The Man Without a Shadow (26 page)

“Same with me, then.” E.H. laughs, stroking his jaw. “Some kind of funny conversation we are having, Doctor, in't it?” (E.H. has taken to joking in an odd, seemingly semi-illiterate accent. Margot has been noting
in't
it
for
isn't it?
recently. She wonders where this is coming from.)

After a moment E.H. says, as if placating the frowning young man, “Something about the mirrors in this place—eh?”

“Mirrors? Here at the Institute?”

“Yes. ‘In-sti-tute.'”

E.H. shrugs, still with an air of bravado. Sidelong he glances at Margot Sharpe as if he hopes this female observer will support him.

(Though E.H. has forgotten Margot Sharpe, in the sense in which he no longer knows her name, or why exactly she is observing
him, he seems to recall that there is something consoling and comforting about her; Margot is grateful for this.)

“There are ‘funny' mirrors here. Like undersea, in a cave. Nobody is his actual self here. That's why they are testing me—to see if they have fooled me.” E.H. smiles, disdainfully. “Sometimes I let them think yes, sure. Other times, I tell them it's all bullshit.”

“Mr. Hoopes, who is ‘they'?”

“‘They' are the doctors who operated on you, too.”

“And what sort of operation do you think I've had?”

“Lobotomy. With an ice pick.”

Seeing the startled look in the young man's face, E.H. bursts into derisive laughter.

(VERY INTERESTING, MARGOT
thinks. How did E.H. know that some of the earliest lobotomies in the United States, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, were in fact performed with common ice picks, crudely and expeditiously? If he'd been reading about the history of psychosurgery recently, he could not retain the knowledge; if he knew this obscure fact, he must have read of it, or heard of it, before his illness. And with the unimpaired part of his brain he “remembered” it—but why, Margot wonders. Why would Eli Hoopes remember such a thing?)

IT IS A
crucial test, the amnesiac subject and the “mirror-self.”

Clearly the subject both sees and does-not-see his reflection in the mirror; or, he sees a reflection clearly enough, but detaches from it so that it is not “his.”

In this way, Eli Hoopes remains thirty-seven years old as his contemporaries age beside him.

As Margot Sharpe ages beside him.

Stubbornly too E.H. refuses to envision the future.

Shown a calendar by one of Margot's associates, and asked to speculate what he will most likely be doing on a specific date in a week, twelve days, a month, E.H. will “disengage” visibly.

For instance, E.H. is often brought to the Institute on Wednesdays for a full day of tests. But if he is asked what he will (probably) be doing on the first Wednesday of the next month he will seem to be shielding his eyes, avoiding the calendar. Grudgingly and vaguely he says, “What needs to be done, I guess.”

“Can you be more specific, Eli?”

“I will do what—it happens to me, I will do. Or will be done to me.”

Margot enters in her notebook
Subject is passive-tense. What is done to him, not what he does. Why?

“Please try to be more specific, Eli.”

The examiner prods him but E.H. is blank-minded. How can one be
more specific
about something that has not yet happened?

“Or—tell us what would you like to do on this day?”

E.H. gives the impression of struggling viscerally with a thought as if threading a length of twine through the labyrinth of his brain.

“I—I think that—I will—w-will . . .”

Margot realizes, the word
will
is giving E.H. difficulty. Discreetly she intervenes. She sees that the examiner, a younger colleague in the Psychology Department, is becoming frustrated, confused. Margot urges E.H. to think of the “high probability” that, three weeks from today, for instance, he will be doing something quite safely routine and familiar: (probably) he will eat several meals, and he will write in his notebook and/or sketch in his sketchbook; he will certainly become sleepy at night, and go to bed at his usual hour—“I think it's eleven-thirty, after the late news? In your house in Gladwyne, on Parkside Avenue?”

“Y-Yes.”

But E.H. seems tentative, disoriented. Margot wonders why this is.

