The Man Without a Shadow

by Joyce Carol Oates

  My sister’s name but she is not my sister.

  My brothers’ faces but not my brothers.

  “Don’t you recognize me, Eli? Your sister Rosalyn—Rosie. Oh, please!”

  “‘Rosalyn.’ ‘Rosie.’” Eli utters the names softly, provisionally.

  It is true, the woman’s strained face does seem familiar to him in the unnerving way of déjà vu. It is an older, thicker, far less beautiful face than the face of his young sister, as he recalls it; he cannot bring himself to acknowledge it. Her eyes that are close-set and reproachful with tears are not Rosalyn’s eyes. Her lipsticked mouth is unbecomingly smeared, from her effort at kissing him, brushing her lips against his cheek.

  “You must recognize me, Eli. I’m wearing my hair the way I used to—before you got sick. And this sweater, I’m sure you remember this sweater . . .”

  Eli does. Eli does remember the sweater. He remembers the soft purple wool, the wooden buttons.

  The hair, he does not remember. The face, he does not remember.

  He is feeling boxed in, they are so crudely manipulative. Establishing clues (like the sweater with the wooden buttons) and openly drawing attention to the clues to confound him—How can we be tricking you, if we acknowledge we are tricking you?

  “Please say hello to me, Eli! Just say it—‘Hello, Rosie.’”

  “‘Hello Rosie.’”

  “Doesn’t it mean anything, I am your sister and I love you?”

  “‘I am your sister and I love you.’”

  Eli repeats these extraordinary words, which he has no way of decoding, since he understands that the woman who speaks them is not his sister, but it is not clear if the woman understands that she is not his sister, or is herself confused and mistaken.

  “Don’t you have any feeling for me?”

  “‘Don’t you have any feeling for me.’”

  Wanting suddenly to placate everyone. Whoever the woman is, whoever the men who have approached him smiling (warily, guardedly—these are not smiles of happy recognition)—whose faces also seem familiar to him in the disreputable way of déjà vu.

  Cannily sensing that he has made a blunder, he has allowed the imposters to know that he knows they are imposters, this might be dangerous. In his old, lost life he often inflamed the dislike of others through his self-sufficiency and intransigence, now he is in a weakened position and must proceed with caution.

  Robust in greeting—“Hel-lo!”

  He knows that his brothers are named “Averill” and “Harry” and that they are older than he: Averill is two years older than Eli, Harry is five years older than Eli. And so it is a challenge to Eli to consider which of the imposters is supposed to be which brother for it isn’t altogether clear—(not that he wishes to stare at them, he does not)—which is the elder, which the younger.

  Surprises them with his sudden energy and enthusiasm. Shaking their hands—“Averill!”—“Harry!” Blindly he grips the hand of the one brother, and blindly the hand of the other. If he has erred, he is daring them to correct him.

  The other imposter, the sister, is close beside them. Each is speaking—trying to speak. Eli is very silent, at the center of the commotion.

  Such a confrontation is like paddling a canoe, he is thinking. A long canoe, fashioned of precisely fitted strips of wood. Heavy, beautiful. But dangerous, for a canoe can overturn in rough weather.

  Paddling a canoe across choppy waters, and each of them has a paddle. But they are not coordinated. Only Eli Hoopes is a skilled canoeist, the others are awkward, blundering. They are imposters, and are becoming defensive.

  “Eli, you know who we are—I think you do.”

  “If we leave here today, Eli, we are not coming back. This is the last time.”

  The last time. But Eli knows, there have been no previous times, for he would recall these devious people, and he does not.

  Eli says, with a faint stammer, “But—I do ‘know’ you. I’ve told you. ‘Averill’—‘Harry.’ And ‘Rosie.’”

  The elder of the brothers, the one disguised as Harry, says sulkily, “Yes, you know us. But you are pretending you don’t.”

  “I am not pretending. I am trying very hard to convince you that I am not pretending.”

  The other, disguised as Averill, says, “This is such bullshit.”

  The woman, disguised as Rosalyn, says with a hurt little cry, “But—Eli isn’t well! His memory has been damaged.”

  “He knows us, look at him. He’s always been an arrogant bastard.”

