The Man Without a Shadow

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Out of cleaving, a sensation of wholeness. Happiness. Knowing that she has made the man feel intense pleasure, and so he has not been alone, and she has not been alone, in this quick frantic coupling.

  When she can think again, it is an unexpected thought that grips her—Will I have his child? Is that the way this will be?

  In the aftermath of love she is naïve, disoriented. She is hardly a scientist, she is not thinking clearly. Feelings wash over her like currents of warm water.

  She holds the perspiring man tight against her. He is holding her also, but her embrace is as fierce as his own, which is surprising to her who has never thought of herself as a very physical, still less sensual, person.

  It is this new person I’ve become. But only here, only now.

  Only with Eli.

  By degrees, their quickened breaths subside. By degrees, exterior sounds intrude.

  An airplane passing, high overhead. In the near distance, the ugly guttural sound of a chain saw.

  “Dear Eli! I love you . . .”

  “. . . . darling, I love you.”

  He has forgotten her name, no doubt. Until he draws back to look at her, very likely he has forgotten her face.

  She wonders too if he remembers that they have made love together in the past—not quite like this, but yes, like this. She wonders what he recalls, in his body.

  Still: they have been together, they have been intimate. She will never forget.

  His seed is inside me. That can’t be altered.

  Margot adjusts her clothing, combs her hair. She is careful to remove from her hair any leaf-fragments, any telltale twigs. She has been careful with her clothing, overall. It is wrong of her to think of any other man at such a time, she feels that it is crude, vulgar, distasteful, but she can’t help but recall with a sense of satisfaction, a kind of reproachful satisfaction, that she’d never been so intimate with Milton Ferris as with this man.

  By degrees she has forgotten how desperately she’d loved Milton Ferris, years ago. How long?—can it have been fifteen years, twenty years? She will not think of this now, it is a mistake to think of her lost love now. She has been so close to this man, she has scarcely needed to name him, or see him. The heartbeat of the other, so near! Her eyes fill with tears of the most intense happiness.

  If I have ruined my life for Eli Hoopes, very well—it could not be helped.

  If I bear his child—that will be enough.

  Earnestly E.H. is asking, “Are you my dear wife? Did you come to take me home with you?”

  Margot hears the wistfulness in E.H.’s voice, as if he knows the answer beforehand but must ask.

  Margot hesitates before saying yes, she is his wife.

  Margot says yes, she will drive him home that day, to Gladwyne. But she can’t stay with him just yet.

  Why not? E.H. asks. If you are my wife.

  His voice rises, alarmed and petulant.

  They must return now to the path—a wide, wood chip path. It is possible—it is even probable—that someone will see them on this path, in the more populous area of the park. E.H. doesn’t know this, has not the slightest awareness of this. But Margot is keenly aware, and draws away from him, just perceptibly.

  E.H. grips her arm at the elbow. He grips her shoulders, to force her to face him. “Why won’t you come home with me, and stay with me, if you are my wife?”

  Margot says, “I—I will come home with you, Eli. Soon. I promise.”

  “‘Soon’—? What’s that mean?”

  “In a—while. I’m not sure when.”

  “Weeks? Months? Years?”

  “Weeks. Or—months.”

  E.H. is hurt, and E.H. is angry. They are walking on the wood chip path now, bypassing the pond. Several times E.H. has taken hold of Margot’s arm at the elbow, and Margot must detach his fingers, not rudely, but firmly.

  Margot is alarmed at E.H.’s agitated voice.

  “Eli, please! Mr. Hoopes! We don’t want strangers to overhear us.”

  “Then why are we here? Why am I here? I want to go home—I can drive us home.”

  “Yes, well—I can drive, Eli. I don’t mind driving. I’ve made arrangements to drive you today. You don’t remember—I guess—but you were brought here this morning, by that very nice young driver—he’s a Dominican—hoping to go to medical school. But I am driving you back to your aunt’s house.”

  “We’re living in Rittenhouse Square. I don’t want to live anywhere else.”

