The Amnesiac

by Sam Taylor

  In fact, James felt guilty now. This was not a real memory: he had made it up because he was embarrassed at not being able to remember anything associated with the word ‘stain’. Or rather, all the ‘stain’ memories he had were to do with semen or menstrual blood, and James had felt uncomfortable talking about such matters with a severe-looking older woman he had never met before. All the same, he regretted lying; he wondered if it would nullify the effects of whatever treatment Dr Lewis ended up prescribing. Nervously he watched her face, but she did not seem to have guessed that the memory was invented. Without looking up from the notebook in which she was writing, she said, ‘Train.’

  Suddenly James was no longer in the office, but standing on a platform at a busy train station. He was feeling the most intense anguish and sadness he had ever felt. A train pulled slowly away and he saw a hand waving from an open window. As the train grew smaller, James felt a great wrenching hollow-ness inside him; as if his heart had been tied to the train, and was being slowly pulled out of his chest. He stared at his hands and when he looked up the bland details of the office had reassembled around him. He didn’t know what to say. Was that a memory he had just experienced? If so, it was not one that he recognised or could place in the narrative of his life. To be precise, it felt like someone else’s memory. And yet it had been so intense, so real . . .

  ‘Train,’ the doctor repeated, tonelessly.

  ‘Um, I don’t know,’ said James, his voice shaky. ‘Catching the train when I was young. We were going somewhere. I can’t remember where. On holiday. Maybe to the beach, or . . .’

  He looked up. Dr Lewis was not writing down what he said; she was looking at him. Her eyes were filled with pity and concern. ‘What happened? Can you remember?’

  ‘No,’ he said, and suddenly tears sprang to his eyes. James was angry with himself. He didn’t want to cry in front of a doctor. ‘No!’ he shouted.

  The doctor came out from behind the desk and moved towards him. The light in the room was growing dim. ‘Calm down, James, it’s going to be all right. It’s Cathy, don’t you remember?’ The softness of her voice was intolerable. He was shouting at himself to stop crying and she was coming closer and the room was losing its colours and straight lines. ‘Hold still, James. This will make you feel better.’

  He felt a sharp pain in his arm.

  He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. At first he had no idea where he was, but slowly he came to understand that he was lying on a hospital trolley in a white corridor. Dr Lewis must have left me here to recover, thought James. He sat up, feeling a little groggy, and looked around. The corridor was empty, and at either end, equidistant from where he sat, were double doors with circular windows. Through each set of windows he saw nothing but more empty corridor, stretching away to more double doors. James realised he must be somewhere in the heart of the large white building, and that he had no idea how to find his way out.

  He got off the trolley and began walking. There were doors leading off the corridor on either side, but he tried them and they were all locked. He called out, but no one answered. He tried looking at his watch but it wasn’t there. That was when James realised he was not wearing his clothes: he was dressed in a white hospital gown, and beneath that he was naked. He started to feel afraid. What had happened to him?

  He walked along the corridor, through double door after double door. The corridor tiles were cold on his bare feet and a draught blew unpleasantly up between his legs; he could feel his penis and scrotum shrinking. Finally he came to a lift. He pressed the call button and the doors opened. There was no button marked ‘0’ or ‘LOBBY’ or ‘RECEPTION’, so James pressed the lowest button and waited as the lift descended. It seemed to take a long time. Only later did it occur to him that the building, though large, was not particularly tall: no more than four or five storeys. Yet there had been at least ten buttons in the lift.

  The doors opened and James got out. Another empty corridor, but he could hear voices further along. He walked in the direction of the voices and came to a half-open door. He could hear a kind of low hum and some high-pitched tweeting noises and the sound of a man sniggering and muttering. He knocked softly on the door and said ‘Hello?’ There was silence. James put his head round the door and saw Dr Lanark, in a white coat, staring back at him, a fluffy yellow chick in one of his hands. James was afraid he would be recognised, but the doctor’s expression was blank.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said.

  ‘Sorry . . . I’m lost. I’m looking for the exit.’

  ‘The exit?’ Dr Lanark looked thoughtful. ‘Are you a patient?’

