Out of Mind

by J. Bernlef

  Step by step. Luckily there is light burning in this corridor. Wooden floors, straight boards, with joins it would be better to avoid. Watch out for splinters. Pull up your knees, high up!

  At the back of this head there's something buzzing. This body is pressing me out. Like a turd I am being pressed out of myself. I can think this with words, but they do not cover what happens. Meanwhile it happens, outside me. (Again an inadequate term.)

  The light switch is usually to the right of the door. So it is here. Hi, dog. Wave, don't talk.

  It thumps somewhere in my head. (Or is it this house that is making that noise?) I cautiously push the curtain aside, take a few steps back. In the black glass hangs a room, a piano, a desk. An old man in pyjamas looks at me, imitates a live man with his hollow black eyes and his long white thin hands which he now raises, defensively, palms turned outward, to breast level. Quick, close the curtains!

  Good God. A man is hovering above the snow out there! A man, a piano, a desk, a whole room floating above the snow out there in the night. Cross the floor to that table over there!

  Hi, dog. Licks my hand with his rough tongue. 'We must wait till it gets light outside.' (Then we can define our position and take the necessary counter-measures.)

  A book with a padded cover, kind of oblong album. (Take the cover between thumb and forefinger, open it!)

  Nothing but photographs, black and white ones and colour ones. And there is that man in the snow again, only younger. The hatred in those eyes, out there in the snow. No one has ever looked at me like that before. He must go. All pictures of him must go. There's a fireplace over there. Logs are lying beside it, stacked in a potato crate. On the mantelpiece lies a box of matches. (Somehow or other I already knew this. Perhaps a case of déjà vu.)

  First tear the photograph carefully from the page and light it and then place it among the wood chips. Small, quivering, yellow-blue flames creeping around the first log. Men sitting in a meeting around a gleaming table. Little bright-blue flames along the serrated edges of the photograph where blisters bubble up which pop and then, as they turn chocolate brown, quickly crawl to the middle until the whole meeting room has disappeared.

  Pictures of people in a park, people on a beach, that same man again, on the deck of a ship beside a woman who is here standing alone on a rock, laughing, her hair blowing loose. A child in a playpen. A boy and a girl hand in hand posing in front of a bright red swing.

  Let them vanish, let them go black and vanish, fly away like dark flakes of soot out through the chimney, turn into black specks in the snow on the roof. I hum softly. The dog beside me likes it, too. At any rate, he is lying with his head between his forepaws beside me and watches my hands as they pick the photographs out of the album and drop them one by one in the crackling, smoking fire.

  Two women, two women in rustling garments, a young one and an older one. They speak English and take a book of photographs out of my hands. (Better do what they want, I'm no longer as strong as I was, seriously weakened, as it turns out.)

  Get up. The throbbing starts again. Dizzy. And thirst. Don't want to go outside between them. (Do they want to turn me out because I am becoming too difficult?) 'Not to that man in the snow!'

  Yet another room. How many rooms are there around me? I am being turned over. They strap me down. Undoubtedly as a precaution. Everything here is in movement. Like on a ship. Amazing that those two stay on their feet. They say nothing. Hard, closed, women's faces under artificial light. Resolute, overconcentrated, busy. Every wrinkle and crease becomes rigid in this merciless light. It is utterly silent, apart from the throbbing which is now close behind my eyes.

  'Something wet on my head, please.'

  I get it at once. Coolness seeping in through my skull. Water runs into my mouth. I suck at it greedily.

  Am alone now. How silent it is. Where has the world gone? Gently shake this head. Shake everything out of it. (Maybe one will then become again who one was before?) Through a chink in the curtains, somewhere over there, appears a thin strip of hesitant light. Seem to feel that this body has become light. (Atmospheric changes? Vanished thoughts? Spring coming perhaps?)

  No way back, no way forward. Fill this space more and more. (Breathe as little as possible, therefore, so as not to expand even more in the emptiness around me.)

  There is a cloth, somewhere above my eyes, but I cannot reach it. Am stuck. Maybe I am not really large at all, but small, maybe I have lost the sense of my own dimensions.

  Don't know. Is that why they have tied me down, are they afraid I will fall out of bed with this enormous head?

  Shake gently, no words, only humming, melodies skimming close above the ground, humming like bees, bumblebees above the grass. Humming against throbbing. Still and yet moving. Less and less body, specific weight. And full of heavy water, which somewhere down below seeks a way out in a warm stream.

  Don't. . . don't. . . don't undo. (Have become as light as air.) Don't. (Yet it is done.)

  Grab hold of me, great sharpness hurting my hands. It smarts between those legs as they walk, or rather are dragged, to a tiled space full of steam. Can't see a thing.

  It's better like this, warm water and nothing to be seen. Behind the steam questions are being asked. I can tell they are questions and I nod. Nod . . . just nod. It gets across.