  “Eli, your living quarters with your aunt Lucinda are temporary. Just until—”

  “What do you mean, ‘temporary’? Why am I living with that old woman? I want to live with you. I have a right to live with my wife.”

  “But we aren’t married yet, Eli. We will be married—soon—after the first of the year—in the Unitarian Church of Philadelphia . . .”

  Eli Hoopes’s face creases in suspicion. “‘Unitarian Church of Philadelphia’—that was long ago. I don’t know those people now. I don’t believe you. I don’t even know your name, Doctor.”

  Eli Hoopes’s face is contorted with rage, and grief. Tears have filled his eyes. Margot is horrified, appalled. It is a relief—if but a mild relief—that two medical workers eating their lunches by the pond haven’t noticed them, and don’t appear to be, in any case, anyone who knows Elihu Hoopes or Margot Sharpe.

  She takes the man’s restless hand, she strokes it as you might stroke an agitated animal, to give comfort and to exert control.

  She feels a sick, sinking thrill—Eli Hoopes will wrest his hand from her, and strike her with his fist.

  In the lowered voice of tenderness, concern, intimacy she assures him—“Yes, you know my name: ‘Margot.’ I have come into your life to love you, and take care of you, dear Eli. You know—you’ve had some trouble with your memory? You’ve had neurosurgery?”

  “I have?”

  “You had a virulent infection—your brain swelled with encephalitis, and you had to have emergency surgery in Albany.”

  “Really! That would explain a lot, I guess. When the hell was this, Doctor?”

  “In late summer 1964.”

  E.H. counts on his fingers—(Margot isn’t sure what he is counting). “Was that—last year?”

  “No. It was some years ago.”

  As usual at such perilous times E.H. becomes very still. The amnesiac isn’t capable of mental time-travel; Margot envisions him as an individual who has opened a door in preparation to stepping through, but discovers that the door is a brick wall. The shock is both mental and visceral.

  Gently Margot encourages him: “If you think for a moment, Eli, you will remember getting sick. The infection—the fever. You had a fever of a hundred and three point one degrees Fahrenheit when you were sickest. You took your own temperature during those days you were sick at the lake, and kept a record.”

  Is this true? Margot can’t quite remember.

  True in some way, Margot thinks. She is sure of that.

  E.H. tries to think. He casts his gaze aside, he frowns, grimaces . . . It is uncanny, Margot can almost feel the man thinking.

  The effort of the damaged brain to reconnect—to recharge itself. Margot is touched by sympathy, and pity; and a kind of futile hope. But the circuit is broken, the neurons can’t properly “fire.” Such effort resembles the effort of a paraplegic trying to walk—the memory of walking, the will to walk, is not enough.

  Poor Eli! Margot yearns to embrace him again but dares not in this public place.

  Haltingly E.H. says, “I have some problem with my memory—I think. I forget things I used to know—I think that is the problem.” But he seems doubtful, as if hoping he will be contradicted.

  “How long do you think you’ve had this problem, Eli?”

  “I think—maybe—six months?” E.H. speaks uncertainly, watching Margot closely. He is sensitive to something in her face for he quickly amends, “Maybe more like eighteen months. I think it must be that long, Doctor. Do y
ou think so, too?”

  Margot explains that she is not a doctor, but a neuropsychologist. Margot assures E.H. that she will be with him for the rest of the day.

  “Darling Eli, please trust me. I will never abandon you.”

  It is all that E.H. needs to hear. Though her statement is not literally true, Margot feels that it is true, in a deeper way. I will never abandon you in my heart.

  E.H. seems placated, if guardedly. He is not so very surprised to see the Institute before them and to see that the path they are taking leads to an entrance.

  As they enter the Institute E.H. invariably steps aside to allow Margot Sharpe to precede him through the revolving doors. He is gentlemanly, courtly; as he has left the parkland, and approached the luminous high-rise building with its myriad panes of vertical glass, he becomes somewhat formal, his expression neutral and his manner tinged with irony.

