“Sure. Go on.”
“Well, Charlie, I’ve been wondering if it just might have something to do with the other side of that wall of amnesia I’ve never been able to cross. This is the first time in my—well, not in my life, maybe, but in the three years I remember of it, that I’ve had recurrent dreams. I wonder if—if my memory may not be trying to get through.
“Did I ever have a set of red and black chessman, for instance? Or, in any school I went to, did they have intramural basketball or baseball between red teams and black teams, or—or anything like that?”
Charlie thought for a long moment before he shook his head. “No,” he said, “nothing like that. Of course there’s red and black in roulette—rouge et noir. And it’s the two colors in a deck of playing cards.”
“No, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t tie in with cards or roulette. It’s not—not like that. It’s a game between the red and the black. They’re the players, somehow. Think hard, Charlie; not about where you might have run into that idea, but where I might have.”
He watched Charlie struggle and after a while he said, “Okay, don’t sprain your brain, Charlie. Try this one. The brightly shining.”
“The brightly shining what?”
“Just that phrase, the brightly shining. Does it mean anything to you, at all?”
“No.”
“Okay,” he said. “Forget it.”
IV
He was early and he walked past Clare’s house, as far as the corner and stood under the big elm there, smoking the rest of his cigarette, thinking bleakly.
There wasn’t anything to think about, really; all he had to do was say good-bye to her. Two easy syllables. And stall off her questions as to where he was going, exactly how long he’d be gone. Be quiet and casual and unemotional about it, just as though they didn’t mean anything in particular to each other.
It had to be that way. He’d known Clare Wilson a year and a half now, and he’d kept her dangling that long; it wasn’t fair. This had to be the end, for her sake. He had about as much business asking a woman to marry him as—as a madman who thinks he’s Napoleon!
He dropped his cigarette and ground it viciously into the walk with his heel, then went back to the house, up on the porch, and rang the bell.
Clare herself came to the door. The light from the hallway behind her made her hair a circlet of spun gold around her shadowed face.
He wanted to take her into his arms so badly that he clenched his fists with the effort it took to keep his arms down.
Stupidly, he said, “Hi, Clare. How’s everything?”
“I don’t know, George. How is everything? Aren’t you coming in?”
She’d stepped back from the doorway to let him past and the light was on her face now, sweetly grave. She knew something was up, he thought; her expression and the tone of her voice gave that away.
He didn’t want to go in. He said, “It’s such a beautiful night, Clare. Let’s take a stroll.”
“All right, George.” She came out onto the porch. “It is a fine night, such beautiful stars.” She turned and looked at him. “Is one of them yours?”
He started a little. Then he stepped forward and took her elbow, guiding her down the porch steps. He said lightly, “All of them are mine. Want to buy any?”
“You wouldn’t give me one? Just a teeny little dwarf star, maybe? Even one that I’d have to use a telescope to see?”
They were out on the sidewalk then, out of hearing of the house, and abruptly her voice changed, the playful note dropped from it, and she asked another question, “What’s wrong, George?”
He opened his mouth to say nothing was wrong, and then closed it again. There wasn’t any lie that he could tell her, and he couldn’t tell her the truth, either. Her asking of that question, in that way, should have made things easier; it made them more difficult.
She asked another, “You mean to say good-bye for—for good, don’t you George?”
He said, “Yes,” and his mouth was very dry. He didn’t know whether it came out as an articulate monosyllable or not, and he wetted his lips and tried again. He said, “Yes, I’m afraid so, Clare.”
“Why?”
He couldn’t make himself turn to look at her, he stared blindly ahead. He said, “I—I can’t tell you, Clare. But it’s the only thing I can do. It’s best for both of us.”
“Tell me one thing, George. Are you really going away? Or was that just an excuse?”
“It’s true. I’m going away; I don’t know for how long. But don’t ask me where, please. I can’t tell you that.”
“Maybe I can tell you, George. Do you mind if I do?”
He minded all right; he minded terribly. But how could he say so? He didn’t say anything, because he couldn’t say yes, either.
They were beside the park now, the little neighborhood park that was only a block square and didn’t offer much in the way of privacy, but which did have benches. And he steered her—or she steered him; he didn’t know which—into the park and they sat down on a bench. There were other people in the park, but not too near till he hadn’t answered her question.
She sat very close to him on the bench. She said, “You’ve been worried about your mind, haven’t you George?”
“Well—yes, in a way, yes, I have.”
“And you’re going away has something to do with that, hasn’t it? You’re going somewhere for observation or treatment, or both?”
“Something like that. It’s not as simple as that, Clare, and I—I just can’t tell you about it.”
She put her hand on his hand, lying on his knee. She said, “I knew it was something like that, George. And I don’t ask you to tell me anything about it.
“Just—just don’t say what you meant to say. Say so-long instead of good-bye. Don’t even write me, if you don’t want to. But don’t he noble and call everything off here and now, for my sake. At least wait until you’ve been wherever you’re going. Will you?”
