Space On My Hands

by Fredric Brown

  He thought that over. He’d had a story ready, but those few words with Charlie in the waiting room had changed everything.

  He said, “Perhaps you’d better ask questions.”

  “Very well.” There was a pencil in Dr. Irving’s hand and paper on the desk before him. “Where and when were you born?”

  He took a deep breath. “To the best of my knowledge, in Corsica on August 15th, 1769. I don’t actually remember being born, of course. I do remember things from my boyhood on Corsica, though. We stayed there until I was ten, and after that I was sent to school at Brienne.”

  Instead of writing, the doctor was tapping the paper lightly with the tip of the pencil. He asked, “What month and year is this?”

  “August, 1769. Yes, I know that should make me a hundred and seventy-some years old. You want to know how I account for that. I don’t. Nor do I account for the fact that Napoleon Bonaparte died in 1821.”

  He leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms, staring up at the ceiling. “I don’t attempt to account for the paradoxes or the discrepancies. I recognize them as such. But according to my own memory, and aside from logic pro or con, I was Napoleon for twenty-seven years. I won’t recount what happened during that time; it’s all down in the history books.

  “But in 1796, after the battle of Lodi, while I was in charge of the armies in Italy, I went to sleep. As far as I knew, just as anyone goes to sleep anywhere, any time. But I woke up — with no sense whatever of duration, by the way — -in a hospital in town here, and I was informed that my name was George Vine, that the year was 1944, and that I was twenty-seven years old.

  “The twenty-seven years old part checked, and that was all. Absolutely all. I have no recollections of any parts of George Vine’s life, prior to his — my — waking no in the hospital after the accident. I know quite a bit about his early life now, but only because I’ve been told.

  “I know when and where he was born, where he went to school, and when he started work at the Blade. I know when he enlisted in the army and when he was discharged — late in 1943 — because he developed a trick knee after a leg injury. Not in combat, incidentally, and there wasn’t any ‘psycho-neurotic’ on my — his — discharge.”

  The doctor quit doodling with the pencil. He asked, “You’ve felt this way for three years — and kept it a secret?”

  “Yes. I had time to think things over after the accident, and yes, I decided then to accept what they told me about my identity. They’d have locked me up, of course. Incidentally, I’ve tried to figure out an answer. I’ve studied Dunne’s theory of time — even Charles Fort!” He grinned suddenly. “Ever read about Casper Hauser?”

  Dr. Irving nodded.

  “Maybe he was playing smart the way I did. And wonder how many other amnesiacs pretended they didn’t know what happened prior to a certain date — rather than admit they had memories at obvious variance with the facts.”

  Dr. Irving said slowly, “Your cousin informs me that you were a bit — ah — ‘hepped’ was his word — on the subject of Napoleon before your accident. How do you account for that?”

  “I’ve told you I don’t account for any of it. But I can verify that fact, aside from what Charlie Doerr says about it. Apparently I — George Vine I, if I was ever George Vine — was quite interested in Napoleon, had read about him, made a hero of him, and had talked about him quite a bit. Enough so that the fellows he worked with at the Blade had nicknamed him ‘Nappy.’ ”

  “I notice you distinguish between yourself and George Vine. Are you or are you not he?”

  “I have been for three years. Before that — I have no recollection of being George Vine. I don’t think I was. I think — -as nearly as I think anything — that I, three years ago, woke up in George Vine’s body.”

  “Having done what for a hundred and seventy-some years?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea. Incidentally, I don’t doubt that this is George Vine’s body, and with it I inherited his knowledge — except his personal memories. For example, I knew how to handle his job at the newspaper, although I didn’t remember any of the people I worked with there. I have his knowledge of English, for instance, and his ability to write. I knew how to operate a typewriter. My handwriting is the same as his.”

  “If you think that you are not Vine, how do you account for that?”

  He leaned forward. “I think part of me is George Vine, and part of me isn’t. I think some transference has happened which is outside the run of ordinary human experience. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s supernatural — not that I’m insane. Does it?”

