The Man Without a Shadow Page 9

  In the past eleven months, however, their relationship has changed. Considerably.

  And now, Milton Ferris is touring China for six weeks. There’d been a vague suggestion that Margot Sharpe would accompany him, as a younger colleague involved in original research on amnesia, but somehow that suggestion faded, and when Margot summoned all her strength to ask Ferris about it, whether she was coming with him, whether she should make travel arrangements, he’d told her evasively that his plans had changed.

  What do you mean, she’d asked.

  What do you mean, your plans have changed.

  She hadn’t raised her voice. She hadn’t wept. She’d felt—well, yes she’d felt a kind of sick horror, bile at the back of the mouth. She’d tasted shame.

  She is telling E.H., she’d managed to salvage some dignity.

  She is assuring E.H., who looks with such pity at her, that she didn’t embarrass herself any further.

  Still, she has been waiting for the man to call her. One final time, they should speak. They should meet.

  They have made love for the final time, she supposes. That she must accept.

  They will meet—somewhere. They will have a drink together. Drinks.

  Sweet fiery sensation of whiskey. Milton Ferris’s favored drink, for which Margot Sharpe has acquired a belated taste.

  Telling E.H., her face wet with tears, that she can’t exactly remember how it ended between her and Ferris. Her memories seem to her muddied, splotched. As if she has been running through mud. Her body splotched with mud. Face splotched with mud.

  The taste of bile at the back of her mouth. But she has not been sick to her stomach, she has not vomited.

  She isn’t a weak woman, she tells E.H. She isn’t a woman who depends upon others, a woman who pleas with others, begs. She is not.

  She tells E.H. that Milton Ferris is in China, and has not communicated with her since his departure. A brief call on the evening before he’d left and this last conversation did not go well.

  She tells E.H. that Milton Ferris is not alone in China. She thinks he is not alone.

  (Yet his wife is not accompanying him—Margot knows.)

  A mistake, a terrible mistake, I was so grateful for his attention, I behaved desperately and stupidly.

  Margot tells E.H.: there is no shame like the shame of rejection.

  Margot tells E.H.: she has thought of killing herself—to alleviate the shame.

  Margot tells E.H.: at the outset of the project on amnesia, Milton Ferris designed all the tests and experiments, and carefully oversaw their execution. Initially, he came to the Institute and worked with E.H. personally—“Do you remember him, Eli? ‘Milton Ferris’—white-haired, with a wiry white beard—he’s a distinguished neuroscientist, he has been nominated for a Nobel Prize . . .”

  E.H. has no idea who “Milton Ferris” is but of course he nods encouragingly. He has been gripping Margot’s hands in his and listening to her halting and not very coherent words with an expression of deep sympathy.

  Such sympathy does not judge. Margot is deeply grateful, that she be not judged.

  Such emotion! Her brain feels like suet, disintegrating.

  The shameful fact is, Margot adores Milton Ferris.

  Margot is in thrall to Milton Ferris.

  Even now, when the man has broken off with her—whatever ill-defined, nebulous and exclusively clandestine relationship they’d had—(of which others in the lab certainly know, or suspect)—the shameful fact is, Margot has not broken off with him.

  Milton Ferris is the most brilliant scientist she has ever met—she is sure. Milton Ferris is the most brilliant person who has ever truly cared for her.

  She is frightened by the prospect of losing him.

  She is terrified by the prospect of losing him.

  She is the Chaste Daughter. She has never resisted Milton Ferris and it is not possible for her to imagine resisting Milton Ferris.

  She is so ashamed! She is thrilled, and she is ashamed.

  Even now speaking of it, for the first time in her life baring her soul and to a stranger, even amid shame she is thrilled. For simply to confess this clandestine love, this humiliating love, is to acknowledge that yes, there was “love”—and it was “sexual love”—(to a degree: Margot’s experience of sex in their relationship has been uncertain)—and of this Margot Sharpe is proud. Even now.

  E.H. listens, avidly. E.H. does not judge for he is kindly, patient—he is all that Milton Ferris is not.

