Out of Mind (17 page)

One thing: 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.

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.