The days continued like this. Etiar returned with a smaller cup of the same stew, and I sipped slightly more than I had on the day previous. He told me a few unimportant facts about his life--like how many patrons he had on my street, or what his prefered color was--and I declined to respond to him. Then, every day, he would ask me a simple question. The questions always came in the same style; the man would finish telling me his fact, then we would sit in silence for several minutes, and then he would pose the question as though it had just hatched inside of his head. I said little of anything to him, and nothing at all to his questions, although I would consider them briefly. Then Etiar would leave again, and during the following twenty-three hours, I would find myself thinking more of the things simple things Etiar had suggested. I still thought too much on my violence and my sorrows, but these thoughts were occasionally interrupted by visions of Etiar's simple things.
In some peculiar instances, Etiar's simple things would find their way into my memories. Etiar had told me about a new grey woolen had he had bought a few months ago; that afternoon, as visions of Ma't's dead body leapt into my mind, I noticed a grey woolen had on the ground by the corpse, caked in blood and frost after P'att had knocked it off of his victim's head and crushed it into the ground. I had never seen this thing before, and I registered the sensation of confusion in my mind, that I was able to discover new information about experiences that I had already had. This in itself brought me a strange feeling, for it was not custom in those days for me to suffer from confusion. Confusion meant that I had expected one thing and seen another, and I did not realize that I expected anything at all.
On the fourth day of his visits, Etiar took on a new charge: my hygiene. This was not something that I desired, and I resisted him as much as I could without showing any active interest. I knew that this was certainly an unpleasant task, as I had neglected my hygiene for nearly a week. The odor was tolerable to me because it had crept upon me slowly, and because I did not bother with odors, but there was no way that a man in normal condition could easily keep his stomach around me. Besides, I knew that the man was interested in such a task, as although he must have noticed the problem constantly, he waited for several days to actually do something about it.
I did not want my condition to cause another man so much labor, and I did not want to hazard feeling guilt because of what Etiar did for me. However, I had no choice, so I merely shut my eyes and pretended that none of it happened. In those moments, images of the three thugs who had shoved me to the ground and stolen my gloves and coin two weeks ago were welcome, as they distracted from the unwanted reality. Nevertheless, I could not prevent the grocer from stripping me of my clothes, from pulling the once-nice but now-ruined linens from the bed, from throwing out all of the tainted fabrics, from wiping my putrid body down with a wet cloth or from wrapping me back up in a woolen blanket.
The experience would repeat itself each day, immediately following the meal. From those days on I was naked entirely apart from the blanket which, although made dirty by my daily excretions, was no where near as filthy as my old blankets had been. I did whatever I could to avoid Etiar's eyes during those times, but I never once saw disdain on his face, nor did I hear a single gasp of disgust.
Then, on Etiar's sixth visit--which was my tenth day of solitude--he brought a different stew. It was still warm and salty, but this one had no potato, but instead a few legumes. The grocer gave me no warning, so I was surprised when I tasted it. I did not say anything, but my face must have registered a bit of my shock. "Do you prefer this one?" He asked. I did not respond, for I was still confused at having felt surprise, and I had no interest in speaking besides. "It is new and the legumes are a bit more difficult to come by. I wanted to make you something special, as I will not be able to return for perhaps a week or more."
I felt a bit of sadness creep into my heart, and I ceased to consume the stew. Sadness was plenty familiar to me, but this particular source was different, as it had been produced externally, by something present. I felt annoyed that so many feelings had returned to me so quickly, but I did my best not to appear to care.
"I certainly will miss you, but it cannot be helped. My nephew in Pondital will be wed four days hence, and I must attend the ceremony. I am sorry that I cannot come visit you, but in my stead, my daughter, Nidath, shall come every day to care for you and bring you a cup of stew. She is a nice young woman, and I believe that she will be kind to you."
Now shock overcame me. Etiar had never mentioned anything about a daughter or a family at all. His daughter would come to my home? What would she do? How would she speak to me? How old would she be? I had so many questions, but of course I would not ask them.
The grocer had a talent for reading my face, as it was the only part of me that gave any indication of my feelings. He realized that I was perplexed, but made an incorrect assumption as to why. "Do not worry," he told me. "She is of good reformist upbringing, and she shall indicate her good intentions with a special sign when she enters the door."
My face did not change from its initial surprise, but Etiar did not attempt to enlighten me any further. Instead, he patted my right leg just above the knee four times, and then said "be well, sir," and left just as he always did.
This time, however, it was at least ten minutes before I began to think of my sorrows again. Instead, my mind was consumed with thoughts of Etiar's daughter. I could not imagine how she must appear, or how her voice must sound. Would she be just like Etiar? I had grown so accustomed to him that the thought of someone new terrified me. How did a man behave around a woman. I had never spent much time around women; Qhema had left our home when I was but six years old, and my mother had died when I was thirteen. Since then we had never had a woman in our house for more than a few minutes, as my brothers did not have female callers, and they did not think it was appropriate for a woman to serve as a laborer in the home of three men. I knew nothing about women!
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