The Reflection

by Hugo Wilcken

  For want of anything better to do, I picked up the pages I’d written about Abby. I’d had a notion to write more, and glanced briefly at what I’d already done. The sentences and thoughts seemed disjointed now, although they had not appeared like that when I’d written them. That story about the friend who’d drowned in the lake: it was a shock to realize that I’d gotten it quite wrong. It hadn’t been Abby who’d told me about that at all. It had been a patient, Miss Fregoli. The one who had later committed suicide. It shook me that I could make a mistake like that.

  My thoughts drifted from Abby to Miss Fregoli then back to Abby again. I remembered the moment I’d known she’d been unfaithful to me. A letter in the morning mail, which wouldn’t have aroused any suspicion if she hadn’t hurriedly put it in her bag without even opening it. Even then I hadn’t realized, it had only hit me with full force an hour later, in the subway, while reading about a case of adultery and murder in the Times. Suddenly everything had felt flat, devoid of emotional substance, slowed down. I’d once been knocked down by a car on Park Avenue: this felt the same. If I’d gone back and confronted Abby there and then, she would have told me the truth. Instead I’d let it fester. I’d followed her one day and seen her with Speelman, walking arm in arm, talking gaily, barely aware of the world around them. It was as if I’d opened the door to their bedroom.

  I tried to imagine her last days. It occurred to me that if she’d had a tumor removed from her trachea, she probably wouldn’t have been able to speak. She’d have been rendered mute. “Yours was the kind of ambition that meant at some point stepping into a void,” I now found myself writing. “With me it was quite different. I’d work methodically, without the possibility of error, until I’d gotten to where I thought I wanted to be.” I stopped, and knew instinctively that if I looked up now, I’d see the woman from across the courtyard. Once again I felt she was staring directly at me, although at this distance her eyes were merely two black points. I felt compelled to get off my bed and walk across the room to the window. I opened it and put my hands to the bars. At the same time I was wondering, for the first time, who had been here in this room before me. Whoever he was, he too had probably spent hours staring out this window. Had he seen the woman? Had she stared back? I thought I saw her slightly shake her head and then, more obviously, raise her hands in an almost supplicatory manner. It wasn’t clear to me what she’d meant with the gesture, if she’d meant anything at all, but I couldn’t help feeling that it was directed at me. There was a presence between us, a ghost. It was “Dr. Manne.” But he had withered to almost nothing. He was someone without potential, without a future, not a person at all, since people live in their future. I turned away and sat back on my bed, once again locked into the absolute solitude I’d always feared and desired.

  5

  “He’s coming back to me.”

  “Who is?”

  “Stephen Smith. He’s been coming back to me. All night.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “You were right. He comes from Ohio. He doesn’t miss it. Sometimes he misses the feeling of space.”

  “Who are his parents?”

  “I don’t know. I think his mother died. When he was very young. His father might be alive. There was a meeting, when he was a child. His Dad was drunk.”

  “Who raised him?”

  “Foster parents. Kind people. In the end, it wasn’t enough.”

  “Why did he leave?”

  “Trouble with the law. Nothing too serious. He’d been caught once and let go. But was told it’d be jail next time. He jumped a train and knew he’d never be back.”

  “Tell me more. Tell me about New York.”

  “New York was tough. The thieving wasn’t easy. I tried my hand at pickpocketing. In the stations and subway. I was no good at it.”

  “What did you do next?”

  “I kept at it. But there were other pickpockets. Gangs of them, guarding their patch. One day they chased me, bashed me half to death.”

  “Bashed you unconscious?”

  “Yes. I woke up by the docks. A kind gentleman took me to a hospital. They bandaged me up.”

  “What happened next?”

  “The gentleman got me cleaned up and bought me lunch.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Esterhazy.”

  “Did you stay in touch with him?”

  “No. Years later, I thought I saw him in the street. I followed him for a block or two. Because after buying me lunch that day, he’d given me money. And I’d wanted to pay him back. But when I finally caught up with the man, it turned out to be someone else. It wasn’t Esterhazy after all.”

  “After the hospital, what did you do?”

  “I had the money. It was spring. I figured if I slept in the park, the money might last me a few weeks. Long enough for me to get better.”

  “And that’s what you did.”

  “Yes. But it was never the same, after the bashing.”

  “In what way?”

  “The headaches. I couldn’t concentrate so well. I’d lose my temper.”

  “Did you work?”

  “I got jobs, down by the docks. They never lasted long.”

  “Where did you live?”

  “I moved around. Cheap hotels. Friends’ places. Parks.”

  “Did you ever go back to hospital?”

  “Once, yes.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Why not?”

  “It pains me to think of it.”

  “Are you Stephen Smith?”

  “I’m David Manne.”

  “Are you Stephen Smith?”

  “No.”

  “Are you Stephen Smith?”

  “I’m tired. I haven’t slept. Please leave me now.”

