My Brain
Since my birth
More precisely when I was already some years old
My mother had the impression more and more that
Something was not right with me
What’s not right then I asked
You’re sometimes a bit odd
I am odd
Just look at yourself
But she didn’t want to get into that
Until a doctor had examined me
First up a child psychologist
Fine
We drove there
He greeted us
He said
Who’ve we got here then?
I said
We’ve got me here
He found that funny
In short
It promised to be a relaxed appointment
With little jokes between tests
That I had to take
In the course of which it would emerge
That my mother’s worries were unfounded
But things weren’t so simple it transpired
The psychologist wanted even more investigations
For those we had to see a neurologist
Who peered all the way into my skull
At first he too made little jokes
Then increasingly he wrinkled his forehead
At last he said
That something really was amiss
With my halves of brain
I’d only one
The right
No the left
No
I never knew which half of brain was missing
The neurologist said
That in itself was a symptom of this disorder
Meanwhile it appeared
That strictly speaking I had indeed two halves
But one had just remained as tiny as a millet seed
And functionally insignificant
While the second half had expansively encroached
Upon the empty side
Because there was ample room
And over time had overrun everything there
Had founded a kind of cerebral colony
A small world power had arisen in my brain
In the stillness of my early early childhood
My mother had a gift
In no time she could assimilate bad news
As something given
Which it was best to handle without complaint
So she emphasised
That on the whole I was all right
Just my behaviour was a little odd
Then she asked the neurologist
What all this might mean for my future development
Development
He said
And paused
He didn’t want to cause alarm
He had never had a result of this kind before
Never yet heard of such a case
He therefore couldn’t say at all
What it meant for my possible development
But he had outlined my case to a specialist
Who now wanted to examine me
Fine
We got the appointment with another doctor
Then we drove home
In the back seat I looked out of the window
Took turns in covering one eye with my hand then
The other
To establish whether a difference
For the neurologist had explained to me
Each eye was separately linked to the brain hemispheres
Crosswise
And indeed
Through one eye I saw animals in the landscape
That weren’t there through the other
On a mown field stood a tapir
Which wasn’t there however
When I looked through the eye
Belonging to the millet seed
So in that eye I was partially blind
Somewhat later a monitor lizard crawled along the roadside
Large birds wheeled above us
And among a few fir trees
That had stood for ages at the edge of the village
An elk was hiding
Do you notice any difference
Asked my mother
Who was watching me in the rear-view mirror
I said No
And to this day I have never told a soul
By Jens Nielsen
Translated by Alan Robinson
Jens Nielsen worked as a writer for theatre and as a radio drama producer. He is now a full-time playwright, actor, speaker, performer and author. For his short stories Flusspferd im Frauenbad (‘Hippo in the Women’s Pool’) he was awarded the Swiss Literature Prize in 2017. His novel Me and Myselves is also a performance for the stage.
Alan Robinson was a John Doncaster Scholar in German at Magdalen College, Oxford and a Junior Heath Harrison Scholar in German. He has taught at the universities of Oxford, Lancaster, Cologne and at all the German Swiss universities. Since 1990 he has been Professor of English at the University of St Gallen.
Photo of Jens Nielsen © From the Author’s Archive