The Man Without a Shadow

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Thank you, Professor, for changing my life.

  And my life—thank you!

  WHICH OCCASION IS this, and which city—Margot isn’t certain.

  She has become disoriented. Her throat is very dry.

  The numbness in her tongue, lips, and extremities has never really faded. The numbness since the terrible telephone call, and the elderly widow’s death.

  And never to see E.H. since that call.

  And never to see E.H. again.

  Mrs. Mateson died of a massive stroke, Margot has been told. A series of small strokes, and then a massive stroke. A massive stroke is a bolt of lightning. Instantaneously the brain is immobilized, consciousness is extinguished. The door is slammed shut, all is darkness within.

  She hears her name pronounced. It’s the public name—Professor Margot Sharpe.

  She has been lavishly introduced. Streams of words like colored confetti, to which she barely listens. For she is so very lonely, they have taken him from her.

  She is on her feet. She is not walking steadily. Observers will note how she pauses, staring out into the audience as if looking for—who?

  A rocking buzzing sensation in her ears—not a rush of blood, but applause.

  Her topics are “Memory, Sensory Registers, and Retrograde Amnesia in a 66-Year-Old Amnesiac”—“New Memory Circuits in the Brain of an Amnesiac”—“Memory Deficit and Compensation in Amnesia”—“E.H.: Mapping the Brain of the Amnesiac.” With the advent of fMRI imaging in the 1990s there is a riches of new material for research and even a traditionalist like Margot Sharpe collaborates now with neurophysicists.

  She has been elected honorary president, North American Association of Women Scientists. At her keynote address in a drafty ballroom in a refrigerated high-rise hotel in Toronto with a view of steely-frozen Lake Ontario from her room on the fortieth floor she receives a standing ovation that jolts tears to her eyes.

  “Margot Sharpe”—the name seems to echo, like a name out of a revered past.

  “Margot Sharpe”—it is a melancholy name, a lonely name.

  Waves of applause. That churning sensation of blood in the ears.

  If they are indeed mocking Margot Sharpe, such mockery is indistinguishable from the highest praise and adulation. Another distinguished award—and a heavy brass medallion to go with it. (Damned medallion is too heavy to pack in her suitcase. Of necessity she leaves it in a wastebasket in her hotel room, discreetly wrapped in tissues.) Membership in the National Academy of Scientists—in which there are very few women.

  Margot Sharpe is not the only scientist to be receiving an award at the May conference of the American Society of Arts and Sciences in Boston but hers is one of the major awards, second in her profession only to a Nobel Prize.

  Very straight and very still she is sitting in the first row of seats in the vast amphitheater. Very straight and her head straight and high as if there were an iron rod affixed to her head, her neck, her spinal column. She is swallowing somewhat compulsively. Her mouth is so very dry. “Professor Sharpe?”—she has forgotten that this is an awards ceremony. For a moment she seems baffled by the source of the applause which seems to rain down upon her head from all directions.

  Oh, the “award” is so heavy! A twelve-inch-high crystal plaque with MARGOT SHARPE engraved on it, given to her by an earnest young scientist, so much heavier than Margot expects that she nearly drops it as the audience stares in fascinated horror. Yet she smiles, it is a rictus of a smile, and with both hands hoists the plaque high so the award-givers can take their innocent pleasure in seeing it so exalted: a heroic Winged Victory made of pure crystal with a polished wood base.

  At first she speaks earnestly if somewhat haltingly. Then, with more assurance. Almost, a kind of eloquence.

  . . . as a young graduate student. In the pioneering “memory lab” of the great Milton Ferris . . .

  Then, her voice begins to quaver. She can’t seem to catch her breath, she is hyperventilating. It’s as if she were shaking in a sudden gust of wind. Her face seems to crumple like a sheet of very white paper crumpled in a fist. Her words are faltering, lurching.

  She has come here to acknowledge—He is my life. Without E.H., my life would have been to no purpose.

  All that I have achieved as a scientist. All that I am known to you for. All, a consequence of E.H. in my life.

  I am not exaggerating. I am speaking the frankest truth as a scientist and as a woman.

