Dreamer

by Daniel Quinn

He carefully rotated his coffee cup in its saucer while thinking this over. “I already know about myself, Agnes. I’d rather hear your explanation of what happened here.”

  “That will come when I’m a little surer of my ground. And to anticipate your next question—I’ll be surer of my ground when I’ve heard a little about Greg Donner.”

  “Christ. What do you want to know?”

  “Just tell me about yourself, Greg. Who are you?”

  He shrugged. “I’m a freelance writer. I live on . . .” He paused, blinking. “On Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. I grew up outside Des Moines, Iowa, went to college at Ames, started on a master’s at the University of Chicago, then gave it up to go into publishing. . . . “After a couple years in publishing I quit and became a freelancer.”

  “Your family background? Wife? Children?” Greg shook his head. “No wife, no children. My father was a farmer. He died of a heart attack when I was fifteen. My mother still lives on what’s left of the farm. It’s a suburb now.

  Agnes nodded. “Good. Tell me about the people close to you, the people who are important in your life.”

  “There aren’t many of those, actually. I’m a loner, which is why I prefer freelancing.”

  “No women friends? Besides Agnes Tillford.”

  “One. Ginny.”

  “Ginny,” Agnes repeated thoughtfully, as if tasting the name. “Tell me something about Ginny.”

  He sighed through his teeth. “She’s a graphic designer. A stunning beauty. Flaming red hair, green eyes, beautiful com-plexion.”

  “Ah.”

  “Ah? Ah what?”

  “She sounds attractive,” Agnes answered ambiguously. “I’m not exactly sure what a graphic designer does.”

  “It’s hard to describe. Does it matter?”

  She looked at him curiously. “You find it hard to describe?”

  “‘To someone outside the business, yes.”

  “You mean the publishing business?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You understand what she does, but you’d find it difficult to explain to me. Why is that?”

  He gave her an incredulous frown. “What is all this, Agnes? What difference does it make?”

  “I’m trying to make sure of my ground, Greg. Trust me, just for a while.”

  “All right. She’s involved in the production end of the business, and that’s not my specialty.”

  Agnes raised her brows. “Now you seem to be saying you don’t understand what she does after all.”

  “Jesus. Okay, I suppose you’re right. What happens be-tween the time I turn over a manuscript and the time the finished product comes out is pretty much a mystery to me—and the designer is the high priest of the mystery. I still don’t see what difference it makes.”

  “You don’t?” Agnes smiled. “You began by saying it was a mystery an outsider couldn’t understand and ended up saying it was a mystery to you as well. I have to consider that a notable difference.”

  He started to say something, then saw that Ella was bringing his breakfast. By the time she was finished serving him, he’d decided to skip it. “Can we get on with it?”

  “I warn you that I’ll have a lot more questions about Greg Donner’s background, but those can wait,” Agnes said. “Here’s one that can’t.”

  “Go on.”

  “How did you spend yesterday?”

  “Oh.” He sat blinking for a few moments. “Yesterday was a bit . . . complicated.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I had a deadline to meet. I was working like a madman up till seven. Then Ginny arrived.” The doctor waited patiently as Greg thought about this. “After I put the manuscript in the mail, we went out. Then we came home and went to bed. Then . . . then I woke up here.”

  Agnes was examining him with interest. “Why do you say it was complicated?”

  “Well . . . I guess the actions were simple enough.”

  “Something happened when you and Ginny went out?”

  He shook his head. “Just the feelings were complicated, Doctor.”

  “‘Doctor,’ huh? I guess that means you don’t want to talk about those feelings.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Will you answer a question about them? Were they good feelings or bad?”

  “Good.”

  “Important? Something to do with Ginny?”

  “Yes. That’s all, Doctor. It’s your turn now.” Agnes nodded but, having agreed, seemed reluctant to begin. “I expect the person you want to hear about right now is you—specifically, what the devil you’re doing here.”

  “I’d say you were absolutely right,” he replied dryly.

