by Stephen Fry
“Go ahead, it’s not gonna bite you. Pick it up! Take a look inside. Tell me what you see.”
I took out an American Express credit card and held it in my fingers. I saw the name “Michael D. Young” and ran my thumbnail over the embossed lettering. “Member since 1992. Expires 08/98.”
“Talk to me, Mike.”
“It’s an American Express card.”
“Uh-huh. Whose?”
“Well . . . mine, I suppose. But I’ve never seen it before.”
“You sure about that?”
“I’m certain. ‘Michael D. Young’ it says. I never use my middle initial like that. Never. So, it can’t be mine.”
“Okay, okay. What else do you see in the wallet?”
“There’s some kind of ID card, a driving license.”
“You see a driver’s license. Is there a photograph on it?”
“Me. It’s me, but again I swear to you I’ve never seen this before.”
“That’s okay. Take your time, have a good look. What is the issuing state?”
I looked at it, puzzled. “State of Connecticut, it says. Is that what you mean?”
“And what do you think of when you say the word ‘Connecticut,’ Mike? What images come into your mind?”
“Um . . . Paul Revere?”
“Paul Revere. Good. Tell me what you know about Paul Revere.”
“The midnight ride?”
“Midnight ride, excellent. Go on.”
“He rode from Lexington to Concord. Or Concord to Lexington, was it? He shouted, ‘The British are coming, the British are coming!’ I don’t know much else. It’s not really my period, I’m afraid.”
It’s not really my period!
Something stirred inside me, a rustle of memory, but it scrabbled away like a frightened field mouse as I approached.
“Fine. You’re doing fine. Tell me what else you see there.”
“Well, there’s another card here. Also with my name on it. There’s that Greek symbol on it. The staff with the snakes entwined . . . oh, what’s it called?”
Ballinger shrugged his shoulders. “You tell me, Mike.”
“Caduceus! It’s a caduceus, the rod of Hermes. There! Why can I remember a word like ‘caduceus’ and not remember who I am?”
“Well now, one step at a time. What do you think that card might be?”
“I don’t know. The caduceus is a medical symbol isn’t it? Is this a national health card?”
“What’s a national health card, Michael?”
I stared at him. “I’ve no idea. I’ve no idea at all. It just popped into my head. Don’t you know?”
“That’s your medical insurance card, Michael.”
“But I don’t go private.”
“Excuse me?”
“I . . . I don’t use health insurance. I’m on the national health, I’m sure of it.”
Ballinger gazed at me blankly. “Would you have any cause to be faking a little episode of loopiness here, Michael? That’s what I’m wondering. Some trouble at home? A girl maybe? Your work getting on top of you, fear of failure?”
“Faking? Faking? Why on earth would I be faking?”
“I had to ask, Mike. So tell me what you mean by ‘national health’?”
I spread my hands despairingly. “I don’t know. I really don’t know. It means something, I’m sure of that.”
“I see. Tell me then who you think the card might belong to.”
I looked at it miserably. “It’s mine, I suppose. It must be mine.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “I just can’t remember . . .”
“Don’t force yourself now. You can put your wallet down. Maybe it would be a good idea if you could tell me some things you do remember.”
Something in the way he said that told me that he was improvising here. He had never dealt with anything like this before and he was simply winging it, guessing the right questions to ask. He was as confused as I was. I sensed, too, that he was annoyed, just faintly annoyed, that his attempts to jog my memory or kick me out of my fantasy or expose my sham were not working.
“What’s wrong with me, Doctor?”
“Woah, one thing at a time. Answer my question first. What can you tell me that you positively remember?”
“Well, I remember being sick last night. I banged my head on a wall. I was pissed I suppose . . .”
“Why?”
“Sorry?”
“Why were you pissed?”
“Well, because I had been drinking.”
“And that angered you?”
“Angered me?” I repeated, puzzled. “Not really . . .”
“So why were you pissed?”
“Oh,” I said, suddenly twigging. “You mean pissed off. I meant pissed as in drunk, not pissed as in pissed off. You see, in England when we say ‘pissed’ . . . never mind.” Ballinger’s blank look was beginning to irritate me. “Anyway, I remember banging my head. And getting on a bus. And waking up this morning feeling weird.”
“And before that? What do you remember from before?”
“I don’t know, almost nothing. Cambridge, of course. I remember Cambridge. That’s where I’m supposed to be.”
“You have plans to visit friends in school at Harvard maybe?”
“Harvard? What do you mean?”
“Harvard is in Cambridge, Massachusetts, maybe you made an appointment to meet some friends there.”
“No! I mean Cambridge. You know, the Cambridge. St. Matthew’s.”
“Cambridge, England?”
“Yes, and I should be there. I should be there now! There’s something important. Something I have to do, something that happened. If I could only remember . . .”
“Hey now! You sit right down, Michael. Getting yourself all excited is not going to help any. Let’s just stay calm.”
I lowered myself back down into the chair. “Why has this happened to me?” I said. “What’s going on?”
“Well now that’s what we’re here to find out. You tell me you remember Cambridge, England.”
