The Man Without a Shadow

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Margot brings E.H. a small container of apple juice which he takes from her with a polite, fleeting smile—“Thank you, Doctor.”

  Margot goes away, and takes notes in her log. She studies test results from the previous week. It is forty minutes before she resumes working with the subject, and is surprised to discover that E.H. is still restless and irascible, though he has no idea who she is. He smiles at her politely if warily, hand extended like a well-to-do landowner greeting a visitor to his property—“Well, hello! Hel-lo.”

  “Hello, Eli—Mr. Hoopes.”

  Margot can imagine Eli Hoopes, in different circumstances, welcoming her to the Hoopes estate at Lake George. She knows something of those old Adirondack properties—the log-cabin summer homes of multimillionaires—more resplendent even than the summer homes of the wealthy of the northern peninsula of Michigan.

  “And you are—?”

  “Margot Sharpe, Eli. We’ve met before, and we’ve done quite a bit of important work together. May we begin now?”

  “What is my alternative?”—but E.H. speaks playfully, and not at all threateningly.

  Margot takes care to begin with general, impersonal subjects that will cause him no distress, or so she hopes. A sequence of iconic photographs by Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Cartier-Bresson—paintings by Monet, Goya, Picasso—woodcuts by Rockwell Kent. All of these E.H. identifies immediately though he hesitates over the woodcuts of Rockwell Kent—coincidentally, as Margot has not planned this, depictions of Adirondack scenes.

  She has decided not to risk showing the drowned girl again. But she shows other sketches of E.H.’s—moonlit Lake George, mysteriously burning pine tree, two-passenger aircraft with one of its wings tilted to the ground looking small as a child’s toy. Haltingly E.H. identifies these as Lake George scenes but doesn’t seem to recognize them as artworks of his own.

  “Damn you.”

  As Margot is about to replace the airplane with another image E.H. turns to her in sudden fury. The ordinarily gentle man grips her wrist and shakes her. And shakes her. He is glaring at her with such loathing, Margot is terrified that he will snap her wrist in his strong fingers.

  “You—God damn you! What did you do with—‘Eli Hoopes’ . . .”

  Margot tries to quiet E.H. They are alone together in the testing-lab and she is in dread of someone hearing his raised voice, and coming inside.

  “Why, Eli—what is wrong?”

  E.H. tells Margot that he has retained a lawyer—there are many lawyers in the Hoopes family—and he is going to sue “you and this God-damned hospital for malpractice.” They operated on his brain, he says, and inserted—something. “An electrode, a magnet—something! You damaged my brain, and now you’re leading me around by what is damaged in me. I am not an experimental animal to be so led.”

  It is an astonishing outburst. Margot is speechless.

  But of course you are an experimental animal to be so led.

  E.H. continues, in a fierce accusatory voice Margot has never heard before, “You! All of you! You flatter me as someone special when in truth I’m a freak. But I am not a freak whose sole purpose for existing is to advance your careers.”

  Margot tries to protest: Eli has misunderstood! It was a fever he’d suffered—encephalitis—he’d had emergency surgery at a hospital in Albany, to reduce swelling in his brain and save his life—but not neurosurgery. Medical intervention had saved his life, not injured him.

  “Bullshit! I don’t believe that. I want to see the medical reports. I want new doctors—I don’t trust any of you. You have made me into”— E.H. looks coolly about for an object to express visually what he is trying to say, leans over to snatch a tangle of wadded tissues out of a trash basket—“like this. ‘Throw-out.’”

  Margot is so shocked, she can hardly reply.

  So shocked, she feels tears gathering in her eyes.

  And so—all along, the amnesiac subject has known? That he is irreparably damaged?

  To look at E.H. in that instant is to look into the ruin of a human being. A human face, amid devastation. The spark of the individual who was once “Elihu Hoopes”—or might have been “Elihu Hoopes”—peers out at her, desolate.

  Help me, please! Help me out of this if you have any human compassion.

  Help me to die.

  THE REMEDY IS simple: you walk away.

  Quickly, but not so quickly as to seem as if you are fleeing, you walk away from the agitated amnesiac subject.