  ‘I was, yes. I came in to see Dr Lewis, but the next thing I knew I was lying on a trolley and there was no one around. I don’t know what’s happened to my clothes.’

  A strange expression flashed across Dr Lanark’s face. James couldn’t tell what it was exactly. He looked excited, greedy, sly, jealous. In the next moment his face was back to normal and he was speaking in a soft voice, as though to a child. ‘Have you lost your memory?’

  Without thinking, James answered truthfully. ‘Part of it.’

  ‘Really? Have you any idea how much time has gone missing? ’

  ‘About three years.’

  ‘Three years? That’s . . . that’s very interesting.’ The doctor stood up and put the chick into a glass cage, ushering James forward like an obsequious courtier. ‘Come in, come in. Would you like a cup of tea? It’s the best treatment for shock, you know.’

  James was pleasantly surprised at being treated so kindly by Dr Lanark. ‘Well . . . all right. Thank you.’

  ‘Milk? Sugar?’

  ‘Milk no sugar please.’

  ‘Milk no sugar,’ Dr Lanark repeated, and then scuttled through a door. While he was gone, James looked around the room. It was a sort of laboratory, he guessed, very neat and pale, no windows, lit by long fluorescent ceiling lamps. There were lots of glass cages with chicks inside and others with eggs. On the desk at which Dr Lanark had been sitting was a notebook with lists of numbers followed by ticks or crosses, a large pair of scissors, and what looked like a small fridge. There was a large bin next to his chair; James peered in and saw lots of yellow and red. At that moment, the doctor returned, a mug of tea in his hand. ‘Here you go,’ he said, smiling. He had the smile of someone who is not used to smiling, thought James. ‘Please, take a seat.’ James looked behind him, but couldn’t see any other seats. ‘Have mine,’ said Dr Lanark. James sat on his chair and the doctor perched uncomfortably on his desk. He seemed to be waiting for something.

  ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt you,’ James said.

  ‘No, no, that’s fine. Please . . . drink your tea. It’ll do you good. It sounds like you’ve had a rough time of it. You must be feeling . . . traumatised.’

  ‘Well . . . I suppose it was a bit worrying, waking up in an empty corridor like that.’

  ‘Of course, of course. That’s it, drink it all down. You’ll feel better after that.’

  ‘Thank you.’ James took a gulp of tea: it tasted funny, but he didn’t want to appear ungrateful so he decided not to mention it. ‘You don’t happen to know where my clothes might be, do you?’

  ‘Your clothes? Don’t worry, I’m sure we can find them. I’ll call someone in a minute to go and look for them. But . . . I’m so rude. I haven’t even introduced myself. My name is Dr Lanark.’ James almost said ‘I know’, but managed not to. ‘And what is your name?’ he asked.

  ‘James Purdew.’

  ‘Now, tell me about those missing years, James. I’m very interested. Memory is my job, you see. I’m a neuroscientist. And I have a particular fascination with cases of amnesia. It’s a very rich field.’ He was rubbing his hands. ‘When did you first become aware of your memory loss?’

  James thought about this, and as he did so, he began to feel more and more worried. ‘I don’t know,’ he said finally. ‘I remember thinking about it a few months ago and being shocked by it. But at the
same time I’m pretty sure I must have known about it before and just . . . forgotten.’

  ‘You don’t mind if I tape-record your answers, do you, James? It’s so interesting. Please go on. So . . . you’d forgotten that you’d forgotten?’

  ‘It sounds funny when you say it like that, but . . . yes.’

  ‘Do you forget many things, James? In everyday life, I mean?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose so.’

  ‘What kind of things do you forget? Appointments? Where you’ve left things?’

  ‘Not really. It’s more just . . . time seems to slip away from me. It seems to dissolve. I write things down to try and keep myself from losing it all, but . . .’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Those three years . . . I kept a diary, but I can’t get to it. It’s locked away. I don’t know where the key is.’

  ‘James, this is fascinating. But please tell me, have you had any serious head injuries?’

  ‘No.>

  ‘No major accidents?’