In conversation (normal, unimpaired) individuals speak casually and constantly of what they intend to do; the future tense is elastic, and unexamined. Though the future doesn't exist in any way, yet it is spoken of as if it were an actual place, and there is no anxiety or concern about entering it. As one might speak casually of “Heaven” without believing in “Heaven” in the slightest. But to the amnesiac there is something about the future that is unthinkable—inconceivable.

They appear to be at an impasse. No matter how the question is phrased E.H. can't seem to reply. The normally articulate man has begun almost to stammer. Margot speculates that the amnesiac can't contemplate the future because the part of his brain that has been impaired is also a part of the brain that “plans”—there must be, in future contemplation, for the normal subject, some measure of recollection; one can't anticipate a future if one can't recall a past, for much in the routine of life is cyclical, repetitive. The only past E.H. can recall is now decades old, and he can't seem to summon it as a stimulus for thinking of the future.

A common brain circuit for both mental functions?—which has been impaired in E.H.

Margot is feeling very excited! Thrilled, like one who has been grasping at the wisp of a dream, and has managed at last to haul it into consciousness.

Of course, exploring this theory will require much time. Months of testing, careful experimentation with the amnesiac subject and with control subjects including individuals whose amnesia is less pervasive than E.H.'s. (Fortunately there are sev
eral of these in more or less permanent residence at the Institute in the dementia and Alzheimer's wing.)

Margot Sharpe will title her groundbreaking paper “Simulation of ‘Future' Identity and Episodic Retrieval in Amnesia.” She will send it to the most prestigious of newer publications, the
Journal of Neuropsychology and Neurophysiology
. In decades to follow, Professor Sharpe's article will be one of the most frequently cited in its field.

Expanded, it will be a key chapter in her most admired book,
The Biology of Memory.

All this future achievement—this future success—Margot Sharpe can glimpse, as one might glimpse a mountain peak behind shifting clouds. For Margot Sharpe has no difficulty leaping ahead into her future—so long as she does not leap too far ahead.

Now, she wishes that she could stroke E.H.'s hand, to comfort him. For she sees that her dear friend who is trapped in the present tense is gripped with anxiety. The tendons in his neck have become taut.

Indeed,
will
is a strange, metaphysical word. How can anyone comprehend what he
will
be doing, when the time of such an action does not (yet) exist? It is an existential conundrum. No normal person would give it a second thought. As Freud may have observed, to give such a conundrum a second thought is to identify oneself as abnormal—neurotic.

In her gently authoritarian voice Margot Sharpe declares:

“Very good! Thank you all. Mr. Hoopes has been very patient with us and has had enough strain for now.”

And quickly, before anyone else can volunteer, or the sly-cat-faced caramel-skinned nurse's aide steps forward, Margot declares that Elihu Hoopes needs some fresh air. She will take him out
doors on this windy late-autumn day, for a vigorous walk—“In his favorite place, the marshland.”

“I LOVE YOU.”

“And I love
you.”

Between them there is a small desperate flame stoked of loneliness.

Always at such times Margot is struck by the
physicality
of the other. The man, who is the other.

It is not an idea, or a scientific theory—love, lovemaking. It is a
physical act,
or it is nothing.

She sees in Elihu Hoopes's face a raw, undisguised hunger. The face is no longer unlined and youthful but it is
his face
.

How is it possible for Margot to deny this hunger? It is not possible.

This is wrong—of course. This is a violation of ethics.

This is—classically!—“scientific misconduct.”

She thinks, she will risk professional exposure, disgrace. She will risk it for him.

Excitement between them rises rapidly, vertiginously. Entering the interior of the parkland, in the thickest part of the woods, they seem to have lost language.

Margot clutches at the man who drives himself into her, hiding his heated face against her neck. They are partially clothed—this has happened so swiftly, and irrevocably. It is the
physicality
of the act that shocks her anew each time, for she is likely to feel some pain, physical discomfort and distress, the man is
so large, so forceful.

Margot feels herself cleaved, somewhat brutally. Yet—there is tenderness in the man's embrace, his anxious kisses. It is this tenderness Margot craves, it is the very nourishment of her soul, of which she takes care not to think in her ordinary life.

