That’s how I got started treating the wounds of the people who lived in this house. Before long they started sending even outsiders to me for treatment. Most of the wounds of the outsiders were very old, but all of them were treatable from the resources in the garden, although this sometimes required the use of fire and cooking vessels. On such occasions the owner had the vessels sent over to me from the house. Sometimes he also accompanied them and for a long time watched me busy at my work.
One day as he was watching I put a brand new vessel on the fire and when I tossed some roots into it, the inside of the vessel turned black. I told the owner, ‘Certain items ruin the vessels; this distracts me from my work.’
‘But whatever you prepare is far more valuable than the vessels.’
‘Even so,’ I said, ‘new vessels hamper my work. If you’ve got some old ones lying around . . .’
‘I suppose that can be arranged,’ he said, appearing to be thinking something, then got up and went back in.
Shortly thereafter the very boy who had injured his forehead came and left several odd-looking vessels near me. Some had their handles broken and some had their lids missing; still they were all quite sufficient for my purpose. As I was about to put one of them on the fire, my hand stopped and I pulled the vessel back. I gathered up the whole lot and brought them over to the outer room.
The owner sat there in his usual chair, his head bent over. He lifted it when he heard my footsteps. I set the vessels on the floor near his feet and looked around at the curios. The gaping spaces between them gave the room a somewhat strange and unfinished appearance. Meanwhile the owner was looking intently at me.
‘Why did you remove these?’ I asked. He looked at me even more intently. I realized that my tone sounded demanding, but before I had had time to change it, he asked, ‘You’re not pleased that I removed them?’
‘They were here for a long time . . . perhaps even from the very beginning,’ I said. ‘Your room doesn’t look right without them.’
He remained quiet for a while, then a faint smile appeared on his lips. ‘When you first came here,’ he began, ‘I mentioned that we wanted to keep you close to them.’
‘I remember,’ I said, ‘but the problem was that I was alive.’
‘They can,’ I said slowly, ‘because they are not alive.’
‘They are not alive,’ he repeated my last words like an echo.
‘But without them this room…’
‘I’ll rearrange things,’ he said, ‘so the absence of those others isn’t felt.’
He stood up from the chair and quickly started to move the curios around. Then he stopped, turned towards me and said, ‘Although their absence makes your presence felt.’
He turned back towards the curios. I picked up the vessels and returned to the portico.
Those vessels were made of old metal alloys. The effectiveness of whatever I prepared in them was increased many times over.
3
From then on one of those vessels was nearly always on the fire and I would feel compelled to make several trips to the garden every day. I went there even when it wasn’t necessary to do so, just to stroll among the vines and shrubs. Sometimes I even rested there, until I began to feel that my true place of rest was the garden, not the portico, though I still spent most of my time in the portico. From here I could see clearly the changing conditions of the small-leafed tree.
Sometimes its branches became heavy with leaves, spreading a cool shade beneath it. Sometimes its leaves turned yellow and scattered all over the compound. Seeing sunshine under its bare branches one felt that the tree had withered away. But then new sprouts appeared on those branches, and sometimes the entire tree turned red with flowers even before the leaves had appeared. Slowly the flowers disappeared, replaced by green leaves that covered the tree.
One day I was looking at the naked branches of the tree imagining where the new shoots might appear first. It seemed to me that light green dots had started to appear here and there on certain branches of the tree even as I was looking at it. When I came out of the portico and approached the tree to give those tiny green dots a closer look, I heard something like a noise coming from the house. Several people rushed out of the side door and ran towards the main entrance. Then some people came back and went in again through the same side door. That day, for the first time, I became curious about the goings-on inside the house, but I just stood quietly between the portico and the tree watching people as they filed in and out through the side door. At first everyone was silent, later they started to talk among themselves. Several times their eyes fell on me but nobody told me anything. The commotion inside the house was rising steadily. Finally I stopped someone who had just walked out of the side door. He hastily told me the reason for the commotion. The owner had died while he was still sitting in his chair in the outer room.