  In a calm voice Margot calls for one of the nurse’s aides who comes at a trot to oversee the agitated patient as Margot excuses herself and departs. No one on the nursing staff is ever surprised, still less astonished, by any outburst or aberrant behavior on the part of any patient; immediately the young woman speaks to E.H. in a voice of comfort, common sense, and constraint. But Margot has fled, Margot takes refuge in a women’s lavatory on the floor.

  “Not again. Never.”

  She has vowed: she will not show E.H. his charcoal sketch of the drowned girl in the stream, ever again.

  After a discreet several minutes Margot returns to the lab, and sees through the plate-glass window that a much-calmer E.H. appears to be talking and laughing with the nurse’s aide.

  She brings the amnesiac subject a glass of orange juice. The sugar will revive him, for another several hours of tests; and he will be warmly disposed to Margot Sharpe, as to any attractive female figure who befriends him.

  “Mr. Hoopes—Eli—hello!”

  “Hello? Hel-lo.”

  MARGOT SHARPE HAS read all of the major literature on amnesia, brain damage, impaired and selective memory—of course. She has read such classics as Alexander Luria’s The Man with a Shattered World, a painful quasi-memoir by a brain-damaged Russian veteran of World War I; she has read Luria’s The Mind of a Mnemonist, the case study of a man whose memory seemed infinite who was also, in a different and more subtle way, mentally damaged. And of course she has read publications on memory and amnesia by Milton Ferris and his most distinguished former students.

  One day—(not now, while she is still dependent upon her elders’ judgment if she wishes to advance her career)—Margot hopes to compose a highly personal sort of prose piece modeled after Luria’s “romance sciences,” not purely, or exclusively, scientific, but speculative and even “poetic” as well: she will convert her journal into a more extensive exploration of E.H. than she is likely to know as a research scientist, by learning what she can of his private life; or, at least, of the emotional landmarks of E.H.’s private life.

  She has written to a number of newspapers and publications in the Lake George area of the Adirondacks making inquiries about the death of a young girl in the 1930s and 1940s—“Possibly, someone associated with the Hoopes family of Philadelphia”—but with no results; either the publications have vanished, or whoever opens Margot Sharpe’s letters feels no obligation to reply. She has spent hours trying to make phone contact with the Warren County Sheriff’s Office and with other law enforcement officers in the area; she has called and written to the Warren County Courthouse Department of Records several times. Her telephone calls have been futile, her letters have gone mostly unanswered.

  No substitute for driving to the Adirondacks one day—but the thought unaccountably fills her with loneliness and dread.

  If Eli Hoopes could come with me! Just the two of us.

  I WAS “BURNING up”—it was a fire that never went out but smoldered for days. The marrow of my bones melted, I could smell the odor like rancid milk.

  I can smell it, still. I can feel the fire smoldering all around my body and inside my head. Trees were on fire. The way pine trees blaze. My grandfather’s plane crash-landed, and burst into flame. That’s why there are yellow barriers in the corridors here, to keep you from walking in the burnt places. That’s why there is a stink of burnt things. But I am almost recovered now. My hair has grown back from where it was shaved. My parents are coming next week to
take me home—I will be in “rehab” for a long time they say.

  Gretchen was not found, I think. She is still in the woods at Lake George where I will look for her when I am able.

  DISTURBING NEWS FOR Margot Sharpe.

  She is being informed that news has come from Darven Park that their amnesiac subject has been “behaving uncharacteristically”—“at times, dangerously.”

  Margot Sharpe has news of her own. Private news, incendiary news, of which no one else knows. She is breathing quickly like one who has run up a steep flight of stairs. She is smiling inappropriately for she is scarcely listening to the alarmed voice of the departmental chair droning in her ears. She is thinking—But what do I care for any of you, I am pregnant at last! I am pregnant with Elihu Hoopes’s child.

  Her hand drops to her belly, which is still a flat hard belly that betrays no secrets. Her eyes lift innocently to the concerned eyes of the new departmental chair Hendrik Latta.