  Her error, Margot says, is that she has made Milton Ferris the center of her life. She has not behaved professionally. If she tells this story from a woman’s perspective she will say he took advantage of my weakness, I am his subordinate and he knew his power over me.

  Yet certain facts remain: she abased herself before the man. She might have eased away from his first advances, which were not aggressive or coercive—(she must acknowledge)—but rather sweetly playful, oblique. A touch of his hand on her wrist, an offer to drive her through pelting rain to her rented apartment overlooking the deep ravine. An offer to walk with her, enormous black umbrella opened above them as in a cartoon by Magritte, to the rear door of her apartment where—(she recalls with stunning vividness, her heart nearly stopping)—she fumbles for her key as he stands close beside her and she feels his breath on her face.

  His pronunciation of her name: “MAR-go SHARPE.”

  Always he has seemed somewhat bemused by her. She has wondered if, in his life, which has spanned nearly seven decades, he has been intimately involved with so many women, has gazed intently into the eyes of so many who have adored him even as they have slightly feared him—if, to Milton Ferris, “Margot Sharpe” is entirely real.

  This past year. Not continuous, discontinuous. Days in succession when she neither saw Ferris nor heard from him. For the edict was, she must never call him.

  She knows: she has not once resisted him in any essential way—only in the most trivial “daughterly” ways. She has never opposed him in the lab. If he is mistaken about something, she remains silent. She allows others to speak, and to risk antagonizing the great man. So bound to Milton Ferris, she cannot imagine a life without him.

  “He has done so much for me, Eli! He has established my career. He has guided me, looked out for me. I wouldn’t be an assistant professor at the university except for Milton Ferris—of course. I wouldn’t know you—I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to work with ‘E.H.’—without Milton Ferris. ‘The biology of memory’—I owe him everything.”

  Ferris has directed Margot Sharpe as one might gently push, with a foot, a light, floating vessel—at once the little boat moves in the water, and momentum will carry it far.

  Yet, it is a fact that Milton Ferris has appropriated a number of ideas from the lab that are not his own. Margot Sharpe’s ideas, and Margot Sharpe’s experimental work with E.H., lengthy batteries of tests recorded by Margot and a graduate student associate here at the Institute—“Olfactory compensation for memory deficit.” Margot Sharpe is listed as an author, of course—a co-author, with Milton Ferris.

  As if Margot Sharpe were Ferris’s assistant. Possibly, Ferris’s graduate student.

  She tells herself—But it is only fair, in his eyes. Without him, I couldn’t have written the paper—couldn’t have done the work.

  Margot tells E.H. how at the start Milton Ferris was truly the principal investigator in the lab. Milton Ferris wrote up the first-draft reports. Milton Ferris was involved in every stage including providing graphs, figures, footnotes. Carefully he looked through his associates’ reports, checked their data. Weeks were involved in the preparation of a single paper. Each member of the lab was listed as a co-author; “Milton Ferris” was named last, as the PI.

  Then by degrees it happened that Milton Ferris came less frequently to the Institute to work with the team. He was “away”—he was “traveling.” He was in New York City consulting with a TV producer preparing a documentary on the human br
ain. He was in Washington consulting with the president’s special advisory committee on bioethics.

  Alvin Kaplan, Ferris’s most trusted associate at the time, would write the first draft of an article. With corrections, the draft would be rewritten by Margot Sharpe. There might be a third draft, and a fourth, and a fifth—by Kaplan and Sharpe. To a degree others in the lab were involved.

  Now it has come to be that Milton Ferris’s appearance at the Institute is something of a rarity, like the visit of a royal person. And it is rare too that Ferris is involved in preparing articles on E.H.—though (as he insists) he continues to read everything that is written by his young associates. He provides detailed critiques, he subtracts and he adds, and returns the drafts to their authors with queries, suggestions, directives for revision. It is only by Ferris’s decree that an article is declared “finished” and ready to be submitted for publication at one or another professional journal where Ferris is likely to know the editors very well. It is only by Milton Ferris’s decree that anything comes out of his lab—you would not dare try to publish without his approval.