  He was the one who has suffered—not me. As others did, I saw an opportunity. A scientist is one who sees—and seizes—an opportunity. My career is a consequence of a thirty-seven-year-old Philadelphian contracting encephalitis in July 1964. Our science is built upon such sacrifices and opportunities. Our science is cruel in its mimicry of life which is its subject.

  Her notes lie on the podium, ignored. The audience is very still. Tears shine in her eyes. Her makeup is radiant, or feverish. Her skin is white-powdered as a geisha. Her eyes are feverish.

  He was my entire life. There has been no life for me apart from “E.H.”

  This award you are giving me, I am accepting in his name only.

  It is a posthumous award. But I thank you.

  And yet, she does not end. A sort of madness has come over her, she continues to speak. Lifts her left hand, to show the staring audience a silver ring on her finger.

  This ring my husband’s gift to me as his ring was my gift to him. We were married for many years—privately. No one has known—until now . . .

  Her voice trails off into silence. She has been leaning on the podium to steady herself, therefore leaning most of her weight on one leg, and now when she tries to straighten her back and stand straight, she finds that she is semi-stricken: a tight, pinched nerve runs the length of her right leg, from buttock to mid-knee. She feels faint, panicked. She seems to have lost her place in a prepared speech on the subject of thirty years of experimentation involving the amnesiac E.H., which originated in Milton Ferris’s laboratory . . . Stepping from the podium she stumbles. Quickly someone comes to her, to steady her.

  “Professor Sharpe!—watch this step.”

  It is a blur and a buzz and through it the stricken woman moves like a somnambulist who dares not wake. Scarcely is she aware that her tech assistant Hai-ku has stepped forward to intervene. Excuse me. I am Professor Sharpe’s assistant. I will take her to her hotel room.

  And when next morning she does wake, abruptly and with a taste of hot bile in her mouth, she sees that she is lying fully clothed on an unfamiliar bed, a quilt pulled up to her neck; she’d been able only to kick off her shoes. A lamp is burning, redundant now in daylight, and on a bedside table is a large, crystal figure turned on its side as in a drunken spill.

  What is it? She has no idea. She is far too exhausted to sit up, to lift the plaque and read the engraved inscription.

  DESPERATELY SHE’D BEGGED But where have you put him? Please tell me.

  And the sister said carefully All you need to know is that our brother Eli is in a safe environment.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  There’s a female voice buoyant as a balloon—“Eli, hello!”

  Bounces back his own balloon-buoyant deep-baritone—“Hel-lo.”

  Quick exchange. Like tennis. Causes his eyelids to open, quick. (Has he been asleep? Only way he can tell is looking out the window: if there’s detail, intricacy of forms clearly visible, evident textures—very likely not a dream.) Must be on guard in this place new and unknown to him.

  “And what is your last name, Eli?”

  “You’re looking at the damn ID bracelet, ma’am, why’re you asking? What’s it say there—‘Eli Custer’?”

  “Please tell me your last name, Eli.”

  “Last name meaning it’s the last damn name I will have, it’s ‘Hoopes.’ As in ‘jumping through.’”

  She laughs. She is a stranger yet she seems to know him well and to appreciate his wit which is important.

  If they l
ike you, they will not hurt you.

  They will not hurt you as badly as they could.

  “And what is your date of birth, Eli?”

  “‘Date-of-birth’: Four—eighteen—twenty-seven.”

  Before she can ask the next stupid question—“Want to know my Social Security number, ma’am?—120-28-1416. Telephone number at home—(215) 582-4491. Number at Hoopes and Associates—(215) 661-7937. Number of our house in Bolton Landing—(518) 301-9928.”

  Rapidly these numbers flow from his tongue. Laughs to see the expression in the stranger’s face.

  “Thanks, Eli—that’s wonderful. I don’t need to know these but I would like to know—today’s date?”

  He pauses. He is thinking. This is a trick question, he may have been asked before. If he answers too quickly, he will make a mistake. And so he pauses, and he thinks. His strategy is to reply as the other person expects him to reply but in this case he has no idea what the other person, a stranger whom he has never seen before, expects him to reply.

