My lips move without making a sound. He turns toward the other man, asks him again if he wants to press charges.
‘No. I have a lot of work to do, and I’ve wasted enough time on this as it is. I’m perfectly content to put the matter behind us, but he has to leave us alone!’
‘You got that? You should thank Mr Harris. But if we catch you near him again, we’ll run you in for disturbing the peace! Is that clear?’
The words spin around in my head, stick together, nail me to the spot. I don’t even have the strength to throw myself at the stranger as he says goodbye and leaves, hands in his pockets. Free. With my passport. My apartment. My wife. I feel light-headed and grip the table. The others have already forgotten me. My complaint has disappeared from the screen. Erased.
‘Are you all right, friend? Would you like to sit down?’
I look at the fat man in plaid who has come up and touched my arm out of genuine concern. From where he was sitting, he must not have understood what was going on. But he senses that I’m innocent, that I’m a victim, like him. He identifies with me, whispers that they’ll end up telling him, too, that if the kids robbed him, it’s because he provoked them with his wallet.
‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
I stammer that I need to make a phone call. He hands me his cell. Only one person can put an end to this nightmare – unless she doesn’t recognize me anymore. The most aberrant behavior starts appearing logical if it gets repeated enough. All these denials have left me unable to defend myself, justify myself. I feel attacked from within, eaten away, dissolved … How long can you survive when you no longer exist for anyone?
I start dialing the number, but I’ve forgotten the last four digits. I check the card in my pocket. With the awful feeling that, if only I lost my memory, everything would fall back into place.
3
The taxi brakes at the curb. The passenger door opens and I climb in.
‘Trouble?’ asks Muriel, pointing at the police station.
I considered waiting for her inside so that she could give a statement, but they literally threw me out the door, telling me to go get treatment. I stood for ten minutes next to the No Parking sign. No one noticed me, except for one young man who came up to ask for a light. I was pretending to search my pockets when the taxi pulled up.
‘What’s going on, Martin?’
I shake my head, bite my lips and hold back my tears. A shrill whistle from the sidewalk: they signal her to move on. After about a hundred yards, she asks where to.
‘Listen, I don’t want you to feel obligated … Something terrible has happened and I have no one else to turn to. I’m sorry, but … I’m all alone. I’m in an insane situation and no one will listen to me.’
‘Go on, I’m just hitting the meter. So what’s the problem?’
I take a deep breath and recap in a few sentences what I’ve been through since she dropped me off at my building. Someone honks us. The light has turned green; she starts up again and goes past the intersection to park.
‘Wait a second, Martin. This guy claims to be you, he’s carrying a passport with your name on it, and your wife is living with him?’
‘Right,’ I say, hoping that her dynamic tone of voice is about to lead to some miraculous explanation.
‘And no one in your building recognizes you.’
‘That’s correct.’
She turns away and scratches the steering wheel for a moment before adding in a small voice while staring through the windshield, ‘And you’ve just come out of a three-day coma, after a head injury.’
‘What’s that got to do with it? I’m the same guy as before the accident. You’re a witness. You’re the only one who …’
I stop.
‘Who what?’ she encourages me, visibly eager to hear any argument in my favor.
With a lump in my throat, I shake my head. My last hope has crumbled into dust.
‘You’re not a witness to anything. I didn’t tell you my name until after I woke up. The only thing you know about me before the accident is that I was going to Charles-de-Gaulle and I was in a hurry.’
Her silence confirms the objection that, in any case, she would have ended up making herself. I sense all too well that she can believe only in one thing, my sincerity. And if I lose her trust, I’m left with nothing.
‘So apparently,’ she summarizes, ‘you have no way of proving that he isn’t you.’
‘So what does that mean?’ I say with a harshness that I don’t even try to hide. ‘That I’ve got amnesia? You can see for yourself that isn’t the case. I’m the opposite of an amnesiac, I remember everything.’
