‘But you can’t just invent a complete set of memories! Glutamate or not, I haven’t transferred myself into this guy: I’ve lived his life! His whole life! Childhood, studies, professional experiences, losses, conjugal life … A thousand details, including the most obscure! How could I know all that?’
He takes a deep breath, stands up, and goes to the window, pulling aside the curtain to reveal a wall just outside.
‘There, dear sir, we leave the field of the rational. All I can tell you is that there are examples, and I’ve met some of them myself, but I’m not supposed to say so in an establishment like this one. So I’m talking to you privately, letting you judge for yourself about phenomena that official medicine still deems utterly unacceptable.’
He turns around and leans his back against the library, his fingers squeezing a corner of the curtain. A ray of sunlight edges its way onto the floor, between the clouds.
‘What are you getting at, doctor?’
‘Let’s say that the mind, to put together the elements of the fable it’s building, will help itself.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Our brains are composed of matter and energy, agreed? Of organic tissues and waves that don’t necessarily interact in a closed system. What I’m trying to tell you …’
‘Is that I cleaned out this guy’s memory long distance.’
‘Cleaned out? No, since you tell me that your memories are equal. More like scanned. The original is still in its place, but the copy is in you.’
I swallow, staring at the reflections playing over the window panes.
‘Doctor, there’s something I didn’t tell you about. When I woke up, I had … It seemed like I had …’
He lets me wallow for a few moments in my ellipses before finishing my sentence: ‘… a near-death experience, is that it? You left your body, you saw it from above, and you felt pulled into a tunnel by a great current of love and well-being. Then a luminous shape explained to you that it wasn’t your time yet and you had to go back.’
I look at him, hands gripping the armrests.
‘How did you know that?’
‘Statistics. Thirty-five per cent of my patients report similar experiences. It’s a simple chemical hallucination, brought on by lack of oxygen to the brain and the resulting discharge of glutamate. The overload of glutamate causes an excess of synaptic relays: too many doors open at the surface of the neurons, which we call NMDA receptors. Because of this, an overproduction of calcium invades the neuron and causes its death. The brain then has to manufacture urgently a substance to block the NMDA receptors – ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic that gives you the sensation of leaving your body, floating in the air, seeing shapes and lights. It’s perfectly normal.’
His reassuring smile fills me with a mixture of rancor and disappointment. He uncaps his pen, furrows his brow, wipes the nib on the blotter. I recall my father’s silhouette floating in the whiteness of the tunnel, the intense light that somehow wasn’t blinding. My father in his gardener’s uniform, restored to the time of his youth, magnificent and joyful, telling me gently, without moving his lips, Don’t be afraid, Martin. Go back to your body. You’ll have a second existence. Only you can decide what to do with it.
‘The result is that, when you come to, the doping effects of the glutamate on your memory are all the stronger because the hallucinogenic ketamine has disconnected you from reality. The scenario you constructed for yourself in the coma thus has a power of truth greater than all the contradictory information you might be receiving now. So I’m not surprised that you refuse to accept the version I’m giving you.’
‘But if you don’t believe in near-death experiences, how can you believe in telepathy, brain waves hacking into other people’s brains?’
‘I don’t believe in them. But I wanted you to tell me about your experience. Being able to verbalize the hallucination means you’ve made considerable progress, for a first session.’
His phone rings and he answers it, listens with brows knit.
‘I’ll be right there.’
He hangs up, preoccupied, tells me he’s sorry but it’s an emergency.
‘So what happens now? Do I get put back to sleep for another brainwashing and wake up my old self?’
He slips his pen into his jacket pocket, changes his mind, and takes it out again to scribble something on his prescription pad.
‘I don’t see how an induced coma could change anything,’ he murmurs while jotting. ‘Are you free for dinner? I’d like to continue this conversation. I have a few more things to tell you that I can’t decently mention inside these walls.’
He tears the slip from the pad and hands it to me.