I sat down under the tree leaning against the trunk. I remembered that I had seen him just that morning. He had walked over to me from the outer room as I was going down the garden steps. Standing there, he had queried me for a long time about different kinds of wounds and their treatments. Then I had gone down into the garden. When I was returning with an assortment of barks and leaves, I again found him standing near the steps. He asked me about the effects of the leaves and barks I had, expressing, with feigned seriousness, his desire to be wounded sometime and to be treated by me. His last words rang out in my ears, ‘Provided,’ he had said, laughing, ‘the wound is one I would like.’
God knows what sort of wound he had wished for himself. I wondered and felt a burning sensation in my nostrils. I looked up in front of me. The portico was filled with smoke, but I stayed under the tree. I knew that whatever was boiling in the old, uncovered cooking pot in the portico must have boiled over and put out the fire.
4
I didn’t venture out of the portico for many days. Meanwhile calm had returned to the house and sulking children had again started to wander into the compound. Now they even talked to me a bit sometimes. It’s through them that I guessed that the man who had come to usher me back into the outer room the very first day was now the owner.
One day the new owner sent a boy to get me and bring me to the outer room, but when I got there I found that the door was fastened from the inside. I left. A few days later he sent for me again, and again I found the door closed. This happened several times. Finally one day as I was going away I stopped and tapped gently on the door. It opened. The new owner was standing across from me.
‘Come,’ he said, sitting down in the previous owner’s chair.
‘I came several times before,’ I said, stepping into the room, ‘but the door…’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I keep it closed.’
I took a sweeping glance around the room. The former owner’s portrait hung on the wall straight across from me and the gaps the vessels had left between the curios were still there. I went near the portrait and started looking at it. ‘He always watched over us with great care,’ the present owner said. Then he talked about the deceased for quite some time while I looked at the portrait. Now and then my eyes came to rest on a space left vacant by a vessel.
Finally I said, ‘He watched over me with great care too.’
‘That’s why I’ve called you here,’ he said. ‘He hoped that you wouldn’t go anywhere else.’ He paused, and then added, ‘and I hope that too.’
After a long silence I said, ‘I won’t,’ and turned around to leave.
‘But he wanted you to rest here,’ I heard him say. ‘You really must rest.’
I sensed something in his voice, so I stopped at the door.
‘I’m not in any difficulty here,’ I replied.
While I continued standing at the door several times he started to say something but hesitated. Finally he got out of his chair and came over to me.
‘This disorderly garden doesn’t go at all well with this house,’ he said, faltering. ‘Everyone had wanted it to be freshly laid out. He did too’—he pointed at the portrait—‘but…’ he hesitated, and said after a pause, ‘the fact is, it doesn’t look like a garden at all.’
‘The fact is, it’s not a garden at all,’ I said softly.
After that I remained speechless for quite some time and so did he. Finally, he cleared his throat and said, ‘He cared for you a lot.’
‘If you would leave the door open for a bit . . .’ I said, going out the door.
I went to the portico, gathered the vessels and hauled them back to the outer room. He was sitting in his chair.
‘But he had given these to you,’ he said, looking at me intently.
‘Empty spaces don’t look pleasing,’ I said, returning the vessels to their places. He stared at me silently, then, when I’d finished my work and turned towards the door, he said, ‘You really must rest now and, as was his wish’—he again pointed at the portrait—‘you must stay on here.’
5
I rest now. But I’ve allowed my curiosity to get the better of me. I want to know more and more about the things that transpire in this house. At first, the older people in the house answered my questions in great detail, then they may have begun to suspect that after asking a question I didn’t really pay attention to their answer, or that I forgot the answer the minute I heard it. Later, they became convinced that I forgot my own question before they had even answered it. So now it doesn’t surprise me that they don’t like me asking them anything, and once one of them even blurted out, ‘You’re afflicted with talking.’
Children are no longer seen in the compound. Only one boy wanders in now and then. I know he’s the one who will be the next owner of this house. He’s very much at ease with me, but whenever I ask him something he answers it in such a way that, were I to reflect on it, my mind would become completely muddled, but I don’t reflect on it, although he thinks that I do. He’s the one who told me about the plan for the new garden, which I couldn’t understand. Nevertheless I kept asking him about each and every corner of it, always forgetting what I had just asked. Finally he got fed up and said the same thing, ‘Why don’t you come along and have a look at it yourself?’ and he went back inside the house without waiting for my answer.
