51) While away from Dr. Creep, on board the Black Swan for so many days, I was free of the sense of his hovering. Bad dreams no longer occurred. My brain filled with a welcomed monotony. Water, water, everywhere. I had no thoughts for great spans of time. I was a blank. A beautiful zero, an empty set nesting in simple math. Sun after sun, night after night, etc. But he is back. Whether behind the next tree, staring down from a balcony, the eyes of a swamp crocodile following my step, or the dust of him in my knotted hair, I again know he is near. Were I a sparrow he would know that I fell and where. But now I understand a bit the why of it. I have been guided, marched, shepherded, more like herding. From timeless hibernation in Antarctica to my profoundly awakened state as I stand at a final border, a river, to cross today, he has been preparing me. I have been given time for the world to be shown. Every day brought new memories. No, that is not right. I merely remember the day and the day before and the day before that. I can put together a serial, pictures and movements, for my mind to explore as it might. Dr. Creep has allowed me to see how time might move. I have no thought of my life before him. I have had scattered irruptions of phantom recollection. I have ugly dreams. But without the world, it is nothing. Though I cannot care, I am unable, it is that the Doctor wants me to understand that others care. They care about their lives, their buildings, monuments, their issue and the other little fires that keep them. I do not need to be warm or cold. I do not need to eat or dress in clean clothes. I do not want for baths or ointments or powders. I never tire. None of the afflictions and joys of this world mean anything to me. I am shown important worldly cares so that I may better destroy them at the behest of the good Doctor. The more exquisite the spider's web the more grief that follows its destruction. I am not meant to lend a hand in the building but in the tearing down. I have no other purpose.
And my talents have gotten worse. Here, as I stand at the border of this Matamoros place, already the grass around me has retreated as though burned by acids. My pestilence spreads to shrubs and trees. Birds fall in slow circles. I hear death rattling in subterranean burrows. Dogs chase their tails and drop. The last meal of a man, after a full breath and a pouring of sun light, is the sight of the awful heap of me. I merely gaze, I protest. He dies just the same.
Yet the cardinal points are not men nor are they gods. I have to be shown what they love, what the other, each, loves. And I am to destroy it. The good of me. All I am for.
Now to cross a river.