  'Water all right?'

  Yesyes, water all right, we nod. Let me sink. Like him.

  Arm hoisting me up under my armpits. Up we go. Careful, I have become so light all of a sudden.

  'Lots of clothes!'

  Get nothing but a bathrobe, belt tied around me.

  Through doors. How many? And all those directions, enough to make you dizzy.

  'Up to the North!' My voice still sounds distinct, still does, but much feebler. (Wear and tear?)

  Vera's hand. (Surely that is her hand?) Don't take your eyes off now, follow now, until a large, flat area of wood comes into view, a smooth, gleaming expanse, in front of which you are set down, seated, bent double. Hold on to wood, this thick wooden edge. Otherwise you will rise or capsize.

  Now it is also in the words themselves. Light sentences come first, shoot up like corks, intended or unintended, the better sentences are too long and too heavy, they go on hovering somewhere under my tongue.

  This is eating. Can eat by myself, honestly, am no longer a little baby. Eating . . . lots . . . lots. No time for cutlery which clatters out of sight into the depths beneath me. Quickly stuff it into my mouth. (Before they take it all away again, start polishing me up, rub my cheeks with a rough cloth.)

  Light hollows out. Human beings are so full of holes. Human beings should be more closed. In the end you can't keep anything inside any more.

  Lovely smooth wood to rub. Movement which prevents emptying. Better not look aside either. Straight ahead, those eyes!

  Voices calling that it is snowing again. Your back towards it. Don't tolerate any more fluttering.

  Am moved once again. (Question: 'Can you walk by yourself?') Could, but a little too dangerous just now.

  Leaning heavily on that mohair arm. Let go. Fall. A tumble into a hard chair. Wood on either side. Wooden slats around my body. Grab hold of them, again the chasing flakes outside that I can't help seeing now. There is thick snow on the blue roof of Vera's Datsun. (This was one of those old-fashioned, good old heavy rows of words.)

  Persevere, find the happy mean between rising and sinking in yourself. Congeal around a centre; a centre of gravity.

  Question: 'How are you feeling?'

  A question that can be answered. Wait a moment. Wave briefly with those hands. Like this. Only very briefly. Quickly grab hold of the wood again. Wait a moment. 'Not enough gravity!'

  Wind drawing patterns and whirling about in the flakes; drawing streaks and stripes across the window panes. Winter falls deeper and deeper (and there is less and less that one can set against it). Judging by the snowflakes the wind now comes from all sides.

  One th
ing: don't go to sleep now. Don't fall asleep. Would like to. Mustn't, though. Hold head straight! Make a firm stand! Be prepared! (Pre-war phrase, blown over from Pop's world to here, to this head which has become much too large to go on living in.)

  Beside me a girl in a fluffy, soft-blue pullover. She looks at the snow. She paints her lips. She holds a little mirror up to her face. (The actions possess a faint echo of cohesion.) Suddenly there is such loud laughter in me that everything begins to shake around me and one hand slips away from the arm of the chair with quick, grab-eager fingers in the direction of a blinking little mirror. I look into it. Away with it! Someone takes it from my lap and lays a hand on this ever-swelling head. Of course, he or she notices it too. It's a hydrocephalus. (Can't you feel how light you have become? Soon you will rise to the surface.)

  One is being pushed aside. They have brought in someone else. I had been able to see that in a mirror just now. One must develop counter-pressure. (But how can counter- pressure be developed from a void?) Somewhere there must still be some energy available, somewhere in Maarten Klein there must still be a Maarten Klein, surely?

  A brush on wood, a stain on the floor, they provide no duration, only a state. (There's no connection any more in anything around here, dammit.)

  Words, that's what provides energy, they are themselves energy. A human being should be made of words. Totally. It's so obvious. (At last something of worth again, supply of words there must be, that's what can save the situation, stories, supply, import of stories.)

  'Read to me!'

  Movement starts up in the room. (You see, when you use the right words something always happens.) A young woman with long blond hair disappears through an open door. Can see her back slipping away. Another woman takes her place, front forward. A pleasant old voice she has, slightly faltering.

  'Read!'

  Follow her in the space around this chair. See a book being picked up from the table. Book. Words. I eagerly stretch out my hands towards it. I hug and stroke the book. A man in a raincoat and hat. He looks up at a hill with palms and a brightly lit hotel on it. The title is unfamiliar to me, and so are the words. I return the book to the lady.

  Now I hear English, the English language. Perhaps it is better so. Only sounds, sounds and rhythm. Cool, bright, unfathomable.

  An old woman's voice, trembling and thin, rising and falling, sometimes to the rhythm of the snowflakes outside the window until a fresh gust of wind disturbs the equilibrium between the flakes and the voice. The voice brings movement closer, progress from sentence to sentence. I hear names recur and that amusing play of rising and falling, of question and answer. Then it stops. The voice has gone and everything goes dead.

