—Less often?
—If you go looking for them, outside the house, he said, you could probably find the other one, no matter when you looked. But, you can’t find this one.
—Why not? Because it is a painting?
—A painting?
—Because it is made by hand—with strokes of a brush? Or for another reason?
—I didn’t mean that, he said. I am tired. Can I sit down?
—Yes, let’s go to our lunch. We can return to this later.
2.
The claimant sat watching her. He was in something she called a window seat. She had her hands folded and was sitting in a chair. They were in a room with what she called a piano. It made loud noise and also soft noise.
The examiner was a girl. The claimant didn’t know that word, but it is how he saw her. He had known others, he was sure of it. Her soft yellow hair fell about her shoulders, and her bones were thin and delicate. He felt that he could see where the bones were through the skin. His own bones were larger.
She was helping him. He didn’t know why. It occurred to him that he hadn’t asked.
—Why am I here? he said suddenly.
The examiner looked up from her book. She smiled.
—I was waiting for you to ask that. Actually, she looked at a little clock that lay across her leg, it is just about the right time for you to be asking that. Nearly to the minute.
She laughed—a small, distinct laugh.
—You are here because you have been very sick. You almost died. But, you realized that you were sick, and you went to get help. You asked for help, and you were brought here. It is my job to make you better. You and I shall become good friends as you grow stronger, and as you learn. There is much for you to learn.
—But, he asked, where was I before?
—In a place like this, she said. Or in some place so different as to be unknowable to us when we are here. I can’t say.
—Why do I keep falling asleep?
—You are learning—learning a great deal. It is too much for you, so your body bows out. Then you wake up and you can continue. It will be like this for a time. I have seen it before.
—Are you the only one like me? he asked.
—No, no, no.
She laughed to herself.
—There is a whole world full of people like us. Soon, you will meet others, when you are ready.
—How will we know?
—I will know, she said.
3.
On the third day, she pointed out to him a gardener. The man was in the distance, trimming a bush.
—There, she said. There is one.
He stood and watched the man for at least an hour. The man had gone away, and the claimant stood looking at the bush that had been clipped, and at the place where the man had been. He asked the examiner if the gardener was likely to be in that spot again. Not that exact spot, she said, but another near to it. This was the gardener window, then, he said. I can watch the gardener from here. They are all gardener windows, she said. There are others, and others. It’s a matter of how far you can look, and if things are in the way. She took him to another window. Out of that one, he could see three people in a field, in the extreme distance. They were scarcely more than dots, but they were moving. At this distance, she said, you can’t tell if they are men or women. They could even be children, he said. It might be hard to see a child that far off, she said. They could be, he insisted. The examiner did not tell him: there are no children in the gentlest village.
On the fifth day, she told him about fire, and explained what cooking was. He found fire to be very exciting. He could hardly bear the excitement of it. She wrote this down.
On the sixth day, he closed a cupboard door on his hand, and cried. She explained crying to him. He said that it felt very good. In his opinion, it was almost the same as laughing. She said that many people believe it is the same. She said there was perhaps something to that view, although of course it appeared to be a bit reductive.
4.
She wrote things in her notes, things like: Claimant is perhaps twenty-nine years of age, in good health. Straight black hair, grayish-brown eyes, average height, scars on left side from (childhood?) accident, scar under left eye, appears to be a quick learner, inquisitive. Memory is returning relatively quickly. Claimant is matching given data with remembered data—a troubling development.
5.
On the morning of the seventh day, he refused to get up. She told him to get up. He refused.
—What’s wrong?
—The other day, you said that I almost died. That I was sick and that I almost died.
—You were sick. Now you are convalescing. You are regaining your strength. You are young and have a long life ahead of you in a world full of bright amusements and deep satisfactions, but you have been sick, and you must regain your ability to walk far and parse difficult things.
—What did you mean when you said I almost died?
—It isn’t very much. It is a small thing. The world is full of organisms. You are an organism. A tree is an organism. These organisms, they have life, and they are living. They consume things, and grow, or they have no life, and they become the world in which other organisms live and grow. You almost became part of the world in which organisms live, rather than that which lives. It is nothing to be afraid of—just . . .
