Dear Mr. M by Herman Koch

Author:Herman Koch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2016-09-06T04:00:00+00:00

Herman came up with the plan.

“We walk to the Zwin and back,” he proposed on the third day. “And we don’t say anything. Not a word. If we want to tell each other something, we do it with sign language. But let’s try to keep that to a minimum too.”

It was around three in the afternoon, they were having a late lunch of bacon and eggs. Miriam Steenbergen, the newcomer to the club, had just a bowl of muesli with fruit.

“And the one who says the least, wins,” she said. “For every word, you get three penalty points.”

Herman didn’t even bother to look at her. “It’s not about points, Miriam. It’s not a contest. It’s about the experience. What happens to you when you’re not allowed to talk? When you walk out of doors and the only thing you hear is the birds? Birds, the wind, and the sound of the waves.”

Miriam had only recently become David’s girlfriend; a week before the fall vacation started, he had called Laura.

“Who is it exactly?” Laura had asked, because she couldn’t connect the name to a face.

“Blond hair, almost to her shoulders,” David said. “She’s in the parallel class. Friends with Karen.”

“Sorry, David,” she said. “I really don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“Remember the field trip to Paris? When we were all at the hotel bar. When you and Landzaat…they were both there too. Karen and Miriam.”

Because Laura still couldn’t put a face to the name, and because David couldn’t see her anyway, she shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Oh, her,” she said. “What about her?”

Then David started in on a long story, a story with lots of details—so many details that Laura knew right away that things were serious between David and this faceless girl. First he’d gone to the one café, then to another, and then back to the first one and was just about to go home—when Miriam suddenly wandered in. He had never really noticed her before, he admitted (which helped to explain why Laura had also been unable to link any physical attributes to the name Miriam), but on that particular evening, four days ago now, her face had suddenly been “beaming,” he didn’t know how else to put it—and while she was beaming their eyes had met.

Laura knew exactly what he was talking about. Last summer she had seen Stella beam like that, but she didn’t tell David.

“You always figure it’s a cliché from some romantic movie,” David said. “Until it happens to you. The light had a lot to do with it; she came in out of the darkness into the light of the café, then semidarkness when she came over to me, but the light never left her face, like the heat of a fire, the glowing ashes after the fire is already out, I mean.”

At this point Laura couldn’t suppress a yawn, she covered the mouthpiece with her hand so David wouldn’t hear, but that probably wasn’t even necessary. He was so

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