  Over the years it has developed that experiments involving E.H. are designed by his young colleagues, and not by Milton Ferris. All data, all evidence, are gathered and collated by the colleagues—of course.

  Yet, no matter who designed the experiments, who spends many hours recording experiments with E.H., and no matter who has written the article, “Milton Ferris” continues to be listed in the position of prominence at the end of the list of co-authors.

  And sometimes it happens, a paper on E.H. appears in a prominent journal with just one author—“Milton Ferris.”

  Once, Alvin Kaplan tossed a copy of the Journal of American Experimental Psychology onto Margot Sharpe’s desk at the university and turned away without a word and when Margot opened the journal she discovered an article titled “Constructive Memory, Memory Distortions, and Confabulation in the Memory-Impaired” by Milton Ferris—an article originally written by Kaplan and Sharpe based upon experiments designed by Kaplan and Sharpe and executed by the lab team.

  Within the lab, Margot does not speak of such things.

  She has never been close with anyone in the memory lab. The young woman who’d been an older graduate student when Margot first arrived has long since departed—without Milton Ferris’s blessing, she managed to secure a position with tenure at Purdue University which is (as Ferris laughingly said) “somewhere west of here.”

  The Chaste Daughter does not betray the Father. Even when the Father has betrayed her, the Chaste Daughter does not betray.

  Until this moment Margot has not quite realized the depth of her shame, and the helplessness of her shame. Until this moment Margot has not comprehended that she might have a professional complaint.

  He is stealing from us. He is sucking our blood.

  He is a thief, he must be exposed.

  No words! The Chaste Daughter has no words.

  If Margot Sharpe brought up such subjects with her mentor, if Margot Sharpe inquired about just one of the articles Ferris has published under fraudulent pretenses, he would be incredulous. He would deny whatever she was suggesting, in the most decisive terms. He would cease to love her, at once.

  He doesn’t love me now—does he?

  Someday, he will love me—will he?

  The displeasure of the Father is a terrible thing. Ferris would be furious with her.

  In an instant, all that existed between them—so assiduously cultivated by Margot Sharpe, with the care of a madman constructing an elaborate ship inside a bottle, over a period of years—would be smashed.

  He would see her as a traitor, the betraying Daughter. Worse, he would see Margot Sharpe as a threat to his scientific reputation, and he would expel her from his lab.

  Ferris is a man of moods. On a number of occasions, with virtually no provocation, he has been critical of his adoring young female colleague—he has been disapproving, sarcastic—(how swiftly bemusement can turn to sarcasm!)—for no evident reason. At the slightest provocation, sensing the most subtle opposition or questioning of his authority, he becomes enraged. (Margot wonders if this is why Alvin Kaplan left the university. Needing to get free of his powerful mentor whom he too adores and resents.) Ferris would deny her charges, if they are charges—he would so confront her, Margot Sharpe would back down in confusion.

  My word against his. But I have no word against Milton Ferris.

  All this while E.H. has been gripping Margot’s hands tightly in his. Margot’s slender fingers, E.H.’s larger, stronger fingers. They are close together, like conspirators. Margot feels a sensation of giddiness, faintness. For here is a man who respects her, someone who is her true friend—as Milton Ferris could never be her friend.

  Of course—what had she been thinking? Milton Ferris could never be her friend but only her mentor.

  He is not her lover, though Margot Sharpe is his lover.

  Ferris is someone who has had, surreptitiously, somewhat distractedly, sexual relations with Margot Sharpe: “sexual relations” being such a crude and reductive term, indicating virtually nothing of the emotional experience which was, on her side if not on his, cataclysmic.

  With a choked little laugh Margot tells E.H.: she wasn’t serious a few minutes ago, she would certainly not kill herself. Not ever.

  She would certainly not kill herself for a man. And not for that man.

  And now, E.H. surprises Margot Sharpe. He has been listening to her intently, and he is fiercely sympathetic as she has never seen him—

  “Someone should kill him.”

