He quickly adjusted to these “bodily peculiarities” and was only troubled by them later when he began to suffer from attacks. But other disturbances (“spatial peculiarities,” as he called them) persisted. For example, when a doctor wanted to shake hands with him, he did not know which hand to extend; if he tried to seat himself in a chair, it often turned out to be further to the left than he expected. He had no better luck with silverware—was unable to pick up meat with his fork or hold a spoon properly, but tipped it to one side, spilling his soup. These problems began quite early, while he was still in the hospital, and continued for years on end.
When the doctor learned what my first name was, he’d always address me that way and try to shake hands when he came over. But I couldn’t manage to clasp his hand. He’d try it a second time, but as luck would have it, I’d forget I had a right hand since I couldn’t see it. Suddenly I’d remember and try to shake hands again but would only manage to touch his fingers. He’d let go of my hand and try once more. But I still wasn’t able to do it, so he’d take my hand and show me how.
Ever since I was wounded I’ve had trouble sometimes sitting down in a chair or on a couch. I first look to see where the chair is, but when I try to sit down I suddenly make a grab for the chair since I’m afraid I’ll land on the floor. Sometimes that happens because the chair turns out to be further to one side than I thought.
These “spatial peculiarities” were particularly distressing when he was sitting at a table. He’d try to write and be unable to control a pencil, not knowing how to hold it. He encountered similar problems in the hospital workshops where he went for occupational therapy, hoping he’d be given some work to do and thus convince himself he could be useful, fit for some kind of job. There, too, he was up against precisely the same difficulties:
The instructor gave me a needle, spool of thread, some material with a pattern on it, and asked me to try to stitch the pattern. Then he went off to attend to other patients—people who’d had their arms or legs amputated after being wounded, or half their bodies paralyzed. Meanwhile, I just sat there with the needle, thread, and material in my hands wondering why I’d been given these; I sat for a long time and did nothing. Suddenly the instructor came over and asked: “Why are you just sitting there? Go ahead and thread the needle!” I took the thread in one hand, the needle in the other, but couldn’t understand what to do with them. How was I to thread the needle? I twisted it back and forth but hadn’t the slightest idea what to do with any of these things.
When I first looked at those objects, but hadn’t yet picked them up, they seemed perfectly familiar—there was no reason to think about them. But as soon as I had them in my hands, I was at a loss to figure out what they were for. I’d lapse into a kind of stupor and wouldn’t be able to associate these two objects in my mind—it was as though I’d forgotten why they existed. I twisted the needle and thread in my hands but couldn’t understand how to connect the two—how to fit the thread in the needle.
And then another annoying thing happened. By then I’d already learned what a needle, thread, thimble, and material were for and had some vague notion of how to use them. But I couldn’t for the life of me think of the names for these or other objects people had pointed out to me. I’d sit there stitching the material with the needle, completely unable to remember what the very things I was using were called.
The first time I entered the shop and saw people working there, I noticed various things—a workbench, a slab of wood, a plane—and I thought I recognized these objects and knew what they were called. But when I was actually given a plane and a slab of wood, I fiddled with them for quite a while before some of the other patients showed me how to use these and other tools. I started to sand some wood but never learned to do it right, never did get it sanded. Each time I’d try, the surface would come out lopsided and crooked or had pits and bumps in it. And what’s more, I got tired very quickly. While I was sanding the wood or looking at some of the other tools in the carpentry shop (a block of wood or a workbench) it was the same old story—I couldn’t remember what any of these was used for.
When I went to a workshop to learn shoemaking, the instructor explained everything to me in great detail, since he was convinced I was very muddled and thickheaded and didn’t know the first thing about making shoes. He showed me how to hold a hammer, drive nails in and pull them out, but all I learned to do was drive wooden nails into a board and pull them out again. And even that was hard, because I couldn’t see where the nails were supposed to go but kept missing the spot and banging my fingers until they bled. And I was very, very slow at it. So the only thing they let me do was bang nails into a board.
These problems persisted, even when he returned home and wanted to help his mother by doing some simple job around the house. If she asked him to chop wood, mend the fence, or bring some milk up from the storeroom, he found he did not know how to proceed. Each time he was at an impasse, and this gave him further cause for grief.
