Working

The man worked every day.  The constant use of his hands in delicate work, the playing out of complex mental processes, was his habit.  He considered himself an artist.

At first the stiffening in his fingers did not alarm him.  He had been working too many hours, he thought, and was tired.  He continued working, even when the stiffness became pain, because the ideas were coming as fast as he could create something with them.  His thoughts traced increasingly complex paths, recorded through his cramped fingers.

The doctors said that he must rest.

“But I have work to do.  What is wrong with me?”

“We are not sure.  Perhaps just a small thing.  We are looking into it.”  The doctors were evasive.  “Meanwhile, rest.”

The man held up his hands, and they trembled.  He felt a current of panic flash along his spine.  But he went home and continued to work.

“Just a small thing,” he repeated.

Ideas continued to flow, but they were more and more impeded by his failing hands.  Pain and numbness alternated.  Soon he was unable to do the finely detailed work that had been his pride.

Still, he worked.  He developed new techniques, adapting to his condition.

“What is it that I have?” he asked.

The doctors did not want to tell him.

“You must not be alarmed,” they said.

The man had read about a disease that takes everything away, and he felt a sudden horror that he must have it.

“I have to know,” he said.  “I have my work to do.  Tell me the worst it can be.”

“It is the worst,” the doctors finally admitted, and they named the disease.  “It would be best to stop working.  You must rest, for you will lose more than the use of your hands, eventually.”  They did not want the man to go home.

The man was angry.  Did the doctors think he would throw himself in the path of a car?  He did not want to listen any longer.  The doctors would not look into his eyes.

Outside, he looked at the traffic moving in front of him, quick and dangerous.  He held out his hands, already alien appendages.

“They won’t obey me anymore,” he said to the traffic that sucked at him.  But he pulled back.  He had work he must do somehow.  His brain was still working.  He went home.

He walked from room to room, looking at everything he had done with his hands, and he cried, “I will not stop working!”

Then he stood still and closed his eyes, and envisioned everything that he could yet do, and he whispered, “I will continue to work.”

When his hands shook uncontrollably, he incorporated the shaking into his work.  His work evolved, finding new ways to flow from his crippled fingers.

There came a day when his hands lay useless and benumbed, with the rest of his body, and the man knew that they would never give shape to his work again.  His brain still created, but his body could not produce.

“Then I will make words about my work,” the man said.  He spoke, and his thoughts were recorded.  Sometimes others read his words, and were inspired to use their hands.  So descriptive were his words that intricate structures seemed to take form from them, as if the man had actually made them with his hands.

Eventually the man could not move from his room.  His ideas came faster then, told to anyone who would listen.  When he could no longer speak, he continued to think.  His thoughts were as inventive as they had ever been.

“I will keep thinking, in case anyone can hear me.”  He believed he must be heard, just as he listened in his mind to others.  And he watched carefully everything that went on in his room.

At last a day came that the room was dark, and the light did not come back.  Then the man invented a light, in the place behind his eyes, so that he could still work.

The sounds and the room receded.  At first the man did not notice, because he was working on a new idea, a pattern his mind had not completed.

“He’s going now,” he heard a voice say, out in the room he remembered.

“Where would I go?” the man thought.  “I have work to do.  I am still able to place one idea after another...”
He thought one more thought.

And that thought hung suspended, and continued.