  “The trouble is, there’s not much I can tell you about you. The person I can tell you about is Richard Iles.”

  She seemed to be asking for Greg’s permission, and he told her to go ahead.

  “The story’s not going to seem relevant at first, and once it begins to seem relevant, you’re probably not going to like it much. But I’d appreciate it if you could contain yourself until you’ve heard it all.”

  Greg said he’d do his best.

  “Two and a half years ago,” Agnes began thoughtfully. She made it sound like a whole preamble: I’m groping for the ends of all the threads; be patient, bear with me.

  “Two and a half years ago, some affair that was being supervised in the Soviet Union by the CIA came unglued. I don’t know the details. There was some foul-up, and it was necessary to infiltrate an agent in a hurry. They looked around and—”

  “Hold on, Agnes. You grabbed the wrong tape or something. This has got nothing whatever to do with me.”

  “I told you it would sound irrelevant at first, Greg.”

  “Well, it certainly does. I’ve already run through my entire supply of willing suspension of disbelief just listening to the first sentence. What the hell does something that happened in the Soviet Union two and a half years ago have to do with me?”

  She gave him a look. “Do you want to hear this or not?”

  With a groan, he told her to go on.

  “All right. Where was I? The CIA was looking for a way to infiltrate an agent into the Soviet Union. Looking around, they discovered that a group of twenty U.S. school teachers was about to convene in Moscow to attend an international confer-ence. One of them was approached. Let’s call him Bill Smith. Bill Smith was approached and asked to give up his place to a CIA agent who would attend the conference in his name. He agreed.

  “The conference in Moscow began, with the U.S. delegates in attendance, including the false Bill Smith. For the first week, all was well. By the beginning of the second week, however, it was clear that the Soviets had learned or guessed or perhaps come to suspect that one of the delegates was a ringer. They didn’t as yet know which it was.

  “Now at this point an unfortunate event occurred in the United States—at least it was unfortunate from the CIA’s point of view. The FBI exposed a Soviet agent who had been buying low-grade military secrets from servicemen all over the country. What that meant to the CIA was this: The Soviets, lusting for vengeance and for vindication in the world press, would spare no effort to ferret out the ringer in Moscow before the end of the convention. If necessary, they figured, the Soviets would detain the entire delegation until they got him. To forestall this, it was decided that one of the delegates—not Bill Smith, of course—would be thrown to the wolves. Which delegate? There wasn’t much time to decide and apparently not much basis for discrimination; a hasty check with the State Department indicated that none of the delegates were regarded as VIPs. Finally, somehow a choice was made. Incriminating evidence of great subtlety was planted in the innocent delegate’s hotel room and duly discovered by Soviet agents, who took him into custody.”

  She paused, seeing that Greg was beginning to fidget.

  “Agnes,” he said, “give me a clue. Why am I listening to this third-rate John le Carré?”

  “Because the del
egate who was arrested was Richard Iles.”

  He smiled crookedly. “Amusing bullshit. Go on.”

  “Contrary to the CIA’s expectations, the Soviets didn’t publicize the arrest. They wanted more than the satisfaction of proclaiming their indignation to the world. They wanted to exchange Richard Iles for their own agent. Okay. When he was arrested, Iles disappeared from public view, and it was learned he was being kept in one of the Soviets’ notorious ‘psychiatric hospitals.’ I guess they made no secret of this. They apparently wanted us to know—or to assume—that Iles was being systematically destroyed by drugs and perverted psychotherapy. The negotiations for the exchange began in the winter and continued through the spring. Early in the summer two years ago they were concluded. It was planned that, on July first, Iles and the Soviet agent would be exchanged.

  “Meanwhile, apparently through powerful family connections, Richard Iles’s wife learned the story behind the arrest, and, with this knowledge to use as a club, her lawyers managed to keep abreast of what was going on. As I’ve indicated, none of this was public knowledge—the State Department was desperate to keep it from becoming public knowledge.

