Legends

by Robert Littell

  “Go on.”

  “Martin Odum is a basically edgy individual—there are days when he jumps at his own shadow. He’s afraid to set foot in a place he’s never been to before, he’s apprehensive when he meets someone he doesn’t already know. He lets people—women, especially—come to him. He has a sex drive but he’s just as happy to abstain. When he makes love, he goes about it cautiously. He pays a lot of attention to the woman’s pleasure before he takes his own.”

  “And Dittmann?”

  “Nothing fazed Lincoln—not his own shadow, not places he hadn’t been to, not people he didn’t already know. It wasn’t a matter of his being fearless; it was more a question of his being addicted to fear, of his requiring a daily fix.”

  “What you’re describing is very similar to a split personality.”

  “You don’t get it. It’s not a matter of splitting a personality. It’s a matter of creating distinct personalities altogether who … Excuse me but why are you making notes when this is being recorded?”

  “The conversation has taken a turn for the fascinating, Mr. Odum. I’m jotting down some initial impressions. Were there other dissimilarities between Dittmann and Odum; between Dittmann and you?”

  “Creating a working legend didn’t happen overnight. It took a lot of time and effort. The details were worked out with the help of a team of experts. Odum smokes Beedies, Dittmann smoked Schimelpenicks when he could find them, any thin cigars when he couldn’t. Odum didn’t eat meat, Dittmann loved a good sirloin steak. Odum is a Capricorn, Dittmann didn’t know what his Zodiac sign was and couldn’t have cared less. Odum washes and shaves every day but never uses aftershave lotions. Dittmann washed when he could and doused himself with Vetiver between showers. Odum is a loner; the handful of people who know him joke that he prefers the company of bees to humans, and there’s a grain of truth to that. Dittmann was gregarious; unlike Odum he was a good dancer, he liked night clubs, he was capable of drinking large quantities of cheap alcohol with beer chasers without getting drunk. He did dope, he solved crossword puzzles in ink, he played Parcheesi and Go. When it came to women, he was an unconditional romantic. He had a soft spot for females”—Martin remembered a mission that had taken Lincoln to a town on the Paraguayan side of Three Border—“who were afraid of the darkness when the last light has been drained from the day, afraid of men who removed their belts before they took off their trousers, afraid life on earth would end before dawn tomorrow, afraid it would go on forever.”

  “And you—”

  “I don’t do dope. I don’t play board games. I don’t do crossword puzzles, even in pencil.”

  “So Odum and Dittmann are antipodes? That means—”

  “Lincoln Dittmann would know what antipodes means. And in a corner of one lobe of my brain I have access to what he knows.”

  “What does this access consist of?”

  “You’re not going to believe this.”

  “Try me.”

  Martin said, very softly, “There are moments when I hear his voice whispering in my ear. That’s how I came up with those Walter Whitman lines.”

  “Lincoln Dittmann whispered them to you.”

  “Uh-huh. Other times I know what he would do or say if he were in my shoes.”

  “I see.”

  “What do you see?”

  “I see why your employer sent you to us. Hmmm. I’m a bit confused about something. You talk about Lincoln Dittmann in the past tense, as if he doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “Lincoln’s as real as me.”

  “The way you talk about Martin Odum, it almost seems as if he’s a legend, too. Is he?”

  When Martin didn’t answer she repeated the question. “Is Martin Odum another of your fabricated identities, Mr. Odum?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Are you telling me you really don’t know?”

  “I thought that’s what you were supposed to help me find out. One of the legends must be real. The question is which.”

  “Well, this is certainly going to be more interesting than I expected. You have a very original take on MPD.”

  “What the heck is MPD?”

  “It stands for Multiple Personality Disorder.”

  “Is what I have fatal? Why are you smiling?”

  “Multiple Personality Disorder is far more likely to be functional than fatal, Mr. Odum. It permits patients who suffer from it to survive.”

  “Survive what?”

