He wakes sometime later.     The light in the room has changed.     It has become more dim.     And yet artificial.     He can only assume it is nighttime.     He is calmer now.     He feels more in control.     “You are merely visiting these books,” his Father would say. “They are not yours. You do not own them.”     He decides to focus on moving his little finger.     Finds that his eyes blink.     Involuntarily.     But that is the extent of his movement.     “You possess books as a man possesses a country that he does not live in. It is false ownership.”  this is a great day for a ride anne says strapping on her sandals the roads here are so nice for riding don’t you think     He tries to speak.     Finds he can’t move his tongue or his lips.     Knows he can barely move his eyes.     That glimpse he caught of the Doctor.     Pure luck.     The Doctor had merely been in his range of vision.     He doesn’t even bother trying his extremities.      The possibility of the words falling on the page like black raindrops. Then he imagines them behind steel bars. Slithering around. Yet too fat to squeeze through.     He understands he’ll soon panic.     And that this panic will be like no other panic he’s ever experienced.     He will not be able to shout.     Or able to move.     Being unable to clench his fist will set off this panic.     Of this he is absolutely sure.     Better to postpone the inevitable.     should we bring our papers anne asks he shakes his head no they would not be going far and the risk of losing their passports on the road this was too great lets leave it behind beneath the mattresses     He lets out an exploratory scream.     Quiet at first.     As he would in his Father’s library.    Just the hint of a scream.     Nothing.     anne is pruning the petunias on the patio off their room at the inn her garish pink shorts and yellow tank-top frizzed blown-out hair and strapped sandals scream american     He tries again.     This time the lung-shattering ear-splitting scream of the terrified.     He can hear the scream thundering in his head.     Imagines it quaking through his entire body.     Can almost feel the ground below the hospital respond.     Like the anorexic who learns to covet food. To shun food. To avoid it at all costs. He starved on his words. He deprived himself of his voice. Even now his strange wife completes the paperwork. He only forms the shape his name occupies. And even that is like gorging. It makes him sick in a way he can’t explain.  he has chosen the costume of one who doesn’t want to be noticed who can blend in anywhere who has chosen to be a common word in the dictionary brown pants white shirt brown shoes hair parted neat and trim the word is drab     He now hears the sucking of the respirator.     Of course.     Of course he can’t speak.     Because of the tube down his throat.    The panic subsides.     Oddly.     the inching of ice on a mountainside     He will just wait until they pull out the tube and he will ask them to explain everything.     He will ask them what has happened to her.     He will ask.     And ask and ask.     And he will never stop speaking again.     “Pick them up and alphabetize them. Just like they were before.” He’s too young and afraid to argue. He stares down at the spilled cards. he looks past her to the mountains beyond the bavarian alps the summer solstice tonight actually the men from town will climb the foothills and set fires the fires will show things  anything from flowers to a face of jesus his thorny crown blazing on the hillside as the people in town shout and cheer on the flames celebrating the coming of summer He didn’t mean to spill them. He was only looking for an book on the Tyrannosaurus Rex. A subject which happened to be near the back of the drawer. And then the drawer had just fallen, and all the rest had fallen, the cabinet, you see, had tipped. The Card Catalogue.     He remembers little.     Can only assume something horrible has happened.     To him.     Likely her.     As well.     Nowhere in signt.     She’s nowhere in sight.     She’s told him many times.     If something horrible were to happen to him.     She would be there.     Right by his side.      His first true memory of any words. He watched the words on the cards disassemble and scatter to the corners of the library. Hiding in Proust and Plato. In the thin pages of the Bible. he and anne will be witnesses to this but not true participants they’ve been invited by the Innkeeper to enjoy the view from the town’s pavilion but they are still foreigners they can only watch They danced and mocked him as he tried to gather them up. Squirmed in his fingers and laughed at him. He picked up card after card. Blank. The words having escaped.     “Still no response.”     This the nurse says.     She places her hand on his forehead and he can’t feel it.     He just sees it.     She shines a light in his eye.     His pupil dilates.     But he doesn’t blink away the light.     He sees the light.     But can’t feel it burn his retina.     She places a cool hand on his cheek and he can’t feel it.     He just sees her hand.     Covering up his eye.     He once fancied himself a poet. But the words stayed locked in his mind. The words slithering around the bars of the cage like thick snakes. she’s told him she will be with him if something horrible happens something horrible’s happened and now she is nowhere to be found there’s no other explanation for her absence she must be gone she must be dead     No, he thinks.     That’s not how it happened.     Preferred Catullus to Horace. Ovid to Virgil. Never got past Euripides.     If something had happened to us on the bike-ride the Innkeeper would have noticed us being gone.    She would have heard of an accident involving two Cyclists.     Would have notified the authorities and passed along our belongings.     They would know who we are.     Do they know who I am?     Maybe.    Maybe so.     But why speak all these languages to me if they aren’t trying to figure out where I’m from?     His mother. A very quiet person. He wishes he were a Poet. So he could adequately describe this woman. But a very quiet person would have to suffice. She floated around the house like a Ghost. Maybe even a Discreet Maid. he’s sitting in the chair and watching anne pick off dead buds watching the late spring snow on the mountains do nothing he watches her frantic movements with his left eye and the chilling icy stagnancy with his right She cooked and cleaned. Never had to bandage wounds. Her little boy never went out to play with others. Never rough-housed or rode his bike off ramps. She wasn’t even his real Mother. She was a woman his Father had arranged to marry. A discrete service.     The questions needle his brain.     His gut.     All these thoughts.     All these words.     Again with the words.    He can’t articulate them.     He can’t even make a sound.     He thinks the Doctors will say nothing more to him.     That perhaps they are waiting for him to wake up.     Then they can say “Sir, you have been in a terrible accident. You are in a hospital in Innsbruck. Your Wife, I’m sorry, I’m sorry to say, didn’t make it.”     someone has to keep up with the petunias she says When he was three his Mother died. Not long after this his Father arranged with the local Ukrainian Dry Cleaner to marry his Daughter. It was all very weird, once he was old enough to understand it, and he always found it strange that of all the languages he had ever learned, he never learned hers. His second Mother’s.     He needs to order the days.     To stop wondering what has happened to him.     As it doesn’t matter now.     He must find structure in his New World.     how he would like to encase himself beneath the permafrost to be underfoot when the men of the town march in triumphantly with their torches to feel the heat of the fires melt away his top layer     He decides to spend time throughout the day trying to move his finger.     And more importantly.     To stay awake.     He hopes the Nurse or the Doctor will say something.     Anything that can give him a glimpse into to his new world.     His favorites the old Roman poems. The ones that only scholars knew about. So many poets. He can’t recall their names. Can’t quite recall the themes. The essay topics. Only remembers the quiet sounds the Latin makes in his head. The sounds no one else can hear. When he does speak, usually in English, he feels like an Interloper. An Adulterer. The words. His silent Mistress. “This is a great day for a ride,” Anne said, strapping on her sandals. “The roads here are so nice for riding. Don’t you think?”     He wakes sometime later.     The light in the room has changed.     It has become more dim.     And yet artificial.     More artificial.     He can only assume that it is evening.     He is calmer now.     He feels more in control.     He decides to focus on moving his little finger.