  Fact is, “today” is just—today. At the same time each damn day is a new today with a new date at the top of the newspaper page.

  On a nearby table, a newspaper. By the print font he can identify—New York Times. Very likely this is “his” New York Times for it is not neatly composed. Its pages are scattered like pages of print that have been voraciously devoured, then pushed aside and forgotten. If he’d known he would be quizzed on the God-damn date he’d have kept the newspaper closer but now it’s too late, can’t lean over to peer at the top of the page for the lady-nurse, he supposes that is what the woman is, in her pale green smock and matching trousers, is closely watching.

  Squints at the window. White-glaring snow beyond, which is a clue.

  Yet, no Christmas decorations on the walls of this place. No New Year’s.

  “Must be”—(calmly he is thinking, calculating, with his gentlemanly smile)—“January 1966. Because I’ve been sick for a while, I think. Since last July.”

  “You think that today might be a day in January 1966, Mr. Hoopes?”

  “I think it might be but there’s no absolute way of knowing—is there? For all that we know, we’ve been told. The great John Locke believed that each mind is a tabula rasa. And David Hume argued something very similar. All that we know has been directed to us from the outside world, where appearances are deceiving, which ‘lies before us like a land of dreams.’ And so, yes—today might be a day in February 1966 or it might be a day in”—(he laughs, he is very witty, he likes to entertain the nursing staff who laugh so readily at his jokes)—“February 1996 and most of us are dead, and gone to this ‘better place.’”

  DISTRESSED AND FRETTING. Why are they not allowing him to walk! On a gurney, he’s being wheeled. Like an elderly stricken patient, wheeled. Quite a ruckus he has raised, having to change from his own clothes into hospital attire—“Ties in the back, Mr. Hoopes. Like this.”

  Repeatedly he asks where the hell they are taking him and repeatedly they tell him. And he asks, and they tell him.

  At last one of the interns has the inspired idea to print on a card, in large caps:

  OUTPATIENT SURGERY. COLONOSCOPY.

  LESS THAN 1 HOUR

  The excitable patient is given this card but soon, somehow he has lost this card.

  Despite his protests he’s being transported somewhere. On a rattling gurney, being wheeled. To the morgue?—is he being taken to the morgue? Protests he isn’t dead yet.

  Trying to sit up, trying to sit up, repeatedly trying to sit up, and repeatedly an attendant urges him back down.

  Now trying to find a vein in his (left) arm. God damn, that hurts and he’s angry.

  Trying to find a vein in his (right) arm. God damn, that hurts and he’s angry!

  Trying to calm him. Assure him.

  Just a pro-ce-dure. Not an operation. Like they do here all the time, Mr. H’ps.

  Sorry Mr. H’ps. Just wait here OK?

  And later checking back, with a tug at his wrist—You OK, Mr. H’ps?? Waitin out here?

  Soon as he’s alone he is on his feet. Grunting, muttering. No idea where the hell he is but needing to escape.

  Chill air at his buttocks, limp rubbery balls and penis—God-damn smock he’s wearing swings open. So embarrassing!

  And his thigh muscles, atrophied. And his gut, a little hard round drum where he expects to see flat hard muscles.

  Careless with the God-damn needle they put in his arm, a “line” in the crook of his arm.

  Except his shoes have been taken from him, ridiculous slipper-socks on his bony feet. If he’s anywhere in Philadelphia he can walk to Rittenhouse Square, no problem. From there, pack for the lake. Badly yearning for the lake. Solitude, sanity. Lapping of lake, calming heartbeat. It has been months—(he calculates)—since he has been at Lake George, last summer when he’d gotten stupidly sick and must be five, six months now at least.

  At the end of the corridor is a high window, ceiling twelve feet above. Hammered tin, white. But not clean-white. The white of opacity, time.

  At a window, standing. A high window, and the exterior of the glass is streaked with rain.

  He is waiting for—what? Waiting.

  If this is a jail it is a strange jail with such high ceilings and his legs unshackled. The needle has been pulled from the crook of his arm, blood splattered on the floor.

