The Man Without a Shadow (20 page)

He isn't sure if he remembers pain, or if he is remembering someone else's pain. A body kicked and dragged along the pavement, screams and grunts, the soft-sickening sound of a body being kicked by a booted foot but (possibly) not his body.

“H'lo, Eli! Great day isn't it”—another smiling stranger passing by. This one in a white lab coat, has to be a doctor.

“Great day, yes—if you're alive.”

Strange that he seems to know the way to the bank of elevators though he has no idea where he is being taken. Stepping inside, and the caramel-skinned girl presses one of the buttons, and Eli sees, but in the next instant has forgotten. On one of the floors someone steps into the elevator and touches his shoulder, and he turns. Smiling face like a mask that sometimes slips if he turns his head too quickly and whoever this is might see his panicked eyes.

“Eli? How are you?”

“Very well, thanks. And you?”

“Very well.”

The caramel-skinned girl leads him out of the elevator at the fourth floor. He will remember that: numeral four.

Four is yellow, usually. Not a bright yellow like his grandfather's little plane but a more subdued yellow.

And so: if he can remember
yellow,
he can remember
four
.

“Come with me! You're just in time.”

Walking now with an energetic youthful man. Friendly and assured, talking to Elihu Hoopes as if he knows him. Whoever was with him in the elevator is gone now. Would turn his head to look yearningly for her but knows it is futile, she has been swept away.

Someone he loves. Has loved. Gone.

Through swinging doors—
NEUROPSYCHOLOGY LAB.

White walls, stone-colored tile floor, fluorescent lighting—he has never been here before but there is something familiar about the place, and in this way comforting.

Now there are two individuals—two men—both in white lab coats—walking with him. One on his right and one on his left. The panicked thought comes to him—
They are neurologist and neurosurgeon. They will drill a hole into my skull, I will smell the dry smoke.

Here in
Neuropsychology
he seems to be “Eli” more than he is “Mr. Hoopes.” His senses quicken, he is approaching the heart of the mystery.

Strange to him that another time he turns into a room, through an opened doorway, as if instinctively, though he has never been in this place before.

If he shuts his right eye, sometimes half his vision falls away. And when he opens his right eye, everything is restored except—(sometimes)—there is another person with him, whom he has not seen before, who has appeared out of nowhere. And it is imperative, he knows, not to acknowledge any surprise or confusion.

In a sunlit room several persons are seated. Are they waiting for him? But why, waiting for
him
?—this makes him anxious. One of them is a woman who stares at him with an expression of commingled anticipation and dread, who rises quickly to greet him, in a bright voice crying, “Eli! Oh, Eli.”

She seems dazed by the sight of him, anxious. Clumsily she tries to embrace him, or to step into his arms—but he stands very still, stiff and unmoving. “Eli, how are you? It's Rosalyn . . .”

Rosalyn is Eli's younger sister. But this woman is not Rosalyn.

“You know me, Eli—don't you? Hello . . .” The woman's voice trails off plaintively.

It is discomforting, how close the woman stands to Eli Hoopes. She grips his arms, staring at him pleadingly. Her eyes shimmer with tears of alarm and reproach.

“Eli, please say something. We've been told this would be a good time to see you . . .”

Detaches himself from the impetuous woman, politely.

“Hel-
lo
. So good to see you.”

Hears his voice flat and mechanical as a programmed voice. He is not very convincing, he is afraid: it is difficult to pretend
you are happy to see someone when you have no feeling for the person and have no idea who she is.

Like playing tennis with a sprained ankle. Barely, it can be done, but only with a herculean effort of will. Sweat oozing onto your forehead, the pain is so extreme.

“Oh, but it's good to see
you,
Eli!—you are looking better-rested than last time . . . Have you been sketching? Will you show us what you've done?”

The woman's voice is anxious and pressing. The woman is imploring him, with a bold sort of desperation. How can he respond? What is his reply? He has stopped dead in his tracks just inside the room, as if in a trance, arms at his sides. Close by, two men have risen to their feet, smiling at him uncertainly, with that same expression of commingled anticipation and dread.

My sister's name but she is not my sister.

