2. Two diaries
I have been relocated. This is not the hospital any more where I woke up first. Some time between the strangely surreal encounter with the doctor and this moment they have brought me somewhere else.
I have a sour taste in my mouth and a furry feeling on my tongue. From my bed I can see a window. Sunbeams wander across the room, first bluish pink, then white. In the evening, the light turns red and vanishes away, while I lie there still, my head pressed into the pillow, trying not to think.
They make it easy for me not to think. There is a tranquilizer drip in my arm, and when I came back to consciousness the first time, my wrists were tethered to the bed rails with short strips of cloth. Those first days I spent here, time stretched like an elastic band. I stared at the window with my eyes half closed, registering indifferently that it was barred: an elegantly scrolled gate of black wrought iron, but bars are bars, however elegant.
This morning I felt really awake for the first time. A doctor and a nurse came in together; they removed the drip. The doctor talked to me, and I answered elliptically. I told him my name, and finally we managed something like a conversation. It seems they don't feat any longer that I might hurt myself or attack the nursing staff, during one of my "episodes"; after our short conversation the doctor removed my restraints and briefly patted my shoulder.
As if he could comfort me with that.
Outside, the sun is setting again. I prop myself up and push away the covers, set my feet carefully on the ground. The room spins in a nauseating whirl as I get up; a high-pitched tone hums inside my ears and I cling convulsively to the headboard. When the room is still again, I walk over to the window. The sky is crimson and full of glory.
Behind the house lies a small garden with white graveled paths that wind around winter-bare flowerbeds. Three or four carefully pruned apple trees stretch their leafless branches into the sky. Then there is a fence (it is high and looks stable) and behind this fence harvested fields stretch to the horizon. Very far in the distance lies a wood. There is also a road; car headlights appear like fireflies and disappear again. Not many of them. This hospital must be very isolated.
Slowly I walk over to the washbasin on the wall and open the faucet. First the water is tepid, then it gets refreshingly cold. I run my wet hands through my hair und across my cheeks; when I look up, I can see myself in the mirror.
Eyes that are too big for the face. Sickly pale skin and a nose that seems strangely pointed. Stringy hair, hanging limp and tousled down my back. A firmly closed mouth... as if violently trying to hide a mystery.
The last mirror I looked in was made of polished brass. His hands had playfully plaited my hair into a braid, and I loosened it again while I looked spellbound at my reflection. My arm was bandaged in white and the wound hurt, but in that moment I didn't feel the pain. He stepped behind me, still naked, and his warm hand cupped my bare breast.
"You are so beautiful. I simply can't believe what a gift you gave to me."
I stare at myself and feel how I start to shiver.
"When do you have to go?"
His hand caressed me, his breath swept warm across my skin.
"The army starts this Midday."
I winced violently.
"I don't want to let you go,"I said. My body was numb and tensed.
"We have one hour left."
He could die so easily in the battle.
"One hour..."
I bite my lips and close my eyes.
"One hour is a long time."
His voice was warm and deep, I could hear the smile in it. I realized that he was deliberately hiding the thought of the way to the Black Gate from me. He wanted to protect me, and the depth of the love I felt for him made my heart hurt.
"Don't leave me."
I press a hand onto my mouth and feel tears running down my face, silent and irresistible. I fumble myself back to the bed, numb and woodenly like an old woman. I lie down and draw the cover over my head.
"Don't leave me."
I lie on my side, my knees drawn up, my arms over my head as if I shielded it from a blow. The pain is almost unbearable. In the end he didn't leave. I was the one who left.
vvvvv
Meanwhile I am already here for one or two weeks – I can't say exactly, though there are some photo calendars in the corridors. The doctors are very patient; nearly every day I'm sitting in some white painted surgery, answering much is expected from me.
Naturally, I don't tell them the truth.
I say nothing about how the reality that has been my life for twenty-five years dissolved and simply disappeared from one moment to the next. I don't tell them how the words felt suddenly strange in my mouth... or my shock when I realized I was speaking a completely different language, a language I had never learned, fluently, without effort. I don't say that my jeans and knitted pullover vanished, and I found myself in strangely-cut trousers and a tunic closed with horn buttons, my feet in soft leather boots.)
Especially I don't tell them the most striking, unexplainable fact of the whole thing - what happened to me was no time journey. Perhaps I could have fit that into my worldview. Instead, I have lived for weeks within a universe that never existed, never will exist, at all.
Or so I had believed - until now.
The doctors have asked me to write a diary. The psychiatrist who talks with me every day has given me a slim book of empty white pages. Write what moves me, he says. Everything I remember, he says, so we will finally get a whole image, something that makes sense. At that moment his pager beeps; he apologizes and leaves the room. I let my gaze wander idly across the office, and on a shelf behind his huge desk I discover a pile of books identical to the one in my hands. I sneak over to the shelf and take one of the books, tuck it in my waistband and cover it loosely with the long dark blouse they have given me. When the doctor comes back, we exchange a few more words and he hands me a ball-point pen with an expansive gesture. Goodbye, I say. I walk out and all the way to my room I feel the pressure of the hidden book, cool against my skin.
Meanwhile they have come to the conclusion that I'm suffering from severe amnesia, and they are welcome to their opinion. It is not important if I really can't remember what I have done the last three months. The main point is to convince everyone that I really don't know.
But there must be someone – like in that other place – to whom I can tell the truth. And among my few relatives and friends there is only one whom I perhaps can tell what has happened to me.
I got to know Faith at an international journalist's forum, and we got on well together, right from the beginning. We found we had similar interests and began e-mailing back and forth. She edited one of my series of articles, and I found her to be one of the cleverest, most humorous people I know. The fact that we have never met is an extra benefit: I will not be forced to see the doubt in her face when I tell her my story. Or even the horror, the growing conviction that I am in this hospital for good reason. When she reads this fantastic, this unbelievable tale, she will be sitting in front of her computer screen in America - provided I can get my laptop back in time, and still remember how to use it.
Or perhaps I'll rip the pages off and put them into an envelope. The main thing is to write it down, and that she will read it at any time. For I have to tell it somebody, or I will in fact go mad.
So I'm sitting this evening at the narrow and unsteady desk near the window, with two books lying in front of me. The first one – which I will give to the doctors – contains only a few sentences. I can barely remember anything. From time to time names drift past my inner eye, but they always vanish at once. I wish I knew what I did in the last three months. Hopefully they are content with that.
Not a word of this is true. I know exactly who I am, where I come from, where I have been.
Dear Faith, I write (and I hope my English will not let me down) dear Faith, I have to tell you something. Maybe you will not believe me, but I have to try anyway.
I pause. I'm not used to writing with a pencil any more; probably my hand will hurt terribly after three pages. I decide that this is irrelevant and continue.
It all started nearly three months ago; I was working on an enquiry and went to our local library...