‘Maybe you just think you remember … And you’ve forgotten who you really are …’
She says this in a very gentle voice, with the standard precautions, the required abruptness: the voice one uses out of moral honesty and human respect to make a patient understand that he’s done for. Then she puts her hand on my arm and says, to finish me off with kindness, ‘It happens sometimes.’
‘Sure.’
The cold determination in my voice startles her. I ask her to lend me her cell phone. She watches me dial the number, which I remember effortlessly.
‘What if we go back to the hospital, Martin? What I told you was just my feeling, a hypothesis, but I don’t really know. Maybe the doctors have already come across cases like this …’
‘Of course. You come out of a coma and poof! you believe you’re someone else. With his memories, his profession, his personality, his problems …’
‘Listen, I really want to believe you, but I have nothing to compare against. You said so yourself, I didn’t know you before.’
‘How do I put this thing on speaker?’
She presses a green button. A pre-recorded musical soundtrack invites us to please stay on the line.
‘Muriel … Just give me a chance to convince you, just two minutes. If I can’t, you can take me back to the hospital and I’ll let them lock me away. Okay?’
‘I just said that to …’
‘American Express, this is Virginia speaking.’
‘This is 4937 084312 75009, expiration 6/06.’
Muriel stares at me attentively. I look back at her, holding my breath.
‘How can I help you, Mr Harris?’
We smile at each other spontaneously. She looks as relieved as I am, freed from the legitimate doubts I’d inspired. I’m glad to see she’s happy that I’m not insane. She still feels responsible for my accident, despite all the problems it’s causing her.
‘I’ve lost my card,’ I say into the cell phone that I’m holding between us, on the armrest. ‘I’d like to cancel it and get a new one.’
‘Very good, sir. May I ask you a few questions?’
‘Go ahead.’
She asks me for my place and date of birth, my mother’s maiden name. I answer in a natural, detached, mechanical tone of voice.
‘Your permanent address?’
‘255 Sawmill Lane, Greenwich, Connecticut. But I’m currently living in Paris at 1 Rue de Duras in the eighth …’
‘Very good. Would you like to receive your new card at that address?’
‘No, absolutely not!’
My outburst makes the phone fall off the armrest. Muriel picks it up and hands it back to me.
‘To what address then, sir?’
I give her a questioning look. She hesitates for five seconds, then articulates slowly, ‘Nouméa building, Îles development, Clichy 92110. Care of Muriel Caradet.’
I repeat the address, wrinkling my eyelids in thanks.
‘And there you go,’ I say, putting down the phone. ‘Forgive me for taking advantage like this … As soon as I get my card, I’m taking you out to the best restaurant in Paris.’
The warmth in my voice immediately cools her off. The euphoria we briefly shared, as I was proving my identity while cutting off the impostor’s resources, gives way to a different sort of discomfort. Maybe
she thinks I’m just trying to pick her up. I try to think how to dissipate the misunderstanding without seeming crass.
‘That doesn’t prove anything, Martin.’
‘What doesn’t?’
‘I mean, it doesn’t prove that you’re any more authentic than the other guy. You could have seen his Amex number and memorized it, like the rest of his information. What I’ve just seen you do, pardon me for saying so, but it could also be simple credit card fraud.’
I spread out my hands and let them fall, completely deflated.
‘Please understand, I’m not calling you a liar. But you haven’t gotten any further than when the police didn’t believe you.’
I let myself fall back against the seat, close my eyes. She adds that she’s sorry, but she still thinks the best thing is to go back to the hospital. I bring my hand down sharply on the armrest.
‘But why would I do this? If all I wanted was to steal somebody’s credit card, why would I do it in front of you? When all I have to do is take you to the INRA in Bourg-la-Reine, and it would take me two minutes to prove I’m a well-known botanist back in the States! You can find my work on the internet, and surely somewhere there’s my photo …’
‘Well, then, let’s go!’ she snaps. ‘And if it turns out not to be your photo, you’ll just say he hacked into the site.’
‘Do you have any other explanation?’ I shoot back, furious that she’s put us in a position of failure from the start, that in the sweep of her logic she’s formulated a hypothesis I hadn’t even thought of.
