When he began to think about this, he was amazed to discover that the damage to his memory was not of a uniform nature. At first he couldn’t remember anything: who or where he was, the name of his home town, etc. But gradually recollections of the past came back, mostly those having to do with the distant past: his schooldays, friends, teachers, the years he’d spent in the institute. However, he could not recall the recent past. As he put it, his memories recurred “from the wrong end.”
During the weeks right after I was wounded I couldn’t remember my first or last name, patronymic, or even the names of my close relatives. Only later was I gradually able to remember a few things, mostly about my childhood and elementary school years. My memories came back from the wrong end—that is, it’s become easier for me to remember things that go far back—the buildings where I went to kindergarten and elementary school, the games 1 played, the faces of children and teachers I used to know. But I’ve either forgotten or have a great deal of trouble remembering anything about the recent past—even what life was like on the front.
Now that’s a weird thing. Instead of being able to remember what happened just before I was wounded—which should be the richest, most vivid memories—my recollections mostly have to do with my childhood and elementary school days. These are much easier for me to recall, so they’re basically the memories I live with now.
If I happen to be sitting, or just doing nothing, I’ll suddenly see images, visions, or pictures of my childhood: the shore of the Don where I liked to swim when I was a child, the cathedral in Epifan’ (the town in Tula Province where I lived), the talk some friends and I gave at a club meeting.
These visions have helped me become aware of my past again, though only small fragments of it. But since they’ve recurred so frequently, I think they’ve helped my memory in general. When I look at these visions and images, it’s as though I were seeing photographs of the recent past.
Only later were other recollections linked to these. For example, he remembered the center where he received basic training, what life at the front was like, what he himself was doing when the attack began that last tragic day. Following that, his mind again was a complete blank. But at a later date he remembered the hospital and the faces of the doctors and nurses who came over to inquire about him. Still later, he recalled images of other hospitals he had been in; lastly, Kisegach, the rehabilitation center in the Urals where therapists first began to work with him and his life was enriched by so many new experiences. He described this place vividly and, later, his recollections of Kimovsk. Finally, images of other hospitals and sanatoria also came to mind.
Images of his past emerged clearly and in great detail, which is why he managed to write this journal. But he could not summon them at will, a problem that was particularly difficult in the early stages. If someone named an object, he could not immediately get an image of it; when he finally managed to, it was sketchy and lacked the intricate associations memories generally have.
My therapist would mention the word cat or dog and say: “Try to picture to yourself what a dog looks like, what kind of eyes and ears it has. Can you see it?” But I couldn’t visualize a cat, dog, or any other creature after I’d been wounded. I’ve seen dogs, I know what they look like, but ever since my injury I haven’t been able to visualize one when I’m asked to. I can’t imagine or draw a fly or a cat, can’t visualize the cat’s paws and ears—I simply can’t picture them.
If I try to get an image of a thing (with my eyes opened or closed), I can’t do it, I can’t visualize a person, animal, or plant. Except that sometimes I have a sense of something that resembles them, though it fades very quickly. What I really see are some specks or tiny bodies.
I tried to remember my mother’s and sisters’ faces but couldn’t form any image of them. But when I was finally sent home and saw my family, I immediately recognized my mother and sisters. They were overjoyed that I was home, threw their arms around me, and kissed me. But I wasn’t able to kiss them—I had forgotten how. My mother wept as she embraced me, cried both from happiness and grief—that one son at least had come back, but with his brain damaged, while the other had been missing since 1941, right after the war began. They began asking me all sorts of questions—how, when, where had I returned? I tried to tell them but just couldn’t get a thing out; I kept mumbling something incoherent. One or two words of a sentence was all I remembered. The rest just wouldn’t come. . . .
I can’t understand how wood is manufactured, what it is made of. Everything—no matter what I touch—has become mysterious and unknown. I can’t put anything together myself, figure anything out, or make anything new. I’ve become a completely different person, precisely the reverse of what I was before this terrible injury.
Later on his situation eased somewhat. He seemed to recover some of his memory, and his recollections of the past became richer and more vivid. Nonetheless, the world about him remained just as alien, colorless, and fragmented as before. Whatever might have given substance to each thought or impression was still buried in oblivion.
All these problems continued even though years have passed. Nothing altered the tragic state of his memory.
Gradually I began reading some short children’s books. Once in a while I’d pick up a grammar or textbook on physics but I’d quickly toss it aside, it just didn’t appeal to me. It was such a strain reading, my head ached and felt like it was splitting. So the only thing left for me to do was to try to use that battered memory of mine to recall whatever I could from the past and develop my memory for language and meaning.
But wherever I turn, I’m in a jam trying to remember words. That shows just how badly damaged, punctured, and scorched my brain got from that bullet and the various operations I’ve had. That’s why, even now, no matter what circumstances I’m in (with my friends, family, different groups of people, working, or just taking a walk), I’m always aware of these defects in my memory and in my ability to speak or think. I sense just how abnormal I am when I talk to people; I’m aware of that idiotic smile on my face, that silly, nervous laugh I have and my constant habit of saying “yes, yes” while someone is talking to me. And when I begin to talk, I start to laugh in some stupid, peculiar way for no reason at all.
I can’t remember a blessed thing of all I studied and learned. It’s just gone! When I’m alone, it’s as though some lock has been clamped on my memory, but when people talk to me, or I listen to conversation, that lock seems to open a bit. Listening to them stimulates my thinking a little.
I’ve become a very peculiar sort of person since I was wounded—sickly, but on the other hand a kind of newborn creature. Everything I learned or experienced in life has just dropped out of my mind and memory, vanished for good since that awful head wound. I have to try to identify everything I see all over again, even things in my daily life. When I leave the hospital for a while to get some air, to get a little closer to nature—flowers, trees, lakes—I’m not only aware of something new and unclear that’s hard to understand, but also something that makes me feel terribly helpless, that doesn’t really let me grasp and understand what I see.
What did this symptom signify? What was causing both his amnesia and those “memory peculiarities” he spoke of—his ability to revive some images of the past but none of the knowledge he had acquired?