  Dr. Irving didn’t answer. Instead, he asked, “You kept this secret for three years, for understandable reasons. Now, presumably for other reasons, you decide to tell. What are the other reasons? What has happened to change your attitude?”

  It was the question that had been bothering him.

  He said slowly, “Because I don’t believe in coincidence. Because something in the situation itself has changed. Because I’m willing to risk imprisonment as a paranoiac to find out the truth.”

  “What in the situation has changed?”

  “Yesterday it was suggested — by my employer — that I feign insanity for a practical reason. And the very kind of insanity which I have, if any. Surely, I will admit the possibility that I’m insane. But I can only operate on the theory that I’m not. You know that you’re Dr. Willard E. Irving; you can only operate on that theory — but how do you know you are? Maybe you’re insane, but you can only act as though you’re not.”

  “You think your employer is part of a plot — ah — against you? You think there is a conspiracy to get you into a sanitarium?”

  “I don’t know. Here’s what happened since yesterday noon.” He took a deep breath. Then he plunged. He told Dr. Irving the whole story of his interview with Candler, what Candler had said about Dr. Randolph, about his talk with Charlie Doerr last night and about Charlie’s bewildering about-face in the waiting room.

  When he was through he said, “That’s all.” He looked at Dr. Irving’s expressionless face with more curiosity than concern, trying to read it. He added, quite casually, “You don’t believe me, of course. You think I’m insane.”

  He met Irving’s eyes squarely. He said, “You have no choice — unless you would choose to believe I’m telling you an elaborate set of lies to convince you I’m insane. I mean, as a scientist and as a psychiatrist, you cannot even admit the possibility that the things I believe — know — are objectively true. Am I not right?”

  “I fear that you are. So?”

  “So go ahead and sign your commitment. I’m going to follow this thing through. Even to the detail of having Dr. Ellsworth Joyce Randolph sign the second one.”

  “You make no objection?”

  “Would it do any good if I did?”

  “On one point, yes, Mr. Vine. If a patient has a prejudice against — or a delusion concerning — one psychiatrist, it is best not to have him under that particular psychiatrist’s care. If you think Dr. Randolph is concerned in a plot against you, I would suggest that another one be named.”

  He said softly, “Even if I choose Randolph?”

  Dr. Irving waved a deprecating hand, “Of course, if both you and Mr. Doerr prefer —”

  “We prefer.”

  The iron gray head nodded gravely. “Of course you understand one thing; if Dr. Randolph and I decide you should go to the sanitarium, it will not be for custodial care. It will be for your recovery through treatment.”

  He nodded.

  Dr. Irving stood. “You’ll pardon me a moment? I’ll phone Dr. Randolph.”

  He watched Dr. Irving go through a door to an inner room. He thought; there’s a phone on his desk right there; but he doesn’t want me to overhear the conversation.

  He sat there very quietly until Irving came back and said, “Dr. Randolph is free. And I phoned for a cab to take us there. You’ll pardon me again? I’d like to
speak to your cousin, Mr. Doerr.”

  He sat there and didn’t watch the doctor leave in the opposite direction for the waiting room. He could have gone to the door and tried to catch words in the low voiced conversation, but he didn’t. He just sat there until he heard the waiting room door open behind him and Charlie’s voice said, “Come on, George. The cab will be waiting downstairs by now.”

  They went down in the elevator and the cab was there. Dr. Irving gave the address.

  In the cab, about half way there, he said, “It’s a beautiful day,” and Charlie cleared his throat and said, “Yeah, it is.” The rest of the way he didn’t try it again and nobody said anything.

  *

  VI

  *

  He wore gray trousers and a gray shirt, open to the collar and with no necktie that he might decide to hang himself with. No belt, either, for the same reason, although the trousers buttoned so snugly around the waist that there was no danger of them falling off. Just as there was no danger of his falling out any of the windows; they were barred.

