Oh, how I wish I could have P'att once again. With P'att I could act, with P'att I was never alone. Before this week, there had never been a time when I took to the streets without him at my side. But now there is no one but me. Anzidrion is dead. Yakko is lost in Hillea. And P'att is now an aggressor.
I hope every day that Yakko will return home soon. Perhaps his ship arrives now. Perhaps he is setting sail from Rakka. Perhaps he is still attempting to win support from Sirlay's associates all the way in Grontinion. Perhaps he has been discovered, captured. Perhaps he is with Anzidrion now, and no one has been either able or troubled to inform me. His post is so irregular, which indeed it must be. Letters come by sea, and can only be passed through the hands of men we trust, and only be passed during secure times. But secure times are the most scarce thing in the world these days.
I must pick up and forge on, but I have no direction, I have no path. The tarbhasts, the parebhurs, the evatarrs should continue, but what do we do more? I do not know how to advance them, only to allow them to continue revolving as we have first set them in motion. Will they one day achieve what they have failed yet to? Will they cause everything to remain exactly as it is now? I know that we must be patient and we must wait for our strategies to work, but what if they will never work? But what does that matter? For now I cannot conceive of anything else, so there is no other strategy to pursue.
This is the third night that I have failed to join my fellow Ilepyans in the streets. I do not want it to be so. I know where I belong, and I have spent enough time walled inside of my home to know that my purpose is not inside here. But now my body is so fatigued that I can scarcely move, and I have many times soiled myself due to an apparent disruption in the communication between my mind and my body. By the time my intestines have told my brain that they arefull and in need of relief, I am already well aware, for the foul odor has climbed into my nose to announce that it is too late. But I have little concern, as no longer bother with my physical needs. I live in a prison within a prison, surrounded wholly by yet a third prison. The misery and despair of my mind--that most immediate cell--prevent me from worrying about my body's fatigue--the intermediate prison. It will only be once I escape these that I can notice my secondary physical needs.
I had said that Hihaythean men do not require sleep, for they spend their days leading normal lives and their nights protesting in the streets. I have lived this fact for a month, but I can attest to it no longer, for now my body demands sleep and I can offer it none. There might be nothing in the world I need more than sleep, but though I spend all hours of the day lying in bed, and most hours with my eyes shut, no rest comes to me. This is because every time I find myself close, images of P'att standing over Ma't's body creep into my mind, and in place of calm, my soul is filled with agony. Many times during that first day, I suffered visions of the attack itself, and I was forced to watch in my mind, as P'att pound the old priest's head and legs with his own cane. But how can I review such things if I never witnessed them in the first place? It is only now that I have come to realize that I am remembering Ma't's attack on P'att, in what seemed like an entirely different lifetime, and reversing the roles in my head.
I have been able to recover from previous despair by balancing the terrible memories with pleasant ones. After that initial act of violence, nearly three years ago, I did not think only of it, for I still had hopes and dreams bouncing in and out of my young mind. When Anzidrion was executed, I occasionally distracted myself with visions of a new Ilepya, or recent happy times with Yakko. But now there was nothing. I could not think of Yakko or Qhema without worrying that they had perished, and that I would never see them again. I no longer joyfully pondered about the future, after our victory, because I no longer was certain of that outcome, and besides I had no one to share it with. What good was this great change if no one I loved was able to enjoy it? If no one I cared about stood to benefit from it, I had no desire to fight for it.
I knew that how I felt was wrong, but I had neither the desire nor the ability to change it. I wish Karliott had been there right then, so I could inform his prophecy how useless it was at that hour. There was no good enough with which to be satisfied, and there was no complacency for me to challenge. I had fallen into despondency, and what did the brilliant Karliott have to say about that?
On the fourth day, the grocer Etiar arrived with my weekly foodstuffs. He entered the home and sought me in order to receive payment. "There are three diyarr on the bureau," I told him from the bed. "You may take those, but please do not leave food. I shall no longer require foods to be delivered, though you may come weekly to collect the sum."