  Am alone again in this space. Squeeze the wooden chair arms with these fingers. On one hand (not this one but that one) is a little scab. (Pick at it.)

  An older woman, her brown hair pinned up, wearing a black high-necked dress. (She is as complete as you could wish the image of a person to be.) She sits down facing me and says the picking should stop, it shouldn't be done, she says. 'Otherwise you are lost.'

  A small round drop of blood on the back of this, no, of that hand. Rub it out to as large a stain as possible. Squeeze hard. And again. There's another drop.

  'You see. As long as blood flows there is still hope.'

  She seems to understand that. She nods with a smile around her lips, which purse as they suddenly approach fast. Ugh! I quickly turn my head away, rub over that damp spot on my cheek. (If they start slobbering over you, where will it end.)

  Flakes. Plural. There is only plural in the world, multiplication, the world expands more and more. (I understand all about that demonstration out there but don't want to join in, don't take part, one shouldn't let oneself be swept along into that faceless fluttering out there.) Shut your eyes! But it goes on snowing. It snows even inside me. No more defence anywhere.

  A doorbell. Someone who wants to come in from outside. That is what that sound means, you can be sure. Someone wants to come in. He or she rings the bell. The door is opened.

  A long white car stands in front of the veranda. I hear voices, male voices and thumping shoes.

  They all stand there, out of nowhere, suddenly, just like that, tall as houses, a circle of people around me. Men in white jackets with a red emblem on the breast pocket. I want to hold on to my chair but feel no strength anywhere. Watch how they unhook old fingers one by one from the arms of a chair.

  Am lifted, slid into a bed with straps, tied down, lifted, I hang aslant in the room. (Men, hold on tight, you have no idea how light is your burden.)

  Furniture, piano, an entire interior, a whole room totters and tilts past me. Vera stands by the door. 'Vera!' I want to raise myself, hanging at a slant I stretch out my arms towards her. 'Vera!' Am stuck fast, fettered. They carry me out of the door and I call out to her, 'Vera!', but I no longer see her and am again tilted through a doorway and lie crying in the snow, flakes land on my lips, on my cheeks, and I see her once more, she looks at a thermometer behind a window and then the white doors of the ambulance close and the driving begins in this rocking car which is also a ship Vera and also a snowflake in which I lie tied down and which skims past tree tops where other snowflakes chase along with us, accompany us like falling stars and so we fall through space Vera and glimmer briefly afterwards (or are we already dead) until we fade away or burn out, become white flakes, or black specks, what's the difference?

  Question of mistake or exchange? ... a tall bare space with concrete flower troughs full of pitch-black earth ... no flowers only scuffed kitchen chairs . . .men and women in mouse-grey overalls . . . sometimes distant, sometimes frighteningly near. SUDDENLY THEY ARE STANDING BEFORE ME

  deportation? . . . only English is spoken here . . . through large windows: a view of a tall brick wall topped with upright green bits of glass ... so these people are hidden from the eye of the world . . .what happens to them? . . . the guards are dressed in white with dark-blue neckties, both men and women . . . are clearly under instruction not to listen ... I come from the Netherlands, the only one here . . .vomit-long and plaintive- as if the person can scarcely muster the strength for it. . . once again someone spewing himself inside out.

  In the snow-covered courtyard stands a birch, spindly branches end in fine, motionless twigs, dark patches on the thin twisted trunk, a

  BIRCH

  he still has that word and therefore I still see you beloved . . .

  Such people's faces are white as sheets and show nothing . . . masks in a museum . . . perhaps it is an exhibition, a competition in sitting still?

  Loud school bell, several times in a row . . . chatter breaks out on all sides ... a voice cries softly . . . another voice crooning the same tune all the time ... it seems spontaneous but it is mechanical.

  A birch surrounded by snow ... if only I could be where that birch is . . .

  YOU'RE MR KLEIN?

  the birch in the snow ... it can't help me either ... I am led away . . . wave one last time . . . shall never see her again.

  A white corridor with a green line half-way up the wall. . . very slow, solemn walking held by one arm (and by the line on the wall).

  Utterly loose in space . . . girl with reddish-brown curly hair very close by now . . . the sun sparkles in the outer hairs around her head .. . space . . . sink at once . . . feel ground . . . they don't understand why someone who is so empty must lie down here . . . they understand nothing of what I say . . . the thought of an interpreter doesn't occur to them ... I am the only survivor of my own language.

  People sit in long rows on benches and wooden seats . . . women and men . . . drugged it would seem from the way they sit staring in front of them at the whitewashed wall.

  Smell of paper, cardboard, glue, wood . . . good smells . . . those people bending over are they asleep? . . . high up in the ceiling there is music slowly trickling down . . . tables covered in colourful strips of paper, glue-pots, brushes . . . party
hat rolled on to its side . . . red with a green pompom at the top.

  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.