  He was not in a cell, however; it was a large ward on the third floor. There were seven other men in the ward. His eyes ran over them. Two were playing checkers, sitting on the floor with a board on the floor between them. One sat in a chair, staring fixedly at nothing; two leaned against the bars of one of the open windows, looking out and talking casually and sanely. One read a magazine. One sat in a corner, playing smooth arpeggios on a piano that wasn’t there at all.

  He stood leaning against the wall, watching the other seven. He’d been here two hours now; it seemed like two years.

  The interview with Dr. Ellsworth Joyce Randolph had gone smoothly; it had been practically a duplicate of his interview with Irving. And quite obviously, Dr. Randolph had never heard of him before.

  He’d expected that, of course.

  He felt very calm, now. For a while, he’d decided, he wasn’t going to think, wasn’t going to worry, wasn’t even going to feel.

  He strolled over and stood watching the checker game.

  It was a sane checker game; the rules were being followed.

  One of the men looked up and asked, “What’s your name?” It was a perfectly sane question; the only thing wrong with it was that the same man had asked the same question four times now within the two hours he’d been here.

  He said, “George Vine.”

  “Mine’s Bassington, Ray Bassington. Call me Ray. Are you insane?”

  “No.”

  “Some of us are and some of us aren’t. He is.” He looked at the man who was playing the imaginary piano. “Do you play checkers?”

  “Not very well.”

  “Good. We eat pretty soon now. Anything you want to know, just ask me.”

  “How do you get out of here? Wait, I don’t mean that for a gag, or anything. Seriously, what’s the procedure?”

  “You go in front of the board once a month. They ask you questions and decide if you go or stay. Sometimes they stick needles in you. What you down for?”

  “Down for? What do you mean?”

  “Feeble-minded, manic-depressive, dementia praecox, involutional melancholia —”

  “Oh. Paranoia, I guess.”

  “That’s bad. Then they stick needles in you.”

  A bell rang somewhere.

  “That’s dinner,” said the other checker player. “Ever try to commit suicide? Or kill anyone?”

  “No.”

  “They’ll let you eat at an A table then, with knife and fork.”

  The door of the ward was being opened. It opened outward and a guard stood outside and said, “All right.” They filed out, all except the man who was sitting in the chair staring into space.

  “How about him?” he asked Ray Bassington.

  “He’ll miss a meal tonight. Manic-depressive, just going into the depressive stage. They let you miss one meal: if you’re not able to go to the next they take you and feed you. You a manic-depressive?”

  “No.”

  “You’re lucky. It’s hell when you’re on the down-swing. Here, through this door.”

  It was a big room. Tables and benches were crowded with men in gray shirts and gray trousers, like his. A guard grabbed his arm as he went through the doorway and said, “There. That seat.”

  It was right beside the door. There was a tin plate, messy with food, and a spoon beside it. He asked, “Don’t I get a knife and fork? I was told —”

  The guard gave him a shove toward the seat. “Observation period, seven days. Nobody gets silverware till their observation period’s over. Siddown.”

  He sat down. No one at his table had silverware. All the others were eating, several of them noisily and messily. He kept his eyes on his own plate, unappetizing as that was. He toyed with his spoon and managed to eat a few pieces of potato out of the stew and one or two of the chunks of meat that were mostly lean.

  The coffee was in a tin cup and he wondered why until he realized how breakable an ordinary cup would be and how lethal could be one of the heavy mugs cheap restaurants use.

  The coffee was weak and cool; he couldn’t drink it.

  He sat back and closed his eyes. When he opened them again there was an empty plate and an empty cup in front of him and the man at his left was eating very rapidly. It was the man who’d been playing the non-existent piano.

  He thought, if I’m here long enough, I’ll get hungry enough to eat that stuff. He didn’t like the thought of being there that long.

  After a while a bell rang and they got up, one table at a time on signals he didn’t catch, and filed out. His group had come in last; it went out first.