  His clothing is not disheveled. His hair—(now thinning, silver-gray and somewhat dry)—is not disheveled. Margot wonders if there is any erotic memory in him—in his body. (There is certainly an “erotic memory” in a woman, Margot thinks.) But in E.H., this possibility is not at all evident. He will leave the outdoors without a backward glance; if you saw him, you would assume that this is a man who knows exactly where he is going. He stands tall, his posture is impressive in a man of his age.

  In the elevator with Margot Sharpe and several others (strangers) he takes his little notebook out of a pocket and scribbles in it, earnestly. When the elevator door opens on the fourth floor, E.H. is prepared to step out though (Margot knows) if she’d asked him at which floor they would be getting out, he’d have had no idea.

  With a sweetly playful little gesture of gallantry E.H. allows any woman in the elevator to precede him out. Margot has wondered on such occasions if he is mimicking an older male relative, or if he is recalling his own, former self.

  In the lab with no protest he allows smiling Margot Sharpe to hand him over to younger associates of hers who have prepared a complicated battery of tests involving encoding, storing, and retrieval of information in the amnesiac subject. He seems happy to see these “strangers,” and shakes their hands.

  “Are you—medical students? ‘Interns’?”

  Margot remains close by, observing. Within seventy seconds Eli Hoopes will have forgotten her, in his concentration upon being tested. It is urgent for Eli Hoopes to be a good testing subject, to evoke praise and affection in these friendly young strangers.

  Margot is taking notes for what will be two linked articles— “Memory Deficits and Déjà Vu in the Amnesiac Subject E.H.” and “False Memory and Déjà Vu in Severe Retrograde and Partial Anterograde Amnesia.”

  AM I PREGNANT? I will have his child, if I am.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Margot Sharpe will become Elihu Hoopes’s archivist. She is determined.

  Margot Sharpe does not want E.H. to die—of course: she loves him. Yet, Margot Sharpe coolly considers the fact that E.H. will one day die, and she will outlive him—of course: she is younger.

  After E.H.’s death hundreds of little notebooks of uniform size will be recovered among the amnesiac’s possessions. Hundreds of sketchbooks as well.

  (Will E.H. still be living with his aunt, at the time of his death? Or will he be living elsewhere? It is crucial, Margot thinks, that Lucinda Mateson provide for her disabled nephew, in the years to come. She will speak to Mrs. Mateson—soon.)

  With a team of assistants Margot Sharpe will one day edit The Notebooks of “E.H”—The Sketchbooks of “E.H.”—to be published in numerous volumes by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

  Among the vast Project E.H. Archives will be audio and video interviews with the subject as well as audio and videorecordings of the subject’s many tests. Thousands of tests, since 1965! CDs, DVDs. The unique (posthumous) brain of Elihu Hoopes will be scanned in an MRI machine for ten hours; preserved, embedded in gelatin, frozen, cut into two thousand thin slices from back to front; these slices will be eventually digitalized and assembled into a three-dimensional image for continued study. How many Ph.D.s in neuropsychology and neuroscience will be spawned out of this treasure-trove, like bacteria out of a petri dish! As Milton Ferris foretold, The most-studied amnesiac brain in the history of science—and it is ours!

  IT IS AN honor! Professor Sharpe has been assured.

  News has come to her by way of her departmental chair. She is being awarded a major, prestigious award from a national science foundation. Too soon! she thinks. She is trying not to feel dismay, panic.

  She recalls that Milton Ferris received this very award, but not until he was over fifty. It is premature for Margot Sharpe to be given the award.

  “Margot? Is something wrong? This is very good news, you know. Good for you, for the department, for the university and the Institute. And for Project E.H.”

  She thinks But it is too soon, Milton will resent me. She is feeling light-headed.

  Later, she will wonder if Milton Ferris, one of the advisory trustees of the foundation, had a hand in giving her the award.

  They will know that Milton Ferris was my lover. That Milton Ferris cast me off, and this is an acknowledgment of his guilt.

