A shaft of light wakes me, the sun shows up in a corner of the big window without shutters in front of me. It hurts. I close my eyes, raise my head. I try to sit on the bed, but I’m so tired, I let myself fall back on the pillow. I hear muffled voices, I try to open my eyes a bit, shading them with my hand.
I see a corner of the floor, a black and white chessboard. People, maybe a dozen. Faces I don’t know. They talk to each other, don’t realize that I’ve opened my eyes, raised my head.
It is not clear what this place is. A hospital? Despite the drip hanging over my head, with the plastic tube snaking down to the patch on my arm, and the white color of objects and furniture, it looks more like a room in a private house. A shaded bedroom with high ceilings, a damp smell emanating from the walls, ancient. The bedside of a dying man, surrounded by acquaintances. But I do not know anyone, I only see a circle of backs of unknown people that from time to time give me skewed looks.
Somebody’s whispering. “He still does not remember”, I can finally hear.
It is true, I realize with a shudder. I do not remember. I do not know where I am. I do not know who I am.
I look around. There isn’t a mirror. I do not know what I look like.
I know I’m seriously ill, or injured. I know I’m a male. Maybe in my forties. I know that I like women and beer. I know I was a child, of course; I do not remember how I was. The faces of my parents. I have a vague emotion towards them, a mixture of love, sadness, and irritation; I almost remember, but I still can’t see them.
I know my language: I think these thoughts in German. Then I am German, or perhaps Austrian, maybe Swiss. I know that German is German, that there are many languages in the world. I know scraps of history, geography, chemistry. Know the formula of hydrochloric acid, the table of elements. I know that the identity of Homer is not certain. I have read books, I can almost see their dusty backs, I remember a few titles, the verses of a poem by Goethe. For this reason, Hafiz, I want to stay next to you…
I know I’ve seen the Olympics on television at least once. I know with certainty, how strange, that I cut my chin after falling from a motorcycle, and they gave me nineteen stitches. I think of myself with with black hair and gray eyes, tall and strong, but I’m not sure. I have a feeling that my smashed body is that of an athlete. I’m sure of the sharp pain that comes over me, the difficult breathing, the bandaged body, the ambiguous mood of the people huddling in the corner of the room.
Whatever I was, it is not accessible, I have only a few incomprehensible memories with the flavor of a dream and the feeling of the imminence of death. I know I’m much more than what I know. I know that I have a name and a life full of memories that have been withheld. But now that maybe I’m going to die, I do not know what to do about that irretrievable life before memories. I have only the white light of this sun that stabs my eyes like a sword, blinding me.
I think it’s spring. Someone must have opened the window, I smell flowers, cut grass. It’s amazing how I know what is going on around me in the distance; I am sure that out here there are parks and cafes and restaurants with outdoor terraces crowded with young people; the girls laugh and wear flowery dresses that enchant. I know how they move and I know their faces, but I am not aware of things that actually connect to my life.
I have the memory of a single event that concerns me, whoever I am. A small piece of a lost film: a large dark place, that must be an underground parking lot. Rows of cars in dim light. A girl with a thin face, beautiful, sad, very young. She’s in front of me, kneeling, crying, black drops of mascara streaming down her cheeks. I see that her hands are stained with blood. She is all covered in blood. Her knees, her stomach, her arms. Her blood, mine? It is she who hit me, or I her?
Then, in the background there appears to be a man. He remains motionless, then runs his hands over his face, so I can’t see it. I wouldn’t recognize him anyway.
A woman in a white coat, certainly a doctor, is close to my bed and leans over me. She holds my wrist for a moment, while looking at some screen behind me. “The pressure has dropped again,” she says to herself, lifting my eyelid with a finger to examine my eye, as if I could not hear her. She gives me an injection.
I want to tell her, “Tell me who I am! Bring me a mirror!” But I realize that no sound comes out of my mouth. I can not speak. I move my eyes desperately seeking a human contact. She can’t have noticed, but she walks away ignoring me, absorbed in her thoughts. I feel myself fading away.
I open my eyes. I don’t know how much time has passed. Confusion. I see again and again the girl smeared with blood. Is it really my victim? So who has done this to me? Perhaps the man in the parking lot hit both me and the girl? And these people around me, do they know? Perhaps it would be enough for them to turn and speak, to say guilty, not guilty, for me to know everything. My mind is spinning. Why don’t I let myself take the rest I need to recover? Why am I so desperately trying to understand? What do I want to absolve myself from?
Absolve. That’s it. This room exudes guilt. I am hated and feared. Those eyes that turn to look at me in askance see me as a criminal.
And how can I say I am not one? It seems to me that I would not hurt anyone, but it is easy to say that, nailed to a bed without the power to move or talk. We all think ourselves incapable of evil, don’t we? Has there ever been someone who thought of himself as evil? And I honestly don’t know if I am tormented more by the things that I don’t remember, or by those few that I do remember. Perhaps the absence of memories of my life is a liberation and a gift? This amnesia is a kindness of the gods?
And if I died now, would I be innocent or guilty of the things that I don’t remember doing? If I can’t enjoy the memory of love and smiles that I have experienced, am I to be called to account for for sins that I can’t remember? If I am guilty of crimes that I don’t not recall, it will be like paying for crimes committed by someone else. What ‘s left of him – me, once the memories are erased? Am I what I am or what I was?
The girl, is she alive? Let me die, if she can be saved.
A stabbing pain in my guts brings me out in a cold sweat. Am I really dying?
Tomorrow, when this wretched sun appears at the window to scorch the bed, perhaps I will no longer be.
Or, in a few days, I’ll be out of here, restored, cheerful, back to the life before memories. In a home that now I don’t know, my mind full of memories that now I don’t have, with a sense of identity that is this and not this; maybe with friends, a wife hugging me, a son, laughing at those odd hours when I felt strange and didn’t remember anything.
How many significant memories would he –the other being that I am– bring with him to the time of death? One hundred, ten, one?
I have to stop pitying myself. Every man falls and ends. Even if I could remember, even if I had my set of memories intact, condensed into the last recollection of a dying man, what I grasp would still be just this: a white room and its merciless light. This place of which I know nothing is all I have.
I close my eyes. I think of the words: original – sin. I do not think many have had to leave without knowing their own face, while a voice higher than the others now, no longer afraid to be heard, says: “Let the bastard die!”
Ideas for a tall story 