J. Bernlef - Out of Mind

It's stuffy here. . fresher atmosphere would be desirable. . my footsteps on the floor can no longer be felt. . soles too thick, floor too soft, who or what is to tell?. . feeling is no longer passed on. . remains hanging somewhere halfway. . counter-pressure. . soft compulsion. . sit.

WE'RE GOING TO MAKE A DRAWING TODAY, A SELF PORTRAIT.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO DO IT IN PENCIL OR WOULD YOU RATHER USE PAINT, MR KLEIN?

A woman's voice ebbing away into a question mark. . scent moves from place to place. . the air has become almost too thin for smells… a hand holding scissors cuts slowly in the air.

LET'S GIVE IT A TRY

Flower scent. . daffodils… so spring must have come. . without him having noticed.

HERE YOU ARE!

A big sheet of white paper… a hand… a woman's hand… a woman's hand holding a wooden box… a box divided into sections, upright partitions… a scent rises from it, right across the daffodils. . two scents floating around me. . flowing into one another. . flowers and graphite. . together a name. . sweetest and heaviest word of my life. . rises from the bottom-most depth like an air bubble. . escapes and bursts resoundingly asunder… I slam my hand in front of my mouth and bite my fingers.

THAT'S OK. DRAW VERA'S PORTRAIT, THAT'S JUST FINE, THAT'S

OK FOR US.

Out of here. . don't know from which side the world is coming towards me. . there must surely be a direction?. . every space must have an entrance and an exit, mustn't it?

Hands. . feet. . scraping of scuffed chair legs across concrete. . want one Mr Klein to say 'Vera', say it, Vera Vera Vera Vera Vera Vera until I hear it.. hear how my voice drifts away. . gone is gone.

Much singing and crooning from all nooks and crannies. . faces: battered. . stretched. . bloated. . flaky (and more such words).

Lightly undulating. . the whole inside now threatens to come out. . Einstein was right once but he forgot this place. . light has no longer any velocity here. . nothing for me to enjoy.

Can that smell of piss clear off!

They shine lamps at you in here. . probably to see what is still lying here. . what has been left in my eyes. . what may still move a little. . they want to have it all. . grasp everything they can get… so he is being slowly scooped empty here, the Maarten that was.

Beam of light full of dancing dust specks. . proof once more that light itself stands still. . perhaps this is the discovery of your life. . the goal.

As soon as singing, shouting, chattering breaks out, the light becomes denser. . everyone hopes to be home before dark.

From behind a stick prodding me in the back. . straight away give a kick backwards without looking round. . bellowing!… on your knees you!. . kneel!

Hands and feet it must have. . eyes open and shut: same place. . eyes open and shut and open again: same place.

Thick, greasy smell is born or carried in. . hangs sweating everywhere. . the doors are deliberately kept shut with clanging keys. . they seem to need music with everything here. . this in imitation of time if you ask him. . farts are the only remedy against it. . utmost disapproval… a sound that is usually accompanied by great hilarity. . but for hilarity one needs a head and nobody here has that any more.

They come past. . they are on their way. . stand still. . not allowed. . changes are clearly no longer permitted. . sit with a big head which from sheer emptiness flops forward. . caught hard by the edge of a table. . and laughing!

Look, this is not exactly humour. . humour is when someone trips on a banana skin. . comic is when someone sees a banana skin and gives it a wide berth and ends up in the path of a falling brick. . big lump. . head which is clearly so conspicuous here that they keep fussing about it. . especially women or what pass as such. . away, you witches!

All the time he needs to keep human beings at arm's length. . someone sings. . very wonderful but hidden behind a pillar. .and why not. .why not admit to everything: that there are voices without bodies.

They make sure that people always take everything with them when they are dragged from place to place.

There are still hands and feet on him but hardly controlled. . spoon. . fork. . still knows more or less what this has to do with eating and so on. . steering is seriously impeded. . steaming food lies all over the place. a plate. . the rim is smooth and round to the fingers. . things keep being taken away in order to prevent one from settling down here. . complete disorientation, that is the aim. . deliberately refuse to understand that this plate is a prop, an anchor for his fingers.

Don't understand anyone. . only the familiar words. . his own language from within. . both his parents spoke Dutch. . they are both dead now. . everyone he knows seems to be dead… do you know. . you astray amid this herd. .you are the only ray of hope.

Tucking in. . beside. . across. . opposite. . don't even know why they are being fed, the stupid hogs. . namely to retain any weight at all. . hence the rumpus when suddenly someone sits down to shit. . quite understand those guards… a) it is filthy. . b) they would blow away on the merest breeze.

Too far removed from the wall. . which is bad… a body that can no longer propel itself becomes a tree. . like that thin one over there in the snow. . the wall… to the wall. . over the wall. . that is what he means when he thinks: only in language can I still undertake anything.

Still hands but once out of sight they snap off. . fall away. . once out of sight they can no longer be felt either. .how heavy I am. . heavy nothingness.

Back into life?. . but where has it gone?… is there such a thing?… or was everything simply a fantasy in the head?. . phantoms of the mind?

At least pinching still causes a slight pain… an event. . using the choke but where has the engine gone. . nothing but metaphors, boy. . nothing but metaphors.

The head rolls about on the neck all by itself without any guidance. . must try to shrink… at any rate this boy here must not eat any more.

Shuffle those feet down there. . rub with those hands higher up. . help to crush this little person in between. . into his disappearance. . that is what they do to all these people here. .

Don't care for anything at all, don't care. . grasping. . holding. . letting go is now done independently by this hand like a machine which he watches.

Extinguished male head. . dribble running into the collar of his overalls. . pink lips opening and closing as those of a fish. . drums absently with his fingers on his flies. . am I like that, too?

The garden wall is good. . imitate a wall, most of the people here do that and who can blame them?. . some of them have quite a talent for it.

Sounds do not remain constant or does the head lower its hearing at times?

A madhouse?. . think: not mad means nothing. . one can't check for oneself whether one is mad or not.

Far in the distance there is gunfire. . shots. . fine business that is, there's even a war on now. . will it never end?. . occupied from within. . my liberators have occupied me, that's what it is. . more and more censorship. . hardly anything still gets through.

Sick. . sick as anything. . but can't tell whether the sickness is inside or outside this skin… on the borderline there is not a breath of air. . he has become a thin, transparent point in space.

Tea in metal mugs. . warms the hands. . lukewarm never becomes hot. . but hot does become lukewarm. . can this be called progress while in fact it is regression… to a state in which everything ends up having the same temperature. . tea can never of its own accord become colder than its surroundings. . that is so. . the static condition of tea for which stirring is of no further avail… let go that mug because those hands down there. . those stiff fingers. . serve no purpose any longer… on the contrary. . they freeze everything they touch.