"The doctor listened to my whole story, and then he said, 'What do you mean by color?' He pronounced it as you did—like a foreign word. I tried to explain it to him. That was the first time I'd tried to explain color, and I saw how impossible it was. Then I caught myself and thought how obvious, this doctor is just trying to test me. Obviously he knows what color is, red and blue and all the rest, and here I'm trying to explain it to him, which is impossible. So I realized, or thought I realized, that the doctor was just trying to test me, to see if my mind was working logically. So I asked him for a dictionary.
"He gave me a Standard College Dictionary and I looked up color, to show him the definition, but it wasn't there. The dictionary jumped from coloquintida to Colosseum. So I looked for spectrum and for rainbow and for all kinds of synonyms, and for the names of some of the colors themselves, and none of it was listed. When I looked up from the frantic search the doctor had a strange expression on his face. 'I'm afraid I'm not equipped to help you,' he said, and wrote down the name and address of a psychiatrist for me.
"That's about all there is to the story, except that when I went home I looked through all my books, poetry and prose, which had been full of descriptions in terms of color. You know, red lips and blue sky and green trees and such, and it was all gone. No such words were in any of the books. I went to the library too, and looked in all kinds of books. And for a while I went around asking people the question I asked you earlier. I tried a few times more to describe color, before I gave up. I soon gave up asking people, because they thought me crazy or drunk, and I didn't want to end up in some institution.
"I felt terrible of course, not only because life without color is so barren, but also because it was all so confusing. I felt so alone. I walked around in a daze for a long time, not knowing any more what was true and what wasn't and still hoping it was all a dream. But I dreamed at night, and I dreamed in color, and then woke up to the colorless world. After a while the color went out of my dreams too.
"I went to see the psychiatrist finally, not because I really expected any help or explanation from him, but just to be doing something. I told him the whole story. That was the last time I told it, and it was over five months ago. He made a diagnosis. He said that because of some insecurity in my emotional life, some happening in my childhood, no doubt, I had needed to construct a wholly individual world for myself. He said that kind of thing does happen, though usually not to such a complete and well-worked out extent, that it usually passes during adolescence. But my insecurity, or whatever it was, had apparently been very pronounced, and my imagination fertile. He said there was no need now to analyse the causes any further, since the syndrome had vanished by itself, and I was apparently cured.
"Since then I haven't told anyone, and till today I haven't asked the question. I've got pretty used to the grey world, and I work in black and white and tone. But inside of me I can't believe the psychiatrist, and I guess I don't want to. I guess I keep hoping all the time, and I was very sad just now, looking at the autumn trees."
Eddie sat in silence for a while, until he realized with embarrassment that he had been fixedly staring at the man next to him.
"What do you make of it?" he asked as lightly and casually as he could.
"Well," said the stranger, slowly and carefully, "except for the details and the exact circumstances it is very much like my story.... No, no, with me it wasn't color, though there is a word, or rather there was a word, for that which was. The word is 'povodil' and I can't describe or explain it any better than you can color. But it was as much part of my world as your color. More so, in fact, because it wasn't just visual, but was perceptible to all the senses and was also part of reasoning.
"It stopped more than two years ago, and like with your color, the world became as though it had never existed. I had an extremely hard time adjusting. It was like coming to another planet, learning a new language.... Well I just can't describe it, if you don't know povodil. You can see now why I wanted to hear your story. There was another reason too.... You see people look so different now. But I have learned to a certain extent how to recognize the people I knew before povodil went, and I feel pretty sure I knew you once. Did you ever go to the University of Virginia?"