He gulped. She made it sound so simple when actually it was so complicated. Miserably he said, “All right, Clare. If you want it that way.”
Abruptly she stood up. “Let’s get back, George.” He stood beside her. “But it’s early.”
“I know, but sometimes—Well, there’s a psychological moment to end a date, George. I know that sounds silly, but after what we’ve said, wouldn’t it be—uh—anticlimactic—to—”
He laughed a little. He said, “I see what you mean.”
They walked back to her home in silence. He didn’t know whether it was happy or unhappy silence; he was too mixed up for that.
On the shadowed porch, in front of the door, she turned and faced him. “George,” she said. Silence.
“Oh, damn you, George; quit being so noble or whatever you’re being. Unless, of course, you don’t love me. Unless this is just an elaborate form of—of runaround you’re giving me. Is it?”
There were only two things he could do. One was run like hell. The other was what he did. He put his arms around her and kissed her. Hungrily.
When that was over, and it wasn’t over too quickly, he was breathing a little hard and not thinking too clearly, for he was saying what he hadn’t meant to say at all, “I love you, Clare. I love you; I love you.”
And she said, “I love you, too, dear. You’ll come back to me, won’t you?” And he said, “Yes. Yes.”
It was four miles or so from her home to his rooming house, but he walked, and the walk seemed to take only seconds.
He sat at the window of his room, with the light out, thinking, but the thoughts went in the same old circles they’d gone in for three years.
No new factor had been added except that now he was going to stick his neck out, way out, miles out. Maybe, just maybe, this thing was going to be settled one way or the other.
Out there, out his window, the stars were bright diamonds in the sky. Was one of them his star of destiny? If so, he was going to follow it, follow it even into the madh
ouse if it led there. Inside him was a deeply rooted conviction that this wasn’t accident, that it wasn’t coincidence that had led to his being asked to tell the truth under guise of falsehood.
His star of destiny.
Brightly shining? No, the phrase from his dreams did not refer to that; it was not an adjective phrase, but a noun. The brightly shining? What was the brightly shining?
And the red and the black? He’d thought of everything Charlie had suggested, and other things, too. Checkers, for instance. But it was not that.
The red and the black.
Well, whatever the answer was, he was running full-speed toward it now, not away from it.
After a while he went to bed, but it was a long time before he went to sleep.
V
Charlie Doerr came out of the inner office marked Private and put his hand out. He said, “Good luck, George. The doe’s ready to talk to you now.”
He shook Charlie’s hand and said, “You might as well run along. I’ll see you Monday, first visiting day.”
“I’ll wait here,” Charlie said. “I took the day off work anyway, remember? Besides, maybe you won’t have to go. He dropped Charlie’s hand, and stared into Charlie’s face. He said slowly, “What do you mean, Charlie—maybe I won’t have to go.”
“Why—” Charlie looked puzzled. “Why, maybe he’ll tell you you’re all right, or just suggest regular visits to see him until you’re straightened out, or—” Charlie finished weakly, “—or something.”
Unbelievingly, he stared at Charlie. He wanted to ask, am I crazy or are you, but that sounded crazy to ask under the circumstances. But he had to be sure, sure that Charlie just hadn’t let something slip from his mind; maybe he’d fallen into the role he was supposed to be playing when he talked to the doctor just now. He asked, “Charlie, don’t you remember that—” And even of that question the rest seemed insane for him to be asking, with Charlie staring blankly at him. The answer was in Charlie’s face; it didn’t have to be brought to Charlie’s lips.
Charlie said again, “I’ll wait, of course. Good luck, George.”
He looked into Charlie’s eyes and nodded, then turned and went through the door marked Private. He closed it behind him, meanwhile studying the man who had been sitting behind the desk and who had risen as he entered. A big man, broad shouldered, iron gray hair.
“Dr. Irving?”
“Yes, Mr. Vine. Will you be seated, please?”
He slid into the comfortable, padded armchair across the desk from the doctor.
“Mr. Vine,” said the doctor, “a first interview of this sort is always a bit difficult. For the patient, I mean. Until you know me better, it will be difficult for you to overcome a certain natural reticence in discussing yourself. Would you prefer to talk, to tell things your own way, or would you rather I asked questions?”
He thought that over. He’d had a story ready, but those few words with Charlie in the waiting room had changed everything.
He said, “Perhaps you’d better ask questions.”
“Very well.” There was a pencil in Dr. Irving’s hand and paper on the desk before him. Where and when were you born?”
He took a deep breath. “To the best of my knowledge, in Corsica on August 15th, 1769. I don’t actually remember being born, of course. I do remember things from my boyhood on Corsica, though. We stayed there until I was ten, and after that I was sent to school at Brienne.”
Instead of writing, the doctor was tapping the paper lightly with the tip of the pencil. He asked, “What month and year is this?”
“August, 1947. Yes, I know that should make me a hundred and seventy-some years old. You want to know how I account for that. I don’t. Nor do I account for the fact that Napoleon Bonaparte died in 1821.”
He leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms, staring up at the ceiling. “I don’t attempt to account for the paradoxes or the discrepancies. I recognize them as such. But according to my own memory, and aside from logic pro or con, I was Napoleon for twenty-seven years. I won’t recount what happened during that time; it’s all down in the history books.
“But in 1796, after the battle of Lodi, while I was in charge of the armies in Italy, I went to sleep. As far as I knew, just as anyone goes to sleep anywhere, any time. But I woke up—with no sense whatever of duration, by the way—in a hospital in town here, and I was informed that my name was George Vine, that the year was 1944, and that I was twenty-seven years old.
“The twenty-seven years old part checked, and that was all. Absolutely all. I have no recollections of any parts of George Vine’s life, prior to his—my—waking up in the hospital after the accident. I know quite a bit about his early life now, but only because I’ve been told.
“I know when and where he was born, where he went to school, and when he started work at the Blade. I know when he enlisted in the army and when he was discharged—late in 1943—because I developed a trick knee after a leg injury. Not in combat, incidentally, and there wasn’t any ‘psycho-neurotic’ on my—his—discharge.”
The doctor quit doodling with the pencil. He asked, “You’ve felt this way for three years—and kept it a secret?”
“Yes. I had time to think things over after the accident, and yes, I decided then to accept what they told me about my identity. They’d have locked me up, of course. Incidentally, I’ve tried to figure out an answer. I’ve studied Dunne’s theory of time—even Charles Fort!” He grinned suddenly. “Ever read about Casper Hauser?”
Dr. Irving nodded.
“Maybe he was playing smart the way I did. And I wonder how many other amnesiacs pretended they didn’t know what happened prior to a certain date—rather than admit they had memories at obvious variance with the facts.”
Dr. Irving said slowly, ”
Your cousin informs me that you were a bit—ah—‘hipped’ was his word—on the subject of Napoleon before your accident. How do you account for that?”
“I’ve told you I don’t account for any of it. But I can verify that fact, aside from what Charlie Doerr says about it. Apparently I—the George Vine I, if I was ever George Vine—was quite interested in Napoleon, had read about him, made a hero of him, and had talked about him quite a bit. Enough so that the fellows he worked with at the Blade had nicknamed him ‘Nappy.’ ”
“I notice you distinguish between yourself and George Vine. Are you or are you not he?”
“I have been for three years. Before that—I have no recollection of being George Vine. I don’t think I was. I think—as nearly as I think anything—that I, three years ago, woke up in George Vine’s body.”
“Having done what for a hundred and seventy some years?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. Incidentally, I don’t doubt that this is George Vine’s body, and with it I inherited his knowledge—except his personal memories. For example, I knew how to handle his job at the newspaper, although I didn’t remember any of the people I worked with there. I have his knowledge of English, for instance, and his ability to write. I knew how to operate a typewriter. My handwriting is the same as his.”
“If you think that you are not Vine, how do you account for that?”
He leaned forward. “I think part of me is George Vine, and part of me isn’t. I think some transference has happened which is outside the run of ordinary human experience. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s supernatural—nor that I’m insane. Does it?”
Dr. Irving didn’t answer. Instead, he asked, “You kept this secret for three years, for understandable reasons. Now, presumably for other reasons, you decide to tell. What are the other reasons? What has happened to change your attitude?”
It was the question that had been bothering him.
He said slowly, “Because I don’t believe in coincidence. Because something in the situation itself has changed. Because I’m tired of pretending. Because I’m willing to risk imprisonment as a paranoic to find out the truth.”
“What in the
situation has changed?”
“Yesterday it was suggested—by my employer—that I feign insanity for a practical reason. And the very kind of insanity which I have, if any: Surely, I will admit the possibility that I’m insane. But I can only operate on the theory that I’m not. You know that you’re Dr. Willard E. Irving; you can only operate on that theory—but how do you know you are? Maybe you’re insane, but you can only act as though you’re not.”
“You think your employer is part of a plot—ah—against you? You think there is a conspiracy to get you into a sanitarium?”
“I don’t know. Here’s what has happened since yesterday noon.” He took a deep breath. Then he plunged. He told Dr. Irving the whole story of his interview with Candler, what Candler had said about Dr. Randolph, about his talk with Charlie Doerr last night and about Charlie’s bewildering about-face in the waiting room.
“When he was through he said, “That’s all.” He looked at Dr. Irving’s expressionless face with more curiosity than concern, trying to read it. He added, quite casually, “You don’t believe me, of course. You think I’m insane.”
He met Irving’s eyes squarely. He said, “You have no choice—unless you would choose to believe I’m telling you an elaborate set of lies to convince you I’m insane. I mean, as a scientist and as a psychiatrist, you cannot even admit the possibility that the things I believe—know—are objectively true. Am I not right?”
“I fear that you are. So?”
“So go ahead and sign your commitment. I’m going to follow this thing through. Even to the detail of having Dr. Ellsworth Joyce Randolph sign the second one.”
“You make no objection?”
“Would it do any good if I did?”
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