  Yet, the imposters are uncertain. Does Eli Hoopes recognize them, and is denying them; or, has Eli Hoopes truly failed to recognize them, and is hoping to deceive them into believing that he has recognized them?

  By this time Eli sees that a scene has been arranged. He and the imposter sister and brothers have been urged to sit down, to “talk”—“relate.” The setting appears to be a lounge of some kind, in a hospital or a clinic; it is not a “natural” setting, Eli thinks; certainly not in a private home. He is sitting, and the others—“Rosalyn”—“Averill”—“Harry”—are seated facing him. A few feet away, a camera operated by a young person is aimed at them.

  The issue is: these individuals, these strangers, Eli Hoopes doesn’t know.

  He will try to placate them, for he doesn’t want trouble. (He is gripping his sketchbook. He knows that he must not let it out of his hands, for it will be taken from him.) But the fact is, he doesn’t know these people. Though they speak to him with a goading sort of intimacy, as one might speak to a brother suspected of mysterious deceit, he can’t speak this way in turn to them. He just can’t.

  Instructions are—Please ignore the camera. Try not to look at the camera but at one another as in a natural conversation.

  But it is not a natural conversation. There is the God-damned camera, there are strangers in the room observing, this is not a natural setting.

  “Eli, look at us! You refuse to look at us . . .”

  “You recognize our voices, don’t you?”

  “It’s hopeless, he doesn’t know us . . .”

  “Of course he ‘knows’ us—he just doesn’t ‘remember.’”

  “He knows us! For Christ’s sake.”

  “But why then would he pretend that he didn’t?”

  “Jesus! Ask him.”

  He listens to them with mounting outrage: how dare they talk about him as if he weren’t present? As if he were some sort of subhuman creature?

  “God damn you! Fuck you!”—astonishing them by rushing at them suddenly, with threatening fists.

  The imposter-brothers shrink from him. The imposter-sister collides with a chair and nearly falls, in terror to escape his wrath.

  He is shouting at them. He is braying, bawling.

  They are predator animals, and he is their prey. Except—the prey has turned against the predator.

  One of the imposter-brothers tries to placate him, by touching his arm. He strikes the astonished man in the face, with his fist; so hard, there is a satisfying crack of bone.

  He winces with pain, and the imposter-brother staggers backward clutching his face, crashing into a table.

  “Eli! Mr. Hoopes! No.”

  Now there is confusion, commotion. Observer-strangers appear, aghast.

  They are circling him. They have penned him in. (The imposter-brothers and the imposter-sister have departed; within seconds, he has forgotten them.) He is sucking at the knuckles of his right hand, that feel as if the bones had been fractured. He wonders who has hurt him—or rather, whom he has hurt. His heart is beating hard, but it is a good sensation.

  “Eli? Come with us . . .”

  “Mr. Hoopes, we are your friends. You know us.”

  This is not true. He has no friends. But he is shrewd enough to know that one must feign friendship, in order to survive. Thus, he allows himself to be penned in a corner. He allows himself to be pacified in the eyes of strangers.

  Fumbling for something in his pocket—
a little notebook. Leafs through it, by instinct. He has little need to read, he has memorized:

  “‘There is no journey, and there is no path. There is no wisdom, there is emptiness. There is no emptiness.’” Pauses to add, “This is the wisdom of the Buddha. But there is no wisdom, and there is no Buddha.” Laughing with inexplicable good humor.

  THE LITTLE BOAT. Shuts his eyes tight. Remembering his parents saying good-bye to him. He was in a small boat, though it was not a boat he recognized from among the boats owned by the family, kept at their boathouse at Lake George. Alone in the boat, which was strange and unexpected for never in his life had he been alone in any boat. And the little boat was being pushed off from shore, and his parents were waving good-bye to him. His mother—so young! And his father—so young! Was this a mistake, they were sending him away too soon? He was crying to them, for he did not want to be sent away in the boat by himself; the horror was, the boat had no oars. The horror was, the back of the boat was awash in dark, dirty water. He was very shaky in the boat, sitting with his knees to his chest, hugging his knees. With a terrifying solemnity and inevitability the boat moved farther out into the stream, a swift current was bearing it away, for this was not Lake George after all but a river, and a wide river whose farther bank he could barely see. His parents walked along the shore quickly, at first keeping parallel with him, then falling back as the current accelerated.

