J. Bernlef - Out of Mind

'The worst was that letter about Paris,' I say, and start automatically walking around in circles. 'I first thought it was a letter of Pop's but then it suddenly turned out be be my name at the end. And only then did I see it was also my handwriting. Only then. You look.'

I hold up the paper between forefinger and thumb. 'I can't remember how I have lived exactly, Vera,' I whisper with my coat on in the middle of the room, holding up the letter in my hand like a piece of evidence (like a scene from a bad play, equally ridiculous).

'Don't take it to heart,' I say therefore. 'I'll remember in a minute.'

'It was in 1963,' she says.

'When we were living in Bonn,' I say.

'You see, you do remember.'

'Bonn, yes, but not Paris.'

'I'll show you some photographs of it later. You were at an IMCO congress. Something about European interaction.'

'Counteraction they probably mean. Eating and drinking and putting spokes in one another's wheels.'

'That's what you said then, too.'

'And I still think exactly the same,' I say with determination. 'As long as they know. There's someone coming. Look, it's William. Where's Kiss? He hasn't brought Kiss with him.'

'Maarten, will you remember once and for all: Kiss is dead. Has been for a long time. So please don't start about that dog again to William. I'm only too glad he's willing to help us with that broken window.'

'William is a good lad. A bit quiet, but when you give him a pint or two he loosens up all right.'

'We don't have any beer.'

'Then I'll make tea. Oh, yes, by the way, have you seen the kettle anywhere?'

'I'll make the tea myself. Later.'

'I couldn't find the kettle.'

'It's where it always is, on the draining-board by the window.'

While Vera opens the door I go to the kitchen. There stands the kettle. I must have looked right through it. It smells of gas in here. I check the enamel controls but all four point to zero. Maybe there is a leak somewhere in the pipes. That is dangerous, an engineer will have to be called in. I go to the living room.

'Hi, William,' I say. William is crouched in front of a broken window and carefully pulls a large pointed piece of glass out of the frame. 'Nice of you to call on us. Haven't you brought Kiss with you?'

William does not reply. As usual. In a while we'll pour a few pints into him and then his tongue will loosen. You'll see.

'It is nice of William to help us with that broken window, isn't it, Maarten?'

'Very decent of you, William,' I say, and rub my hands together.

Vera goes to the kitchen and returns with a brush and dustpan. Carefully, William sweeps the bits of glass into the pan. Some of the pieces are too big, they won't fit into it. I want to help him but he says it's too dangerous. The larger pieces he carries carefully out of the house between finger and thumb and puts them on the snowy flower bed, at the spot where in summer there grows a tall, untidy tuft of wild marguerites. Vera goes out into the hall. (What a lot of activity for this hour of the day. Pleasant to watch.)

'Maarten, where is the hammer?' she calls out from the hall.

'Where it always is. In the toolbox.'

'It isn't there.'

'Women and tools.' Shaking my head I go to the laundry room. On the shelf, to the far left. Hey, that's funny. Who could have removed the hammer from here? Just to make sure, I look inside the washing machine, but it isn't there. (Of course it isn't there!)

'I don't understand it at all,' I say.

'What a nuisance,' says Vera. 'Now William can't nail that old door in front of it, the one that's still standing in the shed.'

But William says he'll find another solution for it. He goes to the shed in the yard and comes back with an old, colourless door and a monkey wrench. Nails he has brought himself, in a gold-coloured box with a convex lid that he takes from the pocket of his anorak. A pretty little box. But William has no eye for pretty things. At any rate, he does not reply when I make a complimentary remark about the little box.

It is always disagreeable when someone doesn't answer you or pretends he hasn't heard you. That happens sometimes at meetings, too. The words remain hanging in the air, as it were, and the person concerned tries his utmost to conceal his embarrassment and irritation by giving a sharp twist to his speech, addressing someone who just happens to be looking in his direction.

'At least, if you compare it with today's packaging,' I therefore continue to Vera. 'All plastic and Cellophane. They would do better to use the money they spend on advertising to make attractive packaging.'

Now William does answer. He is crouching with his back towards me, but he has obviously been listening.

'Packaging is packaging,' he says. 'You throw it out anyway.'

'Except a little box like that,' I say. 'You yourself are using it for a different purpose now.'

'It's Pop who does that,' says William, and carries on hammering with his monkey wrench.

I fumble in my pocket and go to the desk, quick, lock the little door before he comes home and finds out that I have been rummaging around in his belongings. He'd be furious. Not even Mama ever touches those drawers. There, no one has noticed.

'I get you,' I say. 'Just call me Maarten. Why haven't you brought Kiss? Such a nice dog.'

William raises his eyebrows, above his pale blue, somewhat helpless eyes. He looks towards Vera as if she might be able to answer my question. And she does answer it.

'You know what Kiss and Robert are like together.'

'They tear each other to bits!' calls out William.

Why does he shout so and why does he suddenly pull that relieved, almost farcical face? Sometimes people's facial expressions and the words they speak don't seem to tally quite, like in the cartoons in the Sunday paper, where the colours sometimes go outside the lines of the drawing.

William wipes his right hand on his jeans before shaking hands with me and Vera, and lets a shiny little brass box, which I wouldn't mind having myself, slide into his pocket. Nice of him to call in. He's a pleasant, friendly lad. A bit on the quiet side, but after a pint of beer he loosens up sometimes. Vera follows him into the hall. She says I should take my coat off. What am I doing with my coat on indoors?

Grandpa used to have a whole lot of gold-coloured tin cigar boxes in his shed at the bottom of the yard. He used to keep nails and screws in them. They had medals printed on them with the effigies of kings. Under each medal, in a curve of small black letters, was the name of a foreign city and a date. There was a smell of oil in the shed. Penetrating oil, that is an expression he often used. Penetrating oil rustles through my head, penetrating oil, again and again, penetrating oil, at the front of my mouth so that I have to swallow so as not to say it to Vera, penetrating oil, who enters with a tray of rattling tea-cups and I ask: Where are the children, it's gone four, pointing at the clock and staring at the hairline on her forehead and the tiny specks of pigment just below and feeling her hand holding mine as if she were trying to shake me awake, and still all the time those words, like a neon advertisement flickering up among the other words and although I no longer know which words, they are words, I can still hear the sound, see the outline, I can even still count the letters, two words which I cannot say, my mouth wide open, while she looks at me with that patient, loving, anxious look, as if I somehow no longer come up to the mark, an old horse they leave in the stable, and asks me if I want to do the crossword.

Shake my head resolutely!

'No more strange words! I want to think, in short clear sentences.'

'What of?'

'I want to think, in short, clear sentences.'