door on on a small, pleasant verandah outside. I quickly learned the names of flowers, insects and binds, and saw how subtle were the ways in which each depended on the other. I loved the scent of honeysuckle, which came most pleasantly at night. I could remember the names of everyone I met: friends of Seri and Lareen, other patients, orderlies, the doctors, the man who every few days mowed the grass that surrounded the little white-painted room in which I lived.
I hungered for information, for news, and I devoured every morsel that came my way.
As the physical pain receded I became aware that I lived in ignorance.
Fortunately, it seemed that Seri and Lareen were there to supply me information. Either or both of them were there with me throughout the days, at first nursing me while I was most ill, later answering the primitive questions I framed, later still spending painstaking hours with me, explaining me to myself.
This was the more complex, intangible, _inner_ universe, and it was infinitely more difficult to perceive.
My principal difficulty was that Seri and Lareen could only speak to me from outside. My sole question--'Who am I?'--was the only one they could not answer directly. Their explanations canie to me from without my inner universe, confusing me utterly. (An early puzzle: they addressed me in the second person, and for some time I thought of myself as 'you'.) And because everything was spoken, so first I had to understand what they _said_ before I could work out what they meant, it lacked conviction. My experience was wholly vicarious.
Because I had no choice I had to trust them, and in fact I depended on them for everything. But it was inevitable I would soon start thinking for myself, and as I did, as my questions were directed inwards, two things emerged which threatened to betray that trust.
They crept up on me, bringing insidious doubts. They might have been connected, they might have been quite distinct; I had no way of knowing.
Because of my passive role, endlessly learning, it took me days even to identify them. By then it was too late. I had ceased to respond, and a counter-reaction had been set up in me.
The first of the two came from the way in which we worked.
A typical day would begin with either Seri or Lareen waking me. They would give me food, and in the early days help me wash and dress, and use the lavatory. When I was sitting up, either in bed or in one of the chairs, Doctor Corrob would call to make one of his perfunctory examinations of me. After that, the two women would settle down to the serious work of the day.
To teach me they used large files of papers, which were frequently consulted. Some of these papers were handwritten, but the majority, in a large and rather dog-eared heap, were typewritten.
Of course I listened with close attention: my craving for knowledge was rarely satisfied in one of these sessions. But simply because I was listening so attentively, I kept noticing inconsistencies.
They showed themselves in different ways between the two women.
Lareen was the one of whom I was more wary. She seemed strict and demanding, and there was often a sense of strain in her. She appeared to be doubtful of many of the things she talked to me about, and naturally this colouration transferred itself to my understanding. Where she doubted, I doubted. She rarely referred to the typewritten pages.
Seri, though, transmitted uncertainties in another way. Whenever she spoke I became aware of contradictions. It was as if she was _inventing_
something for me. She almost always used the typewritten sheets, but she never actually read from them. She would sit with them before her, and use them as notes for what she was saving. Sometimes she would lose track, or would correct herself; sometimes she would even stop what she was saying and tell me to ignore it. When she worked with Lareen beside her she was tense and anxious, and her corrections and ambiguities came more often. Lareen several times interceded while Seri was speaking, drawing my attention to her instead.
Once, in a state of obvious tension, the two women left me abruptly and walked together across the lawns, speaking intently; when they returned, Seri was red-eyed and subdued.
But because Seri was kind to me, and kissed me, and stayed with me until I fell asleep, I believed her more. Seri had her own uncertainties, and so she seemed more human. I was devoted to them both, but Seri I loved.
These contradictions, which I carefully stored in my mind and thought about when I was alone, interested me more than all the bare facts I was learning. I failed to understand them, though.
Only when the second kind of distraction grew in importance was I able to make patterns.
Because soon I started having fragmentary memories of my illness.
I still knew very little about what had been done to me. That I had undergone some form of major surgery was obvious. My head had been shaved, and there was an ugly pattern of scar tissue on my neck and lower skull, behind my left ear. Smaller operation scars were on my chest, back and lower abdomen. In an exact parallel with nw mental state, I was weak but I _felt_ fit and energetic.
Certain mental images haunted me. They did so from the time I was first aware, but only when I found out what was real in the world could I identify these images as phantasms. After much thought I concluded that at some point in my illness I must have been delirious.
These images therefore had to be flashing memories of my life before my illness!
I saw and recognized faces, I heard familiar voices, I felt myself to he in certain places. I could not identify any of them, but they nevertheless had a quality of total authenticity.
What was confusing about them was that they were utterly different, in tone and feeling, from the so-called facts about myself coming from Lareen and Seri.
What was compelling about them, though, was that they were congruent with the discrepancies I was picking up from Seri.
When she stuttered or hesitated, when she contradicted herself, when Lareen interrupted her, then it was I felt Seri was telling the truth about me.
At times like these I wanted her to say more, to repeat her mistake. It was much more interesting! When we were alone I tried to urge her to he frank with me, but she would never admit to her errors. I was incapable of pressing her too far: my doubts were too great, I was still too confused.