  Latta, Mills. What has become of Mills? Margot had not liked or trusted Mills but she had known him and Margot does not know this Latta, younger than she. His field is social psychology for which neuroscientists have a (not-so-secret) contempt.

  Professor Sharpe has been summoned to speak to this man. She has been summoned to come at a trot like a craven little dog but she has ignored the summons for several days. And now, she has come into the departmental office as if accidentally, to get the mail crammed into her box. “Oh hello! Did you want to speak with me?”—her voice is urgent and insincere. She is swathed in layers of black—black trousers, black silk shirt, black quilted jacket. No jewelry except on the third finger of her left hand a narrow silver ring that might be a wedding band which fits her finger loosely, and which she turns nervously.

  Margot is frightened, but she is thrilled. Margot is numb with astonishment, but she is not surprised. Calmly Margot is thinking—We will have our child. None of you can stop us. We will live somewhere in the country, in the Adirondacks perhaps. Where no one knows us, and no one will judge us. I will protect both the father and the child—I will protect them with my life.

  Through the din in her ears she hears Latta’s voice. She must try to listen.

  “Margot”—the inquisitive man is calling her “Margot” with a grating familiarity, as if he has the right—“we’ve heard disturbing reports from Darven Park. E.H. is becoming ‘violent’ at times—‘uncontrollable.’ He has lost his temper with aides and he has hurt you, he has bruised your wrists. Is this true?”

  Quickly Margot tugs her cuffs over her wrists. Quickly Margot says scoffing, laughing—“No! This is not true.”

  The sound in her ears is so distracting, she isn’t sure what she has said. She speaks again, louder: “I meant to say—no. It is not true.”

  Latta has invited Margot to sit down. But Margot will not sit down, to be trapped in the man’s office. Gravely he says, “I’ve been hearing that your amnesiac E.H. isn’t so cooperative as he used to be. That he has been having health problems . . .”

  Margot wonders if her young lab colleagues have been spreading these rumors. She has been keeping them away from E.H. recently; she has been working with the subject herself. E.H.’s “moods” scarcely worry her—Margot knows that E.H. trusts her.

  If it’s the Institute staff that is spreading rumors about E.H., there is not much that Margot Sharpe can do. But if it’s an individual or individuals in her lab, she can take measures.

  “It’s true, Eli has had respiratory infections this winter. He doesn’t play tennis as impressively as he’d once done. And he isn’t quite so childlike and cooperative as he’d once been. But he has aged, after all—he’s sixty-five years old.”

  Sixty-five! Poor Eli.

  In fact, E.H. has lately become sixty-six years old. But Margot can’t bring herself to say sixty-six.

  Margot dismisses rumors that E.H. is becoming temperamental or difficult. She points out that E.H. remains youthful, despite his age; he continues to dress with care, and to shave each morning; his enthusiasm for his old, favorite subjects—civil rights activism and the bigotry of most whites, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., economics and “game theory”—has not abated, nor has his ability to recite favorite poems, song lyrics, passages from speeches. He continues to record faithfully in his notebook and to sketch in his sketchbook—“E.H. is a remarkable artist. I think that over the years he has recaptured some of his original, lost talent.” Margot speaks so persuasively, and so calmly, no one could guess how rapidly her heart is beating. Unconsciously she turns the ring around her finger.

  Latta asks if E.H. shares his notebook and sketchbook with the memory lab and Margot says stiffly, as if this were a frankly stupid question she will nonetheless politely consider, “No. Not usually. But he will share them, sometimes, with me.”

  “And are you alone together often, with the subject?”

  “No. Not ‘often’—I don’t think so.”

  “Someone is usually with you?”

  “The Neuropsychology Department at the Institute is a very busy place, Hendrik!”—(There: she has called him Hendrik. It is a discreet concession Margot hopes will placate him).

  But Hendrik Latta continues to regard Margot with a look of concern. “He hasn’t hurt you, Margot?”

  “‘Hurt me’? How?”

  “Well—physically. By accident or—deliberately.”

  “Certainly not! Eli Hoopes is a gentleman.”

  “He hasn’t threatened you?”

