The Man Without a Shadow Read online

  Nurse, or nurse’s aide. Small-boned, short—but with well-developed muscles—shoulders, legs. Her shapely body at which he stares. And her smiling face, beautiful face, beautiful kindly eyes not judging him harshly.

  What has he forgotten?—the sketchbook.

  Quickly he snatches up the sketchbook. Of course, he must have been sketching—his fingers are smudged with charcoal. He will wait until he is somewhere alone before he examines the newest pages.

  “That is good, Mr. Hoopes! Don’t want to forget anything, OK?”

  By Eva’s manner he understands that she is someone who knows him well, and who likes him. Thus she is someone whom he knows well.

  Gold and ruby studs in her perfect ears. Smooth skin, warm skin, beautiful line of the jaw, and beautiful mouth—a sweet fleshy mouth, accustomed to kisses.

  On the third finger of her left hand, a thin silver band. Eva is married? Possibly, Eva is a young mother.

  Feels a sense of loss so great, he almost stumbles.

  “Eva help me, I am so terribly lonely . . .”

  He laughs. Better to laugh than to sob.

  “No reason to feel that way, Mr. Hoopes—you got all these folks interested in you, see? Some of them waitin in the testing-room, by the time we get there.” Eva tells him how the doctors are paying more attention to him than anybody else she ever met or heard of, he should feel real good about that, and proud—“They been writin about you too, so you are ‘famous.’ They takin care of you real good.”

  Yet he is not walking so steadily this morning. Shooting pains in both legs but especially the right leg. Can it be arthritis?

  Too young for damned arthritis. Only thirty-seven, in very fit condition. Just a few weeks ago he’d gone backpacking on the rock-strewn twelve-mile trail at White Cross Mountain, by himself.

  Terror in being alone. He has not shrunk from such terror.

  Islands of memory arise in his head jolted loose from the black muck below. Islands of light amid darkness. Lost in an open-eyed trance as the beautiful beguiling girl in the green uniform whose name he has (temporarily) forgotten leads him along a wood chip path in the direction of a place that appears to be known to her, familiar to her, thus must be known and familiar to him, and so he must not signal distress.

  Calmly he thinks—They will not abandon me. The family will come for me. They have forgiven me by now.

  The high-rise building is not entirely familiar but he is not surprised to be brought to the rear entrance, and to navigate the briskly revolving doors. Would be panicked if required to think but there is no thinking required as he turns toward the bank of elevators even as with a gentle nudge of her fingertips the nurse’s aide leads him in that direction.

  Upstairs, fourth floor. Again, he isn’t surprised to exit the elevator when the door opens.

  Strangers are awaiting him. Always there are smiling strangers, happy to see him.

  It is true, he seems to be someone special. Exactly why, he isn’t sure.

  “Mr. Hoopes?—Eli? Hello!”

  “Hel-lo.”

  Quickly he speaks. Quickly he smiles. Extends his hand to be shaken, and to vigorously shake.

  These are doctors, he guesses. He is in a hospital of some kind—though he sees no hospital beds—though fortunately he isn’t wearing a hospital uniform but rather his own clothes, and his shoes.

  The doctors are greeting him warmly, he is known to them. As he greets them warmly in turn though he has no idea who the hell they are.

  “Eli, hello! How are you?”

  “Very good, thank you. How are you?”

  In their eyes he sees himself reflected and he thinks—They feel sorry for me.

  He thinks—Maybe this is the afterlife. It would feel like this—the afterlife. No way to recognize it.

  Several smiling strangers of whom the evident eldest, and the one who has assumed authority, is a middle-aged woman with a striking white skin, intense eyes, urgent smile. She is not a beautiful woman and she is too old for him—in her late forties, at least—yet he finds himself strangely attracted to her. As she speaks in her soothing voice he is listening and yet not-listening. Hears her words even as he forgets them. Disconcerted by the proprietary air of a woman whom he has never seen before who stands slightly too close to him as if to provoke him to step away, and clasps his hand too tightly. He is disturbed that she calls him Eli—as if they are known to each other.

