“You reached the town—”
“Fredericksburg resembled Sodom. Buildings had been set ablaze by the retreating Federals, the emporium lay gutted, its furniture and wares littering the planks of the sidewalk and the dirt in the street. What was left of silken gowns that had been cut up for handkerchiefs and towels hung limply from placards projecting over the entrances to stores. Mad women from the asylum, in sooty shifts and bare footed, picked through the debris, collecting pocket mirrors and colored ribbons and fine ladies hats imported from Paris France, which they pulled over their matted hair. Two of them were struggling to carry off a Regulator clock. I was surely one of the last to cross the bridge because the engineers began to unfasten the pontoons behind me. On the other side I wandered from campfire to campfire, past dispirited troops dozing on the ground, past pickets sleeping on their feet. I must have become feverish because much of what happened to me subsequent to the retreat across the pontoon bridge is disjointed and fuzzy in my head. I seem to remember great lines of woebegone soldiers trudging back toward Washington, the wounded piled three and four deep in open carts drawn by mules, the dead buried in shallow graves where they succumbed. When I came awake, I don’t know how many days later, I found myself on a cot stained with dried blood in a field hospital. Doctors decided I was suffering from hypochondria, what your fancy doctors call depression nowadays. A gentleman with a kindly face and a soiled white shirt open at the throat was sponging my chest and neck with vinegar to bring down the fever. We got to talking. He told me his name was Walter. Only later did I discover him to be the celebrated Brooklyn poet Whitman, scouring the field hospitals for his brother George, who’d been listed as wounded in the battle. Luck would have it, he’d found him in the same tent as me. One morning, when I felt stronger, Walter put his arm around my waist and helped me out of the tent into the sunlight. We sat, only the two of us, with our backs to a stack of fresh pine coffins. I remember Walter staring at the heap of amputated limbs behind the tent and opining, Fredericksburg is the most complete piece of mismanagement perhaps ever yet known in the earth’s wars. After some while orderlies appeared from the tent carrying three stretchers with corpses on them and set them on the ground to attend burial. The dead men were covered with blankets, with the toes of their stockings sticking out and pinned together. Pushing himself to his feet, Walter walked over to the bodies and, squatting, lifted aside the blanket from one and looked for a long, long time at the boy’s dead face. When he sat back down next to me, he pulled a notebook from a pocket inside his jacket and, licking the stub of a pencil, began to write in it. When he finished I asked him what he’d written and he read it off and the words stuck with me all these years.” Lincoln shut his eyes—to keep back tears (so it seemed to Dr. Treffler)—as he dredged up Walter Whitman’s lines. Sight at daybreak,—in camp in front of the hospital tent on a stretcher (three dead men lying,) each with a blanket spread over him—I lift up one and look at the young man’s face, calm and yellow,—’tis strange! (Young man: I think this face of yours the face of my dead Christ!).
Lincoln, drained of arrogance, looked at Dr. Treffler as he recited in a sing-song whisper, “A woman, a dog, a walnut tree, the more you beat ’em—I can’t recall the rest.”
“I believe you, Lincoln. I can see that you really were at Fredericksburg.” When he just sat there, his chin on his chest, breathing unevenly, she said, “Shalimar.”
“What?”
“That’s the name of the perfume I’m wearing. Shalimar.”
1994: BERNICE TREFFLER LOSES A PATIENT
DR. TREFFLER TURNED AROUND THE STATUE OF NATHAN HALE outside the Central Intelligence Agency’s headquarters at Langley, Virginia, studying the expression on the face of the young colonial spy from various angles, trying to imagine what might have been going through his mind as he was being led to execution. It occurred to her that nothing had been going through his mind; perhaps he had been too distracted by the lump in his throat, which is called fear, to think clearly. She couldn’t remember if Nathan had seen the elephant (though the term probably didn’t come into use until the Civil War) before he set off on his mission behind British lines in Manhattan Island. She wondered if the British executioners wore striped shirts; wondered, too, if they had wedged a cigarette between his lips before they hanged him on the Post Road, what today is Third Avenue in Manhattan. It is a matter of tradition, Lincoln Dittmann had remembered the executioner saying. A man condemned to death is entitled to a last cigarette.
