But with regard to my theory about the paradoxical way in which my memory had come to function and not to function, almost as if it had come partially to withhold itself, because there was no one against whom I could test it with argument, except my wife, of course, who agreed fully with me on most things of a theoretical nature anyhow, I was not able to be sure that I was not merely constructing an elaborate disguise so as to hide some painful truth from myself. Whenever one is unsure in this way, if he cannot resort to his coffin and there obtain his confirmation or denial, he has little choice, indeed, he is obliged to do nothing else, than to turn to scripture and hope that his confirmation or denial can be obtained there. For as the scriptures themselves say, Certainty eludes him who will not read deeply into the language of the dead. (Craig., xiv, 22.) And truly, there amongst the scriptures did I find confirmation of my theory, concerning my memory’s increasing ability (as I extricated myself from time and came slowly back into the proper and fitting worship of the dead) to withhold itself.
Now this my reader may think odd, for it may seem to him that I was testing and confirming a theory about the gradual loss of memory with scriptures that I had access to only by means of memory (for the possession of scripture in any printed form was strictly illegal, then as now). May it here be pointed out that my memory was not flawed or imperfect with regard to what it described to me, whether of scripture or of the nature of my experience, as much as it was increasingly absent altogether and increasingly, therefore, reported nothing to me of my experience. My memory of scripture, which I had learned when a mere child, was not affected. But whole days went by without leaving a word in my mind’s report to me on myself, then whole weeks, and then months and seasons, until it was no longer my memory that told me how long I had been imprisoned or precisely when particular events had occurred, as much as it was a tattered calendar on the wall of the dining hall or a casual conversation between two prisoners overheard in the exercise yard or a newspaper in the reading room.
Thus I gradually lost my old ability to move easily among sequences of events, public and private, and my old ability to relate the two chains so that I could immediately know what public events had transpired at the same time as a given private event. There was a morning, for example, when, upon looking into the mirror over my wash basin, I realized that my hair had gone all to white, where before it had been dark brown, and I cannot now say whether I made that discovery mere days before I learned of my wife’s death or seven whole years before. And there was the period of several months when the prisoners were talking amongst themselves of the war that the nation was evidently prosecuting abroad, and I cannot say whether this period was before or after my hair had turned white. And though I can remember the evening of resignation when I decided that I would no longer every ninety days file an appeal for a trial at the upcoming quarter-sessions, so that I could be tried and properly convicted and thus be made eligible for amnesty at the following solstice, a decision I knew was based on the fact that I had been refused such a trial by peremptory notice a hopelessly repeated number of times, I cannot now say how many times I had been refused. That is to say, I cannot now say on what numerical basis I made such a momentous decision.
Doubtless there are some among the brethren who would say that this seeming dysfunction of the memory, even if it indeed was a direct result of my attempt to remove myself from the life of a man of time, was a deprivation and a kind of suffering. But I cannot agree. For the prophet Walter says, There will come a day that will not differ from night, and a night that will not differ from day. (vii, 7.) No, this was not a dysfunction of the memory. It was a more and more frequent withholding of itself, and thus it was another of the many kinds of grace that get granted to those who worship the dead. And grace, as I have said, is the gift that redounds to the greater glory of the giver, and in that way does it serve its purpose. By this gift, therefore, was I permitted to see the true and overwhelming nature of the dead all the more clearly. To hear the voice of the dead is to obey it, and to see its everlastingness is to honor it. To obey death and to honor it, then, are to make the life of a man overflow with meaning. If the gradual loss of my memory, properly understood as grace, served to make my life gradually more meaningful to me, how could I call it a dysfunction? Or even more absurd, how could I call it a deprivation or a kind of suffering?
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THERE CAME TO me a slowly dawning realization, like the spread of a thick silvery light, that my wife had left off coming to visit me in my imprisonment. For a long time her visits to my cell, where we would sometimes converse and more often would sit comfortably together for hours in affectionate silence broken only by some one or another of my thoughts or memories that I felt would be of use in her instruction, had been less and less frequent. Or so it then seemed to me, for whenever she did appear to me there, it did seem to me that I had not been in her company for a long while. As I look back now to that period of my imprisonment when I first began to notice the infrequency of her visits to my cell, I picture her as being somewhat distracted and erratic in her words, but I did not then notice that her behavior was anything out of the ordinary. I had noticed, naturally, from the very beginning of my imprisonment, even from the day of my arrest, when, because of the tumult and frenzy of those days she had been delivered too soon of the child she was then carrying and which as a consequence had died, that her health was precarious and that she was often in pain and would fall to coughing and wincing from it. Her condition worsened, and I did notice that and did advise her on how to medicate herself as best I knew how, and I did direct her to those among the brethren who I knew could provide her, out of their love for me, with aid and comfort and who would also stand forth in the support of our children. For this support my wife expressed often to me her large gratitude, for she as well as I knew how dangerous it was for them to make any show of public sympathy for my dependents.
During those early years of my confinement, my wife and I were at deep peace with one another and were in continuous agreement on all the questions, quandaries and tribulations that beset us and the numerous ways by which we tried to answer and alleviate them. But there came at last a season when it was known to me that no longer was I capable of advising or otherwise aiding her in her attempts to contend with the obstacles she faced in the world outside my prison as she struggled to care for herself and our children. Her knowledge of the outside world had grown to be superior to mine. And thus I gave off attempting to provide more than a generalized and abstract reassurance, which I am sure must at times have led her to believe or to fear that I no longer cared very deeply about the welfare of my family and that I no longer held for my wife the same passionate devotion as when before I had been imprisoned. It is to this belief or fear, then, that I credit her increasingly distracted and erratic behavior, which I did not notice at the time but from which, if I had noticed it, I would have drawn the same conclusions as now, and I would have tenderly remonstrated with her so as to show her the constancy of my caring about the welfare of my family and the continuity of my devotion to her person.