Out of Mind

In the front room I hear Vera on the phone.

'Yes, I thought so. But Maarten said I was imagining it. . That's what I was going to suggest too. We'll be in touch.'

I heard her put the receiver down.

'You see, it was the phone just then.'

I nod.

'So you did hear it?'

'I remember hearing something,' I say, 'but I don't think it was the phone.'

'But it was.'

She goes to the kitchen. I hear her opening the flap of the oven and a moment later the dull plop of the gas leaping into flame. I am still holding the book in my hands. When Vera returns, I say, 'Yes, I remember now. Just as I was about to get up, it stopped. That can happen to anyone. Was it Ellen Robbins?'

'Yes, it was Ellen Robbins. She thought we weren't in, that maybe I had forgotten what we had arranged. Will you keep an eye on the clock? It needs another ten minutes. I'm going to put on a jersey, I keep feeling cold.'

I want to ask her, but she has already left the room. Ten minutes. The big hand is now on the seven. When it is on the nine, ten minutes will have gone. But what then? What has to be done? I shut the book and push it away from me. I stare at the black hands of the gold-coloured wall clock. There is no second hand on it. It looks as if the clock has stopped. It is a modern one, it doesn't tick.

I go to the kitchen, sit down at the table and look at the bright red kitchen clock on the wall, an electric one with a gold-coloured second hand that moves round the clockface with little jerks. I don't let my eyes stray from it for an instant. I have always been a man of the clock. Punctual. That is more than you can say of some people.

One more turn and then the big hand will be on the nine. Then ten minutes will have passed. Time is up. I get up from the chair and go to the living room. 'Vera,' I call, 'time is up.' I walk across the room, into the corridor. 'Vera, Vera, the ten minutes are up,' I call, as calmly as possible.

Then I hear her answer coming from the bedroom. 'Turn the oven off then, will you?'

I don't know how fast to get back, to carry out this instruction. When I hear the rushing sound of the gas cease, I sit down at the kitchen table with a sigh of relief. It is only thanks to her answer from behind the closed bedroom door that I have been able to carry out this task. Otherwise I would not have known what to do. It worries me that you can suddenly be so cut off from the most ordinary everyday actions. I have no explanation for it.

Vera is wearing a grey-blue, thick-knitted jersey with a broad, wide-open neck. She has pinned up her hair.

'Why have you put your hair up like that?'

'I usually do when I have to do the cooking.'

'Do you have to do the cooking now, then?'

'It's already done, really. You're right, it's no more than a habit.'

She puts on her flowery kitchen gloves and pulls the baking tray with a pizza on it out of the oven.

'Pizza,' I say in surprise.

'Yes,' she says, 'it's Sunday, after all.'

'Pizza day,' I nod, and I get up from my chair to fetch plates and cutlery. Vera cuts the pizza into four parts with a meat knife. She flicks two dark bits of meat on to my plate.

'Anchovies, I don't like them.'

'Pizza,' I say, 'I like pizza.'

'We ought to have a glass of red wine with it,' she says. 'Do you remember in Rome, by that large square? I can't remember what it was called. There was a big fountain in the middle. We had a pizza so big it didn't fit on the plate, it was hanging all over the sides. Two gypsy beggar girls in those long ragged skirts saw that I couldn't possibly eat all of it and just as I was about to give them each a piece they were ordered off the terrace by one of the waiters. Those indignant dark eyes as they looked over their shoulders when they walked away! Later we saw them on a wide sidewalk in front of another terrace, dancing like two grown-up women. Do you remember?'

'Yes,' I say, 'Rome. The Trevi Fountain.'

'No, that was a different one. That's the fountain you have to throw coins in and make a wish. I wished for a daughter.'

'And?'

'I got a son.'

I nodded. 'There are many fountains in Rome,' I say. 'I remember. It was before the war.'

Vera nods. She has little blushes on her cheeks, from talking, from remembering. I dare not quite look at her. I spear the leftover piece of pizza on to my fork and hold it so high that Robert has to jump at it with wide-open mouth.

'Pity we have no photographs of that trip,' says Vera.

'Yes,' I say, 'Rome. Rome, city of fountains.'

'Three years later it was war.'

'All over now,' I say. 'In the end everything is all over.'

I get up to make coffee while Vera washes the plates and puts them in the plate rack. I look sideways at her. She must now be almost as slim again as then, on that vacation in Rome of which I remember nothing. Luckily she told me all about it. My God, what would I do without her in this situation (and the worst is that I cannot form a precise picture of what that means: this situation)?

After coffee we play a game of chess. I give up half-way, I can think of nothing but vanished memories and therefore dare not think of the past any more. Even less dare I talk to Vera about it. Perhaps it is only temporary, perhaps they will come back. Memories can sometimes be temporarily inaccessible, like words, but surely they can never disappear completely during your lifetime? But what are they exactly, memories? They are a bit like dreams. You can retell them afterwards, but what they really are, whether they are real, you don't know, no one does. I have sometimes heard Robert dream, at night, squealing thinly and plaintively from the living room. And sometimes Vera mutters a few words in her sleep, under her breath and unintelligible. I never dream. That is to say, I do not remember having dreamt for ages.

'Do you ever hear me dreaming these days?' I ask. 'Aloud, I mean.'

'Not that I know,' she says. 'I suppose I am always asleep myself.'

I had hoped I would sleep well last night. Vera slept. She always sleeps soundly, has done ever since she started using sleeping tablets three years ago. I was suddenly awake, awake and totally lucid. A branch kept knocking, at ever-lengthening intervals, against the veranda railings. Then even that sound ceased. My head was one large brightly lit space, completely empty. And outside it, there was total calm, winter darkness and Vera's regular breathing.

I got up and sat down at the kitchen table with a glass of milk. Robert scrambled out of his basket and stood motionlessly before me for several minutes. 'Something is the matter, Robert,' I whispered. 'You have noticed that correctly, but God knows what it is.'

It must be this wretched winter. That is the only thing here, the winters last too long for my liking.

Suddenly Vera is standing before me in her dressing-gown with a face as if fire had broken out. What are you doing here in the dead of night, sitting at the table fully dressed?

Yes, of course, that was rather strange, that I was dressed. I do occasionally get up at night, but I only put on my dressing-gown and my slippers.

I couldn't find my dressing-gown, I said, by way of explanation. She asked if anything was the matter. Nothing, I said, except that my head feels transparent, made of glass or ice, very clear and yet I am not thinking of anything.

Read for a while then, she said, or do the crossword. She pushed the newspaper towards me across the table. You gave me a fright, she said. I wake up all of a sudden and you're no longer there. You shouldn't worry yourself, I said. Take another half of a sleeping tablet and go back to bed. I'll do the crossword and then I'll go back to bed, too.

Of course it is a stupid pastime, but it makes time fly, I'll say that. I was only half through when it started getting light. I looked at the clock. Half past seven. Not worth going back to bed. Why not surprise Vera with coffee in bed? I always used to do that on Sundays when I was home from work, from IMCO. Coffee and a rusk. And then we'd make love. Not too noisily, because of the children. She would hold it in her hand and circle with her thumb over the tip and push it inside herself. That used to be all she needed to do and I'd come, but these days it usually takes much longer. Sometimes too long. Then we both grow too tired to carry on with it and fall asleep again.