The Man Without a Shadow. Joyce Carol Oates

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      THE SPECIAL CASE.“We’ll be famous one day, Eli! You and me.”

      “Will we!”—E.H. smiles at Margot Sharpe affably if perplexedly.

      “You are a ‘special case’—you must know. This is why we’ve been studying you for years. We are challenging the belief that complex memories are distributed throughout the cerebral cortex—not localized in a small area. We think that you suggest otherwise, Eli!”

      “‘Memory’—‘cere-bral cor-tex.’” E.H. pronounces these words as if he has never heard them before. As if they are words in a foreign language, incomprehensible to him. He laughs at Margot with a kind of childlike delight which is troubling to Margot, who knows that the essential E.H. is a much more intelligent person, given to irony.

       Is it a game he is playing with us, continuously inventing a personality like a shield?

       A personality that does not offend. Inspires sympathy, not cruelty.

      As if he can read Margot’s thoughts E.H. says, with a frown and a wink, “Well—if you think so, Doctor—I am happy for you. I am happy for the future of neuroscience.”

      Of course—it is not advised to speak with subjects about the nature of the experiments in which they are involved. Such exchanges remind Margot uneasily of brain surgery: the skull sawed open, the living brain exposed, but since there is no pain (why no pain?—one has to marvel) the patient is kept conscious and the surgeon can speak to him during the operation.

      Margot wonders: What is the protocol for such brain surgery? Do the surgeon and his assistants chat with the immobilized patient, or is the exchange elevated, grave? A patient so self-aware as Elihu Hoopes might wish to entertain with comical monologues, impersonations of Jimmy Durante, Jack Benny and Rochester, Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca—(as he has been doing lately at the Institute in the interstices of test-taking) …

      Margot chooses to laugh at E.H.’s enigmatic remark. She is moved to touch E.H.’s striped-cotton dress-shirt sleeve, lightly. The most gossamer of touches, it is very possible to pass unnoticed by the amnesiac subject, as by anyone who happens to be observing.

      “Eli, you are so very witty!”

      Gentlemanly Elihu Hoopes certainly notices this touch, though he doesn’t respond—this, too, a gentlemanly gesture.

      And Margot knows that, within seventy seconds, and long before he has been returned to his residence in suburban Philadelphia where he lives with a widowed aunt, E.H. will have totally forgotten their exchange and this lightest of touches.

      LATE-WINTER/EARLY-SPRING 1974, a new battery of tests.

      In these, E.H. is given varying lists of nonsense-terms to memorize. By degrees, the lists are lengthened. On the whole E.H. performs within the “normal” range—for this, he’s given a good deal of praise by the testers.

      Until now, the test is more or less routine. E.H. is told that he is performing well, as he is frequently told. With a wink he asks, “Is there a test for ‘testes’? Is it a little weeny test-ie?”

      Margot and others laugh, awkwardly. Is E.H. simulating a kind of dementia, as a (controlled) parody of his brain-damage?

      As a man with a limp might exaggerate his limp, to arouse laughter and dispel pity.

      The testing resumes. E.H. performs well.

      Then in the midst of one of E.H.’s recitations there is an interruption, and another set of lists is introduced. This is a short list of only three items but when E.H. is instructed to return to the first list he is hopelessly lost. Within a few seconds his frail memory has been overturned—it isn’t just that E.H. can’t recall the items, he is unable even to recall that there was a test preceding the current test.

      Margot thinks—It’s as if a shaky cart heaped with an unwieldy cargo has been pulled by an intrepid donkey up a steep and uneven hill—the cart topples over, the cargo falls to the ground.

      “Eli, let’s try again. Take a deep breath. Relax …”

      The test-with-interruptions is repeated several times. Each time E.H. performs very poorly. Though he has no memory beyond seventy seconds it seems clear that, with each test, he is becoming ever more frustrated and discouraged. It is noted by examiners that the amnesiac subject is “remembering” an upsetting emotion if not its precise origin.

      By the end of the battery of tests E.H. is ashen-faced, sober. His smile has long since faded.

      The test is a model of sadistic ingenuity. Margot Sharpe, a co-designer, feels a flush of shame.

      “Eli? Mr. Hoopes?”

      “Yes? Hel-lo …”

      “Your work today has been very, very good. Outstanding, in fact. Thank you!”

      Uncomprehendingly E.H. gazes at Margot Sharpe who has been designated to tell the amnesiac subject that, despite hours of a demonstration of severe memory loss, he has in fact done very well.

      Weakly smiling E.H. rubs his jaw which is not quite so smooth-shaven as it had been when he’d first arrived at the Institute. “Well—thank you.” He gazes at Margot imploringly as if he has more to say to her—something to ask of her—but has lost heart, and does not ask.

      THE CRUEL HANDSHAKE. Promptly at 10:30 A.M. Alvin Kaplan enters the testing-room. Margot Sharpe who has been working with the amnesiac subject on a series of tests involving visual cues for much of the morning introduces him to E.H. (Close by, unobtrusively with a small camera, a graduate student is filming the encounter.)

      “Eli, I’d like you to meet my colleague Alvin Kaplan. He’s a professor of neuropsychology at the university and a member of Professor Ferris’s lab.”

      E.H. rises to his feet. E.H. smiles brightly. That look of hope in the man’s eyes!—Margot never ceases to be moved.

      Boldly E.H. extends his hand: “Hello, Professor!”

      “Hello, Mr. Hoopes.”

      E.H. has met Alvin Kaplan many times of course—(Margot might hazard a guess: approximately fifty times?)—but E.H. has no memory of the man.

      It would be an ordinary exchange except as Kaplan shakes E.H.’s hand he squeezes the fingers, hard. E.H. reacts with surprise and pain, and disengages his hand.

      Yet, Kaplan doesn’t betray any social cue that he has deliberately caused E.H. pain, nor even that he notices E.H.’s reaction. So far as you would guess, Kaplan has shaken E.H.’s hand “normally”—but E.H. has reacted “abnormally.”

      Poor E.H. is so socialized, so eager to pass for normal, he disguises and minimizes his own pain. Taking his cues from Kaplan and Margot Sharpe (who is his “friend” in the testing-room, he thinks)—he “understands”—(mistakenly)—that the aggressive young Kaplan hasn’t intended any harm, nor is he aware of having afflicted harm. Post-handshake, Kaplan behaves entirely normally, speaking to E.H. as if nothing at all were amiss; nor does Margot Sharpe, smiling at both men, indicate СКАЧАТЬ