My brothers' faces but not my brothers.

“Don't you recognize me, Eli? Your sister Rosalyn—Rosie. Oh, please!”

“‘Rosalyn.' ‘Rosie.'” Eli utters the names softly, provisionally.

It is true, the woman's strained face does seem familiar to him in the unnerving way of déjà vu. It is an older, thicker, far less beautiful face than the face of his young sister, as he recalls it; he cannot bring himself to acknowledge it. Her eyes that are close-set and reproachful with tears are not Rosalyn's eyes. Her lipsticked mouth is unbecomingly smeared, from her effort at kissing him, brushing her lips against his cheek.

“You must recognize me, Eli. I'm wearing my hair the way I used to—before you got sick. And this sweater, I'm sure you remember this sweater . . .”

Eli does. Eli does remember the sweater. He remembers the soft purple wool, the wooden buttons.

The hair, he does not remember. The face, he does not remember.

He is feeling boxed in, they are so crudely manipulative. Establishing clues (like the sweater with the wooden buttons) and openly drawing attention to the clues to confound him—
How can we be tricking you, if we acknowledge we are tricking you?

“Please say hello to me, Eli! Just say it—‘Hello, Rosie.'”

“‘Hello Rosie.'”

“Doesn't it mean anything, I am your sister and I love you?”

“‘I am your sister and I love you.'”

Eli repeats these extraordinary words, which he has no way of decoding, since he understands that the woman who speaks them is not his sister, but it is not clear if the woman understands that she is not his sister, or is herself confused and mistaken.

“Don't you have any feeling for
me
?”

“‘Don't you have any feeling for
me.
'”

Wanting suddenly to placate everyone. Whoever the woman is, whoever the men who have approached him smiling (warily, guardedly—these are not smiles of happy recognition)—whose faces also seem familiar to him in the disreputable way of déjà vu.

Cannily sensing that he has made a blunder, he has allowed the imposters to know that he knows they are imposters, this might be dangerous. In his old, lost life he often inflamed the dislike of others through his self-sufficiency and intransigence, now he is in a weakened position and must proceed with caution.

Robust in greeting—“Hel-
lo!
”

He knows that his brothers are named “Averill” and “Harry” and that they are older than he: Averill is two years older than Eli, Harry is five years older than Eli. And so it is a challenge to Eli to consider which of the imposters is supposed to be which brother for it isn't altogether clear—(not that he wishes to stare at them, he does not)—which is the elder, which the younger.

Surprises them with his sudden energy and enthusiasm. Shaking their hands—“Averill!”—“Harry!” Blindly he grips the hand of the one brother, and blindly the hand of the other. If he has erred, he is daring them to correct him.

The other imposter, the sister, is close beside them. Each is speaking—trying to speak. Eli is very silent, at the center of the commotion.

Such a confrontation is like paddling a canoe, he is thinking. A long canoe, fashioned of precisely fitted strips of wood. Heavy, beautiful. But dangerous, for a canoe can overturn in rough weather.

Paddling a canoe across choppy waters, and each of them has a paddle. But they are not coordinated. Only Eli Hoopes is a skilled canoeist, the others are awkward, blundering. They are imposters, and are becoming defensive.

“Eli, you know who we are—I think you do.”

“If we leave here today, Eli, we are not coming back. This is the last time.”

The last time
. But Eli knows, there have been no previous times, for he would recall these devious people, and he does not.

Eli says, with a faint stammer, “But—I do ‘know' you. I've told you. ‘Averill'—‘Harry.' And ‘Rosie.'”

The elder of the brothers, the one disguised as Harry, says sulkily, “Yes, you know us. But you are pretending you don't.”

“I am
not pretending
. I am trying very hard to convince you that I am
not pretending
.”

The other, disguised as Averill, says, “This is such bullshit.”

The woman, disguised as Rosalyn, says with a hurt little cry, “But—Eli isn't well! His memory has been damaged.”

“He knows us, look at him. He's always been an arrogant bastard.”

Yet, the imposters are uncertain. Does Eli Hoopes recognize them, and is denying them; or, has Eli Hoopes truly failed to recognize them, and is hoping to deceive them into believing that he has recognized them?