  In his life there have been numerous women. Like water falling through his fingers when he was young and reckless.

  Somehow, he’d failed to marry one of them. He had not loved enough. And where they’d loved him, he’d felt scorn for them and fled.

  Fitting that Amber died of the same raging fever that almost killed him. At Lake George she’d died, he’d had to arrange for her body to be airlifted home to her family. He fears that like his cousin Gretchen she awaits him in the afterlife.

  And other wraiths of the dead he has betrayed.

  “MR. HOOPES? ELI . . .”

  Strange how the white-skinned woman provokes in him a curious stir of longing, and yet of dread. A sex-yearning, that uncoils in his groin like a snake coming to life.

  Usually it is (much) younger women to whom he feels attracted and this woman is certainly not young.

  But her voice!—her voice is soothing, seductive.

  Her voice is (he thinks) familiar . . .

  And that single narrow tight-braided plait falling down the left side of her face redolent of—what? The Caribbean, the summer streets of South Philly?

  As others listen intently (and respectfully) the white-skinned woman with the incongruously exotic braid addresses him. She is explaining—something technical, complicated. No point in listening, he won’t remember anyway. At the same time, he finds himself (perversely) attracted to her.

  “Mr. Hoopes?—Eli? Are you listening?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  He is juvenile, defiant. He will have to run away and hide himself. God damn you leave me alone—wants to shove the woman from him, and flee.

  But knows he must not succumb to this impulse, that would be an error.

  Soul mate. Is that what this woman is?

  But Eli Hoopes is too shrewd, too canny, too educated, too steeped in the devious, self-deluding ways of late capitalism to believe in anything so naïve as a soul mate.

  Marxist principles. Nothing naïve or sentimental about killing your class enemies, dumping their bodies in a ravine. Erasing their histories, for the enemy deserves no history.

  He is worried, too: with their brain-X-ray machines they will detect that he has had a stroke. The Alabama deputy sheriff’s billy club must’ve cracked his skull, a hairline crack no one noticed at the time. And years later, at each hairline crack a “stroke” in the brain. There is nowhere to hide, trapped inside such a machine. Arms and legs strapped in place. A strap at his neck, to secure the neck.

  They will shave his skull, and operate (again) on his brain. This time will be fatal. They will touch his very soul with their rubber-gloved fingers.

  A soul is nerve-endings. When the nerve-endings fail to respond, the soul is no longer living.

  The several strangers are being introduced to him as if he has not already met them and shaken their hands. Suffused with the sensation of—what is it: déjà vu. Not doctors presumably since they aren’t wearing lab coats nor is the white-skinned woman with the sexy braid a doctor after all. Their chatter hurts his brain like shaken bits of glass.

  “Probably you don’t remember me, Eli—my name is ‘Margot Sharpe.’”

  “‘Mar-go’—yes. How could I remember you.”

  God damn, he has misspoken. Corrects himself with an irritable chuckle: “‘How could I not remember you.’”

  Politely and gallantly he speaks. Despite the pain in his legs he is straight-backed. Though he finds the woman’s manner grating he is nonetheless friendly to her—it is the old Hoopes diplomacy.

  The woman w
ho has identified herself as Mar-go—(whose last name he has forgotten)—expresses an interest in his charcoal drawings. He is flattered, but he is baffled—for how does Mar-go know that he has been sketching in his sketchbook unless she has been spying on him?

  “Will you show us some of your drawings, Eli?”

  He sees that yes, he has his sketchbook with him, secured under his arm. But he is reluctant to open the book to the prying eyes of strangers.

  They are waiting for him to misstep, he thinks. All these years they have been seeking the murderer of his cousin Gretchen, and the murderer’s identity is hidden in the charcoal sketches.

  “No. I don’t think so. My work isn’t good enough for anyone’s eyes except my own.”

  “But that isn’t true! Your drawings—and your photographs—are excellent. Your work has been exhibited in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Eli. That’s how good it is.”

  This is true. This he recalls, with surprise.

  How strange, the white-skinned woman knows about his single photography exhibit in the museum. He wonders if this means that she knows many other things about him, too.

