Summary

In Chapter 9, the narrator begins another missive by remarking upon a postcard that has arrived from M’s wife. After pausing to mock the old-fashioned method of communication, which the narrator believes to be a reflection of M’s oft-professed antipathy towards modern technology, the narrator describes how he got the opportunity to read the postcard: By offering, very casually, to sort out the mail for the post office worker. He learns where the author’s wife is, and wonders that he did not figure it out before.

In the beginning of Chapter 8, the narrator remembers watching M visit a café across the street on the previous Saturday. The narrator took great delight in witnessing M's struggle to get a cup of coffee with milk from a surly and unhelpful waitress. M’s ineptitude with the waitress prompted the narrator to wonder if...