Free Out of Mind by J. Bernlef

but I can't find them quickly enough. I would like to see that moment again when we stood, a little apprehensive and uncertain, before the registrar of marriages, while behind our backs sat numerous aunts, who never missed a family wedding, particularly when it was whispered that the bride was expecting, and who searched their purses for handkerchiefs when Vera said yes in a loud clear voice, as you can tell from the photograph.
    Her half-open mouth with the snowy-white teeth, the aunts dabbing away a tear here and there. I was so hoarse I had to clear my throat twice before I could answer the registrar's question. And then the wedding reception at her parents' house in Alkmaar, her jovial father who took us to a wooden seaside hotel in Egmond where we had to show our brand new marriage certificate, we looked so young, and indeed we were, I in a suit from the 'Nieuw Engeland' boys' department.
    Perhaps those photographs are in a different album. A festive feeling comes over me. I wouldn't mind a glass of beer.
    I go to the kitchen and look in the refrigerator. Maybe Vera hasn't been out shopping yet. Shall I ask her to get a six-pack? Miller, that's the beer I like best here. Heineken is better, of course, but far too expensive. They drink that here as though it were champagne. The green label was always like a signal from home when I used to have lunch at Crick's. There was always some at one table or another. I ask Vera if there is any beer in the house.
    'Why do you want beer all of a sudden?' she says. 'Anyway, I'd want to ask Dr Eardly first. Alcohol and medicine don't usually go together.'
    I don't quite understand what she is talking about, but I do not want to spoil the atmosphere now.
    'The door has been mended,' she says, and puts her purse on the piano.
    Yet another riddle. Better not ask any further. I nod. She looks at her watch. 'Why don't you lie down for a while?' she says. 'Dr Eardly said . . .'
    ' . . . What have I to do with Dr Eardly?'
    'You don't actually need to go to sleep. Or else play the piano.' She looks at me somewhat anxiously and her voice trembles in spite of her determined tone.
    I don't want to be a nuisance, so I get up and go to the piano. I pick up her purse and open it. She will have to pay Greta before long, and she has nothing but American money. But who would refuse dollars? No one. Greta's boyfriend is a prole, Pop says. He doesn't like her because she smells of perfume, which creeps into my shirt collar at which I sniff furtively in my room after the lesson. I am in love with Greta, but she is on no account allowed to know that. She might not want to give me lessons any more. It is for her that I practise. I don't care about Mozart and Bach. Only about that one little hour a week, alone with Greta, side by side at the piano, wrapped in a cloud of daffodil scent.
    'Why are you standing by the piano like that?'
    Vera's voice. She takes me by the arm. I must go and rest, she says. Only for an hour. No need to get undressed. Just lie down on the bed.
    I enter the bedroom and grin. I chuckle softly to myself and start humming as if automatically. Greta's boyfriend is a prole.
    When I wake up it is so dark I can't even see the church tower behind the Sweelinckstraat. All around the open belfry runs a wooden balustrade. Grandpa told me that someone jumped off it once. In this room I often dream of that. Or of shooting stars, which Pop sometimes points out to me in the evening sky. Shooting stars that burn up when they enter the earth's atmosphere. Maybe Grandpa will teach me how to play checkers tonight. He promised. I'll lie still until he calls me. I hear him playing his recorder at the back of the house. He also has a piano but it has such a heavy touch that I always make mistakes when he asks me to play something. He is playing long drawn-out notes ending in trills. It must be after five. Grandpa always plays from five till half past. Then he has his drink and exactly at six o'clock we