‘It’s forty minutes from Paris. You can bring Ms Caradet, if you like.’
I glance at the address and fold the paper.
‘Do you always invite your patients to the country?’
‘Raking dead leaves is excellent therapy. No, seriously, you’re an enigma to me, Mr Harris. When I come across a case that doesn’t fit the usual profile, I either solve it or write about it.’
He points to the lower shelf of his library, full of books with his name on the spines.
‘In forty years of practice, I’ve never seen someone emerge from a coma with so much … immediate lucidity, self-possession, call it what you will. So much freshness, if you’ll pardon my saying so. The explanation I gave you is just an academic hypothesis. But if you look at it with a little distance, if you analyze the share of fantasy that might factor into your current identity as you perceive it, in the light of this alter ego you’ve had contact with three times since this morning, then you might be able to reawaken the other voice inside you. The one you didn’t want to hear anymore.’
‘Doctor, tell me the truth. Am I crazy?’
He looks at me with a hint of a smile.
‘I’ll see you this evening. And try to wear boots, the ground is wet.’
He leaves without showing me out of his office. Maybe he thinks I’ll see it as a mark of trust. Or he wants to leave me alone with his books so that I can become acquainted with them. I take one off the shelf, turn it over, skim through the brief bio and review quotes above his photo. Dr Jérôme Farge, Who Must I Be? Subtitle: Neurophysiological Evaluation of Core Consciousness in Post-Comatose Identity Disorders. He doesn’t seem like a quack, but nothing he said has struck a nerve. I feel like Martin Harris with every fiber in my body, with all my might, and even more so since trying not to be him. In all fairness, when I described my situation to the doctor, I tried to adopt the viewpoint of the ones who are out to negate me. But it didn’t hold up. My internal reality is stronger – or my ‘dream laboratory’, as he put it. I smile at the idea of my brainwaves heading out to clone Liz’s husband’s. But try as I might to refute a theory that Dr Farge himself admits he doesn’t believe in, I’ve spent too much time studying telepathy in plants to remain entirely deaf to the possibility. Except I’d take it in reverse: during my coma, for a reason I’m beginning to glimpse, I was the one who communicated the contents of my memory to Elizabeth’s lover. The fact is, I was suffocating with her, since her depression; other women were starting to look better and better, but I swore to myself never to leave her, even if she wasn’t the same anymore. It’s true that I accepted this job in France to get us out of the dead-end of Greenwich, where she no longer saw anybody – and especially to get some breathing room outside our usual circles. The fact is, for months I kept having the same dream over and over again. I was looking at myself through the living-room window: I could see myself at home with Liz, and at the same time I was outside, doubled, free to go love other women without abandoning her, without leaving an empty space … But that makes no sense. If someone were to ask me what I want, what I really want since this morning, it would be to reclaim my place, chase out the intruder. However dissatisfied I might have been with Liz, I have too full a life just to give her up to some squatter. Who is apparently hanging onto my identi
ty just as tenaciously.
The other possible explanation, of course, is the one voiced by my colleague at the INRA. Who else could have reason to discredit me, prevent me from pursuing my research, get me out of circulation – who else, if not the GMO producers that I’m attacking by endorsing Kermeur’s work? That said, the stakes are high and they aren’t suicidal: creating another me with false ID papers, even if they’ve bought my wife’s complicity, can only work for a day or two – unless I were to disappear for good. After all, nothing says my accident couldn’t have been attempted murder. Unless they’re simply waiting for me to lose my mind in the face of this absurdity. To bang up against wall after wall until I go nuts, destroy myself like a moth against a lit window. To cut myself off from my milieu, alienate everyone’s trust with my attitude, even Kermeur’s – who will then choose, as he no doubt already has, to base his findings on the work of an impostor who’ll lead him down the garden path, neutralize him with mistaken conclusions that will discredit him as well.