By this time Eli sees that a scene has been arranged. He and the imposter sister and brothers have been urged to sit down, to “talk”—“relate.” The setting appears to be a lounge of some kind, in a hospital or a clinic; it is not a “natural” setting, Eli thinks; certainly not in a private home. He is sitting, and the others—“Rosalyn”—“Averill”—“Harry”—are seated facing him. A few feet away, a camera operated by a young person is aimed at them.

The issue is: these individuals, these strangers, Eli Hoopes doesn't know.

He will try to placate them, for he doesn't want trouble. (He is gripping his sketchbook. He knows that he must not let it out of his hands, for it will be taken from him.) But the fact is, he doesn't know these people. Though they speak to him with a goading sort of intimacy, as one might speak to a brother suspected of mysterious deceit, he can't speak this way in turn to them. He just can't.

Instructions are—
Please ignore the camera. Try not to look at the camera but at one another as in a natural conversation.

But it is not a natural conversation. There is the God-damned camera, there are strangers in the room observing, this is not a natural setting.

“Eli, look at us! You refuse to look at us . . .”

“You recognize our voices, don't you?”

“It's hopeless, he doesn't know us . . .”

“Of course he ‘knows' us—he just doesn't ‘remember.'”

“He knows us! For Christ's sake.”

“But why then would he pretend that he didn't?”

“Jesus! Ask him.”

He listens to them with mounting outrage: how dare they talk about him as if he weren't present? As if he were some sort of subhuman creature?

“God damn you! Fuck you!”—astonishing them by rushing at them suddenly, with threatening fists.

The imposter-brothers shrink from him. The imposter-sister collides with a chair and nearly falls, in terror to escape his wrath.

He is shouting at them. He is braying, bawling.

They are predator animals, and he is their prey. Except—the prey has turned against the predator.

One of the imposter-brothers tries to placate him, by touching his arm. He strikes the astonished man in the face, with his fist; so hard, there is a satisfying
crack
of bone.

He winces with pain, and the imposter-brother staggers backward clutching his face, crashing into a table.

“Eli! Mr. Hoopes! No.”

Now there is confusion, commotion. Observer-strangers appear, aghast.

They are circling him. They have penned him in. (The imposter-brothers and the imposter-sister have departed; within seconds, he has forgotten them.) He is sucking at the knuckles of his right hand, that feel as if the bones had been fractured. He wonders who has hurt him—or rather, whom he has hurt. His heart is beating hard, but it is a good sensation.

“Eli? Come with us . . .”

“Mr. Hoopes, we are your friends. You know us.”

This is not true. He has no friends. But he is shrewd enough to know that one must feign friendship, in order to survive. Thus, he allows himself to be penned in a corner. He allows himself to be
pacified
in the eyes of strangers.

Fumbling for something in his pocket—a little notebook. Leafs through it, by instinct. He has little need to read, he has memorized:

“‘There is no journey, and there is no path. There is no wisdom, there is emptiness. There is no emptiness.'” Pauses to add, “This is the wisdom of the Buddha. But there is no wisdom, and there is no Buddha.” Laughing with inexplicable good humor.

THE LITTLE BOAT
.
Shuts his eyes tight. Remembering his parents saying good-bye to him. He was in a small boat, though it was not a boat he recognized from among the boats owned by the family, kept at their boathouse at Lake George. Alone in the boat, which was strange and unexpected for never in his life had he been alone in any boat. And the little boat was being pushed off from shore, and his parents were waving good-bye to him. His mother—so young! And his father—so young! Was this a mistake, they were sending him away too soon? He was crying to them, for he did not want to be sent away in the boat by himself; the horror was, the boat had no oars. The horror was, the back of the boat was awash in dark, dirty water. He was very shaky in the boat, sitting with his knees to his chest, hugging his knees. With a terrifying solemnity and inevitability the boat moved farther out into the stream, a swift current was bearing it away, for this was not Lake George after all but a river, and a wide river whose farther bank he could barely see. His parents walked along the shore quickly, at first keeping parallel with him, then falling back as the current accelerated.