~ ~ ~
ANOTHER DAY, and they went down the road in the other direction. For the first time, they turned right. They walked for a good long while. For this good while there were houses on both sides, and then there were just houses on one side, and then none — just fields and woods. They had a picnic with them, and when they came upon a large rock that was pleasantly placed beneath the shade of a tree, they decided to sit and eat.
— Do you remember what I said to you last night? That I said, today we will practice how it would be to meet a person? Are you ready to try?
— A real person?
The claimant looked about him to see if there was someone approaching, or any sign of anyone nearby, but there was none. It was just a beautiful autumn afternoon, with leaves falling, and birds passing now and then through the air and through the trees.
— This is practice. We would be practicing. Shall we try?
— All right.
— I’m going to go around that bend there. When I come back over, I will be a different person, someone you have never met. I want you to speak to me as if you don’t know me, and as if you are simply a human being like any other, meeting someone for the first time. You might contrive some reason to speak to me. Or, perhaps, I will have a reason to speak to you. That is how it is in the world. Ready?
— I am.
The examiner jumped down from the rock and walked away. His eyes followed her as she walked with a certain light grace between the roots of trees and the tall grasses. Soon she was out of sight. A sudden shyness and fear rose in him. He gathered himself.
~ ~ ~
— WHY, HELLO.
The claimant looked at her. She was wearing some kind of coat over her clothes and a different hat. Her eyes were painted.
He thought about this, and tried to remember what she had looked like before. Had she been wearing those same clothes before…
She was saying something to him. He was supposed to be speaking to a new person, and she looked like a new person. She was saying,
— Do you know the way to Calistor Avenue?
— I haven’t been there, he said.
And then he was thinking that he had been there. It was the one by the lake, not around the lake, but you passed it there, he thought. He had remembered looking at the sign, seeing the name, and not trying to pronounce it. But when you pronounced it, that’s how it came out. Calistor. When he looked up, the woman was gone.
Oh, dear. How had he done?
~ ~ ~
THE EXAMINER came back around the corner, looking just as she had at the outset.
— Anders, she said. Anders, Anders, Anders. That won’t do at all.
He looked at the ground near his feet.
— You were very convincing, he said. I really felt that you didn’t know me.
— It is hard, isn’t it, said the examiner, to have someone look at you as if they don’t know you — when you feel they do or should.
— I don’t like it. I felt very…
— Alone?
— Yes, alone.
— Maybe, she said. It would be easier for you if it were actually someone else.
— I think so, he said.
— There is someone over there, down the way a bit. Why don’t you walk down there and speak to them.
~ ~ ~
HE WALKED down the road a bit. Sure enough, up ahead, there was a little house, a sort of tollhouse, with a long plank that lowered to block the road.
A man appeared as he approached.
— Papers, said the man.
— Papers?
— I need to see them. I need your papers, said the man.
— I don’t, I don’t have any, said Anders.
The man started for the tollhouse, as if to take some action, and right then, the examiner came up from behind.
— It’s all right, she said. He’s with me.
The toll minder nodded, and sat down on the bench where he had been. To him it was suddenly as though they were not there.
The examiner put her arm around the claimant.
— Let’s go back, she said. You did just fine.
— Why did he ignore us like that? the claimant asked.
— Oh, that’s what people do. He was just returning to the little world he inhabits when no one’s around. At certain conversational junctures it’s perfectly fine to do that. What you need to do is discover where such junctures lie.
~ ~ ~
SHE WAS WRITING her report and sipping a glass of sherry. She had been leafing through a score of Stravinsky, and it leaned on the back of the writing desk, its fine black lines radiating outward as if to cover the room.
++
The claimant has recovered most general function. He can wash himself, dress himself, eat, drink, cook, and govern his natural hours, sleeping at regular times. He has a tendency to drift, and fall into confusion, and he cannot yet discriminate between what is real and what is not.
The integration appears to be working. He speaks to me of his memories as I have invoked them — that is, as my memories which I have seeded into his dreams. This provides him with a level of remove that may permit him some grace.
All the same, the nightmares continue unabated. Here is the text of the last two:
_ _
Where the buses all end up, I have gone there, somehow I’ve ended up there. The bus drivers all leave their buses wherever they can. It is a large yard in a sort of depression, surrounded by trees. Perhaps it was once a sump. It is enormous, and the buses are everywhere. Many of them are out of service, or have been forever. They don’t even have wheels. The bus drivers get out of their buses one by one as they arrive, I didn’t see this, but I know it, they get out and they walk to a wall at the back of the yard and they all stand facing the wall with their noses nearly touching it. There are hundreds of them. It is how they sleep. I am one of the bus drivers. I pull my bus into the yard and stop it wherever I like. I get out. I walk slowly across the yard, as slowly as I like, and when I reach the wall, there is a place there, an empty spot, and I ease myself into it. I am so near the wall, I can feel the cold radiating from the stone. I am basking in that cold. I feel myself falling back into sleep.
*
I am driving again, this time I am driving a car, an open car, in the countryside. There is someone beside me in the car, but I cannot turn my head to look at her. We are going tremendously fast, and the road is curved. We are moving back and forth on the road, the wind is pushing us, and it requires all of my skill just to continue. I want to turn my head and look at her, but I cannot. The light is going out of the countryside that I am in. The whole thing is going dim; the sun is not seeing — it’s more that, someone is closing her eyes, and the light will soon be gone. Just as the light is gone, I turn my head to look and I see her, there, she flashes briefly in the dimness, and the car spills off the road, rolling and rolling and rolling and my body is racked with pain.
_ _
Yesterday, he woke confused; he had forgotten our speech about his dreams. He told me that he wanted to go back to where he had been. He named the city. He asked me if I knew the way. I told him that I did know the way. He should listen to me and follow my instructions. I led him through a breathing exercise and he fell back into sleep and slept through the morning. When he woke the second time, he remembered nothing…