Still, there’s a problem. I’m perfectly willing to believe Monsanto or someone else has the reasons and resources to put my life into someone else’s head, but how could they know all these intimate details about me? Dad’s snakes, his hot-dog contests … I’ve never mentioned those to anyone, not even Liz. Can we be indexed to such a point, from birth? And who controls the index files?
I grip onto the bookshelves, paralyzed by the idea that has suddenly hit me. And what if the psychiatrist were right? What if I’m the fake, the programmed replacement? If I’m the one who was to pass himself off as Martin Harris, and the coma just erased the memory of my imposture? I look for a mirror, my hands trembling, open a closet and look at myself in the full-length glass. The hypothesis is a dead end, I know, but just the fact of having envisioned it has changed something in me. You can’t be thrown away by everybody without it leaving scars. You can’t be flatly repudiated, delivered unto doubt and suspicion without it arousing a certain hardness, a streak of rage and hateful solitude. I’ve tried to convince them every way I know how: sincerity, reason, competence, emotion – all I have left is force. I’m in a state of self-defense, and I want the hide of the man who’s taken my place. I want to see him dead. I can feel it. The woman from the INRA was right, before: the only logical outcome to our situation is to eliminate the extra one. I don’t know what level of violence he’s reached by now, but if he were standing here, in the mirror, in front of me, I would strangle him.
I shut the closet door, slip the book into the pocket of my raincoat, rediscover the twenty-euro bill. I’m sick of being all wrinkled, in these clothes that reek of silt and hospital. I want to change, but I barely have enough to buy a pair of socks. I look around for something that might be valuable. Nothing apart from a statuette of Diana the huntress, bow taut on its bronze arrow: I can’t quite see leaving the office with that under my arm. Delicately, I tear a dozen or so sheets from the prescription pad and slip them into my inside pocket before walking out.
Two orderlies chatting in the corridor nod at me as they cross my path. I answer with a cordial look. All the same, I think it’s a bit negligent of them to leave a man like me at large.
6
I’ve lost everything, except my memory. He has stolen my wife, my job, and my name. I’m the only one who knows he isn’t me. I’m living proof of that. But for how much longer? I’m in danger, sir. And you are my last hope.
A door opens; the secretary shows a client out. I gather my prepared phrases and stand up. She comes back into the waiting room and points me to the door, which she shuts behind me.
I was expecting a nosey little bugger with a hound’s-tooth jacket and a shifty gaze, or a sweaty fat man with eyes swimming in bourbon: the stereotypes that go with the trade. But he’s tall and bald, with a black polo shirt and boots and a body piercing.
‘I don’t do adultery cases,’ he informs me right from the start. ‘Only research into commercial, industrial, or inheritance information and verification of personal data.’
I confirm that I chose him with that in mind. He motions toward the chair facing his desk. I add that it’s the first time I’ve spoken to a private detective. He answers that the term is ‘investigator’.
‘What is this about?’
‘Me.’
I’m about to launch into the call for help that I polished in the waiting room, but his aloofness and cold appearance push me toward sobriety.
‘I’m an American citizen, I’ve lost my papers, and someone’s taking advantage to try to steal my identity. Your ad says you have agents in the United States.’
‘Correspondents, yes.’
‘I need to prove who I am, urgently, to confound the impostor who is passing himself off as me.’
‘Are you familiar with my fees?’
‘No. It doesn’t matter.’
‘So, fill me in on the situation.’
I tell my story, one more time, with the annoying impression of detailing the other man’s situation, of being a stranger to what’s happening to me.
‘Wouldn’t you rather handle this with your consulate?’
‘I’ve been there.’
‘And?’
I summarize the results of my attempt: impossible to obtain a duplicate passport, personal records, fingerprint file, or even a certificate with just my social security number. I insisted, filled out twenty different forms, waited for three hours. I was finally seen by a guy in shirtsleeves who assured me that everything was under control: they have transmitted my requests to the relevant departments, only there was the usual delay in treating this kind of matter. When I asked what the usual delay was, he answered that it depended. But it was already the end of October and we shouldn’t expect too much. Shaking my hand with a friendly air, he wished me good luck and said not to hesitate to call him if there was anything he could do, no matter what. I walked out of there, happy at first, and then I realized halfway down the stairs that I was leaving completely empty-handed: he hadn’t even told me his name.
