The Man Without a Shadow (23 page)

E.H. laughs, perplexed. “This is strange, Doctor. I seem to know how to draw this damned thing in the mirror. Is there some trick here?”

Margot tells him there is no trick. Margot tells him that she is not a “doctor”—she is a neuropsychologist.

Margot is very pleased with the results. Margot will retest E.H. the following week, and the week following that. Margot will discover that the amnesiac subject can “remember” a complex skill though he has consciously “forgotten” it.

E.H. is made to feel proud of himself, though he isn't sure why. Outlining an octagon by watching his hand in a mirror? Is his examiner serious?

Wanting to laugh, he who'd once been a stockbroker in Philadelphia, in his family's firm. He who'd once graduated summa cum laude from Amherst . . .

Margot Sharpe will publish her findings in an article in the
Journal of Experimental Neuropsychology
titled, “Alternative Memory Circuits in Amnesia.”

The headline leaps at her, astonishing—

Milton Ferris, 73
—

(Her initial, terrified thought is that her mentor has died, and this is his obituary; and she had not known)—

Nobel Prize Recipient, Physiology/Medicine.

Milton Ferris has won a Nobel Prize! Above the single-column headline on the front page of the
Philadelphia Inquirer
is a photograph of the scientist as a handsome, ebullient-looking middle-aged man with flowing white hair and short-trimmed white beard, taken at least twenty years earlier.

So astonished is Margot, her eyes mist over as she reads, and rereads, the article. It is surprising—well, perhaps not so surprising—that Milton Ferris is being honored by the Nobel committee for work he'd completed before the age of forty-five.
He is sharing the prize of more than six hundred thousand dollars with two other neuropsychologists at UC-Berkeley with whom he'd done research into sensory perception, reasoning, memory, and problem-solving in the human brain in the 1950s.

By the third time Margot has read the remarkable article, with its continuation on an inner page, she is feeling less overwhelmed. Still, there is the aftermath of her initial shock, when she'd thought that her lover had died.

When her father had died, and the news had come to Margot belatedly—(that is, Margot had not listened to her phone messages for a day and a half)—she'd felt a similar sensation of shock, dismay. She'd had to grope for a chair, to sit down as her head seemed to sway on her shoulders. She'd thought—
But now there is no meaning in my life. Now I am alone.

Soon after, she'd forgotten this observation. As she will forget her shock at seeing Milton Ferris's youthful photograph on the front page of the newspaper, and a similar conviction that her life as a woman and as a daughter is over.

When she has recovered, Margot staggers to a phone. Margot calls her former lover, whom she has never ceased loving; she dials the number without hesitation though she has not called Milton in years. A recorded voice answers, rather curtly, coolly; not Milton's voice, but a mechanical voice. Margot leaves a stammered message of congratulations.

I am so happy for you, Milton!

No one deserves this more than you . . .

She would say more, but her throat shuts up. She is crying, a raw wracking ache cleaving her in two.

She does not say—
We could have been so happy together, Milton.

We could have worked together, and loved each other.

I could have loved enough for two.

Then, in her excited mood, she can't resist calling Dr. Mills.

Guardedly, Mills answers his phone. He recognizes Margot's voice at once. He tells her that since news of Ferris's prize had gone out over Reuters very early that morning, and was picked up by the Associated Press, the department has been flooded with calls.

Margot says, “Aren't you glad that you didn't persecute Milton? Aren't you relieved, it has turned out as it has?” Margot speaks excitedly, aggressively. She is not altogether aware of how she sounds, her heart beats so quickly.

“Yes, Margot. We are all very ‘relieved' it has turned out as it did.”

“Did Milton ever know about it? The ‘charges'?”

“No. I don't think so.” Mills pauses, pointedly. “Unless you told him, Margot, he probably doesn't know.”

“Then he doesn't know. I didn't tell him.”

“Thank you for that, Margot. At least.”

“Thank
you
.”

Margot slams down the receiver, hotly. She has no idea why she is so excited, why her pulses are racing.

She will celebrate Milton's prize alone, since there is no one with whom she can celebrate. A shot glass of whiskey, or two.