A whey-faced young man with a laminated card pinned to the breast pocket of his three-piece suit approached. “He was the first in a long line of Americans who died spying for our country,” he noted, looking up at Nathan’s wrists bound behind his back. “You must be Bernice Treffler.” When she said In the flesh he asked to see her hospital identity card and driver’s license and carefully matched the photos against her face. She peeled off her sunglasses to make it easier for him. Apparently satisfied, he returned the cards. “I’m Karl Tripp, Mrs. Quest’s executive assistant, which is a fancy name for her cat’s-paw. I’m sorry if we’ve kept you waiting. If you’ll come with me …”
“No problem,” said Dr. Treffler, falling in alongside her escort. She was mesmerized by the laminated card on the suit jacket with his photo and name and ID number on it. If lightning struck him right now, right here, would she have the good sense to tear it off and send it to his next of kin?
“First visit to Langley?” he asked as he showed his ID to the uniformed guard at the turnstile, along with the signed authorization to bring in a woman named Bernice Treffler.
“I’m afraid it is,” she said.
The guard issued a visitor’s pass that expired in one hour, and noted Dr. Treffler’s name and the number of the pass in a log book. Karl Tripp pinned the pass to the lapel of her jacket and the two of them pushed through the turnstile and made their way down a long corridor to a bank of elevators. She started to walk into the first one that turned up but Tripp tugged on her sleeve, holding her back. “We’re taking the express to the seventh floor,” he whispered.
Several young men relegated to the plebeian elevators eyed the well dressed woman waiting for the patrician elevator, wondering who she might be, for the seventh floor was, in naval terminology, admiral’s country and outsiders went there (the elevator didn’t stop at other floors) by invitation only. When the door finally opened on the seventh floor, Tripp had to walk Dr. Treffler through another security check. He led her down a battleship-gray corridor to a door marked “Authorized DDO staff only,” unlocked it with a key at the end of a chain attached to his belt and motioned her to a seat at a crescent-shaped desk. “Coffee? Tea? Diet coke?”
“I’m fine. Thanks.”
Tripp disappeared, closing the door behind him. Treffler looked around, wondering if this tiny windowless cubbyhole could really be the office of someone as important as Crystal Quest, whom she had spoken to several times on the phone since she first began treating Martin Odum. A moment later a narrow door hidden in the paneling behind the desk opened and Mrs. Quest appeared from a larger, airier office. She was obviously a good deal older than she sounded on the phone, and wearing a pantsuit with wide lapels that did nothing to emphasize her femininity. Her hair, cropped short, looked like rusting gunmetal. “I’m Crystal Quest,” she announced matter of factly, leaning over the desk to swipe at Dr. Treffler’s palm with her own, then sinking back into the wicker swivel chair. She reached into the bottom drawer of the desk and pulled out a thermos. “Frozen daiquiris,” she explained, producing two ordinary kitchen tumblers but filling only one of them when her visitor waved her off. “So you’re Bernice Treffler,” she said. “You sound older on the phone.”
“And you sound younger—Sorry, I didn’t mean …” She laughed nervously. “Heck of a way to start a conversation.”
“No offense taken.”
“None intended, obviously.”
“Which brings us to Martin Odum.”
“Prefer to hear it from the horse’s mouth.” Quest flashed a twisted smile. “No offense intended.”
“Martin Odum is suffering from what we call Multiple Personality Disorder.” Dr. Treffler could hear Crystal Quest grinding slivers of ice between her molars. “At the origin of this condition is a trauma,” the psychiatrist continued, “more often than not a childhood trauma involving sexual abuse. The trauma short-circuits the patient’s narrative memory and leads to the development of multiple personalities, each with its own memories and skills and emotions and even language abilities. Often a patient suffering from MPD switches from one personality to another when he or she comes under stress.”
Crystal Quest fingered a chunk of ice out of the kitchen tumbler and popped it into her mouth. “Has he been able to identify the trauma?”