—But it would be the end? he said. There wouldn’t be anymore?
—It would be an end, she said. Do you remember the conversation we had, the second night? About going to sleep?
He nodded.
—What happened?
—I went to sleep, and then in the morning everything was still here.
—Death is like that. Only, you work in the world with a different purpose. The world works upon you.
—How did I die?
—You didn’t die. You nearly did.
—How?
—We will talk about this later, when you have more to compare it with. Here, get out of bed. Perhaps it is time for us to go for a walk. Perhaps we should leave the house.
He got up and she helped him dress. They had clothes for him, just his size, in a wardrobe that stood against the wall. They were simple, sturdy clothes: trousers, shirt, jacket, hat. She wore a light jacket also, and a scarf to cover her head. He had never seen her do this. I often cover my head, she said, when I go outside. One doesn’t need to, but I like to.
They went into the front hallway, an area that he had not understood very well. It appeared to have no real use. But now when the door was opened he could see very well why there should be this thing: front hallway. He went out the door and down the stairs and stood by her in the street. He could feel the length of his arms and legs, the rise of his neck.
Going outside, he thought—it is so nice! The things that he had seen through the window were much closer. He could see houses opposite and, suddenly, there were people inside of them, and lights on. There was no one in the street, though. He walked with the examiner, arm in arm, and they went up the street a ways.
The houses looked very much the same. He said so.
—Do you know, she asked—do you know which one is ours?
He looked back in fright. The houses were all the same. They were exactly the same. He had no idea which one was theirs. She saw his fright and squeezed his arm. I will take you back to it, don’t worry. I know which one is ours.
The street wound past more houses, and they gave way to buildings that she called shops. No one was in these shops, but the windows were full of things that she said might be bought. He did not understand, and did not ask.
On down they went to a little lake. Fine buildings were in a circle around the lake. There was a bridge in the lake to a little island (as she called it), and on the island there was a small house with no walls. They sat in it, and she poured him a glass of water from a pitcher that sat on a tray on a bench at the very center.
6.
When he woke up, he wa
s back at the house again, in bed. It was the afternoon, he guessed—as light was all in the sky.
—Did I fall asleep again?
But she was not in the room. He went out to the landing. There was a carpet, but the old wooden boards of the house creaked beneath his feet. He winced, trying to step as quietly as possible. The railing ran along the top of the landing. The balusters were worked with lions and other beasts. He knelt by the edge and listened.
She was speaking to someone else. He couldn’t hear what she was saying. The door shut, and she came up the stairs. When she saw him kneeling there, she smiled.
—Did you wake already?
—Who was that?
—Friends. They helped to bring you here. You didn’t think I could carry you all by myself?
—Can I see them?
—Not yet, she said.
—What about the other people—the people in the other houses?
—Not yet, she said.
—How will you know?
—I will know.
7.
She wrote in her report:
As I stated before, in the case of this claimant, the dream burden of his treatment was severe. His every sleep period is marred with nightmares. He is still in the first period, prior to Mark 1, so he remembers little to nothing of this, but it is a cause for concern. If it continues this way, I may need to directly address it. He talks in his sleep, muttering about a person who has died, and speaking with a vocabulary that he does not possess during the day. It is my hope that reprocessing is not necessary. He is mid to high functioning and could do very well as things stand but would lose much after a second injection.
She leaned back in her chair and her gaze ran along the wall. There was a stopped clock, an embroidered handkerchief in a glass case and an antique map. The map showed the known world as of a time when nothing was known. How apt for the Process of Villages.
She wrote:
The previous case that I worked on involved a woman prone to violence and anger. None of that struggle is evident with this current claimant. It appears that his difficulty may have been entirely situational. If that is so, there is a good chance that our process will bring him to balance, as there may be no flaw whatsoever in his psyche.
8.
—Gardener is there! He’s there!
She came to the window where the claimant was sitting.
—Is it the same one—or a different one?
—This one is wearing . . .
—Glasses.
—The other didn’t have them.
—Is that a good way to tell them apart? she asked.
—It is one way.
—What if I were to wear glasses?
She took a pair out of a drawer and put them on.
—Would I be a different person?
She did look like a different person with glasses on, but he didn’t want to say that, so he said nothing.
