Episode 2

Other voices, but these from within: long laments of the steam engine, priests shapeless in the fog walking single file toward San Michele in Bosco.

The sky is made of ash. Fog up the river, fog down the river, fog biting the hands of the little match girl. Chance people on the bridges to the Isle of Dogs look into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging under the brown fog... I had not thought death had undone so many. The odor of train station and soot.

Another light, softer. I seem to hear, through the fog, the sound of bagpipes starting up again on the heath. Another long sleep, perhaps. Then a clearing, like being in a glass of water and anisette...

He was right in front of me, though I still saw him as a shadow. My head felt muddled, as if I were waking up after having drunk too much. I think I managed to murmur something weakly, as if I were in that moment beginning to talk for the first time: "I ask, I ask, I demand- do they take the future infinitive? Whose country is its religion...is that the Peace of Augsburg or the Defenestra tion of Prague?" And then: "Fog too on the Apennine stretch of the Autosole Highway, between Roncobilaccio and Barberino del Mugello...

He smiled sympathetically. "But now open your eyes all the way and try to look around. Do you know where we are?" Now I could see him better. He was wearing a white-what is it called? coat. I looked around and was even able to move my head: the room was sober and clean, a few small pieces of pale metal furniture, and I was in bed, with a tube stuck in my arm. From the window, through the lowered blinds, came a blade of sunlight, spring on all sides shines in the air, and in the fields rejoices. I whispered: "We are...in a hospital and you...you're a doctor. Was I sick?"

"Yes, you were sick. I'll explain later. But you've regained con sciousness now. That's good. I'm Dr. Gratarolo. Forgive me if I ask you some questions. How many fingers am I holding up?" "That's a hand and those are fingers. Four of them. Are there four?"

"That's right. And what's six times six?"

"Thirty-six, of course." Thoughts were rumbling through my head, but they came as if of their own accord. "The sum of the areas of the squares... built on the two legs...is equal to the area of the square built on the hypotenuse."

"Well done. I think that's the Pythagorean theorem, but I got a C in math in high school..." "Pythagoras of Samos. Euclid's elements. The desperate lone

liness of parallel lines that never meet."

"Your memory seems to be in excellent condition. And by the way, what's your name?"

That is where I hesitated. And yet I did have it on the tip of my

tongue. After a moment I offered the most obvious reply.

"My name is Arthur Gordon Pym." "That isn't your name."

Of course, Pym was someone else. He did not come back again. I tried to come to terms with the doctor.

"Call me... Ishmael?"

"Your name is not Ishmael. Try harder,"

A word. Like running into a wall. Saying Euclid or Ishmael was easy, like saying Jack and Jill went up a hill. Saying who I was, on the other hand, was like turning around and finding that wall. No, not a wall; I tried to explain. "It doesn't feel like something solid, it's like walking through fog."

"What's the fog like?" he asked.

"The fog on the bristling hills climbs drizzling up the sky, and down below the mistral bowls and whitens the sea... What's the fog like?"

"You put me at a disadvantage-I'm only a doctor. And be sides, this is April, I can't show you any fog. Today's the twenty-fifth of April."

"April is the cruelest month."

"I'm not very well read, but I think that's a quotation. You could say that today's the Day of Liberation. Do you know what year this is?"

"It's definitely after the discovery of America..."

"You don't remember a date, any kind of date, before...your reawakening?"

"Any date? Nineteen hundred and forty-five, end of World

War Two."

"Not close enough. No, today is the twenty-fifth of April, 1991. You were born, I believe, at the end of 1931, all of which

means you're pushing sixty."

"Fifty-nine and a half. Not even."

"Your calculative faculties are in excellent shape. But you have had, how shall I say, an incident. You've come through it alive, and I congratulate you on that. But clearly something is still wrong. A slight case of retrograde amnesia. Not to worry, they sometimes don't last long. But please be so kind as to answer a few more ques tions. Are you married?"

"You tell me."

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