I’d set a stump of wood in place, pick up an ax, swing, and miss, so that the ax hit the floor. Ever since I was wounded I tend to hit the floor when I swing an ax, or else it gets caught in the wood and the block bounces up, rolls off, and hits me in the hand or foot, leaving me black and blue. I seldom manage to hit the center of the block but usually land somewhat to the right or left of it, as though some mysterious power were twisting my swing to one side. That’s why I have so much trouble chopping wood.
Once my sister asked me to fasten the barn door which was hanging on one nail. I wanted to do it but spent a long time rummaging around the barn trying to figure out what I needed, where I was to get the tools to fix the door. I couldn’t remember, even though they were right there in the barn. Since I was wounded I’ve been afraid to reach out and touch things—anything around me. That was the feeling I had when I was in the barn, but it also comes over me when I’m in my room. I don’t know or understand where things are. Somehow I can’t really examine things and figure out what they’re for. When my sisters realized I couldn’t find what I needed in the barn, they brought me the nails and hammer. I picked them up but just stood there wondering how I was going to fix the door. After thinking about it for a while, I finally picked up the hammer. But I wasn’t holding it straight—I twisted it so that the nail bent as I hammered it in, and I hurt my finger. The nail was already crooked and bent. I tried to figure out how to fix it but couldn’t find a way of straightening it. At that point my mother got angry with me, took the hammer, and fixed the door herself.
When I tried to fetch some water, I filled up the bucket and started back, but suddenly fell flat on my back on perfectly level ground. I was lucky I didn’t hit my head—I landed on my back and only dented the pail.
Often I ram the right edge of the pails into a fence or a wall, or trip if the ground is uneven. When I start back with the pails of water I feel perfectly all right but I soon get exhausted and very nervous. My hands and feet tremble and I get irritable and annoyed even though I never have to carry water more than 100 meters, since I live right near a well.
The problems of coping with a world that seemed to have disintegrated and a body that refused to function properly plagued him not only when he tried to work but affected everything in his daily life, even something as simple as exercising or playing a game. Confronted with obstacles at every turn, the simplest, most commonplace matters became painfully difficult.
I’d stand in the middle of my room and try to exercise. Before I was wounded I knew four different kinds of exercise I’d learned to do to music when I was a child in the Young Pioneers’ Camp. But for some reason I can’t remember these now; I have forgotten all four. So I just try various kinds of movements like raising and lowering my arms, sitting down, standing up. But I don’t enjoy doing these. I get tired quickly and lose all interest in exercising.
When I try to bowl, I never manage to hit the pins—for that matter I’ve forgotten how to play any kind of game. I can’t see very well or think quickly. If I try to throw a stick, I miss, my aim is usually far off. The same thing happens with other games I finally figure out how to play.
What was at the root of the problems he describes here? Why couldn’t he control his aim when he chopped wood, hold a spoon properly, or find things in his room instead of having to wander around helplessly, mentally probing each object as though he were a blindfolded man groping his way through spacer What was causing those “spatial peculiarities” he referred to so often?
The problem was not that he failed to see an object. He would recognize it, know what it was for, and how to use it. But it was altogether different when he tried to orient himself in space, distinguish right from left, or gauge the distance and relationship between two objects.
These “spatial peculiarities” became apparent to him when he was still in the hospital. If he left his room he would be unable to find his way back, not knowing whether to turn left or right in that long hospital corridor. And what did “right” or “left” mean to him? At one time the distinction would have been obvious, but from the moment he was wounded all such distinctions had collapsed. He had to wrack his brain for a solution to simple matters as though they were complex algebraic problems for which one needs tried and tested methods. Since these methods had not yet become clear to him, he wrote about his problems repeatedly in his journal. The following excerpts deal with the periods he was in hospitals and sanatoriums.
When I came out of the bathroom, I forgot which way I had to turn to get back to my room. So I just started walking, dragging myself along. Suddenly I banged my right side against the door—something I had never done before. I was amazed that this had happened. Probably it was because I’d forgotten the way back and was confused. I tried to figure out where my room was, looked around everywhere, but couldn’t get the layout of things and decide which way to go.
I turned in the other direction and fell, because I got confused again and didn’t know which way to walk. Suddenly the words right, left, back, forward, up, and down occurred to me, but they weren’t any help since I didn’t really understand what they meant. A minute later I also remembered the words south, north, east, and west. But when I tried to figure out what the relationship was between any two of these words, I was lost. I didn’t understand whether north and south meant areas that were side by side or just the reverse. I even forgot what direction north or south indicated. But right then someone called me. At first I wasn’t aware I was being called, but when the fellow repeated my name a few times I looked around to see who it was. Finally, I saw a patient approaching and beckoning to me.
