J. Bernlef - Out of Mind

If need be — if I really have to — I shall invent a life for myself from minute to minute, and believe in it, like my father and mother believed that story about the two barges bumping into each other, one of which 'had almost sunk'.

'Where can the children be?' I say. 'It's late enough.'

Vera does not reply. She gets up.

'Or has the school bus gone past already?' I ask.

'Yes, Maarten,' she says, 'you were still asleep when the bus went past.'

'Did I sleep as long as that?'

'It's because of the medicine. Dr Eardly said it would make you sleep soundly and he was right. I had to wake you up.'

'What time is it, then?'

'Gone twelve o'clock.'

She leaves the kitchen. Robert follows her.

'I'm coming, Robert.'

I always feel a bit stiff in the mornings but that will soon go when I take my walk.

Have I gained that much weight recently? My coat is so tight. And why is the door locked? I tug at the door knob a couple of times. Maybe it is stuck or frozen.

'Come along, Robert!'

I wait for the dog and look at the coat stand. Hurriedly I take off Vera's wine-coloured coat and correct my mistake before she catches me when she comes out of the laundry room.

'Have you seen Robert?'

'He's outside.'

'I'll be off, then.'

She posts herself with her back against the front door.

'The doctor says you mustn't.'

'I'm not sick. There's nothing wrong with me. Robert,' I call out, 'Robert, come here!'

'He'll come back of his own accord.'

'Am I never allowed out again, then?'

'Not now.' 'But I want to go fishing. I fixed up with Gerard and Klaas,' I lie to her. 'Go on, let me.'

'Come along to the kitchen. You haven't finished your food.'

'At school they say too much dairy produce is bad for your teeth.' (But what can you do? Once I am out of the house, on my own, I should be able to do what I like.)

I sit down by my plate of mush and chew demonstratively. In a minute she's bound to say: Don't dawdle so over your food.

'Has Pop gone to work yet?'

'Maarten, it's me, Vera!'

'Don't shout at me so.'

She hides her face in her hands. Why is she so upset all of a sudden? Why is she crying so heartrendingly?

'Don't cry. I don't want you to cry.'

'Vera,' she sobs, 'I'm Vera!'

'Of course you're Vera,' I say, 'did you think I didn't know?'

She suddenly get up. 'I'm just going to call in on Ellen Robbins,' she says. 'I'll be back in a moment. You do the crossword meanwhile.'

Strange that she didn't tell me she was going out. Maybe she has gone shopping. I quite like being at home on my own, so I can secretly peep in Pop's desk. On Sundays he lets me draw at it. A white sheet of paper on a baize-green blotter covered in inkstains and the marks left by Pop's blotted letters. When you look for a long time you see all kinds of things in it — animals, faces.

The door of the little cupboard inside the desk, behind which there are three deep drawers filled with papers, is locked, but I have the key in my pocket. I pull out the middle drawer and grope with one hand among his papers. I hold a letter in my hand, part of a letter, for there is no beginning, it starts somewhere in the middle.

In the afternoon I was free and I went for a walk in the Latin Quarter. It was pleasant weather for strolling past the galleries and second-hand bookstores. My fingers itched but my French is too bad to read books in it. I bought only a few antique postcards of Paris which I enclose. Two more days and I shall be back with you. In spite of the delights of the 'ville lumière' I miss you all every hour of the day (especially you) when seeing all these beautiful things. Kisses, Maarten.

I pull the drawer right out of the desk and turn it upside down, but no matter how I search and grabble among the papers, the rest of the letter does not emerge. Only piles of documents relating to IMCO meetings, when the club still resided in Bonn. I remember those five years in Bonn, from 1962 till 1967 to be precise. But Paris?

I sit down at the desk and reread the letter fragment. Without a doubt my handwriting.

'You've been to Paris,' I say aloud, but the sentence does not help me, I might just as well have made it up, now, at this moment. If I cannot remember it, the words mean nothing. I fold the letter twice and slip it into my inside pocket. Outside, a dog is barking.

'Robert,' I say, and get up from my desk and go to the window.

Barking, Robert dashes over the snow around the house, following me, but all the doors are locked. They have locked me in and left me on my own.

I stand in the back room and watch Robert nervously circling round an ash tree and jumping up against it so that the snow falls from the branches on to his back. This startles him so much that he comes darting towards me like an arrow and leaps up at the window, only to slide back, his claws scratching across the glass. He looks at me with his dark moist eyes full of sadness.

There is nothing for it. Otherwise he will die of cold. I pull a chair from under the table, take hold of the back with both hands, and push its legs through the glass, which falls out with a great clatter. A few more thrusts and the hole is large enough for Robert to jump through. I run my fingers briefly through his damp pelt. He sniffs at the heap of papers beside my desk and then lies down in front of the radiator as if nothing had happened.

I feel a bit cold. A cup of hot tea would do me good. I go to the kitchen and turn on the gas. The kettle, where is the kettle? 'Kettle,' I say, 'kettle,' but the thing is nowhere, not in any of the kitchen cupboards. Perhaps in the living room. Vera sometimes uses it to water the plants. Not there either. I open the store cupboard but no matter how I search behind plates and glasses, I cannot find a bar of chocolate anywhere. Nor are there any pear drops or aniseed balls. Maybe she has gone to the store. I sit down at the piano and first press the practice pedal before I start. Grandpa is having his afternoon snooze upstairs so I must play very quietly. The keys move heavily and stiffly. Or is it that my fingers are too cold? Then I hear the front door open. 'I'm in here, Grandma,' I call out to her from by the piano.

In a wine-red coat with large black bone buttons Vera rushes past me to the kitchen, sniffing loudly. Then she comes back and runs towards a broken window. She looks first at the shattered glass and then at me. 'Jesus,' I hear her mutter. Then she goes to the telephone. I sit down on the settee and fold my hands. Fear wells up in my stomach and then in my mouth. I swallow a few times and then I hear her talking to someone about a broken window pane. She doesn't say I did it and I appreciate that (although I cannot remember how that window came to get broken). How are you to feel guilty if you can't remember anything about an incident? If you see only the consequences without knowing the cause? You have to refuse. Otherwise there is no end to it and anyone could always blame you for everything. And yet I feel guilty.

When she has finished her call she bends down and pulls papers together that are lying on the floor beside the desk. I can easily help her. I get up.

'Take your coat off first,' I say.

'It's freezing cold in here.'

She's right. I go to the hall and take my coat from the hook.

'Where are you off to?' she says in a very frightened, screechy voice when I enter the room with my coat over my arm. Calmly I put it on.

'Nowhere,' I say, 'I feel cold, that's all.'

She pushes the drawer into the desk and sits down on the chair. 'Maarten, what does all this mean?'

That is precisely the question. The meaning, the cause without which the consequences are senseless, inexplicable. In confusion, and perhaps also in order to gain time, I fumble in my inside pocket. I unfold the sheet of paper. Then I remember.