Out of Mind by J. Bernlef Read Free Book Online

standing underneath it in its proper place, but where are my papers? Maybe they'll be handed out at the meeting. That often happens at special unscheduled meetings. I'd better take the case all the same, because there are sure to be more papers. Producing documents, we're good at that at IMCO. Reports about the catches of the last quarter, forecasts about the migration of salmon. For as long as I have been working at IMCO these have never yet come true. Only lobster is reliable, both as regards its movements and its numbers. But then, why should fish bother themselves about a bunch of gentlemen somewhere high and dry in an office block in Boston, who want to share out the catches more or less fairly among the different countries of the world? If you start thinking along those lines, Leon Bähr once said to me, you might as well stay at home. So we don't. We bend over computer tables, models and scenarios, and the stacks of papers grow and the fish in the seas swim and swim and have no inkling of our existence.
    Hunting for things. If there's anything I detest that's it. Where are my keys? And what imbecile has locked all the doors? Robert follows me like a good dog as I try the kitchen door, the laundry-room door and the outside door. Vera must have double-locked it. How could she be so silly?
    I go to the phone and call the library. To a girl's voice I explain who I am and ask if I can please speak to my wife, that it is very urgent because I have to set off for work very soon to attend an important meeting. She asks me to hold the line a moment, but the moment lasts so long that I finally throw the receiver furiously back on to its cradle. I have to get to that meeting. Now. Without a secretary they are nowhere.
    On the shelf in the laundry room I find what I am looking for at once. I take a screwdriver and hammer from the wooden toolbox and go to the door.
    It is easier than I expected. I wedge the screwdriver between the door and the post. After a few hammer blows the door leaps open towards me. Robert slips out immediately and barks, relieved that he, too, has been freed from his imprisonment.
    I quickly return to the hall, put on my coat and collect my briefcase into which I tuck the screwdriver and hammer for the time being. It is a quarter to eleven, I see in passing. I must hurry.
    Robert likes nothing better than a walk. He runs ahead of me, sometimes to the right, then again to the left of the path, into the snowy wood, and waits for me further on, with steaming mouth and wagging tail.
    This is not an official road but a neighbourhood path. It runs past the Cheevers' brick house and the untidy wooden affair of Pat and Mark Stevens. Their garden is one big junk yard. Today there stands a half-demolished bright-red pickup truck without wheels, which, to judge by the black letters on the door, once belonged to Nortons Hardware Store. Just beyond Pat's and Mark's house the woods end and the dunes begin. They are the colour of bleached corduroy. Or matting. The wind has blown ripples in the snow at the foot of the dunes. Like congealed waves. I am the first to arrive, I can tell from the virgin snow all around. It is perhaps a rather strange and yet quite suitable place for an IMCO meeting, so close to the sea. Robert dashes up a dune, but you needn't think, Robert, that those two crows will let themselves be caught by you.
    He lives in the same world as I, and yet he must experience it quite differently. This can be inferred from his behaviour. Close above the ground there must hover a world of scents which he crosses this way and that, sniffing excitedly. His tracks are recorded in the snow. To me they seem a purposeless network. Nothing but consequences. Not a cause to be found anywhere, let alone a system.
    I know my way around here. If I bear left, past these planted rows of marram, I will reach a shell path that leads straight to the slate-grey house where the meeting is to be held.
    I climb the snow-blown steps to