recovery

... The next morning, I was found lying in a snowbank a good distance from the house, with tears and the other residue of long weeping frozen to my face — so close to death, I have been told, I was not even shivering. After I was brought back, I have since learned, I lay a long time in the infirmary, alternating between fiery delirium and moveless stupor, which spared me a great deal of pain. I have lost the end of my nose, the tops of both ears, and the outer digits of my feet and hands. If I ever walk again, it will be with the greatest difficulty, and I am having to learn to feed myself (and to write!) from the other side.

Yesterday, a person claiming to be an old friend was led into my room near the infirmary wing. He was unbearably familiar with me, and I was only able to get rid of him by being rude. I was still fuming about this insufferable intrusion when my personal care attendant 'reminded' me that I surely must recognize the man who had sat with me so often for so long during my convalescence.

I remember no such person. My attendant suggested, in his patronizing way, that the severity of my 'accident', as he called it, may have interfered with my memory. I dismissed the idea at once, but I am beginning to think that I need to take an inventory of what I do recall. Unbelievably, it has never before this moment struck me that I have no idea how I came to be lying in a snowbank a long way from the house, frozen nearly to death!

Today my attendant quit — my fault, really: we argued about my visitor again, and again he tried to persuade me that the man had come to see me with some frequency, had even written to him about me when he couldn't come himself. My attendant showed me the messages, which for all I know he wrote himself, and said so, at which point he flung the things down on my bed and told me he could no longer abide my abuse, when he was only trying to help me.

I read the short writings over, once he was gone and I had somewhat recovered my composure. They are innocent enough: how is my friend, the writer asks, can I bring him anything, that sort of matter. Now that the impertinent youth is no longer here, I cannot think why he is perpetrating this hoax upon me.

But I went too far. I cannot function without his or someone's help, and although it is natural for a person in my condition to be frustrated by it, my rage is ungovernable: I want to kill him, as I think I may have told him just before he stormed out of the room. I don't know what I shall do without him. Starve, I suppose, wasting away here in my own filth.

Of course that will not happen. Even if the boy does not return, surely Abbas will learn of this and come to inquire. He has not visited in a long time, I realize, and I begin to wonder why. I know that there was some disturbance in the wider world troubling him; perhaps he is caught up in it somehow and cannot get away.

I sense that I may have something to do with this disturbance — at the moment I cannot imagine what, but the feeling is quite strong. What could it be? What in the world happened?

Abbas did come to see me. To my shame, I lost my temper with him as well, but he is immune to offence, and only waited until my tantrum wore itself out and I was recovered enough to actually hear what he was saying to me. Of course he will procure me a better attendant, he said, but I should have had some forbearance: no one in the world will ever be able to feel or understand what I am suffering; but it is the same with every one of us, and we must be patient and kind with each other, or the community will fall apart. And I of all people must realize how catastrophic that would be. I was silent after that.

The wider world is undergoing a kind of upheaval at the moment, he says, and he must use all his resources to shield us from it. He would not expatiate upon that, saying only that if we are steadfast all will be well. Foggy as my faculties are as yet, I could discern that he did not entirely believe this outcome was assured.

He then addressed the matter of my visitor, whom it seems he knows well. That I do not remember him is troubling, he said, but then expressed the calm hope that my memory will return. This person is a kind of independent scholar, Abbas told me, who in fact has been very helpful in keeping him informed of developments elsewhere in the world, and this aids in keeping us safe, at least for the moment. Then he said that if he comes again, I should treat him with the utmost courtesy and respect. It was not a request.

Before he left, I asked him what had happened to me. He smiled a little, and I realized I had already been told, perhaps more than once; as he remained silent, I gradually saw that he wanted me to remember it for myself.

I owe this man my entire life, and hereafter I will dedicate everything I do and am to serving him. And remembering.