  Already, the water was too deep for him to step into, to wade back to shore. He was frightened of trying to swim.

  Eli, good-bye!

  Eli darling! Good-bye.

  THE LOVERS’ QUARREL. “Mr. Hoopes—Eli—hello! How are you this morning?”

  “Very good. How are you?”

  “Very good, Eli. Do you remember me?”

  “Yes. I remember you.”

  (Is this true? Elihu Hoopes isn’t sure, but he is a gentleman, and knows what must be said.)

  “My name is”—pausing discreetly as if to encourage Elihu Hoopes to supply her name even as, with a smile, to alleviate any discomfort the amnesiac subject might feel, and to suggest the bond of intimacy and friendliness between them, seemingly of long standing, she provides the name herself —“Margot Sharpe.”

  “Yes! Mar-go Sharpe, hel-lo.”

  Shaking her hand. Closing her slender fingers in his. Leans close, to inhale the scent of her glossy black hair, threaded very lightly with silver.

  Is she a doctor? Associated with this hospital or clinic? Though not wearing a white lab coat, and there is not a laminated ID badge on her lapel.

  He has never seen this woman before, he believes. There is a sort of pale glare in her face, he can’t see her distinctly. We are something to each other. We are linked, in some way.

  He has forgotten her name, and so she tells him another time: “Margot Sharpe.”

  “Yes. ‘Mar-go Sharpe.’”

  “Though I think I resemble a grade school classmate of yours—‘Margo Madden’?—or ‘Margaret . . .’”

  She laughs, and Elihu Hoopes laughs with her, though he is utterly perplexed.

  “By saying that you resemble ‘Mar-go Madden’—or ‘Margaret’—you are not actually saying, you know, that you are not her. For if you are my old classmate, you would also resemble her. Is that correct, dear?”

  “Yes, Mr. Hoopes. That is correct. But in fact, I am not your old classmate from Gladwyne Day School, and I don’t know anything about her. My name is—”

  “Excuse me, I know your name perfectly well: ‘Mar-go Sharpe.’”

  It is an obscure sort of sexual flirtation, Eli thinks. He is both perplexed and intrigued. Here is a woman not previously known to him—(he is sure)—who seems to know him, and whom in a way he seems to know, though he has never seen her before, and is sure she has never before seen him; even if she has access to his (medical?) files, how could she possibly know about the little Madden girl whom Eli Hoopes hasn’t seen in—how long?—it might be a quarter-century.

  More seriously, the woman introduces herself as a neuropsychologist at the university, who has been working with him for several years.

  Neuropsychologist! Several years! He is stunned by this. He does not believe this.

  He laughs, dismissively. “I don’t think so, Professor.”

  “You don’t remember me, Eli?”

  “No. Maybe. I have trouble with my memory . . .”

  “How long have you had trouble with your memory, Eli?”

  He dislikes and distrusts this female professor. Neuropsychologist—what does that mean? He has had too much of neuro-. He would like to think of something other than neuro-.

  “I’m not sure. I told you—I have problems with my memory, sometimes. Could be—six weeks.”

  “Six weeks?”

  “Six months. Maybe that’s a closer estimate.”

  “And did something precipitate your problem?”

  “I think that I was ill. I had a fever, an infection. I think that I was hurt in a plane crash, but I’m not sure when this was. I think—I think I can remember being brought by ambulance to the hospital here, from Lake George. But I don’t remember when.”

  “How old were you when you became ill, do you recall?”

  “Thirty-seven.”

  “And how old are you now, Mr. Hoopes?”

  “How old? Why, thirty-seven. It hasn’t been that long—I’ve told you, six weeks.” He laughs irritably, beginning to feel impatient.