—It is usually safe to assume that a person is different if their physical characteristics are different, said the examiner. But even then sometimes people change—by accident or on purpose—and the same person can look different. Likewise, two people can look very alike.
—Or be exactly the same, he said.
—What do you mean?
—Twins are alike. They are the same.
—But even if the bodies are the same, the minds inside are different—their experiences are different. They are different people.
—Even if they can’t be told apart?
—Even then.
—I knew someone, I think, who was a twin.
She looked at him very seriously and said nothing.
—She had a twin, but the twin died.
—How do you know this? asked the examiner.
—I remember it.
—But not from life, she said. You remember it from a dream. When you sleep at night, your mind wreathes images and scenes, sounds, speech, tactile constellations—anything that is sensory—into dreams. One feels that one has lived these things, of course one does. But dreams are imagined. They are a work of the imagination.
—What is the imagination for?
—It is a tool for navigating life’s random presentation of phenomena. It enables us to guess.
—But I am sure that I knew her.
—Know her you did, but it was in a dream. You may dream of her again. That is the world where you can meet such a person. The actual world is different. For you, it is this house, and the street beyond. It is the lake at the center of the village, and the gazebo in the lake. It is the meal we take together at midday, and again at nightfall.
She sat for a moment quietly.
—Do you remember the book that I was reading to you from?
—About the poacher and his dog?
—Yes. You remember how real it seemed? Well, it is not real. It just seems to be real. And that is just a toy of words on a page—not anything close to the vibrant power of the mind’s complete summoning that you find in the night. Is it any wonder that you believe it to be real? That you confuse memory and sleep’s figment?
He shook his head.
She took off the glasses, and put them in the drawer.
—I still feel that you are different with glasses, he said.
She laughed.
—People do look quite different with glasses, I suppose. I suppose that must be true.
—Will you play for me on the piano? he asked.
She went to the piano and opened it.
—I can know that it is you because you play for me on the piano, he said. Someone else wouldn’t do that.
—So, she said—you believe an individual’s function and service are identical to their person?
She began to play.
He looked out the window again. It was open, and the air was moving now and then, sometimes in, sometimes out. Or, it must move out whenever it moves in. It couldn’t just move in, or it would all end up inside. But, he supposed, that wasn’t entirely impossible. After all, he was completely inside.
He put his arm out the window and felt the air on it.
Below, the neatly trimmed yard lay flat on its side. The street unrolled from left to right, and beyond the houses, other streets could be seen by the white chalk of their surface. The tops of houses could be seen downhill, the glint of light off the lake in the distance. In the long fields of the distance, and in the canopies of the trees, in waves at their edges, he felt a coy energy. It was as though the edges of things were where the greater part might be hidden—where he could find more.
9.
—There is a thing I want to tell you about, she said. It is called naming. Many things have names. You know that. The bottom post on the staircase is called the newel post. The staircase is called a staircase. The post is called a post. The bottom of the staircase is called the bottom. These are all names. People can have names too, and naming is a privilege. In human history, names have been used as a form of power. Poor families, for instance, would sometimes have three or four sons, and those sons would simply be given numbers for names. First son, second son, third son. Some people would be named just for their position. Blacksmith, or Miller. In fact, that naming system was so strong that there remain people today who have as part of their names those old positions.
She paused.
—Can you think of someone you speak about in that way?
—The men who work outdoors.
—You call them gardener. And if you spoke to them that way, they would understand. This is why it is useful—because it is effective communication. You speak to them, and they understand. Now, let us imagine that such a person had a different name—a name that had nothing to do with what he or she did. What would you say to that?
—It wouldn’t make sense, he said. How would you get such a name? There would be no reason for you to have it instead of a different name.
—That’s true. What would you call me?
—I would call you examiner.
<
br /> —That’s right, and why am I an examiner?
—Because your work is to examine people and things and help to achieve balance.
—That’s what I told you, and I have shown it to be true through my actions. So, to you, a sound name for me is examiner. However, that is not my name. That is the name of my position. In the world, there are many examiners, but there is only one person with my particular allotment of cells who stands in my geographical and temporal position. That person is myself, and so I have a name to help differentiate me from other people who are similar to me.
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