"There be no need for that," the man responded, coming closer to the filthy heap of my body, waste and clothes upon the bed. "I shall not charge for deliveries I have not made. But why do you no longer require the food?"
"My body no longer asks for food, so I no longer supply it. The money is yours; please take the whole of it. I have no cause for it and no one else to whom to give it."
"I shall not take honest money from an honest man. I prosper in these times, and have no use for it either. Will Yakko return soon? Do you have any other family in Ilepya to offer you comfort?"
I had begun to warm up to the middle-aged man, as he was my only recent consistency, and the only human who had spoken to me in the last three days. But now, at this question, I was reminded anew of my despair, and I merely moaned in response. Then I took all of the strength I had and buried my face in the quilt, in order to shut Etiar out entirely.
Etiar was a saint of a man, and he approached me in spite of my filth. He was even so daringly gracious as to place his hand upon my back, either to rouse me or calm me. "Sir, be well," he urged me, but I merely moaned again, and shouted "let me be" into the depths of the bed. The hand let up from my back, and I heard the sounds of the man backing out of the bedroom and gathering up the things he had left in the kitchen. Then I heard the house door shut, and I was left in peace again.
It is of great fortune to me that during that week I had learned not to grasp time, but rather to let it pass by me. I did not sleep and my body received no rest, but I managed to shut off my thoughts, and the minutes seemed to pass by in rapid succession. Nothing about one moment was distinct from the previous or the following, so they all blurred together, and time seemed boundless and lacked rhythm. Thus, although I know that it had been at least an hour, Etiar's return seemed immediate, with only another vision of P'att's attack as the only punctuation between the two visits.
External events no longer seemed to me to have any relation to one another, so I did not understand who was in my house or why he had come. Even when I heard Etiar's voice call out to me, I had no idea why he had returned. Perhaps I could have managed the connection, but I had no concern anyway. Anyone could come into my home without my interest. I did not bother to think that Etiar was concerned for my well-being, and that he had returned to my home in order to care for me.
Once he entered my bedchamber, Etiar said no words. I felt him place his hands firmly on my sides and I wondered what he meant to do. Would he kill me? I posed this question to myself, but the thought came with remarkably little urgency. I was indifferent about my death, or perhaps I knew very well that Etiar was probably not the type of man to murder me. I did not resist as he rolled my body over so that I was face up. Then he propped me up against the wall at the back of the bed, so that I was nearly in a seated position. Now he spoke: "Fe'n, do not move. I have brought you a stew. You will need this now, as you have not eaten in many days."
The stew did not interest me, but I knew deep within me that I required food, so I did not argue. However, when he brought a glass of it to me, I refused to open my mouth to it. Then I whispered "parebhur. Evatarr. Who grew those beans?"
Etiar smiled at me. "These are good reformist beans that comply with the parebhur. I grew them in my own garden." And then, without waiting for my response, he parted my lips and poured a small amount of the stew into my mouth.
The liquid was salty and tasted of potatoes. I swallowed a bit of it and it made me feel at once ill and satisfied. Then I waved it away, as I feared that if I downed too much of I would risk losing it all as quickly as I had gained it. "Thank you," I whispered.
Etiar smiled again. "What is your favorite vegetable?" He asked me.
I offered no response. I did not consider the question, as I was out of practice thinking about mundane things. Then images of various vegetables and legumes flashed in my mind, and a few words drifted around, attempting to align themselves with the correct image. This was a strange sensation for me, and I allowed it to continue for some time. I noticed the grocer nodding, and he said "of course. I am sorry for asking. I know that it is spinach." A trio of spinach leaves danced to the forefront of my thoughts, and I felt satisfied that I had managed to align a sound with its sight. My mind was still capable of bridging what was within to what was without. Etiar appeared satisfied, and he left the room. I closed my eyes and the spinach leaves were replaced with Ma't's battered face, as I heard the sound of the house door shut.
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