  Nigger lover! Nigger lover! Shuts his eyes, there are too many faces. The profound truth is, he has not loved enough—“niggers,” “whites.” Has he ever loved anyone . . .

  He wants another chance, he is thinking. Another chance at life.

  Mr. H’ps! Where you goin! Look-it what you done to that IV line, ain’ that hurtin you? Oh man.

  Mr. Hoopes, please lie down here. You pulled out your needle Mr. Hoopes. We need to get this line started Mr. Hoopes.

  His muscles resist. A kind of spasm of resistance. Shoves the nurses. Uses his knee. He is panting. He is cursing—Fuck fuck fuck you all. Fucking hands on me, I’ll kill you. No weak God-damned child any longer. This time he will defend himself.

  Mr. H’ps? H’lo?

  He is fighting them, but they are stronger. Injected with toxic-hot liquid in the crook of his arm.

  Damn needle is stinging, they found a new vein and a toxic-hot liquid is coursing into it. They will send an X-ray tube up into his gut, many yards of his tangled gut, through his rectum. A radioactive implant like the one in his brain when they sawed through his skull to excise the fever-fire.

  Why are his jaws so poorly shaven. God damn his hand shakes. Not forty years old and in the prime of his life but sick-feeling in his gut, something terrible and irrevocable has happened. Waiting for her to come for him—his aunt.

  Lucinda Mateson, his father’s sister. Where is she? Why isn’t he at home? Where is his home?

  He is the one to find her. Like a crumpled doll fallen from her chair by the TV. He could recognize her without “seeing” her. Has not “seen” her in years. You recognize people by their voices. Their mannerisms. Knows at once, his fingers against the artery at her neck—no pulse. Dial 911. Call for an ambulance speaking calmly. I think that my aunt has suffered a stroke. The address is Four-Six-Six Parkside, Gladwyne.

  Wandered outside and by the time the ambulance arrived he has forgotten he’d summoned the ambulance and why.

  Leading him stumbling from the house and his things left behind. Can’t remain there any longer by himself but why? He is protesting his aunt Lucinda will wonder where he is.

  Eli, you will stay with me. Please Eli, you know me—Rosalyn. I am your sister Rosalyn. Eli?

  Shocked that Rosalyn looks so much older than her age. A woman of no more than thirty-four yet face lined and anxious, has she been ill? Cancer? Why doesn’t he know this?

  She is weeping in his arms. Someone has died—who?

  Oh Eli we will take care of you. Dear, dear Eli this is so—this is so very sad . . .

  Then he re
alizes, the woman is an imposter. His sister has died, and an imposter has taken her place.

  Pushes against her—Go away, go away to Hell where you belong.

  And now here, at the high window. The needle ripped from his arm, and the damned wound bleeding.

  And now, outside. Rear of the bright-lighted building. Rain, stinging rain, ice-pellets striking his face. The pavement is puddled, his stocking feet are wet, God-damned ridiculous, a man’s dignity such a precarious thing, yet he can move swiftly—terror has made him cunning as a hunted animal.

  Hides in doorways. Running, stumbling. His breath comes quick and shallow, there is something wrong with his lungs. Bacterial infection, can’t draw a deep breath. Reasoning if he can recognize a street sign, a landmark—he can make his way home.

  To Rittenhouse Square, that is his home. Fourteenth floor.

  Or, Bolton Landing. It is Bolton Landing—Lake George—to which he really wants to flee, except he has misplaced his car key and has no idea where his car is, in any case. Or which car, which vehicle. Tries to remember but God damn has no idea.

  And no money, his wallet is gone. And these paper socks, shredded now. Bony bare feet, has to laugh, rich white man, rich white family, what you deserve, slaveholders in your Hoopes blood predating the pious Philadelphia Quakers, long before Philadelphia and the Abolitionists, in the original slave colony Virginia. Would flee to the Adirondacks if he could find his wallet, his car, his car keys, if he could recognize one of these streets, or landmarks—but he isn’t sure where he is, or even if this is Philadelphia. And when—which time in his life this is.

  No journey, and no path. No wisdom, only emptiness. But there is no emptiness.

  No wisdom, and no Buddha.

  Waiting.