  ‘I broke my ankle in the summer, but . . .’

  ‘Brain disease? Tumors? Epilepsy?’

  ‘No.>

  ‘James, a lot of scientists would have difficulties believing your story. You see, there is an orthodoxy among people in this industry that retrograde amnesia is a myth.’

  ‘Retrograde?’

  ‘I mean the inability to remember incidents in the past, before whatever it was that caused the amnesia occurred. As opposed to anterograde amnesia, which is the inability to remember ongoing, day-to-day experiences. Anterograde amnesia is by far the more common of the two, but because its effects are less dramatic, less simple to imagine, it’s rarely used as a plot device in novels or films. Retrograde amnesia, however, is used all the time, in spite of its rarity. That’s why many scientists suspect people who claim to have retrograde amnesia of faking it - unless there is evidence of some kind of brain trauma.’

  ‘Why would I fake it?’ James asked.

  ‘Well, precisely. You’re not a criminal, are you? I believe your story, James, don’t worry about that. Honestly, some of these scientists are so unimaginative. Scepticism is a kind of religion to them, and they cling to it against all evidence. In fact, there are lots of documented cases of all kinds of bizarre amnesias, and in some cases the causes are still unknown. But scientists - the orthodox ones - detest mysteries. They see a hole and they want to account for it, and if they can’t their instinct is to fill it in, to deny its existence.’ As he spoke, he was becoming more heated, his face redder and angrier. He was standing now, pacing around, and his smile had gone. James had the impression the doctor was delivering this speech to an imaginary conference hall. ‘I was born in the wrong century, you know. A hundred years ago, scientists were free - free to experiment alone, to follow their instincts and desires; their hunches. They were like Sherlock Holmes, whereas now they are like the police force. Do you know what my job is here, James? Do you know what I was doing when you walked in on me? Don’t worry, I’m only locking the door so we won’t be interrupted, it’s perfectly safe. I was decapitating chicks, James, that’s what I was doing. Look in that bin. Yes, that’s right. Every day I take a score of day-old chicks and I put a bead in their cage - sometimes the beads taste nasty, sometimes they’re dry, sometimes they have a drop of water on them. And . . . God but it’s boring, isn’t it

