The Book of M (17 page)

“HE'S NEVER DONE THAT BEFORE, APPARENTLY,” DR. ZADEH
said. They were in the car again, on their way to the hospital from the hotel for their third visit. The amnesiac wasn't sure he'd slept at all last night, but he didn't feel the least bit tired. “Confided in anyone about his elephant research or pulled the cables off his head like that. Dr. Avanthikar hopes it's a promising sign. Did he say anything potentially helpful when the alarms were going? The microphones couldn't pick up anything.”

Magic.
“No,” the amnesiac lied.

Dr. Zadeh frowned. “Nothing?” he asked. “What was he talking about?”

“Just how he felt,” the amnesiac said. “He's afraid of what he can't remember, but he's also embarrassed by it. It's a strange feeling, to be surrounded by people who you know have a better understanding of you than you do.”

“Shame is a powerful emotion.” Dr. Zadeh nodded sympathetically. “It can be a huge obstacle.”

It wasn't that the amnesiac didn't trust Dr. Zadeh or Dr. Avanthikar. He just didn't understand how to explain to them what Hemu had said. Hemu needed their help if he ever hoped to stop his forgetting, but they already had him under virtual arrest, confined to two rooms inside a hospital wing. He was more experiment than patient. What would they do if the amnesiac told them what Hemu had revealed and made him seem even more impossible and confusing?

“NOW THAT YOU'VE ESTABLISHED SOME RAPPORT, LET'S HAVE
you ask him specific questions about his past today,” Dr. Avanthikar
said as the amnesiac took off his shoes to enter Hemu's transplanted living room. “Childhood, family, Zero Shadow Day, the moment when he first started to forget.” She clicked a few screens on her computer. “Maybe you'll be able to better help him pinpoint something relevant than we can, now that you two have quite the bond.”

“I'll try,” he said.

Dr. Avanthikar put a hand on his shoulder to reassure him. “I know you're worried about his decline, but we still have plenty of time. Okay?”

“Okay.” He tried to smile. Dr. Avanthikar opened the door.

“My American friend,” Hemu nodded from inside his little wired web as the amnesiac walked in. He apparently didn't mind having the cables on again, now that he'd managed to pass his secret on. Or perhaps he was only pretending to be calm, waiting for another moment. Or perhaps he'd already forgotten what he'd said. “Any American food?”

“Oh,” the amnesiac blinked. The peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “I'm sorry, Hemu. We were late leaving to get here this morning—it completely slipped my mind.”

Hemu waved it off. “I shouldn't even have asked. Don't trouble yourself with it.”

“I promised I would,” he said. “Tomorrow.”

Hemu slid his elephant research notebook carefully onto the low table so he could settle more comfortably on the couch. The amnesiac sat in the chair facing him and waited patiently for the aides to attach the cables to his own forehead again so they would match each other. “So what have they instructed us to speak about today?” Hemu asked. “More Gajarajan?”

“Unfortunately, no,” the amnesiac said. “They're hoping for more of a . . . focused approach now. They want us to talk about anything about your past.”

Hemu nodded, resigned. They sat for a moment.

“You know what the worst part is,” he started. The amnesiac
looked up. “Is forgetting something, but remembering that you've forgotten it.” He toyed with the hem of his tunic. “It's almost better to both forget a thing and also forget you've forgotten it. Maybe not better. But kinder.”

The amnesiac sighed. “I'm sorry we have to do this,” he said.

“It's all right. I know you're only trying to help. This just always shows me exactly what it is I've lost.” He took a breath. “Did you have any family that you didn't remember you had?”

The amnesiac thought about Charlotte. “Not really,” he said. “No siblings. I apparently never knew my father, and my mother died a few years before the accident.”

Hemu squinted, thinking. “I have a mother,” he said. “I do remember that word, what it means. Just not who she is.”

“Dr. Zadeh told me that my mother's name was Anne,” the amnesiac said.

“The doctors say they keep telling me what mine is named, too. But I just can't hold it.”

“It's not your fault,” the amnesiac said.

“So they all keep saying,” Hemu sighed.