  He sees now, the woman is regarding him with an expression of intense sympathy, curiosity. She is white-skinned, as if unhealthy, her hair worn in a style slightly too young for her age—straight-cut bangs to her eyebrows, glossy black like Asian hair. She appears to be in her early forties, older than he; she wears a black long-sleeved jersey and black trousers, or leotards. (Like a dancer? Is she a dancer?) Her mouth is red, her eyebrows darkly defined. He finds her a sexually attractive woman. An inquisitive woman, a kindly woman, a strong-willed woman. A woman of whom you might say after the most fleeting of glances—Professional woman, unmarried. Hard on herself and on others. Respected by colleagues and subordinates, grudgingly.

  She has asked him a question about his age, and he has answered her. He is certain that he’s thirty-seven years old, for he can’t be younger, or he wouldn’t yet have succumbed to the mysterious fever that left him dehydrated, staggering and delirious, scarcely able to telephone for help; this occurred when he was thirty-seven. And he can’t be older—he would know, if he were older.

  Bemused he asks his interrogator, whose name he has forgotten, “How old do you think I am?” A slight, insolent emphasis on you.

  The woman with the straight-cut glossy-black hair regards him for a moment in silence. Her eyes are beautiful eyes but there is something too intense in them. The irises are so dark, there is virtually no distinction between pupil and iris. In a faltering voice the woman says, “I don’t think that I can guess, Mr. Hoopes—Eli. We are all as old or as young as we feel.”

  He laughs, mystified. Why are they having this strange conversation?—an unsettling mixture of the banal and the inexplicable. Is there someone else in the room, observing? (Is that a camera-eye turned upon them? But why would anyone be filming him?)

  “And where do you live now, Mr. Hoopes?”

  “Where do I—live now?”

  It is a profound question, like a sledgehammer to the head. He is quite stunned by it. Where does he live now; or, if he lives now, where does he live?

  The examiner sees that she has upset Elihu Hoopes, and regrets her question. Another time she touches his wrist with her forefingers, lightly. She seems to be signaling him—I will take care of you. I will comfort you. I am your special friend, please trust me, Eli!

  But Eli surprises her by saying coldly, “I live in Philadelphia. I live at Forty-Four Rittenhouse Square. I’ve lived there since 1959, and I have always lived there alone. And I think I will be going home now, if you don’t mind.”

  “But, Eli—Mr. Hoopes—we�
��ve only just begun . . .”

  “No. We’re finished.”

  He has risen to his feet, he looms above her. He has surprised and frightened her now! Almost, he could close his hands around her slender white throat—not to strangle, not even to inflict pain, but to allow the woman to know that he, Elihu Hoopes, is not a man to be trifled with. If he is an outpatient, he is still a man in the prime of his life.

  “But, Mr. Hoopes—wait . . .”

  “Am I ‘committed’ to this place? Am I ‘detained’?”

  “Certainly not, Eli . . .”

  “Am I arrested?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Then, good-bye.”

  “Please wait—”

  He does not wait. He does not have to wait. He is not committed to this place, he is not arrested. He cannot be legally apprehended and detained without a formal arrest, and there is no one here to make the arrest. No one here knows about his young cousin Gretchen and how he might have saved her but had not saved her, how he’d failed her and allowed her to die a terrible death. All that has been erased and forgotten.

  He hears the woman’s voice behind him, pleading—“Eli! Mr. Hoopes! Please come back . . .”

  “Go to hell, all of you. Fuck you.”

  He pushes through a swinging door. He does not glance back. He is suffused with a happiness so deep and so profound it leaves him trembling.

  BY THE TIME he has left the Neuropsychology Department, and taken the elevator to the first floor, his resolve has begun to diminish. He has no idea where he is. The jigsaw puzzle-piece in his skull is missing, keenly he can feel it. Strangers surround him, oblivious of him. Some are in the uniforms of medical staff, some are in civilian clothing. Some wear white lab coats over dress trousers, shirts and ties—these are physicians. He sees, on a sign outside the gleaming new building, that it is the UNIVERSITY NEUROLOGICAL INSTITUTE AT DARVEN PARK—he recalls that Darven Park is a suburb of Philadelphia, and it is approximately twenty miles from Gladwyne, where his parents and grandparents live, or had lived. And he himself now lives in—is it Rittenhouse Square, in central Philadelphia? But why is he here in a medical center in Darven Park, who has brought him here? Has he driven himself? But he can’t recall having driven to this place, and he has no idea which car, which vehicle, he might have driven.