J. Bernlef - Out of Mind

Hunting for things. If there's anything I detest that's it. Where are my keys? And what imbecile has locked all the doors? Robert follows me like a good dog as I try the kitchen door, the laundry-room door and the outside door. Vera must have double-locked it. How could she be so silly?

I go to the phone and call the library. To a girl's voice I explain who I am and ask if I can please speak to my wife, that it is very urgent because I have to set off for work very soon to attend an important meeting. She asks me to hold the line a moment, but the moment lasts so long that I finally throw the receiver furiously back on to its cradle. I have to get to that meeting. Now. Without a secretary they are nowhere.

On the shelf in the laundry room I find what I am looking for at once. I take a screwdriver and hammer from the wooden toolbox and go to the door.

It is easier than I expected. I wedge the screwdriver between the door and the post. After a few hammer blows the door leaps open towards me. Robert slips out immediately and barks, relieved that he, too, has been freed from his imprisonment.

I quickly return to the hall, put on my coat and collect my briefcase into which I tuck the screwdriver and hammer for the time being. It is a quarter to eleven, I see in passing. I must hurry.

Robert likes nothing better than a walk. He runs ahead of me, sometimes to the right, then again to the left of the path, into the snowy wood, and waits for me further on, with steaming mouth and wagging tail.

This is not an official road but a neighbourhood path. It runs past the Cheevers' brick house and the untidy wooden affair of Pat and Mark Stevens. Their garden is one big junk yard. Today there stands a half-demolished bright-red pickup truck without wheels, which, to judge by the black letters on the door, once belonged to Nortons Hardware Store. Just beyond Pat's and Mark's house the woods end and the dunes begin. They are the colour of bleached corduroy. Or matting. The wind has blown ripples in the snow at the foot of the dunes. Like congealed waves. I am the first to arrive, I can tell from the virgin snow all around. It is perhaps a rather strange and yet quite suitable place for an IMCO meeting, so close to the sea. Robert dashes up a dune, but you needn't think, Robert, that those two crows will let themselves be caught by you.

He lives in the same world as I, and yet he must experience it quite differently. This can be inferred from his behaviour. Close above the ground there must hover a world of scents which he crosses this way and that, sniffing excitedly. His tracks are recorded in the snow. To me they seem a purposeless network. Nothing but consequences. Not a cause to be found anywhere, let alone a system.

I know my way around here. If I bear left, past these planted rows of marram, I will reach a shell path that leads straight to the slate-grey house where the meeting is to be held.

I climb the snow-blown steps to the veranda and peer in. A white lacquered table with four chairs around it. This is where it is. I am not surprised I am the first to arrive — I always am. I have never yet seen Bähr turn up on time, even though he is the chairman. Johnson and Simic always phone to say they are on their way and Chauvas cracks jokes about his dates that are forever getting out of hand. I do not record the times of their arrival, only the time at which Bahr opens the meeting. A subtle reference to the official starting time mentioned at the top of the agenda. But today there is no agenda, so the gentlemen are clearly not bothered about punctuality.

Beside the grass-green door is a brass bell. I press it but hear nothing. I put my ear against the door and press again. Bell out of order. I turn. Robert is standing on the snow- covered porch, wagging his tail. A few seagulls float on invisible thermal waves over the undulating dune ridge. Not a soul to be seen. Anywhere.

I open my briefcase and take out the screwdriver and hammer. This time it is much more difficult. The hammer blows sound loud, hard and dry, and from time to time I glance briefly over my shoulder, because for the secretary to a meeting to be forcing a door open is not an everyday event, I realize that.

It is very cold in here. No sign of any heating. Robert wanders into the kitchen but there is nothing there except an empty tea canister on the granite draining-board. An almost hostile, bare interior. What possessed them to choose this place as a venue? Or could I have misunderstood? Mistaken the date perhaps? Were documents sent out and did I not receive them for some reason or other?

I sit down at the table and look out of the window across the snow-covered dunes. In the summer I love this landscape with its somewhat pale, scrubbed colours and tough shrubs and stubborn thistles, the wind moving through the rows of marram on the flanks of the dunes. But today my eyes confront a bare and indifferent terrain. The sky above is grey and closed. Damned winter.

I know, a secretary belongs and yet does not belong. He is a marginal figure, really. But when they arrive I shall have a piece of news for them. I shall get up when they come in. I'll wait for them to sit down, get out their papers and arrange them in front of them on the table. Then I'll get up and beg permission to speak.

'Gentlemen. For some considerable time I have had my doubts about the effectiveness of our meetings. You know as well as I do that the recommendations regarding catch quotas (for they are no more and can be no more than recommendations) are being evaded by the countries concerned, who hire ships under foreign flags. The statistics and catch figures of the past year do not conform with reality and besides, no fish has ever let itself be guided in its movements by our computer forecasts. None of this is news to you, although we try anxiously to conceal the relative futility of our organization from the outside world and from each other. However, another factor has now come into play: the fully automatic fishing fleet, originating from Japan. You are surprised? I am sure you are, but if you will allow me to explain.

'First, with the aid of hydrophones, the sounds emitted by feeding fish are recorded under water. These recordings are then played back under water by means of powerful loudspeakers. In this way, fish are lured over great distances to a particular area where a completely mechanized fishing fleet, steered by remote computer control, is in attendance. The fleet uses electrical nets. An electric field is set out in the sea. Any fish entering this field becomes paralysed and is sucked into the holds by means of enormously powerful pumps.'

A feeling of nausea suddenly comes over me. I just manage to reach the porch. As I hang over the rail my stomach empties itself into the snow, a mucky brown, steaming pulp in which even Robert shows no interest. I feel cold.

What am I doing here? In the summer, people from Boston live here, a bald man and his small dark wife. Fortunately the door can still be shut in such a way that from the outside you can hardly tell it has been forced open. I may get into trouble over this. Without looking back I walk down the shell path, in the direction of the sea. If I return along the beach there is little chance that anyone will see me. Let's hope it will soon start snowing again and all my footprints will be covered up.

I want to get back to Vera. I want to hold her close and say I am sorry. And that she shouldn't leave me alone like this. All these wrong things happen because I am being left alone.

'Come on, Robert, we must go home at once.'

A sharp wind and the sound of the sea swishing, sighing over the smooth hard sand. I watch the foaming, advancing water. Underneath, a counter-current pulls it swiftly over the sand, back to the sea. If I look at these opposing currents for a long time I grow dizzy.