Dr. Treffler cleared her throat. “The original trauma, the root cause of these multiple personalities, remains shrouded in mystery, I’m sorry to report.” She could have sworn Crystal Quest looked relieved. “Which is not to say that with more treatment it won’t surface. I would very much like to get to the trauma, not only for the sake of the patient’s mental health but because of the medical paper I plan to write—”
“There won’t be any medical paper, Dr. Treffler. Not now, not ever. Nor will there be additional treatment. How many of these multiple personalities have you detected?”
Dr. Treffler made no effort to hide her disappointment. “In Martin Odum’s case,” she replied stiffly, “I’ve been able to identify three distinct alter personalities, which the patient refers to as legends, a term you will surely be familiar with. There’s Martin Odum, for starters. Then there is an Irishman named Dante Pippen. And finally there’s a Civil War historian who goes by the name of Lincoln Dittmann.”
“Any hint of a fourth legend?”
“No. Is there a fourth legend, Mrs. Quest?”
Quest ignored the question. “How many of these legends have you personally encountered?”
“There is Martin Odum, of course. And at the most recent session, which took place last week, I came face to face with Lincoln Dittmann.”
“How could you be sure it was Lincoln?”
“The person who came into my office was quite different from the Martin Odum I know. When I realized I was confronting Lincoln Dittmann and said so, he came clean.”
“Cut to the chase. Is Martin Odum off his rocker? Should we commit him to an institution?”
“You can have it either way, Mrs. Quest. Lincoln Dittmann is certainly off his rocker, as you put it. He’s convinced he was present at the battle of Fredericksburg during the Civil War. Say the word and I can get a dozen doctors to certify he’s clinically insane. If you wanted to, you could have Lincoln Dittmann—or his alter ego, the Irishman Dante Pippen—committed indefinitely.”
“What about Martin Odum?”
“Martin is distressed by his inability to figure out which of the three working identities is the real him. But he functions reasonably well, he is quite capable of making a living, of fending for himself, perhaps even of having a relationship with a woman as long as she is able to live with the ambiguity at the heart of his persona.”
“In short, nobody who meets Martin in a bar or at a dinner party would think he was mentally deranged?”
Dr. Treffler nodded carefully. “As long as he is unable to dredge up the details of the original childhood trauma, he will remain in this state of suspended animation—functional enough to muddle through, vaguely anguished.”
“Okay. I want you to drop this case. I’ll send my man Tripp around to your clinic to collect any and all notes you might have made during the sessions. I don’t need to remind you that the whole affair is classified top secret and not to be discussed with a living soul.”
Dr. Treffler remembered something she’d told Martin at one of their early sessions. “Even if I change the names to protect the guilty?”
“This is not a laughing matter, Dr. Treffler.” Crystal Quest stabbed at a button on the console. “Tripp will see you to the lobby. Appreciate your coming by.”
“That’s it?”
Mrs. Quest heaved herself out of the wicker chair. “That’s definitely it,” she agreed.
Dr. Treffler rose to her feet and stood facing her, her eyes bright with discovery. “You never wanted me to identify the trauma. You don’t want Martin to get well.”
Quest sniffed at the scent of perfume in the windowless cubby-hole; it startled her to realize that Bernice Treffler’s professional psyche reeked of femaleness, which was more than she could say for herself. “You’re in over your head,” the Deputy Director of Operations testily informed her visitor. “In Martin’s case, getting well could turn out to be fatal.”
1997: MARTIN ODUM DISCOVERS THE KATOVSKY GAMBIT
STEPPING OFF THE CURB IN FRONT OF THE CROWDED AIRPORT terminal, Martin raised an index finger belt high to flag down one of the freelancers cruising the area in search of customers who didn’t want to deal with the doctored meters on the licensed cabs. Within seconds an antique Zil pulled to a stop in front of him and the passenger window wound down.
“Kuda,” demanded the driver, an elderly gentleman wearing a thin tie and a checkered jacket with wide lapels, along with a pair of rimmed eyeglasses that were the height of fashion during the Soviet era.
“Do you speak English?” Martin asked.
“Nyet, nyet, nye govoryu po-Angliiski,” the driver insisted, and then began to speak pidgin English with obvious relish. “Which whereabouts are you coming to, comrade visitor?” he asked.