Don't feel sorry for me, I am not sorry that I loved you.

I am not sorry that you used me, and discarded me.

I am in love with someone else now.

I am in love now with the love of my life, and he will never betray me.

T
he Lovers.
He is saying he remembers what it was like to be married. He is saying he remembers what it was like to be married to
her
.

“You were my dear wife, I think? Before I got sick.”

Clever Margot Sharpe has restyled her hair: she has brushed the shiny dark silver-threaded hair straight back from her forehead, and she has braided a single, narrow strand like a pigtail, that falls along the left side of her face, to below her chin. At the university, and at the Institute, this tight-braided pigtail has drawn the attention of admiring eyes—or so Margot would like to think.

E.H. is one of these. E.H. has been staring at Margot, and at the braid, since he has first seen her that morning.

“Pretty!”—E.H. has tugged at the braid. He is being playful, or—maybe not.

Margot feels her face heat with a sudden stab of pleasure. It has been some time since anyone has touched her with such a
playful sort of intimacy. It has been a very long time since anyone has tugged her hair.

“Are we going to our special place, dear?”

“Yes, Eli. Yes, we are.”

Margot has discovered that if she brings the amnesiac subject outside the Institute and walks with him in the quasi-wilderness parkland adjacent to the Institute, E.H. will begin to speak more seriously to her, in a quieter voice. His usual bright bantering manner subsides and his eyes rove about her hungrily.

“My dear wife! It was wrong of me to leave you, and I was punished for leaving you. One of them struck my head with a baseball bat—I could feel the bone crack. ‘Nigger lover'—”

Margot has discovered that E.H. will become emotional at such times, and will reach for her hand. He will clasp it firmly, and draw it against his side.

Margot has discovered that the walks into the “green sanctuary” behind the Institute are thrilling to her. These walks with E.H. are like floating islands of light amid the shadowy interiors of her routine life.

Margot has not said to E.H. that yes, she was once his wife. She has not said that she is his wife now. But Margot has not dissuaded E.H. from thinking that they were once husband and wife.

E.H. speaks gently, urgently. It is hard to Margot not to think that the amnesiac is thinking out loud.

“I'm trying to remember what it was like to be ‘married.' I think it would be a safe, warm feeling—like now. There would be someone beside you, always. You would sleep with her, and she would be beside you, and hold your hand. And hold you if you were feeling lonely and frightened. I think I remember that.” E.H. speaks like a man drifting into a dream open-eyed and trusting. He clasps Margot's hand, harder. “Always she would be
with you—a ‘wife.' But I lost my wife through my carelessness. I failed her, and she died of a raging fever. The fever was intended for
me.
Is that why you are here with me, Doctor?”

Margot is hurt, that E.H. has forgotten
she is his wife
.

As she has corrected him countless times, so Margot corrects E.H. again: “Eli, I'm not a medical doctor. I have an academic Ph.D. In theory I'm a ‘doctor' but not the kind you mean. I'm a professor—a research neuropsychologist at the university—and I am attached to the University Neurological Institute at Darven Park, which is where we are now.”

“Are we!”

“We're going for a walk in the parkland behind the Institute, as we often do. We call this ‘ambulatory testing.'” Margot laughs, for this is a thought that pleases her.

“Whatever you say, Doctor. You're the doctor.”

They laugh together, giddily. Margot feels laughter fizzing inside her throat like champagne.

Except, Margot doesn't want anyone from the Institute who knows them to observe them. Margot is cautious not to allow E.H. to clasp her hand in his until they are some distance from the Institute, in the quiet interior of the pinewoods and the marsh that buzzes with its rich fecund life well into autumn.

Margot's pulses quicken with feeling, and with the risk of the illicit. Though she is not being deceptive, she believes. She is not misleading E.H., for in her heart, and truly, Margot Sharpe loves Elihu Hoopes; and if they were not literally married, that is but an accident—“An accident that might be remedied one day.”

They are leaving the graveled path, and are walking now on the wood chip path. They are on the raised boardwalk through marshy land, hand in hand approaching the little plank bridge at which E.H. always insists upon stopping. Here, he will stare avidly into
the marsh; he will open his sketchbook, and begin to draw. And Margot will observe him, noting his intensity, and his obliviousness of her. Until at last he will have forgotten her, she knows.