When I went for a walk the same thing happened. I forgot where our building was, what direction I should walk to go back. I looked at the sun but couldn’t remember where it was supposed to be at that time of day—whether to the left or the right of me. I had already forgotten how I’d gotten to this place and what direction to take to get back, even though I had only gone a short distance from the building. The hospital was hemmed in by enormous evergreens, a little ways off there was a lake, and after that—nothing but dense forest. What was I going to do? How was I going to manage?
The same thing happened when he went to have his eyes examined by an oculist:
The doctor pointed to the figure of a semicircle and asked me in which direction it was turned. I looked at her but didn’t answer, since I didn’t understand the question. She began to get annoyed: “Why don’t you answer? Which direction is the semicircle pointing—to the right or the left?” When I finally understood what she was asking, I looked at the semicircle but couldn’t judge since I didn’t know what “left” or “right” meant. It seems that ever since I was wounded I can’t understand such expressions.
I could see that ring (the circle with one side missing). It was so clear you couldn’t miss it. But I didn’t understand the doctor’s question. She was getting impatient with me and repeated the question again. I just sat and stared at that figure but wasn’t able to answer her since I didn’t know what the words meant. Once again I had to tell her I didn’t know. But she couldn’t believe me, she thought I was pretending. Then she picked up the pointer and indicated a much larger figure. But again I didn’t know what to say. It’s strange, but I just can’t grasp simple things like that.
These problems also occurred in his reactions to sounds. When someone called him in the hospital corridor he was unable to tell which direction the sound was coming from, for he was as disoriented aurally as visually. Obviously, his problems stemmed from something deeper and more pervasive than a mere visual defect.
Although he had already experienced problems with spatial orientation in the hospital, it was incomparably more difficult for him after he was discharged and sent home. Some of the pages of his journal describe his trip home from the hospital. A nurse accompanied him to the railroad station where he was to catch a train to Tula. When she left he wondered how he was going to manage, whom he would turn to for help.
As soon as the nurse left me at the station, I became very uneasy and looked around to get my bearings, decide what side of the station I should be on to catch my train. I was sitting in the Kursk Railway Station in a special room for wounded soldiers. No one had been assigned to accompany me home, and I don’t know whether anyone should have since I was able to walk and could at least make myself understood. I even thought I’d have no trouble getting home alone since I’d traveled by train many times before I was wounded. But when I noticed passengers were arriving and others leaving the station, while I was still sitting there, I suddenly got up and began nervously pacing back and forth holding my small suitcase.
I was utterly confused, didn’t know where to go, how to get to my train. I was so upset I became completely incoherent. A strange sense of uneasinesss about my personal welfare suddenly took hold of me. Nothing in my surroundings made any sense at that moment, I felt absolutely helpless. Finally I had enough sense to go over to a woman wearing a uniform with the railroad insignia on the sleeve. I tried to tell her I had to catch a train to Tula, but stuttered so badly and couldn’t remember the few words I needed, and I bit my lips in despair. When she saw how incoherent I was, she asked if I’d been wounded. “In . . . in . . . the . . . head,” was all I could get out. Once she understood, she didn’t ask me any more questions but led me over to another woman who showed me where I was to get the train to Tula.
Finally he was approaching his home town, the place where he had attended school and over the years had come to know each block so well. Yet here, too, he found himself in a completely strange and unfamiliar world:
I got off the train in Tula and had to transfer to another station to catch a trolley to the other side of town. For some reason no trolleys were coming, so I decided to walk—it wasn’t far, less than two or three kilometers from the station. But a strange thing happened. Somehow I just didn’t recognize Tula, none of the streets, avenues, trolley stops, or routes. Yet only a short while back, just before the war, I’d spent three years there in a polytechnic institute. And all of a sudden it looked like an entirely different place. How was I going to find my way to the other station? It seemed ridiculous even to me, but it was also terribly depressing.
Was it possible I couldn’t recognize the town any more because of that injury? Strange, but damn it, it was true. I tried to remember just a few of the streets in Tula I knew so well but none of them came to mind. For some reason I had forgotten the entire place. I walked along trying to remember where Ry-azhsky Station was. Finally, somone showed me how to get there. It seemed peculiar that I had forgotten the way since Tula, after all, isn’t that big a town.