‘So what is it you want me to do, exactly?’ says the detective, kneading the diamond in the flare of his nose. ‘To get your records faster than the American authorities? I don’t want to give you false hope, Mr Harris. I’m expensive, but let’s be realistic.’
‘No, I was thinking that you could send your correspondents to check me out in Greenwich, where I lived, or at my campus. Ask my neighbors, my colleagues, show them my picture, take down their statements, get me supporting documents …’
‘For whose benefit?’
His interrogation-like tone is getting on my nerves. I explain that I’m the victim of a plot by a multinational out to discredit my struggle against GMOs. Suddenly his face comes to life, his eyelids rise, and a glimmer of interest casts me in a new light.
‘Monsanto?’
‘Or its competitors.’
‘If that’s the case, you couldn’t have picked anyone better: I’m in contact with the best law firm in Philadelphia, specializing in suits against industrial lobbies. I gave them the conclusive evidence in the Vivendi case …’
‘No, thanks. I just want to prove that I’m me, that’s all. I’ve prepared a list for you with the names of people and organizations to contact.’
He asks why I don’t simply handle this myself.
‘I no longer have a computer, or a phone, or a credit card. I reported the loss, but until I receive my new card …’
I immediately regret my confession of insolvency, which will no doubt cool his enthusiasm. But he’s begun reading my two pages of names, addresses, references, biographical data, and his smile continues to widen. Obviously, the profit he hopes to gain from my case nicely exceeds the amount he could ask me for.
‘You really managed to get plant testimony admitted in a court case?’
Respect has permeated his voice. I nod.
‘I can understand why the GMO lobby is trying to break you,’ he murmurs, standing up. ‘I’ll be right back.’
He goes out, taking with him those two sheets of paper that encapsulate a life. When earlier I dredged up the details from my memory to write them down, I felt the same nervousness as when I pack my suitcase, the same anxiety that I’m forgetting something essential. Every event was there for the asking, all the notable facts of my existence, but it was an effort to recall the images of the people and places I was evoking. My father in the garden of Disney World, my mother dressed up like a vahine delivering breakfasts down the hallways of the Polynesian Hotel, receiving my diploma at Yale, meeting Liz at a law-school party, our marriage with no family members present and only colleagues as guests, my first discoveries in the language of plants … When I focused my attention, I felt like pieces of me were coming unstuck in my brain and moving to the background to compose a memory, recreate a scene. Each time it was the same feeling of tearing, ubiquity, dispersion. Like a tree losing its leaves, a flower disseminating its pollen. I’ve never experienced anything like it. I’m someone who has always built his life on a single note: rage, born of childhood humiliations. The feeling of injustice and rejection was transformed with the passing years into pride at being different, at standing apart from the human race and relying only on myself. I’ve always been collected, coherent, unassailable. Why did it feel like I was amputating a piece of myself every time I committed a memory to paper? Probably a side-effect of the coma – yet another one.
But there was this other, even stranger phenomenon, like a superimposition. As I was writing the date and place of my marriage, an image from somewhere else came to settle on top of the scene, blotting out the decor of the Greenwich Country Club. I’m with Liz on a street in Manhattan, precisely at the corner of Forty-second Street and Sixth Avenue, where the giant screen broadcasts live, every second, the sum total of the national debt and its amount per American household. I am kissing Liz, but I see myself from behind, from above, as when I floated over my body in the coma. And the liquid crystal numbers parade by, brighter and brighter, clearer and clearer: seventy-two billion, four hundred seventy million, seven hundred thirty-two thousand, eight hundred fifteen …
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