“A village not far from Moscow named Prigorodnaia. Ever hear of it?”
The driver rocked his head from side to side. “Everyone over fifty knows where is Prigorodnaia,” he announced. “You have been there before?”
“No. Never.”
“Well, it’s not stubborn to find. Direction Petersburg, off the Moscow-Petersburg highway. Big shots once owned dachas there but they are all late and lamented. Only little shots still live in Prigorodnaia.”
“That’s me,” Martin said with a tired grin. “A little shot. How much?”
“Around trip, one hundred dollars U.S., half now, half when you resume to Moscow.”
Martin settled onto the seat next to the driver and produced two twenties and a ten—which was what Dante Pippen had paid the Alawite prostitute Djamillah in Beirut several legends back. Then, popping another aspirin from the jar he’d bought at the airport pharmacy to dull the pain from the cracked rib, he watched as the driver piloted the Zil through rush-hour traffic toward Moscow.
After a time Martin said, “You look a little old to be freelancing as a taxi.”
“I am one miserable pensioner,” the driver explained. “The automobile belongs to my first wife’s youngest son, who was my stepson before I divorced his mother. He was one of those smart capitalists who bought up industry privatization coupons distributed to the proletarian public, and then turned around and sold them for an overweight profit to the new Russian mafioso. Which is how he became owner of an old but lovingly restored Zil automobile. He borrows it to me when the ridiculous rent on my privatized apartment needs to get paid at the start of the month.”
“What did you do before you retired?”
The driver looked quickly at his passenger out of the corner of an eye. “Believe it or not, no skin off my elbow if you don’t, I was a famous, even infamous, chess grandmaster—ranked twenty-third in Soviet Union in 1954 when I was a nineteen-year-old Komsomol champion.”
“Why infamous?”
“It was said of me that chess drove me mad as a hatter. The critics who said it did not comprehend that, as a chess-playing psychologist once pointed out, chess cannot drive people mad; chess is what keeps mad people sane. You don’t by any chance play chess?”
“As a matter of fact, I used to. I don’t get much of a chance anymore.”
“You have
heard maybe of the Katovsky gambit?”
“Actually, that rings a bell.”
“It’s me, the bell that’s ringing,” the driver said excitedly. “Hippolyte Katovsky in the flesh and blood. My gambit was the talk of tournaments when I played abroad—Belgrade, Paris, London, Milan, once even Miami in the state of Caroline the North, another time Peking when the Chinese Peoples Republic was still a socialist ally and Mao Tse-tung a comrade in arms.”
Martin noticed the old man’s eyes brimming with nostalgia. “What exactly was the Katovsky gambit?” he inquired.
Katovsky leaned angrily on the horn when a taxi edged in ahead of him. “Under Soviets, drivers like that would have been sent to harvest cotton in Central Asia. Russia is not the same since our communists lost power. Ha! We gained the freedom to die of hunger. The Katovsky gambit involved offering a poisoned pawn and positioning both bishops on the queen’s side to control the diagonals while knights penetrate on the king’s side. Swept opponents away for two years until R. Fischer beat me in Reykjavik by ignoring the poisoned pawn and castling on the queen’s side after I positioned my bishops.”
His lips moving as he played out a gambit in his head, Katovsky fell silent and Martin didn’t interrupt the game. The Zil passed an enormous billboard advertising Marlboro cigarettes and metro stations disgorging swarms of workers. Fatigue overcame Martin (he’d been traveling for two days and two nights to get from Hrodna to Moscow) and he closed his eyes for a moment that stretched into twenty minutes. When he opened them again the Zil was on the ring road. Giant cranes filled what Martin could see of the skyline. New buildings with glass facades that reflected the structures across the street were shooting up on both sides of the wide artery. In one of them he could make out automobiles barreling by, but there were so many of them on the road he couldn’t be sure which one was his. Traffic slowed to a crawl where men in yellow hard hats were digging up a section of the roadway with jackhammers, then sped up again as the Zil spilled through the funnel. Up ahead an overhead sign indicated the junction for the Petersburg highway.
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