One could see the man standing in a tub while the old woman poured water over him and scrubbed and scrubbed until he was clean. And soon, he had learned to scrub as well. Soon, he could do it by himself.
If one waited some days and looked through the bottom windows, a different scene might present itself. The two sat at a long table, and blocks with pictures of things were passed back and forth. Large bound sheets full of pictures were shown and shared.
Sometimes a task would be terribly difficult — terribly, terribly difficult, and the man would cry. He would sit down on the floor and cry. Then the old woman would sit down beside him on the floor and wait, and when he was done crying, they would try again.
Her patience was the heart of it. She was as patient as a person could be.
~ ~ ~
THE HOUSE was a tall Victorian house. That meant it was nicely made, and with good proportions. The rooms had high ceilings. The windows were large and bore many panes within their cavities. The floors had long wooden boards that ran the length of each room. Many were covered with fine carpets. When a person trod on the floors, the boards creaked, and in this way the house was a little bit alive.
Along the stairs there were photographs. At each step there was another photograph. By walking up and down the stairs one could find a sort of history — but of what it was hard to say. There were many photographs of machines. Winged machines, wheeled machines, farm machines. There were many people with somber clothing and blurry faces. Sometimes there were many people together in one photograph, and when there were, they usually all stood facing in the same direction. How could the photographer stand in front of them — so many, and not be noticed?
The banister was of a swooping brown wood and felt very pleasant under the hand. One could run the hand along it, all the way down the stairs, and then one would be at the bottom. All the way from the top to the bottom.
The bottom of the stairs faced a long, narrow hall — and at its end a door that was never open. This door was set with colored glass of every sort. It would be a nice place to lie, to lie flat on the back in the hall and be covered with the colored light.
There were two paintings in this hall — one of a bird with long feathers, and another of a woman who wore clothing that made her look very much like a bird. She was angry, and her face was cruel, and she filled the area around the door with her anger.
Many of the windows in the house had seats in them. The seats were covered in cushions, and a person could sit there as long as they liked. Eventually, the sun might become blinding. Or, the sky would become dark. Then it would be time to go to a different place.
The woman who walked about in the house was very old. She was always watching everything that happened, and always listening. She was a comfort because she would be there in an instant to help, or she would wait for hours until the next time she should be there in an instant to help. She wore dark stockings of wool and no shoes. Her clothes were the same color as the walls.
The kitchen was the airiest room in the house. It had many windows, and they looked out on a garden full of plants. Some things from the garden would end up in the kitchen. There were many times when one could leave the kitchen happily, and one would often come into it with great happiness, too. The kitchen was the best room in the house.
There were many places in the house for putting things. One could put things from one place to another, and they would go back to the place they had been before. This was a sort of game. As many times as one would do it, the things would return. Even paintings that were tilted, or hairs placed under small statues.
The man would get up and go to the stairs at first, and he would wait there, and wait until she came and then they would go down the stairs together. Or, later, he would go down sitting, go down sitting all the way. He had a hard time making his legs and arms work like the old woman could. Whenever she wanted to do something, she did it.
Finally, he could go down the stairs just like her. In fact, he could go down faster than that. He would go down the stairs and the old woman would find him and they would have things to do all day and then it would be time to sleep.
Whenever he didn’t have things to do, the old woman found something for him to do. But when he had something to do, she was never there.
The man liked the pants that he wore, and there was a day when he put all the clothes on by himself and came down the stairs by himself, and worked on a thing he had decided to do by himself and ate by himself and it was not until the evening that he saw her. Then they sat on the closed porch and she lit a candle and it was a sort of celebration.
~ ~ ~
AND ON THE SEVENTIETH DAY, the man spoke.
~ ~ ~
— CAN I, the water.
The examiner sat quietly looking at the claimant. She said nothing.
— Can you give me the water?
His words were clear and distinct.
She picked up the pitcher of water with both hands and gravely presented it to him.
— Here you are, she said.
— Thank you, said the claimant.
The examiner nodded and went back to what she had been doing as if nothing remarkable at all had just happened.
~ ~ ~
SHE DID NOT begin to speak to him until two days had passed. Until then, she would answer him when he spoke, and speak to confirm the sense of what he had done.
But, when she began, she spoke with full diction and clarity.
— I am the examiner, she said. It is my purpose to help you. I have no purpose but that. I live here in this house. This house is the place where you live. We live in this house together. We are together in completing something. The thing that we are completing is your recovery. You were very sick. You were totally incapacitated by an illness. You almost died. When you were on the point of death, you were rescued, and now you are being brought back to health. There is every reason to have real optimism about your chances. I feel certain that things will go well for you, and though you do not know what lies ahead, you may rely on me.
— Where…
He swallowed.
— Where are we?
— We are in the house where we live. Where else would we be? How could it be possible to be anywhere else but where we are? How silly.
— How do you know me?
— I am the person who knows you. I am the only one. And you, you know me. We create a world through that, through knowing one another. You need not worry yourself about that. We have this house that we live in, and in it we do the things we need to do to live. We cook and eat, we clean ourselves, we practice our tasks. You will have many tasks to learn and do.
— I feel, I feel very sad.
— It isn’t sadness that you feel. Sadness is a feeling of loss. There is something one wanted, and one doesn’t have it — or there is a way one wanted things to be, and things aren’t that way. That is sadness. Instead, you feel rootlessness. You have not attached yourself to the things around you. By doing so, you will find that your happiness can grow.
She led him over to a wall.
— Let us begin here. What do you see?
— Two, two…
— Pictures. They are called pictures. But you knew that. You know many words. They will return to you soon enough. Let us try — what is the top one called? What sort of picture is it?