  It is easier often to kill than to dissuade. But it would not be easy to get the woman alone, and to squeeze her white-skinned throat between his fingers.

  “Eli? Mr. Hoopes? We would like very much to see some of your drawings. I’ve seen a few of them in the past, and they are so very well . . .”

  Felt that way about white racists. Often it was said of white racists in the Movement.

  Easier to kill than to dissuade.

  He’d had his chances to kill the enemy over the years. As a boy, he’d failed ignominiously. Too weak to kill his father though the drunk man had been sleeping flat on his back. Too weak to kill the bishop’s grandson. Jeering white racists, faces ugly with hatred. As an undergraduate at Amherst he’d read of the revolt of Nat Turner and he’d felt a swoon in his soul, the exhilaration of slashing the throats of slave owners but also white women, white children. White-skinned children, screaming as they were murdered by the blades of righteousness.

  “Eli? May I?”

  The smiling woman has made a gesture as if to take the sketchbook from his hands.

  But he is too quick for her. Grips the sketchbook tight and refuses to surrender it. Sees the startled expression in her face.

  She is the one who knows who drowned Gretchen. All these years she has been hunting you, waiting for you to misstep.

  “No, Doctor. Don’t touch! This is private property.”

  Seeing the expressions on their faces he has to laugh. As a dog might laugh, baring wet teeth and panting.

  Taking out his little notebook instead, to confuse and entertain. In a grave voice intoning:

  “‘There is no journey, and there is no path. There is no wisdom, there is emptiness. There is no emptiness.’” Pausing then to add, “This is the wisdom of the Buddha. But there is no wisdom, and there is no Buddha.”

  DEAR HUSBAND THERE was the hope that I would be—pregnant.

  But I’m afraid now, dear Eli—that has turned out to be a mistake.

  Yes, we were so happy! We were married, and living in—Rittenhouse Square.

  Oh but Eli, don’t look so sad! We will be happy again! I promise.

  When the tests are finished we will move away—to the Adirondacks. We will live in your beautiful family home at Lake George.

  I will drive you there to live with me. I will love you and take care of you all the days of your life—our life. I vow.

  “MR. HOOPES? ELI? Hello . . .”

  She observes him from the doorway. She is determined not to be upset. Jealousy the most shameful of emotions. Sexual jealousy, unspeakable.

  Eva, the nurse’s aide. Very pretty, petite. Self-assured for a mere nurse’s aide in dull-green smock and trousers.

  Well, yes—very pretty. Her eyes are outlined in black mascara, her lips are moistly pink, her pert little body beautifully shaped though small, her legs oddly short. From a distance, Eva might be twelve years old. Closer up, she could not be mistaken for any twelve-year-old.

  Before Eva there was Yolanda, the caramel-skinned beauty from the Caribbean whom he has totally forgotten. Now there is Eva, another caramel-skinned beauty from the Caribbean.

  Of course at the Institute there are always nurses, nurse’s aides, attendants. These are likely to be young, good-natured, flirtatious and many of them are dark-skinned, yes and very attractive.

  “Absurd. You can’t be jealous. Just stop.”

  Margot Sharpe slits her eyes at her reflection in a restroom mirror: why is her skin so white? And now in her hair that has always been shiny-black there are ever-widening cracks of silver, gray, even white.

  Strange that she, who’d so often been the youngest person to give a paper at a scientific gathering, the youngest full professor in the Psychology Department, the youngest award recipient, is no longer young but middle-aged; no longer promising but accomplished; no longer envied but revered.

  In her smooth white skin, tiny lines, hairline fractures. You can only see close-up.

  Still, she is an attractive woman. Not a beauty when young, she has acquired a solemn sort of dignity, even an air of hauteur in middle age. She prepares her hair carefully, with the signature little braid trailing down the left side of her face; she dresses in her signature black clothes, and sometimes now shiny black shoes with a small heel, to provide height. She wears silk scarves and shawls that her dear friend E.H. has given her—(that she imagines E.H. would certainly have given her if he could). She is sure that, when E.H. sees her, and is not distracted by the presence of a shapely young woman like Eva, he feels for her something more than a perfunctory emotion.

