Dear Mr. M by Herman Koch Read Free Book Online Page A

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 latter 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.
    I always wait until the postman has walked on with his cart before starting to fill the boxes. I look at each package or envelope before slipping it into the appropriate mail slot. For me, it has never been anything but plain old curiosity. Or healthy interest, if you will. On the basis of bank statements, subscriptions, and warning notices, I get to know my neighbors better. I never go too far. I study the blue envelope from the tax service for no longer than a second, then put it in the mailbox of the one to whom it is addressed.
    Sometimes I imagine that I am being filmed by someone in a van parked across the street. A nondescript van with the name of a construction or plumbing firm on the side. An undercover operation, with a hole drilled in one of the
o
’s of “construction,” the glass of the camera’s lens visible perhaps only from up close. A telephoto lens, the images are blurry, grainy—but nothing strange is going on. I