I moved cautiously from the bed and stood, weak but solid, on the floor. A step at a time, slowly, making sure like a mountain climber that each step was firm before trying the next, and then I was in the living room, and across it to the threshold of the kitchen, and there was the kettle. I boiled water for tea and sat at the table, drinking it, feeling the heat of the liquid down my throat, into my body, feeling every drop of it and warming inside. After a while I stood again, still careful, and made toast. My stomach was already filled, for it had shrunk with the illness. I sat very still until the hunger came again and then I boiled an egg, almost the last of this supply, what day was it, I couldn’t tell, there might be eggs going bad, waiting at the bottom of the lane. I made another slice of toast and poured the egg onto it, had another cup of tea and washed the dishes. I was tired and went into the living room to the couch, to lie down. I was weary of the bedroom, it had too much of the smell of sickness about it. After a while I fell asleep again.

In a few days I was almost well, much thinner I could see, hipbones jutting from the flesh, but almost strong again. I made myself eat and did very little. I sat in the sunshine outside the cabin and watched the birds and the plants; from my chair I could see the weeds growing up, still small but growing, in the garden, and I longed to go and pull them out.

I got the book I used for sketching and began to draw again. The lines seemed fainter, and I guessed I did not have the strength in my fingers yet that I had had.

These drawings were different, horrible in a way, but they did not frighten me as they might have before. In them, living things became dead as I watched, each of them freezing into death, and yet it was not disturbing, did not seem cruel. A flower translated onto paper would suddenly wilt, wither, turn brown in front of me and in the drawing, and I could leave it and think, “Well, that’s dead, that’s done with, I wonder what will turn up in its place?” Or a bird, flying high, would suddenly plummet in the sketch, smash into the ground, and I would stare at it and then look up again, to see that in its place another bird was circling, and it would plummet and hit the earth, and above yet another one would be flying, and always when one went there was another in its place, and that seemed right and not at all sad.