Out of Mind

'I went to the bookstore,' I say airily. 'Bought another book by Graham Greene. Our Man in Havana. The one they made that movie of, with Alec Guinness, you remember?'

Her mouth sets in irritation. 'If you intend to stay away half the day you could at least tell me.'

I remain silent. Of course she is right. Robert lays his damp snout on my shoulder and then presses it against my cheek. We drive along the shore. The lights across the bay flicker in a long, faintly curved line. And there, far away at the furthest tip, the illuminated cone of the lighthouse scans the black water at regular intervals. I look at it until a bend in the road removes it from my field of vision. Then we drive home in silence past a wall of snow-covered pine trees.

How dark it has suddenly become. The feeling of anxiety has come back, as if I had been deceived by something or someone today, led up the garden path. When we stop on the gravel in front of the veranda, I quickly get out and open the door on the other side for her. I take her brown purse from her and say, 'I am very sorry, Vera, really I am.' I follow her and Robert into the house, which briefly stares at me with all its black windows at once.

What worries me most of all is that the dog did not go in search of me, did not follow my trail. Could Robert have smelt something about me? Something that made him decide firmly to turn back and go home on his own?

'It's the winter,' I say to Vera, 'this damned long, rotten winter,' while I help myself to more French beans and sprinkle some powder over them from a green canister. 'This winter is making me restless, fidgety.'

'I was only getting worried,' she says.

With two outstretched fingers I touch her cheek. 'I love you, Vera.'

She nods absent-mindedly, as if what I said didn't quite sink in.

'Do you remember us walking there, hand in hand, along the canal, on the old back dike? Below us on the other side lay the polders and in between there was a ditch with pollarded willows along it. We walked above the land, above the red pantiled roofs of the labourers' cottages and farmhouses. Suddenly a splash of sunlight fell from a hole in the clouds right on a group of black-patched cows that went on grazing unperturbed. We stood still on the dike, you and I. You put your arm around my waist. A hole in the clouds, isn't that what you call it? A frayed hole that very slowly closed again from the edges inward. We looked at it, from where we were standing, high above the land, you and I, and then we kissed.'

'I don't know what you are talking about, Maarten.'

I purse my suddenly cork-dry lips. I look at the dull yellow shine of the reading lamp and make a movement as though chasing a fly from my forehead. Then I desperately grab hold of the edge of the table.

'You are tired,' she says. 'I can tell. You slept badly last night, you've been walking around all day. That's why it is. Now why don't you go and shave before Ellen Robbins comes.'

'Ellen Robbins?' I startle at the sudden uncontrolled aggression in my voice.

'Maarten, she comes here so often.'

I nod. Ellen Robbins. Of course. She sails into the room like a battleship.

'Why are you laughing?'

'Ellen Robbins sailing into the room, I mean, coming into the room like a battleship sailing into port.' For a moment I have to laugh so much that the tears spring to my eyes.

'What makes you say that?'

'Nothing. You have to admit she doesn't exactly move like a ballet dancer.'

Now Vera also laughs a little, fortunately. I look around the room, let my eyes glide along the gleaming furniture, the black piano. Everything is in order again, back in its place. We are sitting opposite each other by the table, Vera and I, a burning lamp hangs above us and just now we laughed together. I take her right hand, rub gently over the wedding ring which she can easily take off these days. Once they had to saw it off her finger when she had to have an operation.

'Do you remember,' I say, 'when you had to have that operation on your stomach, that this ring was stuck rock fast to your finger? It wouldn't come off no matter how they tried. '

'Don't pull so hard. That's twenty years ago. '

'There's something I have to do,' I say. I rub my hands contentedly. 'But what?'

'Shave,' she says.

I shake my head. 'That too. Be that as it may. .'

A phrase I rarely use, be that as it may. A phrase from work, which I occasionally throw out at meetings as a life-buoy to one of my colleagues if he becomes entangled in a complicated argument. Be that as it may… A formulation suggesting a summary that never comes. A moment of helplessness for a speaker, which causes the people around the table to avoid one another's eyes in embarrassment. Bahr, Chauvas, Johnson and that haggard-looking Karl Simic.

I walk out of the room, up the stairs. While I am shaving I shall no doubt remember what else I have to do. Robert is waiting for me at the top of the stairs He walks ahead of me, his claws tapping on the linoleum. A dog knows your habits, knows exactly what you are going to do. I grope for the light switch in the bathroom but I cannot find it. Why is it so dark everywhere around here? Vera shouldn't be so stingy with the light.

'Maarten,' she calls from downstairs. 'What are you doing up there?'

I suddenly remember. Fetch wood. Of course!

'Come on, Robert, we'll get some wood from the shed. Come on.'

Quickly I go down the stairs. Vera stands waiting for me below, her hands on her hips.

'Out of the way!' I call out jokingly as I take the last step. 'Robert and I are going to get you some wood.'

'There's plenty of wood left,' she says, taking hold of Robert's collar. 'What were you doing upstairs?'

"Upstairs is part of the house too,' I say, a little sheepishly.

'We never go up there any more, you know that very well. And please go and shave. I don't want Ellen to see you like this.'

I go into the bathroom. Robert has gone with Vera. He knows he always gets something from her. From me he gets only wood. A stick to run after on the beach or in the woods.

I look at my face in the mirror over the washstand. No one can tell from it what I used to look like. Not even I myself. Be that as it may… I wet my face, squirt a blob of shaving cream on my fingertips and with the fingers of my left hand rub the slithery foam over my cheeks and chin.

You must make sure to pull the skin straight, otherwise the scraper gets caught in the wrinkles. Black dots in white shaving floss swirl around in the wash bowl and then disappear down the plug-hole. Beard hair. Another word for beard. Moustache, goatee, whiskers. Uncle Karel had whiskers. Until 15 May 1940. When the Netherlands capitulated, Uncle Karel shaved off his proudly up-twirled whiskers. In protest. A first and last act of resistance. At the bank where he worked everyone understood at once. First they had looked surprised when he came in with a bare face. He had run two fingers of his right hand over his upper lip and then, somewhat apologetically, shrugged his shoulders. Everyone had understood, he said. The Germans. Damned Huns. The Queen gone to England. And so the only thing Uncle Karel could do was shave off his whiskers. Almost a logical consequence of history.

'There, now you look smart again, Maarten.'

Don't talk to yourself. At least not when other people can hear you. When you talk you should be addressing another person, not yourself.

It is as if I can hear two voices, women's voices. Surely we don't have company? Maybe the radio.

Cautiously I open the door and go into the hall. Vera's voice. I try not to listen to what the voice in the living room says, and press my nails into the palms of my hands. I stand very still.

'I'm really worried. You can't see there's anything wrong with him. But that makes it all the more alarming. Sometimes he tells me things about us that I was never part of. As if I were a different person in his eyes. And then suddenly he can't remember a whole chunk of his own past. I feel so helpless because I don't know how to help him. And it has happened so suddenly. Practically overnight he has become like this.'