  “Finally July first arrived and the exchange was made, I suppose somewhere in Europe. Iles was whisked back to the U.S and installed in a government facility for examination. Mrs. Iles’s lawyers demanded access to him but were put off for a week, then for a second week and a third. When their demands became threats, it had to be admitted that Richard Iles had been returned in a damaged—perhaps irreversibly damaged—condition. After three weeks of tests and observation, the physicians and psychiatrists could only shrug.

  “Now another set of negotiations began, these between Mrs. Iles’s lawyers and the U.S. government. They didn’t take too long, because there was no question of the government going to court to defend what the CIA had done. The government would award Richard Iles four million dollars tax free and would pay all expenses for his treatment at an institution of Mrs. Iles’s choosing for as long as it might take—for life if necessary.

  “Within a few days of that settlement Richard Iles was delivered into the care of the Glenhaven Oaks Sanatorium. To be specific, he became my patient.”

  Agnes paused as Ella appeared to clear away the dishes. “How was everything?” the waitress asked.

  “Fine,” Greg replied dully. He barely remembered eating.

  “More coffee?”

  He nodded. When she was gone, he said, “So?”

  “So. For a year and a half we looked after Richard Iles. He was what the nurses call an easy patient—pleasant, never any trouble, undemanding. But also completely withdrawn, com-pletely unresponsive. Until one morning he woke up and gave everyone a hell of a shock by announcing that he wasn’t a school teacher named Richard Iles, he was a freelance writer named Greg Donner.”

  Greg glared at her, his lips working angrily. “That,” he said, “is absolute, unadulterated crap.”

  “I’m sorry, Greg. It’s not all crap. I can’t personally vouch for the story of Richard Iles’s arrest and imprisonment in Russia; for all I know, it may well be crap—though why anyone would invent such a tale is beyond my understanding. But there is definitely no doubt that a person identified as Richard Iles was admitted to this institution a year and a half ago. And I’m afraid there’s also no doubt that you were that person.”

  He shook his head stubbornly. “No, believe me, Agnes, that part is completely and utterly impossible. A year and a half ago I was right there in Chicago—and I’ve been there ever since, right up to last night.”

  “Right in your apartment on Lake Shore Drive?”

  “That’s right.”

  “The one with a telephone Ma Bell’s never heard of.”

  He glared at her. “I’ve never ever been to Russia.”

  “That may be so. That’s just what we were told.”

  “I’m not married.”

  “That also may be so. The woman who visits you here may be a fraud. I never asked her to produce a marriage certificate.”

  He closed his eyes and breathed through his nose for a minute. “I don’t accept it.”

  “And I don’t blame you for not accepting it. In your place, I wouldn’t accept it either.”

  “But you do accept it.”

  “You have to understand, Greg. I’ve seen you sitting right here at this table day after day, for a year and a half. This is your table—Richard Iles’s table. I’ve seen you and talked to you hundreds of times. You spent an hour in my office yesterday. It would be impossible for me not to accept what’s happened. You went to bed Richard Iles and woke up Gregory Donner.”

  “What was I doing in your office yesterday?”

  “Nothing you haven’t done a hundred times before. Sitting. Answering questions when asked, but mostly just sitting.”

  “That’s completely impossible.”

  “It seems impossible, because you have a different memory of how you spent yesterday.”

  “That’s right. Where the hell did I get that memory if I was sitting in your office?”

  Agnes nodded. “That’s a point, all right. Would you like to hear my hypothesis?”

  “I don’t promise to accept it, but I’d like to hear it.”

  “Promises aren’t required,” she said with a smile, which slowly faded as she gathered her thoughts.

  “You presented us with an unusual problem right from the beginning. You came to us without a case history. We had no idea what had happened to you in Russia and no way of finding out. This made it impossible to arrive at anything like a reliable diagnosis of your condition—and, without a reliable diagnosis, any course of treatment is just well-meant improvisation. In other words, we felt that all we dared do was keep an eye on you until we had some idea of what we were up against.”