  “How could Eli Hoopes threaten anyone? The poor man has virtually no conception of the future.”

  Margot laughs. Turning the ring around her finger.

  It is a peculiar thing to have said, it is not very logical, but Margot isn’t about to retract it.

  “He hasn’t”—(an awkward pause, as Latta considers how to phrase this query, what discreet words that will not alarm and inflame Margot Sharpe who is notoriously quick to take offense)—“in any way—suggested—behaved—touched you—sexually?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “I’m sorry, Margot. But I had to ask. I’ve been hearing . . .”

  “Eli Hoopes is not a ‘sexual’ person—so we’ve observed. His brain damage seems to have precluded ‘sexual’ and ‘emotional’ attachments. And so, to answer all your questions, Hendrik—no.”

  Stiff-backed and unyielding Margot exits the office of the departmental chair without a backward glance.

  WHAT DO YOU know, you fool you know nothing.

  (Hides her wrists, in case her wrists are bruised. Hasn’t examined her wrists and if she does, and finds bruises, she rubs Arnica montana oil into the skin. Once or twice he has squeezed her upper arm, and shaken her, in frustration at all that his poor broken brain cannot communicate, and bruises on that part of Margot’s arms are hidden in any case for she never wears short sleeves.)

  (She has vowed never to upset him again. It is cruel, though the results are significant, exciting.)

  (She has vowed never to upset him again and yet—she must risk upsetting the subject, sometimes. There is no progress without such upsets, and such risks. One more time to show E.H. the charcoal sketch of the naked girl in the stream, and to ask him to identify her, and the setting.)

  (For each time is the first time for the amnesiac subject. Each time is a unique time, and it is not repeatable. And for the research scientist each unique time substantiates the experiment in which meticulously recorded data is the ideal.)

  PROFESSOR SHARPE WAS some kind of fanatic. I’d never worked with any scientist like her, and I’d gotten my Ph.D. at Harvard. She was totally devoted to her work—to recording E.H. “Unlocking the mysteries of memory”—she’d say. Virtually nothing could interrupt her, that we knew about—a call might come announcing that she’d won another award, or another grant—Margot would thank the caller politely, hang up and return to work. Sometimes she wouldn’t even tell us what it was—we’d read about it later in the paper. She was the most modest
—selfless—individual any of us had ever met, and not just in science. Everything that wasn’t work was a distraction to her, and she demanded the same sort of devotion from her students and colleagues. That she was a woman in a man’s field made no difference. She was as hard on her female associates as on her male associates. Possibly she made no distinction—she didn’t notice. It wasn’t always a pleasure to work with Margot Sharpe but it was a revelation, we’ve all been changed by her. I scarcely knew what it meant to be a scientist before I’d met Margot Sharpe and I think it’s fair to say that I owe everything to her.

  Yes, it’s true—she was strangely attached to E.H.—as he was then called. Some observers said she was “morbidly” attached to him. But there was nothing more than professional interest, I’m sure. Margot Sharpe was totally professional, and made sure that everyone around her was as well. Poor Eli Hoopes was in his sixties living with an elderly aunt in a Philadelphia suburb at the time I began to work in Margot’s lab—a driver brought him to the Institute most days. He had no idea what was going on—his surroundings were always a mystery to him, and he never recognized us from one hour to the next. Of course he never recognized Margot Sharpe—he called her “Doctor.” He called me “Doctor”—he confused me with someone he’d known long ago in Philadelphia.

  When the aunt died, there was some difficulty, and how Margot Sharpe resolved it, I’m not sure. I’d left the university by then, and established my own lab at Caltech. And all that I know, Margot Sharpe taught me. And Margot Sharpe would always say, all that she knew, she’d learned from Milton Ferris.

  In generational terms, Ferris is my “grandfather.” Margot Sharpe is my “mother”—the least maternal woman I’ve ever met.

  SHE TELLS HIM—“I think that I am pregnant, Eli.”

  She tells him—“Eli darling, I think—I think that I am pregnant.”

  She tells him—“Dearest Eli, I hope you won’t be upset, or shocked, but—I think—think that I am—might be . . .”