Yet I had already forgotten the name of the station I wanted to get to. It was a good thing the nurse had thought to give me a slip of paper listing my address and the route to our section of town. I spent an endless amount of time waiting in the Tula Railroad Station. Then someone advised me to catch the train that was leaving from the railroad junction. But it turned out I still had to transfer twice after that. I kept asking people for instructions because I was afraid I’d miss my stop.
When he finally got off the train, his house was only a short distance away. And although he had walked those few blocks thousands of times, they seemed totally unfamiliar to him. He simply did not recognize the place, didn’t know which way to go:
I tried to figure out what directions north, south, east, and west were by the sun, but just couldn’t. I even had trouble understanding where the sun should have been then—whether to the right or the left. I confused east with west and couldn’t remember what those words meant. When someone passed by, I asked him how to get to Kazanovka. But he just smirked and walked on, since the settlement was right there—you could see it through the hedges. I still couldn’t believe it and asked another person. “Look for yourself,” he said, “it’s right here!” And sure enough, when I looked around, I recognized the houses in Kazanovka. It’s so weird—I simply can’t orient myself to a place, just have no sense of space.
Finally he returned to Kazanovka (since renamed Kimovsk), the small settlement where he was born, grew up, and had come to know everyone. Yet again he was plagued by those “spatial peculiarities”—everything seemed alien, unfamiliar. How was he to orient himself to his home town when he no longer recognized it?
For days and months after I returned, I couldn’t get used to my own neighborhood. When I went any distance from home, I couldn’t recognize my own house. All the houses looked alike to me and I was afraid I’d get lost.
Years passed but these “spatial peculiarities” persisted. He still could not orient himself to that little settlement.
I’ve been living at home now for almost two years, but when I go for a walk I still can’t seem to remember the streets, even the nearest ones. Although the town is so small you can walk from one end to the other in an hour, it’s awkwardly built, the architectural layout doesn’t make sense to me. That’s why I stick to those two or three blocks and always walk along the ones near Parkova Street. What’s more, I get tired very quickly and forget everything. I’m also afraid those fits may suddenly come on, particularly the severe attacks that make me so sick I’m bedridden for days afterwards. So I generally don’t go far from home, but still have trouble remembering the names of nearby streets and lanes I walk each day. As for some of the other blocks and sections in Kimovsk that are also very nice, there’s no point in my trying to remember them, since my injury has blotted out so much, I couldn’t possibly recall them.
His problems increased a few years later when his family moved to a two-story house, a very convenient location not far from a lovely wooded area.
During the first few days and weeks after we moved to the new place, I couldn’t get used to it, couldn’t get my bearings. So I just didn’t leave the house during that time. To get to the Miners’ Club—which is only three houses from ours—all I have to do is cross one small block (Octyabraskaya). But if I do go there, I can’t remember how to get home. I not only forget where our apartment is, but even the name of my block. That’s how bad my memory’s become since I was wounded. I always have to carry a little notebook with me listing my address and apartment number, just in case I get lost.
Since his damaged brain had shattered his world, he found it difficult to do what had once been so simple—read a map or analyze a mechanical drawing. As the commander of a platoon, he had had plenty of experience reading maps, and mechanical drawings had been routine matters at the polytechnic institute. Now, however, even the simplest tasks left him helpless:
Recently my family bought a small kerosene cooking stove with an oven. It came with a book of instructions including diagrams that showed how each part operated. I spent several weeks trying to figure out this stove but couldn’t understand many of the parts or which ones were illustrated in the diagrams. It took me a long time to decide how to insert the wick and light it. I was convinced that the stove didn’t function right, that it was defective.
Whenever I try to analyze anything and have to concentrate for a long time, the strain of coping with things that are not clear makes me anxious and upset. Since this can easily touch off an attack, I’ve quit trying to read books or burden my mind with too many ideas.
In summary, the bullet fragment that entered his brain had so devastated his world that he no longer had any sense of space, could not judge relationships between things, and perceived the world as broken into thousands of separate parts. As he put it, space “made no sense”; he feared it, for it lacked stability.
After I was wounded, I just couldn’t understand space, I was afraid of it. Even now, when I’m sitting next to a table with certain objects on it, I’m afraid to reach out and touch them.