“I think so.”
“You like English things maybe?”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “What are your politics, for example?”
“Politics? I don’t have any politics.”
“No politics, fine. But your parents came from England originally did they not, Mike? Back in the sixties.”
“My parents?”
“Your mother and father.”
“I know what parents are!” I snapped. Ballinger’s style was beginning to irritate me, much as I could see that my confusion was now openly irritating him.
He didn’t reply, but just wrote something down on his pad, which annoyed me still further. Just trying to mask his distaste.
“I know this,” I said. “My father is dead, and my mother lives in Hampshire.”
“You think your mom lives in New Hampshire?”
“No, not New Hampshire. Just Hampshire. Old Hampshire. Hampshire, England, if you like.”
“You ever been to England, Michael?”
“Been there? It’s my home. I grew up there, I live there. I should be there now.”
“You like to watch English movies?”
“I like all movies. Not English ones particularly. There aren’t enough of them for a start.”
“Maybe they’re too political for you.”
“What do you mean?”
He didn’t reply, but ruled a line on his pad, let the pen drop down onto the pad once more and rested his chin on his hands.
“Maybe you’d like to be a film actor, is that it? Maybe you see yourself as a big Hollywood star.”
“Actor? I’ve never acted in my life. Not so much as a nativity play.”
“I’m not putting it on! This is how I talk. This is me.”
Ballinger picked up a thick directory from his desk and rifled through the pages, running the tip of his pen down the columns.
“Senior year undergraduates,” he said to himself. “Let me see, Wagner . . . Williams . . . Wood . . . Yelling . . . bingo!” He drew a circle on the page and pushed the book towards me. “I want you to do something for me, Mike. I want you to look at that name and that number and tell me what you see?”
“Er . . . Young, Michael D., 303 Henry Hall. 342-1221.”
“Good. Now I want you to watch me as I call that number, okay?”
He pressed a button on his telephone and the sound of a dial tone emerged from its built-in speaker. “Call out that number for me, Michael.”
“Three-four-two. One two, two one.”
“Three-four-two,” repeated Ballinger, dialing, “twelve twenty-one.”
Puzzled, I listened to the ringing tone. “But if that’s my number, then why . . . ?”
Ballinger held up a hand. “Sh! Just listen now.”
The ringing tone stopped and was followed by a click and a cheerful voice. “Hi, it’s Mikey. You called, I was out, but hey, it’s not the end of the world. Leave a message after the tone and maybe, if you’re real lucky, I’ll get back to you.”
Ballinger pressed the hands-free button again, folded his arms and looked at me. “Wasn’t that you, Mike? Wasn’t that your voice we heard?”
I stared at the telephone. “But it can’t have been . . .”
“You know that it was.”
“But that was American!”
“That’s my point, Mikey. You’re American. I have your medical records. You were born in Hartford, Connecticut, April twentieth, 1972.”
“It’s not true! I know you don’t believe me, but I’m telling you, it just is not true. I mean, you’re right about my birthday, but I was born in England, at least, that is, I grew up in England.”
“And what did you do there?”
“I don’t know! I was at Cambridge. Doing . . . something. I can’t remember. God, this is a dream, this must be a dream. Everything is wrong, everything has changed. I mean, Christ, even my teeth are wrong.”
“Your teeth?”
“They’re straighter than they should be. Whiter. My hair is shorter. And . . .” I broke off, blushing at the memory of the shower.
“Go on.”
“My penis,” I whispered, a hand over my mouth.
Ballinger closed his eyes.
“Excuse me, did you say your penis?”
Even as I replied I could hear him laughing about this with colleagues, writing up case notes for publication, shaking his head at the erotic hysteria of the young.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s my foreskin. It’s disappeared. Gone.”
He stared at me wide-eyed as I buried my face in my hands and wept.
PERSONAL HISTORY
Rudi’s wartime diary
Josef buried his face in his hands and laughed till Hans thought he might burst.
“Ausgezeichnet! That’s brilliant! Brilliant. I will tell it to the Colonel at lunch. He just loves jokes like that. Here’s one for you now. If Ludendorff and the Kaiser both jumped off a high tower at exactly the same time, which one would hit the ground first?”
Hans Mend wrinkled his nose and inspected the ceiling. “Mmmm . . . I give up,” he said.
Josef raised his shoulders and spread his hands, “Who cares?” He nudged Hans violently in the side and roared with laughter again. “Hey! Who cares!”
Mend joined in dutifully and took careful sips of his schnapps between buffets to the ribs. “Ha!” he said. “Who cares! Wonderful.”
The life of a messenger had its advantages. It was absurdly dangerous to career back and forth between the reserve trenches, HQ and the front line, easy pickings for any bored enemy sniper and as often as not the potential victim of crossfire from one’s own side. Sometimes the weather and the terrain allowed for a motorbike, as today, but often it was a question of slogging through churned mud on foot. And that cliche about blaming the messenger . . . how many times Mend had opened his satchel, handed over some orders about which he knew nothing and then been withered in a raking salvo of abuse from some jumped-up junior officer with an imagined grievance against the General Staff. Nonetheless, for the privilege of being able to get away from the front line saps and trenches, even for an hour or so at a time, Hans would have undergone twice the danger. And after all, he was alive now, wasn’t he? For four years he had been in the thick of the fighting, from the very first month of the war until now, with only two minor wounds in all that time, two small scars to show his grandchildren one day in the distant peace. If you survived your first two months, they said, you would survive forever.