  “That’s what we’re going to try to work our way back to. Let me give you the short course on MPD. My guess is that somewhere along the line something happened to you. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the trauma took place in childhood—sexual assaults are high on the list of childhood traumas, but not the only things on the list. I had one case about four years ago where a patient turned out to have been traumatized because he played with matches and started a fire that resulted in the death of his baby sister. The trauma short-circuited the patient’s narrative memory. This particular patient developed seven distinct adult personalities, each with its own set of emotions and memories and even skills. He switched from one to another whenever he came under any stress. None of the seven alter personalities—what you would call legends, Mr. Odum—remembered the original childhood personality or the trauma associated with that personality. So you see, switching between personalities—almost always accompanied by a headache, incidentally—was a survival mechanism. It was his way of erecting a memory barrier, of shielding himself from an extremely frightening childhood experience, and it’s in this sense that MPD is considered to be functional. It allows you to get on with your life—”

  “Or your lives.”

  “Very good, Mr. Odum. Or your lives, yes. My instinct tells me you certainly don’t fit neatly into the literature on the subject, inasmuch as you developed your alter personalities out of operational necessity, as opposed to a psychological necessity. When your psyche decided it needed to disappear behind a memory barrier, you had a series of personalities crafted and waiting to be stepped into. It’s in this sense that you can be said to fit into the Multiple Personality profile.”

  “How different were your patient’s seven personalities?”

  “In my patient’s case, as in the majority of MPD cases, they were quite distinct, involving diverse habits, talents, interests, values, dress codes, mannerisms, body language, ways of expressing themselves. They even made love differently. The alter personalities had different names and several of them even had different ages. One of them was unable to communicate verbally while another spoke a language—in his case Yiddish—that the others didn’t understand.”

  “How is it possible for one personality to speak a language that another of his personalities doesn’t understand?”

  “It’s a perfect example of how compartmented what you call legends can be in the brain.”

  “Were the seven personalities aware of each other’s existence?”

  “Some were, some weren’t. This aspect can vary from case to case. More often than not several of the personalities seem to be aware of the existence of several other of the personalities—they think of them the way you would think of friends who you know exist but haven’t seen in awhile. And there is what we call a trace personality—in your case it would appear to be Martin Odum—who serves as a repository of information about all of the other personalities except the host personality that experienced the trauma. This would account for the sensation you have that, as you said a moment ago, in a corner of your brain you have access to the specialized knowledge or talents of another alter personality, or as you would put it, another legend.”

  “I have a question, Dr. Treffler.”

  “Listen, since we’re going to be working together for some time, how about if we move on to a first name basis. Call me Bernice and I’ll call you Martin, okay?”

  “Sure. Bernice.”

  “What’s your question, Martin?”

  “I seem to be abl
e to distinguish three operational identities. There’s Martin Odum. There’s Lincoln Dittmann. And there’s one I haven’t introduced you to—the Irishman, Dante Pippen. Today of all days, Dante would be out on a pub crawl in Dublin, seeing how many of the city’s pubs he could drink in before the sun set.”

  “What’s so special about today?”

  “It’s Bloomsday, for pete’s sake. All the action in Ulysses takes place ninety years ago today—16 June, 1904.” Martin shut his eyes and angled his head. “‘Bloom entered Davy Byrne’s. Moral pub. The publican doesn’t chat. Stands a drink now and then.’ On top of everything, it was a Tuesday, like today. In Ireland, that’s the kind of thing you don’t let pass without praying at what Dante liked to call licensed tabernacles.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “So here’s my question: Is one of my three legends genuine? Or is there a fourth personality lurking in the shadows who’s the original me?”

  “Can’t respond to that one yet. Either premise could be correct. There could be a fourth legend, even a fifth. We won’t know until we start to break down the memory barriers, brick by brick, to get to the identity that recognizes himself as the original you.”

  “For that to happen, the childhood trauma will have to surface?”

  “Is that a question or a statement of fact?”

  “Question.”

