He isn’t immediately capable of remembering, when he sees a dog, say, that a month earlier he saw a dog in his grandmother’s yard, and that he’s the person who has had both experiences. It’s episodic memory that establishes a link between who we are today and who we have been, and without it, when we say I, we’re referring only to what we’re feeling now, not to what we felt before, which gets lost, as you say, in the fog. You haven’t lost your semantic memory, you’ve lost your episodic memory, which is to say the episodes of your life. In short, I’d say you know all the things other people know, and I imagine that if I were to ask you to tell me the capital of Japan…"

"Tokyo. Atom bomb on Hiroshima. General MacArthur…"

"Whoa, whoa. It’s as though you remember all the things you read in a book somewhere, or were told, but not the things associated with your direct experience. You know that Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo, but try to tell me the name of your mother."

"You only have one mother, your mother is still your mother… But as for my mine, I don’t remember her. I suppose I had a mother, since I know it’s a law of the species, but… here again… the fog. I’m sick, doctor. It’s horrible. I want something to help me go back to sleep."

"I’ll give you something in a moment, I’ve already asked too much of you. Just lie back now, good… To repeat, these things happen, but people get better. With a great deal of patience. I’ll have them bring you something to drink, perhaps some tea. Do you like tea?"

"Maybe I do and maybe I don’t."

They brought me tea. The nurse had me sit up against my pillows and placed a tray in front of me. She poured some steaming water into a cup with a little bag in it. Go slow, she said, it burns.

What do you mean, slow? I sniffed the cup and detected the odor, I wanted to say, of smoke. I wanted to see what tea was like, so I took the cup and swallowed.