Free Out of Mind by J. Bernlef Page B

resume the thread. 'When you don't have to go anywhere any more you just walk as you please. There's no harm in it. It can't go wrong. It's not all that good either, but be that as it may . . .'
    He nods and suddenly gets up. He gives me a cool, dry hand. I wonder if he plays the piano? He has the hands for it. When I am about to ask him, he has already turned his back on me and is following Vera into the hall.
    Peace and quiet, keep indoors, familiar surroundings, carry on with the therapy, I hear a man's voice say. And Vera's timid voice in reply: 'Sometimes he's like a stranger to me. I can't reach him. It's a terrible, helpless feeling. He hears me but at such times I don't think he understands me. He behaves as if he were on his own.'
    I know exactly what she means. Like it was just then, when it all went wrong. All of a sudden I had to translate everything into English first, before I could say it. Only the forms of sentences came out, fragments, the contents had completely slipped away.
    Furiously I glare into the front room. I seem to lose words like another person loses blood. And then suddenly I feel terribly frightened again. The presence of everything! Every object seems to be heavier and more solid than it should be (perhaps because for a fraction of a second I no longer know its name). I quickly lie down on the settee and close my eyes. A kind of seasickness in my mind, it seems. Under this life stirs another life in which all times, names and places whirl about topsy-turvy and in which I no longer exist as a person.
    'Curious,' I say to Vera as she enters the room. 'Sometimes I just have to lie down for a moment. I never used to.'
    'It doesn't matter. Have some time to yourself.' She sits down, picks up a book.
    'Have some time to yourself.' I repeat the phrase because it appears strange to me.
    She turns the pages but she isn't reading. I can tell from the look in her eyes that she doesn't understand me.
    'It should be: have some time in yourself. That describes the situation better.'
    'Is that how you feel?'
    'Less and less so.'
    'What do you mean?'
    'Like a ship,' I say, 'a ship, a sailing vessel that is becalmed. And then suddenly there is a breeze, I am sailing again. Then the world has a hold on me again and I can move along with it.'
    'I find it so hard to imagine it, Maarten. I can't see anything wrong with you at all. It is as if you were looking at something, at something that I can't see. Are you afraid at those moments? What exactly happens to you then?'
    'I don't know. I can't remember. Only that feeling of a sudden heaviness, as if I am sinking through everything and there is nothing to hold on to.'
    'Dr Eardly says it will all come right again with rest.'
    'Do you know what I sometimes think, Vera? Why do I have so few memories from my childhood? I think a happy childhood leaves few memories. Happiness is a condition, like pain. When it's gone it's gone. Without a trace.'
    'But there are other things that you remember perfectly. You remember everything about the elevator at the Postjesweg. I had forgotten all about that until you started talking about it.'
    I nod. A small engineering miracle. It was a machine but its wheels and cogs worked so slowly that it looked as though the vegetable boats were being lifted trembling and swaying from the depths by some magic force. I often wave from the bridge at the market gardener sitting in the poop and sometimes he waves back with his cap or woolly hat.
    'Who are you waving at?'
    I look at my raised right hand and quickly drop it. Reality comes to my aid in the shape of a black car that stops behind Vera's Datsun in front of the house.
    'Dr Eardly, that must be Dr Eardly,' I say quickly.
    Vera gets up, puts the book she was holding in her hand upside down on her chair and goes to the door. I can read the title. Our Man in Havana. Rings a bell. I probably read it long ago, though I haven't the faintest idea what it is about.
    'Hi, William,' I say as the