Dear Mr. M Read online

  Then, for the second time, he laid his hand on Laura’s forearm, the only difference being that this time he didn’t remove it again right away. We all saw. We saw that Laura didn’t pull her arm away. We saw how Laura took the elastic band out of her ponytail and shook loose her long, black hair—how she then put a cigarette between her lips and asked Mr. Landzaat for a light.

  Jan Landzaat, too, had almost certainly put on his socks and shoes before leaving his temporary rental in Amsterdam’s River District that Boxing Day morning, to spend a few days with “friends in Paris.” And because it was “on my way anyway,” as he told us later that same day, he had swung by Terhofstede, a cluster of houses belonging to the municipality of Sluis, some three miles from the coast of Zeeland Flanders.

  His tempestuous affair with Laura Domènech had ended a little less than two months earlier. He tried to be lighthearted about it, but with each passing day his face bore more and more traces of collapse. The color of his skin faded from brown to yellow, he began forgetting to shave, and there were mornings when the smell of alcohol made it to the desks all the way at the back of the classroom. Often he would remain standing at the board for minutes, lost in thought. You’d have to repeat your question a couple of times before he would reply.

  But not that one time, not when I raised my hand and asked if there was any truth to the rumor that Napoleon had ordered his sixteen-year-old mistress drowned in the Seine. Mr. Landzaat turned slowly and looked at me. His red-rimmed eyes had dark, heavy bags under them, as though he’d been up weeping all night.

  “And why should you suddenly be interested in that?” he asked.

  The house in Terhofstede belonged to Laura’s parents, who were spending their own Christmas vacation in New York, giving Laura and me the run of the place. At first, when Laura told him she was dumping him, Jan Landzaat couldn’t believe his ears. And when he heard why and for whom, Laura said he’d looked disgusted.

  “With him?” he said.

  The little white house was at the edge of the village. When I woke up in the morning I would lie there and look at Laura’s long, black hair fanning out over her pillow. Sometimes I let her sleep, usually I woke her. The frost made flowers on the windowpanes and there was no heating upstairs, so after that first night we moved the mattress down to the living room and slept in front of the antique coal stove.

  In fact, we didn’t get up often. Every once in a while, just to do some shopping in nearby Retranchement, which had one shop. It was too cold to cycle so we walked, holding each other tight the whole time. When we went back to the house we had bottles of cheap wine, beer, eggs, and bread.

  The difference between night and day faded to a timeless vacuum in which we had eyes only for each other—for our attempts to get closer and closer together. In the warmth of our zipped-together sleeping bags, on the mattress in front of the coal stove, the world began all over again each day, each hour, each minute.

  So in that timeless vacuum it didn’t surprise us much to find, after we had got dressed and walked to Retranchement to replenish our supplies, that it was Boxing Day and everything was closed. We lingered there for a while, before the plate glass window of the closed shop, struggling with the idea that the world actually stuck to something like opening times. It was the coldest day of that whole week, a fine haze of snow was blowing across the paving stones. Night seemed to be falling again already, or else it was already getting light again—on that score, too, there was no longer anything like absolute certainty.

  And so, empty-handed, we started in on the trip back to our warm bed in front of the stove. Just outside Retranchement the road makes a slight bend, halfway through which one catches sight of the first houses of Terhofstede, including the white one that belonged to Laura’s parents.

  She was the first to see the car parked outside the garden gate. Someone was leaning against the fender, only a vague form at this distance, but still, unmistakably, a person. It was Laura too who immediately recognized the cream-colored Volkswagen Beetle as belonging to our history teacher.

  “Oh, no!” she said. She grabbed my arm and tried to pull me back down the road. At this point in the bend there were no houses or trees to hide behind. Our only hope was to backtrack as quickly as we could.

  At that moment, though, the figure hoisted itself off the fender and walked up onto the road. He waved.

  “Oh, no!” Laura said again. “This is just too horrible!”

  I pulled her up close, threw my arms around her. I didn’t ask how Mr. Landzaat knew where we were. His behavior in the last few weeks had become increasingly desperate. First he had accosted Laura in the bicycle shed at school, panting and pleading for a chance to talk. Later there were the phone calls when all Laura could hear was the sound of his breathing.

  One night she had woken up with a strange feeling, and when she slid aside the curtain of her bedroom window she saw him there. He was standing under a lamppost, looking up at her. She couldn’t see his features clearly, but she could feel his look of reproach.

  For obvious enough reasons, at school she hadn’t dared to complain about our history teacher’s behavior. That would have resulted, at the very least, in the two of them being kicked out of the Spinoza Lyceum. And telling her parents about it was completely out of the question. They were modern, to a certain extent (or at least that’s what they called themselves), and you might even say they were understanding. But between being understanding and actually understanding something yawns an unbridgeable chasm—a chasm so deep that you often can’t see the bottom at all.

  And so I had taken Laura in my arms and held her tight. She started sobbing quietly.

  “Take it easy, love,” I said. “Take it easy. Everything’s going to turn out fine. I’ll make sure it all turns out fine.”

