Get up, you… go and inspect that piano from close by. . he walks to the little steps by the side of the stage. . toilingly clambers up. . keys that go up and down all by themselves. . now in the middle register then in a rapidly ascending run in the descant. . perhaps they can help your fingers. . teach them perhaps to play again… to play from memory again. . that blissful feeling that your body is playing you. . that you yourself have become music… he sits down on the chair in front of the piano and feels the keys knocking against his fingers. . they push you away. . rebuff you. . won't have anything more to do with you and the canteen boss with his grinning face pulls you off the chair and wants you to help drill those grey old people at those tables down below to the beat of the shrill automatic piano behind you which strikes up 'Home on the Range' and he sees the childlike abandonment on all those singing, wide-open faces that are so happy at being allowed to do the same thing together on the orders of the music machine.
Run away then. . away from here and you grope your way among the thick folds of a back curtain. . with the laughter from the hall in your ears you fumble. . grab hold of the folds. . clawing along the curtain until you have found the way out and stand panting in the darkness where you can still hear the piano but more muffled and also the singing feebler and poorer… he is searching for the exit. . that's what I like to see. . and ends up by the steps again down which you climb or stumble, it isn't certain which, and then you see light burning at the end of a corridor with a freestone floor and tall, barred windows and past a row of toilets without doors. . then he enters a space with washstands and taps. . the drinking troughs. . here is water at last. . drink… go on drinking. . rinse. . rinse. . rinse. . stream… I must stream… lie under water and stream along. . stream away. . why do those guards remove this body from its fountainhead and dry it and lead it away from the water?
They take it to a space where there are beds. . they make it sit on the edge of a bed. . they undress it. . they put pyjamas on it that look like the pyjamas of those other men with their big, staring, half-bald heads on the tall, white pillows and all turned towards him. . they push a pill into his throat. . they pour water through it as if he were a funnel. . they lay him in the bed. . they walk past the row of beds together. . they are silent until they reach the door and call out together good night GOOD NIGHT they call and then it is dark.
There is breathing everywhere. . they have all come here to sleep for the last time together. . who with whom no longer matters… no more names… no more faces. . only breathing. . sighing… all of them known to him when they were still alive. . each one of them. . name and surname. . she is among them somewhere. . seek her. . her hand we must seek. . this takes time… a whole lifetime it takes. . breathing out and sighing and groaning and wailing and whimpering and snoring. . her hand will come to you. . here. . first take that hand that gropes aimlessly in the dark. . take it gently. . calm him. . now you no longer need to hold anything yourself. . she will do that from now on. . she carries you… I carry you. . little boy of mine. . the whole long frightening night I will carry you until it is light again.
When it is already light and GOOD MORNING and someone says. . whispers. . the voice of a woman and you listen. . you listen with closed eyes. . listen only to her voice whispering. . that the window has been repaired. . that where first that old door had been nailed. . there is glass again. . glass you can see through. . outside. . into the woods and the spring that is almost beginning. . she says. . she whispers. . the spring which is about to begin. .
About the Author
J. Bernlef was born in 1937. He has worked as a bookseller and translator. Since 1962 he has lived as a freelance writer in Amsterdam. He has won prizes for his fiction, most recently the prestigious AKO Literatuurprijs. Out of Mind is his first novel to appear in English.