  Haltingly Margot tries to explain that it is very good news of course—but it will have the deleterious effect of interesting more scientists and quasi-scientists in their work with E.H.; the Institute will be swamped with proposals, which will be turned over to Margot Sharpe to consider.

  “We have to protect E.H. We can’t let his identity become known. We can’t let him become a—freak of some kind. I’m forced to turn down virtually every proposal that comes to me, hundreds a year . . .”

  Margot has been stammering. Not knowing what she means to say.

  Her colleagues at the university marvel at Margot Sharpe, and laugh at her—but kindly, with affection. How eccentric Margot is becoming, and she isn’t even fifty years old yet!

  What would be delightful news to another scientist seems to alarm and frighten her. What would be a public confirmation of the significance of her work seems to threaten her.

  For Margot Sharpe is happiest at work. She is a good, devoted, reliable and responsible faculty member at the university, but her relationships with her colleagues and students are likely to be somewhat distracted. Her true life is in the lab, or at the Institute—testing the amnesiac subject E.H.

  She has made a lifetime of E.H., has she! A career.

  Grinding facts, data. Conflating results.

  Composing theories. Designing new tests.

  “—I’m very grateful of course. I’m very—honored.”

  Enduring congratulations. Enduring praise, flattery.

  Her hand shaken. But not her hand shaken by E.H. who is her only happiness.

  She is being told (now by the dean of the faculty) that she must, she absolutely must, accept this award. And she must accept it in person. She certainly cannot send a young colleague in her place!

  Thinking But what if I have no “person”—what will I do then?

  Often when others speak, even if it is her field of neuropsychology of which they speak, even if they are speaking specifically of “Margot Sharpe,” she has begun to find it difficult to concentrate, and intrusive. She finds it difficult to follow the thread of others’ words.

  She is distracted by their brains inside their skulls inside their skins. Almost, she can observe the workings of brains, as in a brain-scan.

  Energized by thought and by speech, brains are illuminated from within. There is a rapid, involuntary firing of neurons like electric shocks. To what purpose?

  Beauty in such illumination, to no other purpose.

  She has taken photos of brain cells, many times magnified. The most beautiful hues, shapes and textures. One day, she will pore over the ultra-thin slices of Elihu Hoopes’s brain.

  Oh my darling. I can’t bear to live without you.

  She will endure. She will live without him. At all times
of the day and the night, when she is not with E.H., she must live without him.

  Thinking how with E.H. she never—quite—loses the thread that connects them.

  For with E.H., as with no other possible lover, the relationship between them is always shifting back to zero. Always, they are discovering each other for the first time.

  “—I am very happy for us all. But the award ceremony comes at a difficult time, when I have so much work to do . . . We are bringing E.H. to the University Hospital, for an fMRI . . .”

  Her voice is oddly hollow, nasal. She has left central Michigan so far behind, so many years ago, how is this possible!

  Eli, I wish you were here. Wish we could be together.

  I miss your hand gripping mine. Your love.

  SHE HAS NO time for anything but work but—after all, and despite her protests—she is being interviewed. The Institute director has insisted on this interview for the Philadelphia Inquirer, she has been told.

  As if Margot Sharpe is placated by being informed that her interviewer is a science writer.

  Asked with a fatuous smile/smirk, “Professor Sharpe, as a scientist do you believe that we have ‘souls’?”

  A question meant to elicit controversy. Though the (female) journalist is smiling, hers is not a friendly smile.

  And so carefully Professor Sharpe replies, “The concept ‘soul’ is fundamentally theological, not scientific. So I am really not able to answer.” Carefully smiling, respectful.

  “Maybe if I rephrase my question—”

  “Well, I’m not sure that I understand your question. Are you asking do I believe as a scientist that we have souls; or, do I, who happens to be a scientist, believe that we have ‘souls’?”

  The interviewer laughs as if Professor Sharpe has meant to be witty and not withering.

  “You can answer either, please! I’m sure that our readers will be intrigued.”

  “As a scientist, I scarcely believe that we are ‘we.’”

  “Excuse me, Professor Sharpe—what does that mean?”