When she sees that he is feeling lost, and is looking helplessly about, Margot will touch his wrist lightly, and identify herself to him. And E.H. will stare at her in amazement. He does not recognize her, yet Margot is certain that a part of his brain registers familiarity; she has been studying the phenomenon in the amnesiac subject, who can identify very few items in a visual test, for instance, yet unfailingly indicates those items as “familiar” which he has seen before, amid others that are totally new to him.

Margot is always devising tests for E.H. It has come to seem a way of appropriating him, loving him. As he clasps her hand, and squeezes her fingers tenderly, and talks to her in his slow meandering way, Margot's brain never ceases creating tests and experiments to further define this remarkable man; though she is listening closely to him, as well. If she is recording the amnesiac's speech it is not for the purposes of the lab, but for her own, intimate purposes, to be replayed privately. None of the intimate speech of E.H. will find its way into a professional paper. (Margot vows.)

She has had very few lovers. She has had few male friends who might have been lovers, if Margot had encouraged them. (If Margot had not intimidated them with her intelligence and ambition.)

E.H.'s words are precious to her. No one has ever spoken to Margot Sharpe as E.H. does.

Not Milton Ferris, certainly. For Milton spoke mostly of himself, and, at times grudgingly, even bitterly, of his “complicated” emotions for her, Margot Sharpe; for Milton Ferris is one of those men who is frightened by vulnerable feelings of his own, and resents emotional dependence upon others. Milton did not
ever speak of the things of which E.H. speaks so readily, of such exquisite intimacy and trust.

“Were you my dear wife, Doctor? You look like her, I think. Before you got old—
older
.”

“What do you mean—‘
older
'?” Margot laughs, hurt. “I am not so
old
as you, dear Eli.”

“Of course, of course—I know. We are ‘old'—‘
older
'—in the same way.”

With no provocation the brain-damaged subject will say the oddest things. Whatever part of E.H.'s brain was devastated by fever, some part of the area that monitors inhibition was affected as well. Where most of the time E.H. is courtly and gentlemanly, at times he behaves with an impish irreverence, like Groucho Marx among the somber-minded. (Groucho is one of E.H.'s favorites: E.H. can imitate the comic brilliantly, wriggling his eyebrows and [invisible] mustache, repeating outrageous Groucho dialogue.)

In fact, Margot is fourteen years younger than Elihu Hoopes, who is now nearly sixty. But, in E.H.'s memory, he is frozen at the age of thirty-seven; Margot assumes that, when he sees himself in the mirror, he somehow “sees” the younger man.

As, when Margot Sharpe glances into a mirror, narrowing her eyes, she “sees” a still-young woman whose severely chic straight-cut black hair isn't threaded with silver; nor does she see the pale creases in her white skin, at the corners of her eyes and mouth.
A principle of perception: we see what we are primed to see, not what is there. We can look at anything but we can “see” only what we allow to be seen.

Margot's vanity is stung by E.H.'s careless remark. Though she would have described herself as totally lacking in female sexual vanity, yet she feels hurt and even alarm.

Old!
She will not allow herself to be
old
before she is prepared.

“I love to hold your hand, Eli. Your hand is strong and—masculine . . .”

Her own hand, soft and
feminine.

She is determined to make E.H. feel comforted and safe in her company. Since the first hour of their meeting she has been conditioning him to trust her.

It is not so difficult to “condition” another. Especially if the other has no idea what you are doing.

“You remember, your mother held your hand, too, Eli, when you were a little boy. There have been many—many of us—who've loved you . . . You should not ever feel alone.”

“Doctor, I love you.”

Is it wrong of Margot Sharpe to encourage the amnesiac subject in this way? She doesn't want to think—(she doesn't allow herself to think)—that her behavior, in private with E.H., might be considered by some (narrow-minded, jealous) observers a type of scientific misconduct; for E.H. is suggestible and impressionable as a young child in her presence. (With other examiners, particularly male examiners, E.H. can be curt and dismissive. He is not nearly so universally obliging and naïve as he'd been at the outset of
Project E.H
.)

