J. Bernlef - Out of Mind

Most people talk about the 'salty sea air', but I call it the 'white scent'. Those little birds the colour of brown rope, tripping along the tide line, would probably understand what I mean.

I am beginning to regain my feeling, my normal feeling. As if my blood is beginning to flow again. I should take such a brisk walk more often. I used to, in the winter, with Pop. Warmly dressed on our bikes along the Bergen Road to Bergen-Binnen where we would stop for a bowl of pea soup, and then straight on to the beach. There we would put our heavy bikes in the store room of a first aid post and walk all the way to Egmond and back. The Dutch wind was nastier, more biting than this one.

I can see the tall white flagpole of the Atlantic Motel sticking out above the last ridge of dunes. Robert knows exactly which way to go. The wooden steps to the beach are half buried by snow, but the hand-rail shows precisely where they are. Robert sniffs at a yellow plastic crate that juts out of the sand.

On the Atlantic Road I have to pause to catch my breath. Robert keeps running around me impatiently. Then we walk back towards home with the sea and the wind at our backs.

As we pass the Cheevers' brick house I call Robert to heel. Before you know where you are he has disappeared, in search of Kiss, the Cheevers' white Pomeranian.

Vera's light-blue Datsun is parked in front of the porch. I climb the steps and look through the window. She is on the phone. I tap against the glass but she doesn't hear. Then she suddenly sees me. Startled, she drops the phone. I wave and enter the house through the open front door.

When I enter the front room she is sitting by the table with clasped hands. Her face looks helplessly at me, like that of a child who waits anxiously for what the grown-ups have in store for her this time. 'Let me take your coat.' She has to stand on tiptoe to help me out of my coat. I sit down by the table while she puts my coat away. She returns with a book in her hand, a paperback with a green cover. A man in a raincoat looks sideways at a brilliantly lit hotel on top of a hill. The title is Our Man in Havana.

'Is it about Cuba?' I enquire. I know Vera is interested in politics. She is about to answer but changes her mind and sits down again, placing the book upside down on the table.

'Maarten,' she says, 'where have you been?'

I take a deep breath of relief. 'A long walk,' I say. 'I have decided to go for long walks more often in future. It's good for the circulation. You should have come with me but you had already gone when I left. Where have you been?'

'I've been to see Dr Eardly.'

That gives me a fright. 'There's nothing wrong with you, is there?'

She puts her hands on mine. 'I went for you, Maarten. You are so restless these days. You do things and the next moment you can't remember having done them. Strange things. I went to talk about it with Dr Eardly.'

'I feel perfectly healthy. Strange things? What kind of strange things?'

'When I got home the whole kitchen was strewn with chicken bones.'

'Robert,' I say hesitantly.

'Half a chicken, Maarten. In the morning, on an empty

stomach, you ate half a chicken. And a can of liver pâté. And several pineapple rings and a packet of cookies.'

'A healthy appetite for an old man, that's all I can say.'

'It's no laughing matter, Maarten. But Dr Eardly says we can do something about it together. And he's given me tablets for you, for the night.'

'I sleep very well, actually.'

'Sometimes you get up in the middle of the night. You get dressed. You don't know the difference between day and night any longer.'

'It's all because of this damned winter,' I mutter. I look at her earnestly, almost severely, as if wanting to persuade her. But what I am really doing is begging her to understand something I do not understand myself. Something that suddenly comes over me and vanishes equally suddenly, leaving a dark shadow of panic behind, which slowly ebbs away until only that slight sense of unease remains that I now feel almost the whole day.

'I know what the trouble is,' I say, 'Chauvas said the same to me at a meeting the other day. "My dear Maarten," he said, "don't you remember we discussed that in detail at our last meeting? Look it up in your own minutes." I've been a bit forgetful for a long time.'

'It was four years ago you last went to an IMCO meeting,' she says.

'Sure, sure,' I say. 'Did you really think I didn't know that?'

'You should take it easy, Dr Eardly said. You should stay indoors for the time being. Your memory is a bit confused. We must steer the past back into its proper channels. Together. Our past, Maarten.'

'Don't look so sad, Vera,' I say. 'There are lots of things I do remember.'

'I can help you,' she says softly. 'We've been together almost fifty years. Dr Eardly said it can all come all right again.'

'What does this Dr Eardly know about me? I've been to see him twice maybe in all the years we've been living here.'

'Don't get excited. He promised to call in one of these days.' 'Doctors,' I sneer. 'Especially in this country with its obsession with health. They do nothing but keep the pharmaceutical industry on its feet, the pill manufacturers.'

'Don't excite yourself so.'

'That's what you said before.'

'I know.'

'What should I do, then?' My voice sounds dull and timid, as though admitting I am sick. Therefore I say, by way of compensation, 'Out of sight, out of mind' (a subtle reference to my condition, because I have guessed all along what this Dr Eardly thinks of me).

'Tell me what you have been doing this morning.'

I mustn't panic. Start from here. From where I am sitting now. The snow outside. The room. This table edge, which I am holding with both hands.

'Take your time thinking about it.'

'Nothing special,' I say. 'Same as usual. Get up, wash, dress, shave, drink coffee, eat breakfast.'

'Chicken?'

'Chicken? No, just the usual slice of toast and marmalade, from that yellow jar with the black lid, you know.'

'You ate half a cold chicken from the refrigerator. A can of liver pâté, a couple of pineapple rings and a packet of cookies.'

'I am finding this a painful account. In broad outline I cannot agree with it.'

'Who are you talking to?'

'Vera,' I say, quickly, and panting slightly, 'listen carefully to me. I don't hurt a fly. I went for a walk this morning, with Robert. Down the path. In the Stevens' yard there was a pick-up truck from Salem. A red one without wheels. You can go and look for yourself. The usual junk. I didn't see Pat. Robert was chasing after some crows. We went to the beach. Into the wind. The white scent was all around me. But I thought that only because other people always talk about the salty sea air. Even Pop does, he always talks about the salty sea air, too.'

'Your father died in 1956.'

I pick up a book that is lying on the table between us and turn it over with a furious bang.

'Did you imagine I didn't know that? To sum up, as Bahr always says at the end of a meeting, I walked along the beach, a little way down Atlantic Road, and then back towards home. Wind at my back. Any other business?'

'You phoned the library.'

'When I came home you were on the phone,' I reply. 'I could see you through the window. I tapped against the glass but you didn't hear me. I waved and when you finally saw me you dropped the phone from fright.'

'It was Joan from the lending department.'

'I don't want you to work there any more,' I say. 'I want you to stay with me from now on, Vera. When I am alone everything goes wrong. I don't know why.'

'I haven't worked there for ages, Maarten.'

'Good,' I say. 'That's all right, then.'

Her narrow head with the brown hair wobbles on her wrinkly neck and her eyes are suddenly so dull and sad that I get up to comfort her. The blood throbs in my temples and I put my hands on her shoulders.