The Man Without a Shadow (6 page)

She tells E.H. how badly she wants to please Milton Ferris; how fearful she is of disappointing the man—(who is frequently disappointed with young colleagues and associates, and has a reputation for running through them, and dismissing them); she wants to think that Ferris's assessment of her “brain for science” is accurate, and not exaggerated. It's her fear that Ferris has made her one of his protégées because she is a young woman of extreme docility and subservience to
him
.

Margot confesses to E.H. how sometimes she falls into bed without removing her clothing—“Without showering. Sleeping in my own
smell
.”

(So that E.H. is moved to say, “But your
smell
is very nice, my dear!”)

She confesses how exhausted she makes herself working late at the lab as if in some way unknown to her she disapproves of and dislikes herself—can't bear herself except as a vessel of work;
for she will not be loved if she doesn't excel, and there is no way for her to excel except by working and pleasing her elders, like Milton Ferris. She recalls from a literature class at the University of Michigan a nightmarish short story in which the body of a condemned man is tattooed with the law he'd broken, which he is supposed to “read”—she doesn't recall the author's name but has never forgotten the story.

E.H. says, with an air of affectionate rebuke, “No one forgets Franz Kafka's ‘In the Penal Colony.'”

He too had read it as an undergraduate—at Amherst.

Margot is surprised, and touched. “You remember it, Eli? That's—of course, that's . . .” It is utterly normal and natural for E.H. to remember a story he'd read years before his illness. Yet, Margot who'd read the story not nearly so long ago, could not recall the title.

E.H. begins to recite: “‘“It's a peculiar apparatus,” said the Officer to the Traveler, gazing with a certain admiration at the device . . . It appeared that the Traveler had responded to the invitation of the Commandant only out of politeness, when he'd been invited to witness the execution of a soldier condemned to death for disobeying and insulting his superior . . . Guilt is always beyond doubt.'”

E.H. laughs, strangely. Margot has no idea why.

Something about the man without a shadow reciting these lines makes her fearful—
I don't want to know. Oh please!—I don't want to know.

THEY HAVE NEVER
told him—
Your cousin is dead. Your cousin was dead as soon as she disappeared.

No one saw. No one knows.

Wake up, Eli! Silly Eli, it's only a dream.

So much Eli has seen that summer, only a dream.

SHE RENTS A
single-bedroom unit in dreary university graduate housing, overlooking a rock-filled ravine at the edge of the sprawling campus. (The University Neurological Institute at Darven Park is several miles away in an upscale Philadelphia suburb.) She avoids her neighbors, who seem so much less serious than she, given to playing music loudly, and talking and laughing loudly; especially, she avoids married couples—the thought of marital intimacy, the pettiness of domestic life and sheer waste of time required for such a life, makes her feel faint. She has no time for friends—she has ceased writing to her friends from college; they seem diminished to her now, like pygmies. One or two of the men in Ferris's lab have—(she thinks, she isn't absolutely sure)—have made sexual advances to her, awkwardly and obliquely; with similar awkwardness, and much embarrassment, she has discouraged them—
No I don't think so. I—I don't think—it's a good idea to see each other outside the lab . . .
Seeing her fellow researchers in such relentless intimacy, day following day, for hours each day, it is not possible for Margot to harbor romantic feelings toward the men, or feelings of friendship for the other women; like rivalrous siblings they are easily irritated by one another, and easily provoked to jealousy, for each is vying with the others continuously—(how fatiguing this is!)—for admiration, approval, affection from Milton Ferris.

Work has become her addiction, as work has become her salvation. In human relations you never know where you stand; in your work you can mark progress clearly, and your progress will be noted by others—your distinguished elders.

It is slightly shameful to Margot, how she lives for Milton Ferris's praise—
Good work, Margot!
—a murmur like a caress along the length of her body.

At times she is sure that there is an (implicit, unstated) promise between her and Ferris, like a match not yet struck.

At other times, seeing how Ferris's interest waxes, wanes, waxes, she is sure of nothing.

He, Ferris, with his wiry white beard, bristling manner and sharp-glinting eyeglasses, his flashes of wit, sarcasm, insight, and frequent brilliance—(all who work with the man are convinced of his genius)—has become a figure of considerable (if forbidden) romance to Margot Sharpe. He is fifty-seven years old, he has become famous in the field of neuropsychology; he has long been a member of the National Academy of Science. He is (said to be) happily married, or in any case stolidly married. Yet—
We are special to each other.

Margot feels a sensation of weakness, faintness—when Ferris singles her out for praise in the lab. Her face flushes with blood, her heart beats with great happiness. It has often been so, for Margot has been, through her life, the exemplary good-girl student: the Daughter.

She is the Chaste Daughter. She is the one who, if you believe in her, will never betray you.

Yet Margot thinks—
I am not in love with Milton Ferris.

Then—
I must never allow him to know.

In the night in her bed. In this strange darkness, in her bed. Sometimes she slides her arm around her waist, in mimicry of an embrace. Sometimes she caresses her ribs through her skin, taking a kind of mournful pleasure in so intimate (and unthreatening) a touch. Shuts her eyes tight to summon sleep. And there is
Elihu Hoopes standing before her with his eager, hopeful smile and stricken eyes—
Margot?
Hel
-lo.