“Do you remember the last time you saw her?” the amnesiac continued. “I mean, I know you don't, I just meant—maybe we could try to work backward.” He felt absurdly underqualified. Surely his own team had tried this countless times. “I see Dr. Zadeh—my doctor—do that with his other patients, sometimes,” he finished lamely.

“I do remember cameras,” Hemu said. “A lot of cameras. It was so bright. Every time one would finish its blinding flash, another one would be starting. All I could see was white.” He peeled back his lips and made the sound of a hundred shutters clicking:
chh chh chh chh chh chh chh.
“The police were trying to help me into a van, to get me away from them. I wanted to close my eyes and just let them push me toward the back doors and into a seat.”

“Oh, this is when they took you from the spice market and brought you here,” the amnesiac said.

“The what?” Hemu asked, looking at the amnesiac mid-thought, face puzzled.

“The spice market.”

“What market?”

“The—what was it called—the Mandai,” the amnesiac tried. “The spice market. Where you were when you lost your shadow.”

Hemu's dark eyes grew distant, as if he was gazing somewhere far away. He was trying to recall it, the amnesiac realized.

“I don't remember,” Hemu finally said.

A few minutes later, there was a metal clang on the other side of the door, from inside of the observation room. A chair falling as someone stood up out of it too quickly, maybe. The amnesiac glanced over, but the door didn't open.

Then someone cried out “
Mandai!
” The wall muffled it somewhat, but the word was clear enough. “
Mandai! Mandai!
”

They both stared at the door. Suddenly everyone was screaming. “What's going on?” Hemu asked fearfully.

“I don't know,” the amnesiac said. He ripped the cables off his head. “Stay here,” he called over the alarms he'd triggered, and ran across the room. He shoved the door to the observation office open. Dr. Zadeh dashed forward to stop who he thought would be Hemu, but then realized it was only the amnesiac. The shadowless was still sitting where he'd been left, staring confusedly at them. Inside, the aides were shouting and pointing at a TV playing the news. Dr. Avanthikar had her silver head in her hands. There was an aerial shot of a completely empty street on the screen. No shops or buildings lining the sides, not even paint on the asphalt to denote traffic lines. A crowd had begun to swarm at its edges. “What's going on?” the amnesiac cried to her over the alarms.

The reporter's voice-over was in Hindi, but it was unmistakable
that he was yelling, frantic. Dr. Avanthikar didn't look up from her hands. “The spice market is gone,” she said. “It . . . it vanished into thin air.”

THE NEXT MORNING, AN AIDE OPENED THE DOOR TO HEMU'S
re-created living room for the last time. Both doctors nodded at the amnesiac as he stood there.
Just a few minutes,
it meant. That was all the time they had. After whatever had happened to Mandai, the rest of the night had been filled with uniforms, badges, interrogations. Interrogations of Dr. Avanthikar. Interrogations of Dr. Zadeh. Interrogations of the amnesiac, over and over. None of them could explain it. Hemu was the only one the officers didn't question. They were afraid to cause whatever had happened to happen again. They watched him through the observation window for hours in silence before they let the rest of them go home.

Dr. Zadeh and the amnesiac had woken at dawn to the hotel room phone ringing. They had no idea which official was on the line, but the message he relayed from the prime minister was unambiguous: the joint Indian-American experiment was over. They had less than twelve hours to get on a plane voluntarily before law enforcement would come and forcibly deport them. As soon as Dr. Zadeh put down the receiver, it rang again. This time it was Dr. Avanthikar. More officials were coming at noon for further assessment of her research, she told him. If they could get to the hospital before that, they could say goodbye and escape clean.

“Hemu,” the amnesiac said.

“Hello,” Hemu replied. He tucked his legs up beneath him on the couch.

They looked at each other for a few moments. The amnesiac wondered if he still remembered what had happened yesterday evening—not exactly what, but that it had been terrible, and it was his fault somehow, or if Hemu was simply waiting for him to speak. If he even remembered the amnesiac at all.

“I'm leaving today,” he finally said. “I have to go back home.”

“Oh.” Hemu looked down. “That's too bad. I like—I liked talking with you. Especially about Gajarajan.”

The amnesiac felt an immense relief. “You remember,” he said.

Hemu shrugged. “For now. Soon I might not remember you even came.”

