along the beach, a little way down Atlantic Road, and then back towards home. Wind at my back. Any other business?'
'You phoned the library.'
'When I came home you were on the phone,' I reply. 'I could see you through the window. I tapped against the glass but you didn't hear me. I waved and when you finally saw me you dropped the phone from fright.'
'It was Joan from the lending department.'
'I don't want you to work there any more,' I say. 'I want you to stay with me from now on, Vera. When I am alone everything goes wrong. I don't know why.'
'I haven't worked there for ages, Maarten.'
'Good,' I say. 'That's all right, then.'
Her narrow head with the brown hair wobbles on her wrinkly neck and her eyes are suddenly so dull and sad that I get up to comfort her. The blood throbs in my temples and I put my hands on her shoulders.
'Not so hard,' she says.
My hands are cold and numb. I withdraw them, I look at the palms and slowly let them drop limply by my sides.
'I know the feeling,' I say, 'as if someone had locked you up inside your own house. That's the feeling. But there is always a way out, Vera, always.'
It is very understandable that she has to cry now. I sit down again. 'I am with you,' I say. 'Whatever happens, I am with you. We'll have to get used to the fact that our world has become smaller, that you see fewer and fewer people, that you startle when the phone rings, that all the days look alike. But we have each other, Vera, don't forget that.' And I stroke her hair softly. Let her have a good cry. I understand.
A human being can look for a long time without seeing anything. Robert can look too, but he is unable to recognize the tea caddy and the cheese slicer. He looks without seeing is what I mean. Try it for yourself. You always drink coffee of a particular brand and when they don't have any in stock at the drugstore you take a different brand, a different tin.
When you want to make coffee the next day, you look everywhere for the tin of coffee. The remembered image of the old tin is so strong that it makes the new brand, the tin there right in front of your nose on the kitchen shelf, invisible. To see something you must first be able to recognize it. Without memory you can merely look, and the world glides through you without leaving a trace. (I must remember this well, because it will enable me to explain a great deal to Vera.)
I am standing by the window in the back room and looking at two scrawny squirrels chasing each other up the trunk of a crooked birch tree. Look at those swaying grey plumes. Whoops! A little dance step would be in pace here . . . no . . . not pace . . . step . . . pace ... in place! A leak. There is a small leak somewhere. Hampers the thinking process. That is the sort of thing Simic would have said, at one of those rare moments when he raised a point. Tall, thin, taciturn Karl Simic, as brittle as china, cautious, timid, looking warily out of his dark, slightly squinting eyes. Dampens the thinking process. Simic used to play the piano rather well. The whole of Ravel's Boléro. Out of his head. Even though he was drunk. A song about a ship with so many guns. He sang the words to it, in German, his eyes raised to the ceiling. I only ever went to his house once. On the occasion of his forty-fifth birthday. Neither chick nor child did he have. After a few whiskies in that cocktail bar in Boston he invited me home. He lit only one small reading lamp. In the half-dark he told me a story of how his wife or girlfriend had deceived him with his best friend, that he had found a letter which left him in no doubt, how he had gone out and bought a bottle of bourbon and had drunk it all, with that friend while they argued about the literary qualities of Hemingway's novels. In the end their disagreement ran so high that the friend had shouted: Next time there is a war you won't survive the camps but I will.
Simic then muttered something and I had to bend forward to hear what he said. He
'You phoned the library.'
'When I came home you were on the phone,' I reply. 'I could see you through the window. I tapped against the glass but you didn't hear me. I waved and when you finally saw me you dropped the phone from fright.'
'It was Joan from the lending department.'
'I don't want you to work there any more,' I say. 'I want you to stay with me from now on, Vera. When I am alone everything goes wrong. I don't know why.'
'I haven't worked there for ages, Maarten.'
'Good,' I say. 'That's all right, then.'
Her narrow head with the brown hair wobbles on her wrinkly neck and her eyes are suddenly so dull and sad that I get up to comfort her. The blood throbs in my temples and I put my hands on her shoulders.
'Not so hard,' she says.
My hands are cold and numb. I withdraw them, I look at the palms and slowly let them drop limply by my sides.
'I know the feeling,' I say, 'as if someone had locked you up inside your own house. That's the feeling. But there is always a way out, Vera, always.'
It is very understandable that she has to cry now. I sit down again. 'I am with you,' I say. 'Whatever happens, I am with you. We'll have to get used to the fact that our world has become smaller, that you see fewer and fewer people, that you startle when the phone rings, that all the days look alike. But we have each other, Vera, don't forget that.' And I stroke her hair softly. Let her have a good cry. I understand.
A human being can look for a long time without seeing anything. Robert can look too, but he is unable to recognize the tea caddy and the cheese slicer. He looks without seeing is what I mean. Try it for yourself. You always drink coffee of a particular brand and when they don't have any in stock at the drugstore you take a different brand, a different tin.
When you want to make coffee the next day, you look everywhere for the tin of coffee. The remembered image of the old tin is so strong that it makes the new brand, the tin there right in front of your nose on the kitchen shelf, invisible. To see something you must first be able to recognize it. Without memory you can merely look, and the world glides through you without leaving a trace. (I must remember this well, because it will enable me to explain a great deal to Vera.)
I am standing by the window in the back room and looking at two scrawny squirrels chasing each other up the trunk of a crooked birch tree. Look at those swaying grey plumes. Whoops! A little dance step would be in pace here . . . no . . . not pace . . . step . . . pace ... in place! A leak. There is a small leak somewhere. Hampers the thinking process. That is the sort of thing Simic would have said, at one of those rare moments when he raised a point. Tall, thin, taciturn Karl Simic, as brittle as china, cautious, timid, looking warily out of his dark, slightly squinting eyes. Dampens the thinking process. Simic used to play the piano rather well. The whole of Ravel's Boléro. Out of his head. Even though he was drunk. A song about a ship with so many guns. He sang the words to it, in German, his eyes raised to the ceiling. I only ever went to his house once. On the occasion of his forty-fifth birthday. Neither chick nor child did he have. After a few whiskies in that cocktail bar in Boston he invited me home. He lit only one small reading lamp. In the half-dark he told me a story of how his wife or girlfriend had deceived him with his best friend, that he had found a letter which left him in no doubt, how he had gone out and bought a bottle of bourbon and had drunk it all, with that friend while they argued about the literary qualities of Hemingway's novels. In the end their disagreement ran so high that the friend had shouted: Next time there is a war you won't survive the camps but I will.
Simic then muttered something and I had to bend forward to hear what he said. He
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