  The squeak of the linoleum, the door opening and closing, the turn of the key: I was alone again. It was true what I’d said about being tired. Just talking to the doctor had exhausted me, although it had been no effort at all to come up with the story of Stephen Smith. On the contrary, the details had flowed out of me, almost of their own accord. Of course, I now realized, I’d drawn on past case histories of patients of mine, so many of whom had spent time as a vagrant. On top of the tiredness, or because of it, I could feel the kick of euphoria. I could have easily botched it. Instead, my performance had seemed real enough, to me at least. I knew I had to pay attention. It was common enough for patients to fake it, to humor their doctor, for whatever reason. A good psychiatrist would view any surrender with suspicion. In the coming days and weeks, I could look forward to continued probing from Dr. Peters. I’d have to carefully construct my capitulation.

  There was something else to the euphoria as well. Once I’d finally decided to ditch Manne, I’d felt liberated. And Smith had mysteriously come to life. I’d sensed it even before the doctor had entered the room. It wasn’t only that Stephen Smith was now my best chance of getting out. I’d begun to have hopes for him. After all, he was starting from nowhere. He was someone who could still invent himself, begin afresh. On the face of it, Manne had a lot more going for him. Manne was educated, a professional; Smith was a homeless man, with a history of mental instability and suicide attempts. But Manne had made choices that had remorselessly narrowed his horizons, until finally they’d vanished altogether. For Manne, there could be no real continuation, except in a sort of living death.

  “Tell me about David Manne.”

  “I don’t know anything about him.”

  “Are you David Manne?”

  “No. I’m Stephen Smith.”

  “Who is David Manne?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then tell me about someone you do know.”

  “Like who?”

  “Like the photo. On your bedside table. Who is she?”

  “Her name is Marie.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  “Marie? She was a few years older than me. It was after the
war. The refugee boats were coming in. Down by the docks there were two big warehouses converted into dormitories. One for men, one for women and children. Refugees could stay there free, for a week. I was working at the Coimbra Shipping office opposite.”

  “She was a refugee?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “I came across her, sitting on a suitcase in the street. She’d spent her week in the dormitory. After, she had nowhere to go.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I bought her a cup of coffee. Then I found her somewhere to stay for a few nights.”

  “Did you see her again?”

  “I took her to the movies one night. She didn’t talk about herself. After, I asked her if she wanted to get a drink. I took her to bed, in my room at a boarding house.”

  “Was that the only time?”

  “No. We wound up living together for a while. She had a husband in Europe. She didn’t know whether he was dead or alive. So we pretended to be married. We rented two rooms in a street near the docks. For a while we were happy. Then I started imagining things. One night I threatened her with a broken bottle. She called the police.”

  “What did they do?”

  “They restrained me. They got a doctor. He committed me.”

  “What was the doctor’s name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Could it have been Manne?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was it Manne?”

  “No.”

  “It was Manne, wasn’t it?”

  The woman on the balcony disappeared. Perhaps she’d moved out, perhaps she’d taken a vacation, perhaps it was too cold to stand on the balcony any more. But I couldn’t help thinking that it was because of me. She’d vanished at the very moment I’d given Manne up—I felt the connection even if I couldn’t see what it might be. A week at least had gone by, and although my hopes of seeing her again diminished with each day, it didn’t stop me from looking out the window. But after a while, it started to feel right that she was no longer there. I saw that final supplicatory gesture of hers as a sort of goodbye.

  I was astonished to have a visitor one day. His name was Peter Untermeyer, and he’d been a psychiatry intern with me at Bellevue, years ago. I’d only seen him once since, a chance meeting in the street. He’d been in uniform, I now remembered, and was just back from Europe. I’d asked him what he was up to and he’d told me about a psychiatric unit he was helping to set up. We’re looking for people right now, he’d said, doctors and psychiatrists to join the team. Perhaps I might be interested? I’d followed him to an office in a ramshackle building in Turtle Bay, on one of the streets they’d later razed for the UN headquarters. He’d been all apologetic about the premises and had said they’d soon be moving uptown, now that the army funding had come through. After introducing me to a few of his colleagues there, he’d outlined some crackpot psychiatric model they were working on, the details of which I could no longer recall. I remembered saying I’d think about it, that I’d call, although I never had—at that time I’d still entertained hopes for my Park Avenue career. And that had been the last time I’d had anything to do with him.

  Why on earth was Untermeyer here in front of me now? He was asking me questions about Stephen Smith, and I was blankly regurgitating what I’d already recounted to the doctor. He was looking straight into my eyes, seemingly without a flicker of recognition. Could he really not see who I was? Had I changed so much? I let the Stephen Smith persona ramble on, while I tried to pull together an idea of what could have led Untermeyer here. Perhaps he was already working in the hospital. Perhaps he’d heard the story of a patient supposedly impersonating someone he vaguely remembered from student days. Intrigued, he’d asked Dr. Peters if he could see the patient … But I couldn’t quite make that story stand. Yes, he might not recognize me had he not been expecting to see me. After all, I myself might not have recognized Untermeyer had I simply crossed by him in the corridor. But a one-on-one meeting with the background I’d just dreamed up—no, it was impossible, regardless of how much I’d changed.