‘Yes I do! You might have read an article about him just before the accident …’
‘That’s right, an article that gave his Amex number!’
‘Listen, Martin, I don’t know which way is up anymore! I want to help you, but there are limits!’
‘Montparnasse station,’ a guy says, getting in.
He settles into the back seat and pulls the door shut. Muriel turns around to tell him she isn’t free.
‘It’s pouring!’ he answers. ‘I’ve been cooling my jets for an hour and not a single cab has stopped. Give me a break, would you, please …’
‘It’s fine,’ I say, opening my door. ‘Just lend me a euro for the bus. I’ll pay you back as soon as …’
‘You won’t get very far on one euro.’
‘My train is leaving in twenty minutes,’ the guy says impatiently.
‘I don’t give a shit about your train!’ Muriel shouts. ‘I’m talking! Stay here, you,’ she segues, closing my door again. ‘Fine, I’ll take you to Bourg-la-Reine and we’ll drop this one off at Montparnasse. It’s on the way.’
I get thrown back against the seat as she peels away.
‘Thank you,’ says the passenger.
While she slaloms through traffic, he makes call after call to reassure his correspondents and push back the time of his meeting in Nantes in case he misses his train. The rhythm of his guttural voice repeating the same thing over and over, with slight inflections of deference or superiority, isolates me in a bubble that helps me clear my head. I shut my eyes and let myself drift, trying to catch my breath. Hearing someone spend so much energy explaining problems other than mine, and such insignificant ones at that, is somehow comforting.
‘Other than your website, what could make me change my mind?’
I open my eyes, note bitterly that it only took a mile or two of reflection for her to side with the enemy camp.
‘Muriel, my wife is the one who set this all up. I can’t think of any other explanation. She learned about my accident, thought I was dead, and passed her lover off as me …’
‘Wouldn’t it be simpler just to be a widow?’
I can’t think of an answer, so I pursue my thoughts alone. Liz might have erased me from her married life and imposed her accomplice on the neighbors, but that’s where it ends: he could never get away with it in Bourg-la-Reine. A fake passport and memories learned by heart won’t be enough; you can’t improvise twenty years of research and exploration. They can’t replace me professionally overnight.
‘My colleague Paul de Kermeur brought me to France so we could pool our research. He spent hours corresponding with me by email. He knows all my studies on the intelligence of plant life. They won’t be able to fool him!’
‘Five minutes early, great!’ the guy in back rejoices. ‘How much?’
‘Nineteen ten,’ answers Muriel, showing the meter that was running for me.
He hands her a twenty, tells her to keep the change, and rushes into the station with his attaché case. She tries to give me the bill, but I refuse. She reminds me that I have nothing on me and says I can pay her back for the ride when I get my new card. The ease with which she has come back to my side leaves me disarmed. I pocket the bill.
‘I’m sorry I got angry, Muriel.’
She pulls a gray plastic sheath from the glove compartment and gets out of the car. A small thump on the roof. She sits back down and hands me her cell.
‘Since you’re already racking up debts, why don’t you call the States? Your family, or a friend …’
‘My father is dead and I don’t know where my mother is. Apart from my wife, I only have acquaintances, or co-workers … And it’s four in the morning over there.’
‘Have it your way,’ she says, rummaging behind the meter. ‘But that seemed the easiest solution to me. You let me talk to the person, I’ll give them your description, and I’ll see if it’s actually you.’
I swallow my saliva, disappointed that she still needs this kind of verification. But she’s right. I ask if she speaks English.
‘A little.’
‘I’ll call Rodney Cole, my assistant at Yale.’
On the third ring, a synthetic voice tells me that the person is not available. Muriel takes back the phone and shuts it off with a sigh.
‘I can try waking somebody else up.’
‘No, don’t bother. Now it’s in the call log and I can call him myself if I have any doubts. This way I’ll see if you dialed a real number or not.’