The amnesiac walked over to where Hemu was seated. “For now is good enough for me,” he said.

Hemu looked up at him and smiled. He saw it then. How tired Hemu was. How tired he must have been for a long time.

The amnesiac held up the plastic-wrapped peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “Parting gift,” he said. “You asked me—”

“Oh, yes!” Hemu grinned. “I do remember that, still. Thank you. I really—this means a lot. That you did this for me.” His voice was strangely thick, like he might cry.

“It was nothing,” the amnesiac said, surprised at the intensity of his response. “Really. Dr. Zadeh just asked the kitchen staff at the hotel to make it.”

Hemu lifted the package to look at the peanut butter smear, the purple jelly oozing out between the crust. “What's it called again?” he asked. “I mean, I remember that I asked you for it. Just not the name.”

“Peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” the amnesiac said.

“Peanut butter and jelly,” Hemu repeated. He tucked the bag into the large pocket of his tunic. “I look forward to eating this tonight. It will be something new. A good memory—for a while at least.”

“Don't give up, Hemu,” the amnesiac said. He felt like he might cry, too. He knew how useless it was to say that, probably better than anyone, but he couldn't help it. “I promise I'll remember you. Whatever happens.”

Hemu stood and embraced him gently. “If only we were elephants,” Hemu said, “we could help each other.” Then his expression changed. “Did I ever tell you about—” he began.

The amnesiac hugged him tighter.

ON THE PLANE, DR. ZADEH COMPARED HIS
NOTES ABOUT THE
spice market incident to Dr. Avanthikar's draft report to her prime minister. She'd stated what everyone in the observation room had seen: Persons whose shadows had disappeared began experiencing disorganized but progressive and permanent amnesia. Shadowless Hemu Joshi was asked a question about the place where he lost his shadow, the Mandai spice market, in conversation by a visiting American patient recovering from severe retrograde amnesia, “Patient RA.” Mandai had been one of Joshi's favorite parts of the city, according to background information provided by his brothers. However, Joshi's reply to Patient RA made it clear he did not remember it at all. At almost the exact same time, Mandai—including all the people in it—inexplicably vanished.

“How soon until they inform the public of the connection?” the amnesiac asked.

“As soon as . . .” Dr. Zadeh paused. He reached his fingers under his glasses and massaged his eyelids. “The problem is
how
to explain it. What happened just isn't possible. There's nothing in any field—psychiatry, neurology, physics, biology . . . I mean, you were there.” He set the report down. “I don't even know what I saw. Do you?”

“No,” the amnesiac said. None of them knew, and all of them did.

The amnesiac took out his copy of Hemu's elephant notebook that Dr. Avanthikar had copied and printed for him before they left, as a parting gift. On the first sheet, he traced the outline of Gajarajan's towering body with his finger. His pale trunk stared back, in front of his pale face.

The amnesiac paused. The picture wasn't the same as before. He flipped through the other pages, faster and faster. Gajarajan was ivory-colored in every one of them, instead of deep gray. Not just the trunk, but all of him now. He closed the book and pretended to sleep.

“You're trembling,” Dr. Zadeh said.

“I'm just cold,” he lied.

A small ding echoed overhead, and then Dr. Zadeh asked the flight attendant who appeared, “Could we get another blanket?”

The spice market. Gajarajan's form. One mystery could be ignored. Two could not.
Magic,
Hemu had whispered to him, terrified, but too addicted to stop.

“We have to go back,” the amnesiac said.

“Our visas have been revoked,” Dr. Zadeh replied. “Pune border security would never let us off the plane.”

“This is more important than that,” the amnesiac said. “Hemu is on to something with the elephants.”

“What?” Dr. Zadeh blinked.

He didn't know how to explain it, but he could feel the threads there: the unbinding of shadows from their people; the market Hemu had loved to spend time in; the inexplicable thing that had happened when he forgot it. How the more important the original memory had been to the shadowless, the stronger the power they had over it in the real world when they gave in to the pull. If only there was a way to reverse it, so the magic protected things instead of endangered them, the way the elephants somehow did. The amnesiac flipped through his papers until he found the right one. “Read this,” he said, shoving the old article into Dr. Zadeh's bewildered face. “This is Gajarajan.”