  Ray Bassington was behind him on the stairs. He said, “You’ll get used to it. What’d you say your name is?”

  “George Vine.”

  Bassington laughed. The door shut on them and a key turned.

  He saw it was dark outside. He went over to one of the windows and stared out through the bars. There was a single bright star that showed just above the top of the elm tree in the yard. His star? Well, he’d followed it here. A cloud drifted across it.

  Someone was standing beside him. He turned his head and saw it was the man who’d been playing piano. He had a dark, foreign-looking face with intense black eyes; just then he was smiling, as though at a secret joke.

  “You’re new here, aren’t you? Or just get put in this ward, which?”

  “New. George Vine’s the name.”

  “Baroni. Musician. Used to be, anyway. Now — let it go. Anything you want to know about the place?”

  “Sure. How to get out of it.”

  Baroni laughed, without particular amusement but not bitterly either. “First, convince them you’re all right again. Mind telling what’s wrong with you — or don’t you want to talk about it? Some of us mind, others don’t.”

  He looked at Baroni, wondering which way he felt. Finally he said, “I guess I don’t mind. I — think I’m Napoleon.”

  “Are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Are you Napoleon? If you aren’t, that’s one thing. Then maybe you’ll get out of here in six months or so. If you really are — that’s bad. You’ll probably die here.”

  “Why? I mean, if I am, then I’m sane and —”

  “Not the point. Point’s whether they think you’re sane or not. Way they figure, if you think you’re Napoleon you’re not sane. Q. E. D. You stay here.”

  “Even if I tell them I’m convinced I’m George Vine?”

  “They’ve worked with paranoia before. And that’s what they’ve got you down for, count on it. And any time a paranoiac gets tired of a place, he’ll try to lie his way out of it. They weren’t born yesterday. They know that.”

  “In general, yes, but how —”

  A sudden cold chill went down his spine. He didn’t have to finish the question. They stick needles in you — It hadn’t meant anything when Ray Bassington had said it.

  The dark man nodded. “Truth
serum,” he said. “When a paranoiac reaches the stage where he’s cured if he’s telling the truth, they make sure he’s telling it before they let him go.”

  He thought what a beautiful trap it had been that he’d walked into. He’d probably die here, now.

  He leaned his head against the cool iron bars and closed his eyes. He heard footsteps walking away from him and knew he was alone.

  He opened his eyes and looked out into blackness; now the clouds had drifted across the moon, too.

  Clare, he thought; Clare.

  A trap.

  But — if there was a trap, there must be a trapper.

  He was sane or he was insane. If he was sane, he’d walked into a trap, and if there was a trap, there must be a trapper, or trappers.

  If he was insane —

  God, let it be that he was insane. That way everything made such sweetly simple sense, and someday he might be out of here, he might go back to working for the Blade, possibly even with a memory of all the years he’d worked there. Or that George Vine had worked there.

  That was the catch. He wasn’t George Vine.

  And there was another catch. He wasn’t insane.

  The cool iron of the bars against his forehead.

  After a while he heard the door open and looked around. Two guards had come in. A wild hope, reasonless, surged up inside him. It didn’t last.

  “Bedtime, you guys,” said one of the guards. He looked at the manic-depressive sitting motionless on the chair and said, “Nuts. Hey, Bassington, help me get this guy in.”

  The other guard, a heavy-set man with hair close-cropped like a wrestler’s, came over to the window.

  “You. You’re the new one in here. Vine, ain’t it?”

  He nodded.

  “Want trouble, or going to be good?” Fingers of the guard’s right hand clenched, the fist went back.

  “Don’t want trouble. Got enough.”

  The guard relaxed a little. “Okay, stick to that and you’ll get along. Vacant bunk’s in there.” He pointed. “One on the right. Make it up yourself in the morning. Stay in the bunk and mind your own business. If there’s any noise or trouble here in the ward, we come in and take care of it. Our own way. You wouldn’t like it.”