E.H. says—
Margot? I am so lonely.

(IN LIFE, MARGOT
knows that E.H. will never say these words. For E.H. will never remember Margot from one encounter to another.)

“He is our ‘amnesiac'—his identity must be kept absolutely confidential.”

Milton Ferris speaks lightly—there is something meant to be playful about the words
our amnesiac—
but of course he is utterly serious. Everyone at the Institute who comes into contact with Elihu Hoopes, who knows his identity, is sworn to secrecy; others are not told his name—“For legal reasons.”

Since Ferris has begun to publish his “exciting” and “controversial” research on E.H., scientists at other universities have contacted him with requests for interviews with the amnesiac subject. Ferris has refused most of these requests as impractical, since, as he says, he and his researchers are currently studying E.H., and it is not possible to subject E.H. to further testing.

“He is our subject,
exclusively
. That is the agreement.”

Milton Ferris has become vehement on the subject.
Exclusively
is an unmistakable claim.

PROFESSOR SHARPE, DID
you ever consider at any time that you and your fellow researchers were exploiting the individual known in scientific literature as “E.H.”?

No. I did not.

Really? At no time, Professor Sharpe, during the thirty-one years you studied him, did it occur to you that you might be behaving unethically, in exploiting his handicap? His “amnesia”?

I said no. I did not.

And do you speak for your fellow researchers, as well? Do you speak for the neuroscientific community?

I speak for myself. The others can speak for themselves.

But “E.H.” could not speak for himself—could he? Did “E.H.” ever comprehend the nature of his affliction?

I've told you, I speak for myself. That is all.

“That is all”—Professor Sharpe? After thirty-one years?

HE IS NOT
being exploited, he is being protected from exploitation!

Margot Sharpe wants to protest. In time, Margot Sharpe will protest publicly.

For E.H. is a neurological wonder, capable of odd, unpredictable feats of memory while incapable of remembering “familiar” faces or what he has just eaten for lunch, or whether he has eaten at all. He has astonished observers by interrupting a rote-memory test to recite the names of his grade school classmates at Gladwyne Elementary School in 1935, desk by desk. On other occasions E.H. has recited Major League Baseball statistics, dialogue from favored comic strips Dick Tracy, Terry and the Pirates, Little Orphan Annie, and song lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein. He can recite passages from speeches by Lincoln, Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. By heart he knows the entirety of the American
Declaration of Independence
and portions of John Locke's
The Rights of Man.
He knows passages from Thoreau's
Walden,
Whitman's
Leaves of Grass,
Jean Toomer's
Cane
. On the
Institute court he plays tennis with zest and cunning; he can play piano by “sight” reading—some classics, some American popular songs, and Czerny exercises to grade eight. He is remarkably gifted at jigsaw puzzles, crossword puzzles, plastic puzzles of the kind that fit in the palm of the hand and involve moving numbered squares about in a specific pattern. (How Margot hates those damned plastic puzzles!—she'd never been able to do these with the skill of her brothers, whose grades in school were always inferior to hers; when E.H. offers his puzzle for her to try she pushes it away.) If journalists hear of E.H., Margot can imagine sensational TV coverage, articles in
People, Time,
and
Newsweek,
the
Philadelphia Inquirer
and other local publications. Neighbors, acquaintances, medical workers and researchers who know E.H. would be plied with interview requests. Fortunately the Hoopes family isn't in need of money, so there is little likelihood of E.H. being exploited by his own relatives.

Margot thinks—
I vow, I will protect Elihu Hoopes from exploitation.

“‘Elihu Hoopes.'”

These syllables, he hears murmured aloud. The sounds seem to come out of the air about his head.

The strangeness of the proposition—(he cannot think it is a
fact
)—that these syllables, these sounds, four stresses, constitute a “name”—and the name is “his.”

His body, his brain. His name. Yet, where is
he
?

It is a peculiar way of speaking, he'd thought long ago as a child—before the fever burnt up his brain. Why would anyone say—
I am Elihu Hoopes.

Again he hears the syllables, in a hoarse, slightly derisive voice.

“‘Elihu Hoopes'—who
was
.”

IS HE AT
Lake George? But where? Not on one of the islands, which have no trails so clearly defined as the trail he sees here, leading through a pinewoods, and out of sight.

Nor is there a plank bridge at the lake quite like this bridge, so far as he can recall.

How lost he feels! No idea how old he is, or where the others are. No idea if he is hungry, if he has eaten recently or not for a very long time.

The others.
Scarcely knows what this means: parents, grandparents, adult relatives, young and elder cousins. A child has but a vague sense of
others
. Apart from relatives, many adults seem interchangeable—faces, names. Ages.

So many adults, in a child's life! Children nearer his age, for instance young cousins, are more vividly delineated and named.

Where is Gretchen?—she has gone away.

When will you see Gretchen again?—maybe not for a while.

He is trying to recall if this is before the “search party”—(but why would there be a “party”—in the woods? Why a “party” when the girl is gone away somewhere, and the adults are sad?)—or after; if this is before Granddaddy insisted upon taking up the Beechcraft, and had to make an emergency landing on one of the islands.