She starts off again. I look at the traffic, huddled in my seat. After a moment, she puts her hand on my knee.
‘I want to believe you, Martin. But I’ve been lied to so many times in my life. What street in Bourg-la-Reine?’
4
We enter a lobby made of black glass and decorated with a dying yucca in the middle of a Zen garden.
‘Hello,’ I say to the receptionist.
‘Mr … ?’
‘Mr Harris.’
‘He’s not here. Who shall I say wanted to see him?’
I grit my teeth and avoid looking at Muriel, laboring to preserve my calm, politeness, and sense of obviousness when I answer. ‘He is me!’
She studies me, brows knit, as if she were searching her memory.
‘Sorry, I just took over for Nicole and I don’t know everyone yet. Your name was … ?’
‘No, you don’t understand. I am Mr …’
‘Is Paul de Kermeur here?’ Muriel cuts in.
‘No, ma’am, he won’t be in until three, either.’
She starts to look away, but I grab her arm.
‘That’s not true. He’s in his lab. He does his experiments every morning alone and he doesn’t want to be disturbed. Miss, would you please call him, extension 6310? Tell him it’s an urgent matter regarding the Thynnidae, from Martin Harris.’
‘Regarding the what?’
‘Thynnidae. It’s a kind of wasp – he’ll understand.’
With her tongue in the corner of her lips, she pushes some buttons and murmurs into her headphone, ‘Sir, it’s a gentleman for the wasps, sent by Mr Harris. Very well.’
She smiles and says in an air-stewardess voice that I can go ahead. I stay where I am, my toes curled in my shoes. She looks at me quizzically.
I ask, ‘I believe it’s across the way?’
‘Sorry, yes. You go back out and it’s across the road, the tan building marked Unit 42. I’ll unlock the
gate for you.’
As we cross the street, I explain to Muriel that Dr de Kermeur has a fairly special position at the INRA. A number of his colleagues reproach him for working at the crossroads of genetics, molecular biology, and the paranormal. That said, they mainly resent that he actually makes discoveries, which in France seems to be incompatible with the status of researcher.
‘Back home, he’d be a university department head, with half a million a year in funding. Here, they’re just waiting out his retirement by sticking him in some prefab shack behind the trash bins.’
She watches me pass through the electrified fence, which shuts behind us, cross the parking lot in long strides. I breathe easier as I find my bearings. Finally. Even though this is the first time I’ve set foot here, I feel at home. I recognize the surroundings that Kermeur described in his emails, the kind of construction shed in which he persists in trying to prove that plant DNA is related to the golden section, and that the introduction of any new gene is a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. Muriel holds me back at the door to the shed.
‘Go gently. He’s already working with the other one, you heard her. Don’t go in there saying, ‘Hi, I’m the real Martin.’ Play it cool. Let him come to you to keep him from digging in his heels.’
I smile at her in the rain. She moves me, with her messily cut hair sticking to her hollow cheeks and her eyes that are used to seeing problems, danger, scams. Traffic jams, complainers, passengers who come on to her, late-night attacks, kids to watch between runs … She copes with all of it, and none of it seems to get to her. The speed with which she passes from justifiable suspicion to freely given trust, from angry outburst to tact, touches me well beyond the immediate circumstances. She’s an only child, like me, who must have grown up nurturing a dream that never came true but has remained intact, and prevents the drab colors of her life from bleeding into her. I followed my childhood vocation, without ever straying from the path. I accomplished everything I set out to do, and now I find myself utterly bereft in the face of betrayal, abandonment, lies … Liz has always been a liar. She was a lawyer before we met, but her beauty helped me forget all that. I didn’t want to see the cracks beneath the veneer, the instability behind her strength of character, the misunderstandings hidden by silences, the fragility masked by her unassailable indifference. How badly she must have hated me to reach this point. Was I really so obsessed with my plants? Maybe this was her only way of letting me know that she exists, independent, available, and still young, that she can’t stand me anymore and that I’m replaceable.
Unknown Page 3