  Then I let go of her and stepped out into the middle of the road. I raised my hand and waved to Mr. Landzaat. I waved as though I was happy to see him.

  This is the point at which I leave you up in the air about how things went from there, a technique you apply regularly yourself—a digression at a moment of suspense, a story within the story.

  In Liberation Year, that story within the story begins when the four children start on their long journey on foot to the part of Holland already freed by the Allies. The trip takes ages and is rarely suspenseful. We, the readers, would rather get back as quickly as possible to the interrogation of the Wehrmacht defector. But for pages on end you make us hop over frozen ditches along with those children. That they dye their hair along the way is, in fact, extremely implausible in that last year of the war, when even the direst necessities were rationed. Implausible and boring. The children are such pains-in-the-ass, the reader doesn’t really give a damn whether they survive the trip or not. You end up hoping they’ll be arrested and spirited away, and the sooner the better. Off! Off with them! Off with this book!

  Another reason why I pause here is because I’m curious to hear whether my tale of teacher mortality sounds at all familiar to you. Especially the part about the two high-school students and the teacher who just won’t go away. What I’m wondering is whether you have any idea how it goes after that, but to be honest I have no doubts about that anymore.

  At the risk of getting ahead of myself: Isn’t it an ironic twist of fate that your most commercially successful book should be entitled Payback? I’ve always liked that title. You were never particularly in form after that when it came to titles—nor when it came to writing books either, come to think of it—but that’s another story. The story within the story of your life, you might say, of your dwindling writer’s career.

  And then, isn’t it a much more ironic twist of fate that Payback should be your only book based on real events (not counting The Hour of the Dog, which was about your first wife—a different genre, if you ask me)?

  Suddenly I can’t help thinking about my visit to the bookshop a few days ago. Not the day that you were there signing, but the day before that. The mome
nt when the customer finally put Liberation Year back on the pile beside the register.

  After the initial relief, I also felt a certain disappointment. Because, as a matter of fact, I still wish you the best possible sales figures. What could be better than for as many readers as possible to see for themselves that, after a dozen books, two plays, and almost half a lifetime, the writer of Payback no longer cuts the mustard?

  That afternoon, by the way, I also noticed that there weren’t a lot of your books on the shelf. Payback is pretty much obligatory, of course, but your other work was thinly sown. I asked the salesperson about The Hour of the Dog (talk about glaring titles), but he informed me that that particular title was “no longer in print.”

  No longer in print…There are words, sentences, and phrases that, in all their simplicity, say much more than they seem to at first: two months to live, never heard of it, dead on arrival…For a writer, no longer in print must fall somewhere in that same category.

  I saw that Payback is now entering its twenty-seventh print run. I sort of like the new cover, vaguely American with all that red and blue. And that new picture on the back cover—at least you’re not one of those writers who hopes to cheat time’s advance with a single vague and grainy photo.

  You try to keep up with the times, even on the backs of your books. That too, though, is a form of mortality. Every five years the cover is rejuvenated, while the writer and his work go on aging for all to see.

  I took care to stop and read once again the text on the back cover. There was no significant difference from the text on the back of the first edition I have here at home. I own several editions—three, to be precise. When it comes to covers, I think the movie edition is the ugliest. Those red, dripping letters! What could the publisher have been thinking? A bloodbath? It’s a pity, because a title like Payback already speaks so clearly for itself. Why would you want to add anything to that?

  And then, beneath those dripping letters, in a sort of Gone with the Wind setting, the photos of the three stars. That’s the second crucial mistake. An intentional mistake to boot, made only to pump up sales. And indeed, after the movie came out, Payback began its second life, as they say, and made the bestseller list for the second time in five years.

  Movie or no, you should never put pictures of the book’s characters on the cover. That only cramps the reader’s fantasy. You force him to keep seeing the faces of the actors in the movie. For someone who has seen the movie first and then, out of curiosity, goes on to read the whole book, that might not be so bad. But anyone who reads the book first is faced with a dilemma. During the reading he sees the faces of all the characters in his mind’s eye. Faces he wants to assemble with his own fantasy. No matter how those faces may be described. Despite your superfluous descriptions of noses, eyes, ears, and hair color, each reader constructs his own faces in his own imagination.

  Three hundred thousand readers; that’s three hundred thousand different faces for each character. Three hundred thousand faces that are destroyed at one fell swoop by that one face in the movie. As a reader, it’s pretty tough to remember that imaginary face after seeing the actor on the screen.

  Two high school students mastermind their teacher’s perfect murder. That’s the first line of the text on the back cover.

  Two factual inaccuracies, in the very first sentence. Because we never masterminded anything—and it was anything but perfect.

  There’s no need for me to cite the rest of the text here, you know well enough how it goes. That first sentence wasn’t there on the first eighteen editions, it was added only for the film version. But it’s been on every edition ever since. The book has been molded to fit the movie. A movie that differs from the book on a few essential points. Just as your book differs from reality on a few essential points. From the real events on which it’s based.

  Those latter differences are understandable enough. You ran into a few blank spots that your imagination had to fill in. And I must say: Hats off! You got awfully close.