  “He loves me. He loves his ‘wife.’ That doesn’t change.”

  It isn’t unlike an ordinary marriage, Margot supposes. A middle-aged marriage.

  Not a surprise that E.H. forgets Margot Sharpe if his attention shifts from her for more than a few minutes but it is hurtful to her, the alacrity with which he “neglects” her when Eva is present.

  Eva, with her musical Caribbean accent. Eva of the beautiful thick-lashed eyes, shapely little body and springy step. Eva who is very young, and looks younger.

  It is hurtful. It is embarrassing. When Margot Sharpe is speaking to E.H., and should have E.H.’s fullest attention, how easily E.H. is distracted by figures in the background; how openly distracted by the nurse’s aide Eva, his gaze shifting in her direction, that soft-melting look in the man’s eyes until at last he simply ignores Margot Sharpe, turns away from Margot Sharpe in a pretense of having forgotten her, and calls out—“Hel-lo! Is this—‘Eva’?” Peering at the laminated ID on the girl’s breast.

  Margot Sharpe thinks—If we were married! How embarrassing.

  But they are not married, and between Margot Sharpe and Eli Hoopes, so far as anyone at the Institute knows, or should know, there is only the professional connection: she is principal investigator of Project E.H., and he is E.H. Nothing could be simpler.

  Margot is too embarrassed to joke about her amnesiac subject’s wandering attention, though others have surely noticed. And it is hardly uncommon that older patients are attracted to the young women who tend to them—No fool like an old fool.

  Doesn’t he know, he is old enough to be that girl’s grandfather!

  Margot means to be reasonable. She isn’t a mean person. She will not speak sharply to the nurse’s aide but (perhaps) she will complain to the young woman’s supervisor, and see if Eva can be shifted to another floor at the Institute. Yes, certainly Margot will arrange for this.

  “You see, the girl is a serious distraction. She flirts with our subject—she can’t seem to help herself. She’s very young, and very charming—and our subject is in his sixties, and vulnerable. You really must transfer her. Thank you!”—so Margot rehearses.

  For she is helpless to control E.H.’s attention when she is herself not his sole focus of attention. Only when the
y are alone together can Margot claim the man’s total attention.

  Indeed, Margot Sharpe has written on the phenomenon of “attention” in amnesia—“Multiple Memory Systems, Visual Perception, and ‘Attention’ in Retrograde and Anterograde Amnesia” is the title of a forthcoming article in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, that will be included in the appendix of The Biology of Memory.

  Margot does not display her extreme unease, of course. Not in any public way. Margot knows how people will talk. As she has become something of a revered and even intimidating figure, Margot knows that people will talk about her.

  She understands that the amnesiac subject, now in his mid-sixties but imagining himself thirty-seven, does not perceive the awkwardness of his behavior—how the look of avid yearning in his face betrays him even as he tries to smile, to banter and to laugh exchanging remarks with the girl as if their interest in each other is reciprocal.

  Margot recalls how years earlier she herself had been the distraction, and Milton Ferris had been ignored. How E.H. had been attracted to her, clasping her hand, sniffing her hair!

  Those years. She’d been the Chaste Daughter, so young.

  He can’t love me—can he? I am too old for him now.

  She will take E.H. on a walk that afternoon. She, and no one else.

  She will drive E.H. home to Gladwyne at the end of the day. She, and no one else.

  By which time, Eva will be forgotten. And since Eva will be shifted to another floor at the Institute, Eva will be totally forgotten.

  At last, it is time for the nurse’s aide to leave. Backing away from E.H. with a cheerful murmur ’Bye now, Mr. Hoopes! You have a good day y’hear?—as E.H. gazes with undisguised longing after her.

  All this while—(though it has been less than two minutes, probably)—Margot has been waiting patiently, calmly.

  Only when the girl is gone does E.H. turn back to Margot Sharpe with his usual expression of surprise and interest, and a quick winning smile. Not sure who she is, exactly—but reasonably sure that she is someone more important than a mere nurse’s aide.

  “Hel-lo!”