  “I’m going to enjoy working with you, Martin. You’re very quick. You’re not frightened, at least not to the point where you’d walk away from this adventure. The answer to your question is: To get to what you call the original you, you’re almost certainly going to have to experience pain. How do you feel about pain?”

  “Not sure what to answer. Martin Odum may feel one way about it, Lincoln Dittmann and Dante Pippen, another.”

  “On that delightful note, what do you say we call it a day?”

  “Uh-huh.” As an afterthought, Martin asked, “Could I take you up on that aspirin?”

  1997: MARTIN ODUM DISCOVERS THAT NOT MUCH IS SACRED

  FROM LOWER MANHATTAN, AS THE CROW FLIES, CROWN HEIGHTS is a mere four miles across the river but a world away. Since race riots raged in its streets in the early 1990s, this particular section of Brooklyn had enjoyed a degree of extraterritoriality. Riding in squad cars with the mantra “Courtesy Professionalism Respect” visible on the doors not spattered with mud, police officers patrolled the neighborhood during daylight hours, but only for the most flagrant crimes would they abandon the relative safety of their vehicles. Depending on which street you were on, in some cases which sidewalk, different mafias ruled. On the streets south of Eastern Parkway off Nostrand Avenue, the Lubavitchers, solemn men in black suits and black hats, busied themselves reading the Torah in neighborhood shuls and obeying its 613 commandments while they waited for the Messiah, who was expected to turn up any day now; by the weekend at the very latest. Because the end of the world was nigh, Lubavitchers were enthusiastic about mortgages, the longer the better; but they hesitated buying anything they couldn’t immediately consume, they didn’t get involved in fights they couldn’t finish before darkness fell. One block farther down President, on Rogers Avenue, the Lubavitchers gave way to African-Americans crowded into tenements; ghetto blasters with the volume turned up drowned out the occasional shrieks of addicts who needed a hit but didn’t have the cash to pay for it. The West Indian ghetto, with its tidy streets and social clubs and block parties that had young people strolling in the gutter until dawn, began a few blocks farther south, on Empire Boulevard. Where the denizens of the different ghettos rubbed shoulders, tensions ran high. Everyone understood it only needed a spark to set off a conflagration.

  Martin, an outsider in all of the Crown Heights ghettos, knew enough to keep his head down and avoid looking anyone in the eye when he walked the streets. The sun was up and toasting the crispness out of the air as he made his way down Schenectady, past a large “Rent Strike” sign whitewashed onto a storefront window, past several broken shopping carts with small placards saying they were the property of Throckmorton’s Minimarket on Kingston Avenue, kindly return. His leg with the pinched nerve was starting to ache as he turned onto President, a wide residential street with trees and two-story homes on either side. He stepped off the sidewalk to make way for three Lubavitch women, one more anemic than the other, all of them wearing long skirts and kerchiefs over their shaven heads. They didn’t so much as glance in his direction but went on prattling to each other in a language Martin couldn’t identify. As he neared Kingston, he came abreast of an ambulance with a Jewish Star of David painted on the door, parked in front of a brownstone that had been converted into a synagogue; two pimply young men, with embroidered skull caps on their heads and long sideburns curling down to their jaws, sat in the front seats listening to Bob Dylan on the tape deck.

  … Everything from toy guns that spark

  To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark

  It’s easy to see without looking too far

  That not much is really sacred.

  Once across Kingston Avenue, Martin began to search for the house numbers. Two thirds of the way down the block, he found the big house that Estelle Kastner had described; a narrow flagstone walk-way led to the side door with the light burning over it. He continued past the house without stopping and turned right on Brooklyn Avenue, and then right again on Union Street, all the while watching the streets for the telltale signs that he was being followed, either by someone on foot or in a car. He felt a certain nostalgia for the good old days in the boondocks when he would have had a sweeper or two trailing after him to make sure he was clean, and tidy up behind him if he wasn’t. Nowadays, he was obliged to make do with rudimentary tradecraft precautions. Streets and alleyways and intersections, the lobbies of buildings with their banks of elevators, the toilets in the backs of restaurants and the windows in the backs of the toilets that looked out on alleyways—he took it all in as if his life might one day depend on remembering what he saw.