So, against the danger, you had to weigh the perks. A glass of schnapps and a pipe of decent tobacco at Staff HQ—sure, you get a fool like Josef Kreiss to enjoy them with—but great luxury nonetheless.
Hans sighed, put down his glass and rose.
“Going already?”
“I must. Westenkirchner is on leave and they haven’t sent through a replacement. Lots to be done.”
Josef limped over to his desk and made a show of looking carefully through packets of documents. As if, thought Hans, he actually had any hand in their selection. The man’s a clerk, for God’s sake. Why can’t he just give me what he’s been ordered to give me and have done with it? Why this feeble charade every time?
“Ah,” said Josef, weighing a piece of paper in his hand and slipping it into Hans’s satchel. “This might interest you. It has to do with someone who is, I believe, a friend of yours.”
“Who’s that?”
“Gloder? Hauptmann Rudolf Gloder?”
“Rudi? What about him?”
“Oh, it’s Rudi, is it? We regularly refer to our betters by their Christian names, I see. Perhaps I should send a memorandum to General Buchner on this. He does not approve of this kind of Bolshevism among the lower ranks.”
Hans closed his eyes. “What about Hauptmann Gloder, Josef?”
“Ah, wouldn’t you like to know?”
Eyes still closed, Hans now breathed in deeply through his nose. “Yes, Josef,” he said calmly, “I would like to know.” Jesus, the puerility of these people.
“Well, it so happens that a recommendation has come through. Iron Cross, First Class, Diamond order.”
Hans did not attempt to hide his pleasure. “Wonderful,” he cried. “And about time too. He should have had it three times over.”
“My, aren’t we pleased!”
“It’s good news, Kreiss, that’s all. Ru—Hauptmann Gloder deserves this honor. Without him our regiment would have fallen apart months ago, years probably. I wouldn’t be surprised if he made Major before the war’s over. Like me he joined up as an ordinary Landser you know.”
“Well that’s wartime for you. The scum rises to the top.”
“The cream rises,” said Hans. “He’s from a fine family, he could have joined as an officer, but as it happens he chose not to.”
“So he’s got friends in high places,” said Kreiss. “What’s new?”
“He’s got friends in all places,” retorted Hans. “Unlike some.”
“Well, well, I’m sure this Gloder is a paragon of all the virtues. He’s obviously got you eating out of his hand, anyway.”
Leaning down on the handlebars, mud flying up onto his goggles, Hans chewed on the news with pleasure. He pictured to himself the party that Rudi would most certainly throw in celebration of this decoration. A dinner in a first-class restaurant somewhere behind the lines, perhaps even Le Coq d’Or. There would be music, glorious w
ine, laughter and real German comradeship. Gloder would not be embarrassed to invite officers and men to sit at the same table. Later on there would be girls. Expensive, pox-free girls.
Hans drew up at the fermier, threw his motorcycle against the wall of the stable yard and hurried through to the house.
At the moment Gloder was on attachment to Major Eckert of the Sixth Franconians as acting adjutant, an assignment, he had told Hans, that irked him excessively.
“I do not like to be missing the fun,” he had said on finding himself stuck half a mile behind the lines in the small farmhouse that constituted Colonel Baligand’s HQ. “Eckert’s idea of war is to lick the arse of the general staff and pray for peace. I do what I can to fire him into action, but I’m a soldier. I’d be more use at the front.”
Hans delivered a bundle of dispatches to the Colonel’s ADC, waited in a fever of impatience to receive papers in return and then, as excited as a child on Christmas morning, he hurled himself up the stairs to the first floor, where Major Eckert’s staff had their offices and quarters.
Hans stood on the landing and straightened his tunic. He decided to play it very cool. “Good day, Hauptmann Gloder,” he would say languidly, “nothing very interesting today, I’m afraid. Just this from HQ. Probably some chit forbidding the use of paprika in donkey stew or announcing that every man is to polish his buttocks thoroughly in honor of the Kaiserin’s birthday.”
Rudi would smile at this, take up the letter and open it. He would read it through and then look up to see Hans beaming down at him fit to bust and then he would roar with laughter and bring out his oldest bottle of Cognac.
Hans walked past the door to Major Eckert’s office, satchel tightly in hand, until he came to the end of the corridor where stood a door of bleached French oak. Carved upon it by hand in perfect Gothic lettering were the words:
Schloss Gloder
Hans grinned and knocked lightly.
No reply.
He knocked again, louder this time.
Still no cheerful answering voice.
Disappointed, Hans pressed down the black iron latch and pushed the door open. With no clear idea of what he should do, he entered and looked around.