  As he took leave of me, I searched his face for some hint of double play. But I could see nothing in that smooth expanse, no sense of the mind behind it. For a moment I considered blurting out: “Don’t you remember me? Can’t you see who I really am?” But I held back. Even if I couldn’t piece together why, I had this feeling that Untermeyer’s appearance was some kind of trick. Perhaps a sly means of getting me to admit that I didn’t really believe in Stephen Smith.

  Sitting on my bed, staring at the door that Untermeyer had just closed, I realized that if I were to persuade the doctor that I wasn’t shamming, then I’d have to go some way toward persuading myself as well. I had to mourn the death of Manne, while at the same time assist in the birth of Smith. Right now, the two felt equally distant from me. Equally unreal. I was located somehow in a void between them, observing both as if they were someone else.

  Then I’d find myself turning inward. And I’d search. And there was nothing.

  “David Manne.”

  “What of him?”

  “Who was he? Tell me about him.”

  “He was my doctor. He visited me in the hospital. One day he came to discharge me. They didn’t want him to. There’d been an argument. Finally I was allowed out, on condition that I saw Dr. Manne once a week.”

  “Which was what you did?”

  “For a time, yes.”

  “How did you learn so much about him?”

  “We met on Friday afternoons. One day, he let slip that mine was his last appointment of the week. Afterward, I waited outside and saw him come out of the building. I followed him into the subway and home. So now I knew where he lived.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I came back the next morning. I waited at the corner. I’d only been there a few minutes when I saw him come out again. He went to a diner across the street. He ordered eggs, bacon, toast, coffee. Later, I learned that he ordered the same thing at the same diner, every day. Anyway, he finished his breakfast, paid the check, and left. And I followed him.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to know who he was. How he passed his time. He knew everything about me, but I knew nothing about him. I thought it was only fair.”

  “So what did he do?”

  “Nothing special. He bought a newspaper. He went walking in the Park. Later on he took a subway downtown. He wandered around the Village for a while and stopped for lunch. He did some window-shopping and bought a book at a secondhand bookstore. He took the subway back uptown, went to another diner, read his book over dinner. Then he went back home.”

  “How often did you follow him?”

  “Every weekend. But it was mostly the same. Breakfast, a walk in the Park, a little window-shopping or maybe a museum or gallery. It never varied much.”

  “Did he ever meet anyone?”

  “Sometimes. There were young women. I remember one occasion. He’d gone into a phone booth and made a call. Which surprised me, because he’d never done that before. Afterward, he’d ridden the subway up to the West Eighties or Nineties. He’d gone to a bar where a woman was waiting for him, in a booth by the window. She was young, well dressed, although not especially beautiful. At first they’d both seemed uneasy, embarrassed. But as time passed I could see them relaxing, leaning into each other. I watched them as they talked nonstop for about an hour. Eventually, it was time to go. He paid and then they were on the sidewalk, still talking, but I couldn’t catch what they were saying. I could just hear the tone of the voices, which sounded melancholy. Things were winding up. They were making the goodbye gestures. She kind of pecked him on the cheek. There was a pause, as if they both knew something else was needed. Then he almost lunged at her. They were in each other’s arms for a good minute or so. After that she walked off, without looking back. Manne just stood there for quite a while. I thought I could see tears on his cheeks but
I wasn’t sure. He was badly shaken up, though, I was sure enough of that. He wandered back down into the subway, but I didn’t follow. Instead I went off in the other direction. I knew I had to find out who the woman was.”

  “And did you?”

  “Not then. But later, yes. She was Abby Speelman, Manne’s former wife.”

  I couldn’t stop puzzling over the Untermeyer visit. No scenario I came up with really explained it. There was that odd coincidence: on the night in my apartment with Esterhazy in my bed, I had thought of Untermeyer, for the first time in years. I’d wondered whether the psychiatric unit he’d been setting up had had something to do with the Stevens Institute. And yet why on earth should I have been wondering that? Why should I have dragged up from my memory a chance meeting from long ago? I reflected upon this conundrum on and off for days. Why should Untermeyer have sprung to mind, and how was that connected with his subsequent reappearance? But wasn’t this exactly the kind of coincidence that the deluded always fixated upon? Once more, the trouble of having no outside reference points, no guiding stars. The awful necessity of recreating the world from your own mind. At the same time, your sense of self diminishes, dissipated into the very world you’ve created.

  Perhaps Dr. Peters didn’t actually believe I was Stephen Smith. My supposed suicide attempt, my “paranoid” beliefs, my seemingly bizarre behavior had all led to my being sent to a mental ward after the accident, but the “Stephen Smith” story was some new kind of therapy. A means of resolving personality problems at a remove, through the creation of a different persona … I’d vaguely heard of such a therapy, through journal articles I’d skimmed over. As thoroughly unlikely as this scenario was, it at least had the merit of making sense of the Untermeyer visit. He’d have known my identity, but had simply refrained from saying so. If this were the case, how should I now proceed? I sat there musing and losing myself down myriad paths of reasoning and fantasy for what seemed like hours, without ever coming to any firm conclusions.