  Halfway down Union he climbed the front steps of a brownstone and stabbed at the bell. An old man in an undershirt flung open an upstairs window and shouted down, “What’cha want?”

  “Looking for a family, name of Grossman,” Martin called back.

  “You’re barking up the wrong block,” the man yelled. “The Jewish, they live on President Street. Union is still thanks to God reasonably Roman.” With that he pulled his head back into the house and slammed the window shut.

  Martin stood on the stoop for a moment, feigning confusion as he surveyed the street in either direction. Then he doubled back the way he’d come and made his way along President Street to the flagstones that led to the side entrance with the light over it. He was about to knock on the “No Peddlers” sign when the door was pulled open. Stella, wearing tight jeans with a man’s shirt tucked into them, stood inside, squinting up at him. The same three top buttons of her shirt were unbuttoned, revealing the same triangle of pale chest. Strangely, Martin found her more attractive than he remembered. He noticed her hands for the first time; the nails were neither painted nor bitten, the fingers themselves were incredibly long and extremely graceful. Even her chipped front tooth, which had struck him as downright ugly when they met the day before, seemed like an asset.

  “Well, if it isn’t the barefoot gumshoe, Martin Odum, Private Eye,” Stella said with a mocking grin. She let him in and slipped his valise under a chair. “In that raincoat,” she said, taking it from him and hanging it on a vestibule hook, “you look like a foreign correspondent from a foreign country. I saw you limp past ten minutes ago,” she announced as she led him up a flight of stairs and into a windowless walk-in closet. “I concluded that your leg must be hurting. I concluded also that you’re paranoid someone might be following you. I’ll bet you didn’t call me from home—I’ll bet you called from a public phone.”

  Martin grinned. “There’s a booth on Lincoln and Schenectady that smells like a can of turpentine.”

  A booming
voice behind Martin exclaimed, “My dear Stella, when will you learn that some paranoids have real enemies. I was watching from an upstairs window when he limped down President Street. Our visitor has the haunted look of someone who would circle the block twice before visiting his mother.”

  Martin spun around to confront the corpulent figure wrapped in a terrycloth robe and crammed into a battery-powered wheelchair. Scratching noisily at an unshaven cheek with the nicotine-stained fingers of one hand, working a small joystick with the other, the man piloted himself into the closet, elbowed the door closed behind him and backed up until his back was against the wall. The naked electric bulb, dangling from the ceiling, illuminated his sallow face. Studying it, Martin experienced a twinge of recognition: in one of his incarnations he’d come across a photograph of this man in a counterintelligence scrapbook. But when? And under what circumstances?

  “Mr. Martin Odum and me,” the man growled in the grating voice of a chain-smoker, “are birds of a feather. Tradecraft is our Kabala.” He scraped a kitchen match against the wall and sucked a foul smelling cigarette into life. “Which is how come I meet you in this safe room,” he plunged on, taking in with a sweep of his arm the shelves filled with household supplies, the mops and brooms and the vacuum cleaner, the piles of old newspapers waiting to be recycled. “Both of us know there are organizations that can eavesdrop on conversations over the land lines, it does not matter if the phones are on their hooks.”

  Stella made a formal introduction. “Mr. Odum, this is my father, Oskar Alexandrovich Kastner.”

  Kastner removed a pearl-handled Tula-Tokarev from the pocket of his terrycloth robe and set the handgun down on a shelf. Martin, who understood the value of gestures, accepted Kastner’s decision to disarm with a nod.

  All the tradecraft talk had tripped a memory. Suddenly Martin recalled which counterintelligence scrapbook he’d been studying when he came across the face of Stella’s father: it was the one filled with mug shots of Soviet defectors. “Your daughter told me you were Russian,” Martin said lazily. “She didn’t say you were KGB.”