  Margot stares at E.H.’s stern face. The amnesiac is not smiling now. Margot isn’t sure that she has heard correctly.

  “If that—that man—lied to you—and stole from you—and took advantage of you—and made you feel so bad—someone should kill him.”

  E.H. speaks almost calmly. It is clear to Margot that E.H. has no idea who “Milton Ferris” is—only that this is a person who has made her distraught, and thus must be punished.

  “No, Eli! Of course not—no.”

  Margot is shocked. Such a remark isn’t characteristic of mild-mannered kindly Elihu Hoopes!

  “Eli, please. I shouldn’t have told you this . . . No.”

  Her close proximity, her tears, her utter lack of discretion and control may have triggered in the amnesiac an upsetting memory. His feeling for her is the result of a dislodged memory that predates his illness, when he’d been a sexually vigorous man in the prime of life—Margot thinks.

  E.H. persists: “Tell me who he is. Where he is. I will find him.”

  “Eli, I don’t think so. I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  “Tell me. I will kill him for you.”

  She is astonished. She is beginning to be frightened.

  Such conviction in Elihu Hoopes. Such certitude!

  The amnesiac’s narrowed eyes. No childlike sweetness in those eyes, now.

  Margot wonders—Has E.H. killed? In his past life?

  And no one knows? And E.H. himself only dimly remembers?

  Out of an amnesiac’s past emerge islands of memory, unpredictably.

  Islands of memory. A beautiful expression, she thinks it is Milton Ferris who first employed it.

  Margot is feeling very exhausted. Margot has never spoken at such length, in such a way, exposing her soul to another. Though Milton Ferris is her lover, or has been her lover, Margot has never spoken openly to Milton Ferris about virtually anything. She shuts her eyes seeing something floating in the dark—islands, in an inland lake. Small islands that float in reflected light. The lake itself is enormous, its circumference is not visible. The water is rough, rippling. Yet creased with light from an (invisible) sun, or moon. Connective tissue among the islands is the earth, the lake-bed, but it is invisible to the eye. If you don’t know the connective tissue is there beneath the shimmering surface you could not guess at it.

  E.H. is holding Margot, to comfort
her. Never before has anyone held Margot Sharpe in such a way.

  Never before have Margot Sharpe and Elihu Hoopes touched so intimately. Never before have they been alone together for such a sustained duration of time. Though her heart is beating rapidly in the knowledge that what she has done, what she is doing, is very wrong Margot presses her face against the man’s chest, against the soft cashmere wool beneath which, at a distance of just a few inches, the amnesiac’s heart beats warmly.

  Margot thinks—He is a beautiful man. A beautiful soul. Here is the one I love, not the other.

  WHAT SHE HAS revealed, what she has done. The shame of it!

  Professionally, she would be disgraced. Will be, if anyone knows.

  Almost, she feels a compulsion to confess. But to whom?

  “Milton. Forgive me. I’ve said terrible things about us to a stranger . . .”

  (The humiliating fact is, even now Margot Sharpe hopes that her married lover will return to her. And if he will not “return” to her exactly—for indeed he has never been with her—she will settle for their former relationship in which, when he wishes, he contacts her; and she is forbidden to contact him.)

  Her eyes are reddened. Watery and stricken, in the white-skinned face.

  In cold water in the women’s restroom she washes the face—of course, she recognizes it as “hers.”

  The most extreme amnesia would be prosopagnosia—the inability to recognize one’s own face in a mirror.

  Except prosopagnosia isn’t amnesia, strictly speaking. It is a defect of perception, not of memory.

  Returning to the testing-room, and there is E.H. seated at a window with shoulders slightly hunched, rapidly sketching with a stick of charcoal in his sketchbook. When Margot enters the room, E.H. looks up startled and quickly closes the book.

  “Hel-lo!”

  She sees how completely the amnesiac’s smile transforms his face, like a skintight mask.

  MARGOT DOWNS A shot of whiskey. Quickly, so that her hand doesn’t shake.

  Like fire, the liquid in her throat. A burning sensation in her chest, in the region of her heart.