  But not close enough.

  How would you like to have the chance to fill in those blanks all over again? A revised edition of Payback in which the unsettled questions are settled at last? If I were a writer, I wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation.

  It was a little less than a year ago that you moved in upstairs. That would never be possible in a novel. Writer moves into apartment above…well, above what? A character? No, I’m not one of your characters. I’m a flesh-and-blood human being on whom a writer has loosely based a character. In a novel, it would be completely implausible. Too much of a coincidence. Coincidence undermines a story’s credibility.

  There’s only one area in which we accept coincidence, and that is in reality. “Such a coincidence!” we say, and then we dish up a juicy anecdote in which coincidence plays a major role.

  Conversely, you could say that the coincidence that has made us neighbors is only plausible because it takes place in the real world.

  You could never come up with that yourself, people say. At least, a writer never would.

  I remember so clearly the afternoon when I went to see the movie version of Payback. There weren’t very many people in the theater, it was a matinee. I remember the moment when the high-school students appeared on screen for the first time. The boy takes the girl by the arm.

  “I want you to know that I care about you more than anyone else in the world,” he says, and I couldn’t help laughing at such a totally unnatural and implausible line, spoken by an even more implausible actor—the kind of actor you see only in Dutch feature films. I laughed so loudly that I was hissed at from all corners of the darkened theater.

  People read a book and imagine the faces themselves. Then they go to the movie version and the imaginary face is destroyed by the face of the actor on the silver screen.

  With me, that was totally different. In both the book and the movie, I kept seeing the same face.

  My own.

  The postcard came this morning. A postcard…there’s something touching about that, something from days gone by. The same days gone by to which you belong, where your roots lie, you might say.

  You yourself are all too pleased to make a show of those days gone by. In interviews you never fail to emphasize your lack of confidence in modern inventions. Computers, the Internet, e-mail, cell phones—all things you keep at bay.

  “My wife does all my e-mails, I’m too old to start in on that.”

  “Sometimes I hear the cell-phone conversations people carry on in the train and I ask myself whether we’ve made any real progress since the days of the Neanderthal.”

  “I write the first version in longhand, then I type it over. On an old-fashioned typewriter, yes. I tried it once, writing on a computer, but had the feeling right away that I was checking in passengers at an airport. Or working at the local branch office of a bank.”

  Every once in a while you go too far with it, and the coyness shines through. Like when you cast doubt on the sense of electronically amplified guitars.

  “Why for God’s sake does a guitar need to be amplified? When I hear it, I always have the sneaking suspicion that the guitarist isn’t really technically competent, that he’s trying to mask that by making as much noise as possible.”

  Who are you trying to impress with comments like that? Probably those readers who, like you, grew up during World War II. Those readers who (like you) believe that after a certain age there are no new experiences to be had.

  Otherwise, of course, you have every right to do what you do. Writing on a typewriter, why not? It’s not about whether people are right or wrong to live in the past, it’s about whether or who they’re trying to impress.

  If you ask me, that’s what you’re out to give your readers: a potbelly stove rather than central heating, a bike with coaster brakes, a teacher you address as “Mr.” and “sir,” rather than a teacher who tries to be just as young as his pupils. Just as young and sexy, I should really say—the lat
ter above all.

  As a matter of fact, you’re sort of right to be so naive. Those cell-phone conversations really are completely vacuous, of course, but then so are all conversations. Including those held around the old-time cracker barrel. There’s no reason to wax nostalgic about how those cracker-barrel conversations were more edifying than the ones carried on today in a train that is—per usual—running late (“Hi, it’s me, no, we’re standing still again, where are you?”).

  People prefer to talk about nothing at all, it’s been that way for thousands of years and everyone’s fine with that. To say nothing, quite intentionally, of e-mails and text messages. E-mails and text messages facilitate social contact the way a laxative facilitates defecation. But when one takes an overdose of laxative, as we all know, the result is only diarrhea.

  You, in fact, are doing the right thing when you write longhand and then type your sentences letter by letter on a blank sheet of paper: that forces one to think slowly. For the sake of convenience, I won’t go into whether a mediocre mind is served at all by thinking slowly. It’s the idea that counts.

  The reason your wife sent a postcard is because an e-mail or text message would be a no-no. Her handwriting is cute, it’s—I say this without duplicity—girlish. Handwriting with lots of round shapes in the letters, and with round, open dots over the i’s. Psychologists say that open dots over the i’s are an indication of egocentrism, but when it comes to that, if you ask me, you have to draw a sharp distinction between men and women.

  Sometimes I run into the postman while he’s filling the boxes down by the front door. At other times, like this morning, he’s still busy sorting the mail out by his cart.

  “Give it here, I’ll do it,” I say.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure. People have to help each other, right?”

  That’s the way it goes, all the time. Completely natural. A nice, normal man lends the postman a helping hand. Only in the course of a subsequent reconstruction, in black and white and with an ominous voice-over, might one see something abnormal in it. Only with the advantage of hindsight concerning what happened next, and with the aid of tendentious music, does being handed mail that is not addressed to you take on something sinister.