  “You were by no means a zombie. You were unfailingly polite and would discuss any neutral subject. But you seemed to be a person without an interior life. You had no memories, no feelings, no worries, no thoughts, no desires, no anxieties, no expectations. It was our opinion that, left alone, you probably would have thoughtlessly starved to death.”

  “Okay. So what’s your theory?”

  “It’s still pretty crude at this point, I’ll admit, but I assume you want to hear it all the same.”

  “You know I do.”

  “Okay. Here goes . . . Most of us at one time or another have to deal with traumatic experiences—and most of us man-age it pretty well, in very ordinary ways. We distract ourselves from the past, we find new things to focus on, we keep busy, we make plans for the future, and so on. These are all functions of the ego; that is, they’re deliberate policies executed consciously. Usually this works fine; we put the trauma behind us and go on. But apparently the trauma you experienced as a prisoner in Russia was one that Richard Iles couldn’t handle this way. It was too massive—it blotted out the horizon, blocked off all access to the future. He was theoretically free to resume his life but wasn’t up to tackling it as a deliberate policy executed consciously. In other words, his ego was paralyzed. But, you see, even though his ego was paralyzed, his unconscious wasn’t. His unconscious took on the problem and solved it in its own way and to its own satisfaction. In effect, it said, ‘All right, you can’t go on with your life as Richard Iles; that ego is finished, useless. So let’s give you a new one. We’ll start from the ground up: a new man, a new name, a new background, a new occupation—a whole new set of memories to live with that doesn’t include any disastrous trips to Moscow. Okay? The ego that calls itself Richard Iles is going to go to sleep now—and is never going to wake up. Someone else is going to wake up in his place—a whole new person I’ve put together for you, by the name of Gregory Donner. Let’s see how you do with that.’”

  “Jesus,” Greg whispered and shook his head. “Are you telling me my entire life has been a dream?”

  “Not your life, Greg, your past.”

  “Is there a distinction?”

&nbs
p; “Of course there is. In a very real sense, everyone’s past is a dream; the past isn’t a thing you can reach back and touch; it’s just something in your head. Your life, which is what’s going on here and now at this table, is as real as anyone’s. And believe me, your life looks a hell of a lot more promising today than it did yesterday.”

  He laughed mirthlessly. “Thanks to my helpful unconscious.“ He closed his eyes and slumped back heavily into the booth. “I’m suddenly very tired. Exhausted.”

  “It’s no wonder,” Agnes said.

  While walking back to his room, he said, “Agnes.”

  “Yes?”

  He shook his head. “Does it really make any sense to call you Agnes? I just met you a couple hours ago.”

  “That’s really not true, you know. I think you’ve got to trust your unconscious on this. It told you I was Greg Donner’s friend—and I accept that. If I can accept it, why shouldn’t you?”

  “But are you the same person?”

  “Greg, we’ve spent hundreds of hours together here. Your unconscious didn’t make me up. The Agnes it gave you in Chicago was the Agnes it knew in Kentucky.”

  “Okay. I’m glad of that. Look, what I wanted to ask you . . . You said Richard Iles had a wife.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you have to tell her about this . . . development?”

  “Not if you’d rather I didn’t. My first obligation is to you, of course.”

  “I would emphatically rather you didn’t.”

  “Then I won’t. Here you are.”

  Greg paused, staring at the door. “There was something else I meant to ask you . . . Oh, yeah. When I got up this morning, my door was locked. I mean from the outside. Why is that?”

  Agnes smiled. “I don’t really know. Richard Iles asked that it be locked. He didn’t explain why.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ll tell the nurse to leave it unlocked from now on.”

  “Thanks.” He opened the door.

  “Is there anything you need? Anything you’d like?”

  He looked around blankly for a moment. “Yeah. Would it be possible to have someone get my clothes from Chicago?”

  Her smile faltered briefly and then was back in place. “We’ll take care of everything. You have a good nap now.”