  James? You’re bored already, I can see it in your eyes. Or are you just sleepy? No? Well, don’t worry, I don’t blame you in the slightest. Even I find it boring, and it’s my job. So . . . I give them this bead and I write down their response - do they peck it or not? - and then I cut their head off and take out their brain and I slice it up and put the slices on glass slides and freeze them. That’s what I do. Years of postgraduate research, all my natural brilliance, and this is my reward. And what do we learn, James? Perhaps in five or ten years we might have discovered some tiny, very specific structural facts about how the brain works. The chick’s brain. And do you want to know something, James? I don’t give a flying fuck about chicks’ brains. That’s not what I’m interested in at all. I’m interested in memory. Human memory. Do chicks remember? Do they feel nostalgic? Do they close their tiny chick eyes and try to wish themselves back into a blue-remembered past of some paradisiacal battery farm, following their mother’s feet around in the dirt and wondering at the sadness and beauty of those lost moments, and all the time passed in between? Do they? Do they? Do they fuck, James! They’re stupid, stupid, stupid animals. And . . . are you feeling sleepy now, James? Your eyelids are drooping. Don’t feel ashamed, it’s quite normal, after all you’ve been through. Would you like to lie down? Yes, of course, there’s a couch just through here. That’s right, make yourself comfortable. Your clothes? Absolutely. I’ll go and see to that myself in just a moment. There we go, now isn’t that better? Yes, I’m just going to tighten this belt around your chest, James, so you can’t fall from the couch in your sleep. Not too tight, is it? That’s right, your ankles and wrists too, we can’t be too careful . . . so yes, as I was saying, the real problem with this century of ours is that it is almost impossible, outside of certain enlightened dictatorships, to experiment on human beings. Oh yes, I’m perfectly serious! You see, I’ve been waiting a long time for someone like you, James. At last I have the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of William Beecher Scoville - what do you mean you’ve never heard of him? The man is a giant, a legend - but why? Because he experimented on a human being. It wasn’t even that long ago. Nineteen fifty-three, can you believe it? The year I was born, Dr Scoville operated on a twenty-seven-year-old epileptic called Henry. You know what he did, to relieve his epilepsy? He bored two holes in the bone above his eyes - his eyes were open by the way, did I mention that? Henry was awake during the operation. There are no nerves in the brain, you see - all one need do is pump a little shot of lidocaine, like this, voila, into the skin of the scalp, and after that you won’t feel a thing. So . . . Dr Beecher, he drilled two holes in Henry’s skull, and then he took a spatula and used it to lever open the skull and to look upon the beauty - the oh so fragile beauty - of the human brain. Oh James, it’s so breathtaking. What a shame you won’t be able to see it for yourself. Anyway, there was one particular part of the brain in which Dr Scoville had a special interest. You see, he had performed this operation before - he had removed the hippocampus of epilepsy patients, and without fail they had all ceased to exhibit the symptoms of epilepsy after the operation. Remarkable, wouldn’t you agree? The only catch was that all Scoville’s previous patients had been psychotics, so, frankly, it was rather hard to tell whether there might be any side-effects to this bold experiment. But Scoville had Henry’s permission to perform the operation. He had Henry’s parents’ permission. It was all quite above-board. So . . . yes, please do try to stay awake, James, I’m saying all this for your benefit . . . so Dr Scoville inserted a thin silver straw into Henry’s brain and, using a suction device, he - whoosh! - sucked out the hippocampus. He took a few other bits with it, of course - neurosurgeons weren’t terribly precise in those days. But anyway, James, do you know what happened? Something quite amazing. Henry’s epilepsy was cured, just as advertised, and in many respects he remained the same young man he had been before. With only one small difference. He couldn’t remember. Oh, he remembered his childhood, and the broad outline of the decade leading up to the operation. But the two years just prior to it . . . whoosh, it was gone. And ever since the operation, he has never remembered anything that’s happened to him. Nothing. Oh yes, Henry is still alive, an old man now of course, a famous man too, at least in the world of scientific literature. We call him HM. We do love initials, us scientists. In Henry’s mind, Truman is still president. Henry’s mother died in the 1960s. Every time Henry hears this news, he cries: he thinks it is the first time he has heard it; the grief is always new, always raw. Can you imagine, James? Not only that, but Henry is aware of his condition. He says he feels like he is constantly
waking up from a dream. Oh James, it’s such a rich field of inquiry, I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that you have agreed to let me investigate the mysteries of your brain. Now, I’m just going to have a drink of water and then we’ll begin. There, that’s better. Don’t worry about the drill, James, I know it must look large and frightening, but I can promise you won’t feel a . . .’

  At that moment, very suddenly, Dr Lanark stopped talking. He appeared to have been frozen, paralysed; his mouth open as if in the middle of a word, his hands suspended in the act of holding the drill above James’s skull. And then James saw another figure move beside Dr Lanark. He squinted: the other figure was Dr Lanark as well.

  There were two Dr Lanarks, side by side: one motionless, the other normal. The new one looked identical to the other in every respect and yet, at the same time, he was quite obviously not the same person. He spoke differently too, even though his voice was unchanged. ‘I’m terribly sorry about that, Mr Purdew. I realise you must have been rather frightened, but let me reassure you that you were never in any danger. I was watching the whole time. Yes, I could have intervened sooner, but, you see, I learned so much in those final moments; that was precisely when his readings jumped off the scale.’

  By now the belts had been unstrapped so James was able to sit up. He was still groggy, and his vision was blurred, but he could feel strength returning to his muscles. Now he looked more closely he could see electrodes attached to the head of the first Dr Lanark, and behind him a desk on which sat a laptop computer and a printer. The printer was spewing out graph paper. The second Dr Lanark studied it. ‘Remarkable,’ he muttered. ‘Unprecedented, in fact. Anyway, we can leave that to the boys in IT to interpret. In the meantime I suggest you come with me. You must be feeling a little shocked by the night’s events.’