E.H. has paused in their walk. Still holding Margot's hand, and twining his fingers in hers so tightly that Margot nearly winces with pain, he recites:

“Ah love, let us be true

To one another! For the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.”

Margot is riveted by this recitation. E.H.'s voice is low, intimate, tremulous. It is not uncommon for E.H. to recite poetry but it is uncommon for E.H. to recite poetry in so impassioned a way. It is the first time anyone has ever recited a love poem to
her
.

Not knowing what to say foolishly Margot cries, “Oh, Eli! That's beautiful. Is it—Shakespeare?” even as she supposes it can't be Shakespeare, for the language is modern.

E.H. shrugs. Not Shakespeare.

(Has Margot disappointed him? She feels his fingers loosen their grip.)

“Maybe I wrote it myself. Would you be impressed?”

“Yes. I would be impressed.” Margot laughs, for obviously E.H. is joking. But the tone of his joke is—melancholy? Ironic? Or simply playful?

Margot feels that she has missed something. She has blundered in some way. She thinks, not for the first time, that she is not equal to Elihu Hoopes. His soul is more expansive than hers—if one can believe in “soul.”

As they walk on, fingers less tightly twined, E.H. reverts to one of his favorite subjects—“game theory.” No longer is his voice tender and impassioned, now he speaks briskly, somewhat derisively. He has his fixed and irremediable thoughts on the subject and if Margot tries to ask him a question, he is likely to ignore her. In graduate seminars in the Psychology Department Margot learned a little of game theory—but only superficially, for game theory is fundamentally mathematics, and not relevant to Margot's subfield of psychology. Nor is it clear when E.H. lapses onto this favorite topic whether he is himself a strong advocate, or a
skeptic; or whether he has his own “theory” with which he hopes to counter others.

Margot assumes that E.H. was disappointed in her weak reaction to the love poem—(if indeed it was a love poem)—but she has no way of reverting to it, for by now E.H. will have forgotten he'd recited it, and all she can clearly recall of the lines is the raw appeal—“Ah love, let us be true to one another!”

She will be true to Elihu Hoopes. Even if no one, including Elihu himself, will know.

Immersed in the knots and snarls of game theory, E.H. laughs frequently, baring damp gums. He has lapsed into his mode of quasi-public banter, calculated to keep others at a distance; but Margot believes that she is special to E.H., and he should not wish to behave this way with
her.

They have made their way into the interior of the wooded parkland. It is quiet here, secluded-seeming. As politely as she can Margot suggests that E.H. stop for a while here and do some sketches—“You've brought your sketchbook, Eli—see?”

E.H. has carried his sketchbook under his arm, and in his pockets are drawing pencils and stubs of charcoal, but he has forgotten these, and is delighted when Margot reminds him.

For the next half hour E.H. works eagerly in his sketchbook with both pencils and charcoal. Margot has found a place to sit close by, but not so close that she distracts the artist.

Margot takes notes in her own notebook which she carries with her everywhere in her shoulder bag. This is not Margot Sharpe's lab book but a private book. She will date the entry, and she will note the place. All that she can recall of E.H.'s remarks she will record. (She will make an effort to locate the poem and will discover that it is a nineteenth-century poem by Matthew Arnold titled “Dover Beach.” She will surmise that Elihu Hoopes
memorized the poem at Amherst, in one of his several literature courses. She will not speculate in her notebook that the poem was recited particularly to
her
.)

If there is something crucial that Margot feels she should record, that suggests the intimacy between her and the amnesiac subject, she finds a way to record it without being overtly explicit. Sometimes, she will abbreviate crucial words; she will use a kind of code.

Yet, she feels a defiant sort of pride in what she records that might be construed as “intimate” between her and E.H., even as she feels unease—for what if the notebook is discovered by someone at the Institute or worse yet, at the university? What if a rival discovers it? What if—(so Margot persecutes herself, absurdly)—she dies unexpectedly, and her departmental chair appropriates all of her papers, her data, her notebooks, her secret, undisclosed self?