Out of cleaving, a sensation of wholeness. Happiness. Knowing that she has made the man feel intense pleasure, and so he has not been alone, and she has not been alone, in this quick frantic coupling.

When she can think again, it is an unexpected thought that grips her—
Will I have his child? Is that the way this will be?

In the aftermath of love she is naïve, disoriented. She is hardly a scientist, she is not thinking clearly. Feelings wash over her like currents of warm water.

She holds the perspiring man tight against her. He is holding her also, but her embrace is as fierce as his own, which is surprising to her who has never thought of herself as a very physical, still less sensual, person.

It is this new person I've become. But only here, only now.

Only with Eli.

By degrees, their quickened breaths subside. By degrees, exterior sounds intrude.

An airplane passing, high overhead. In the near distance, the ugly guttural sound of a chain saw.

“Dear Eli! I love you . . .”

“. . . . darling, I love
you
.”

He has forgotten her name, no doubt. Until he draws back to look at her, very likely he has forgotten her face.

She wonders too if he remembers that they have made love together in the past—not quite like this, but yes, like this. She wonders what he recalls, in his body.

Still: they have been together, they have been intimate.
She
will never forget.

His seed is inside me. That can't be altered.

Margot adjusts her clothing, combs her hair. She is careful to remove from her hair any leaf-fragments, any telltale twigs. She
has been careful with her clothing, overall. It is wrong of her to think of any other man at such a time, she feels that it is crude, vulgar, distasteful, but she can't help but recall with a sense of satisfaction, a kind of reproachful satisfaction, that she'd never been so intimate with Milton Ferris as with this man.

By degrees she has forgotten how desperately she'd loved Milton Ferris, years ago. How long?—can it have been fifteen years, twenty years? She will not think of this now, it is a mistake to think of her lost love now. She has been so close to this man, she has scarcely needed to name him, or see him. The heartbeat of the other, so near! Her eyes fill with tears of the most intense happiness.

If I have ruined my life for Eli Hoopes, very well—it could not be helped.

If I bear his child—that will be enough.

Earnestly E.H. is asking, “Are you my dear wife? Did you come to take me home with you?”

Margot hears the wistfulness in E.H.'s voice, as if he knows the answer beforehand but must ask.

Margot hesitates before saying yes, she is his wife.

Margot says yes, she will drive him home that day, to Gladwyne. But she can't stay with him just yet.

Why not? E.H. asks. If you are my wife.

His voice rises, alarmed and petulant.

They must return now to the path—a wide, wood chip path. It is possible—it is even probable—that someone will see them on this path, in the more populous area of the park. E.H. doesn't know this, has not the slightest awareness of this. But Margot is keenly aware, and draws away from him, just perceptibly.

E.H. grips her arm at the elbow. He grips her shoulders, to force her to face him. “Why won't you come home with me, and stay with me, if you are my wife?”

Margot says, “I—I will come home with you, Eli. Soon. I promise.”

“‘Soon'—? What's that mean?”

“In a—while. I'm not sure when.”

“Weeks? Months? Years?”

“Weeks. Or—months.”

E.H. is hurt, and E.H. is angry. They are walking on the wood chip path now, bypassing the pond. Several times E.H. has taken hold of Margot's arm at the elbow, and Margot must detach his fingers, not rudely, but firmly.

Margot is alarmed at E.H.'s agitated voice.

“Eli, please! Mr. Hoopes! We don't want strangers to overhear us.”

“Then why are we here? Why am I here? I want to go home—I can drive us home.”

“Yes, well—I can drive, Eli. I don't mind driving. I've made arrangements to drive you today. You don't remember—I guess—but you were brought here this morning, by that very nice young driver—he's a Dominican—hoping to go to medical school. But I am driving you back to your aunt's house.”

“We're living in Rittenhouse Square. I don't want to live anywhere else.”

“Eli, your living quarters with your aunt Lucinda are temporary. Just until—”

“What do you mean, ‘temporary'? Why am I living with that old woman? I want to live with
you
. I have a right to live with my wife.”