The Man Without a Shadow. Joyce Carol Oates

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СКАЧАТЬ met before, Mr. Hoopes?” Kaplan asks.

      E.H. shakes his head no. He looks to Margot Sharpe, his “friend” in the lab, who says, with a pause, “I don’t think so, Professor. I don’t think that you and Mr. Hoopes have met.”

      Kaplan glances sidelong at Margot Sharpe. “Mr. Hoopes and I have not met—it isn’t a matter of what you think, Miss Sharpe, but of what I know.”

      It’s as if Kaplan has struck Margot with the back of his hand, to discipline her. Margot feels a stab of rage. Tell your own lies, you bastard. Cold heartless unfeeling son of a bitch.

      Of course, they have rehearsed the cruel handshake. It is not a very difficult experiment, if it’s even an “experiment”—Margot knows how she should behave.

      Yet, what does it matter? E.H. will begin to forget within seconds.

      “Eli, I’d like you to meet my colleague Professor Alvin Kaplan …”

      But this time, as Kaplan approaches E.H. with his usual smile, the amnesiac stands very still, and visibly stiffens. E.H. is smiling a wide, forced smile even as his eyes glare.

      Then, he extends his hand bravely to be shaken—but before Kaplan can squeeze his hand, E.H. squeezes Kaplan’s hand, very hard.

      Kaplan winces, and jerks his hand away. For a moment he is too surprised to speak.

      Then, red-faced and teary-eyed, he manages to laugh. He glances sidelong at Margot Sharpe, who is astonished as well.

      “Mr. Hoopes, you’ve got a strong handshake! Man, that hurt.”

      Kaplan is so stunned by the amnesiac’s unexpected reaction, he has reverted to a way of speaking that isn’t his own but copied from undergraduate speech. Margot laughs nervously, yet with relief.

      Coolly, E.H. gives no sign that he has behaved out of character. His smile is less forced, you might say it is a triumphant smile, though much restrained.

      And restrained too, E.H.’s ironic remark: “One of us is a tennis player, I guess—‘Professor.’ That’s how you get a ‘strong handshake.’”

      MARGOT AND KAPLAN are impressed with E.H.’s most recent response to the handshake. The amnesiac seems to have learned without conscious memory; he has acted reflexively. Subject “remembers” pain. Behavior indicates non-declarative memory.

      Their joint paper will be “Non-declarative Memory in Amnesia: The Case of E.H.” (1973–74). But the experiment is far from complete.

      Next time the “visitor” returns to shake E.H.’s hand, a week later, the amnesiac subject behaves as if he is “trusting”—somewhat stoically, he extends his hand to be shaken, and endures the painful handshake without wincing.

      Margot thinks that this is evidence of E.H. having retained some memory; Kaplan does not.

      To Margot’s surprise Kaplan is dismissive of E.H. He has seen in the amnesiac virtually nothing of the subtlety of response Margot is certain she has seen and recorded in her meticulously kept notebook. (To Margot’s dismay this subtlety isn’t clear in the grainy video a graduate student provides.)

      Kaplan says flatly, “The subject behaves mechanically. His reactions are programmed. He is almost exactly the same each time. Only if we shorten the interval to twenty-four hours does he ‘remember’ something. Otherwise, the neurons in his brain must be firing in precisely the same way each time. He’s a zombie—worse, a robot. He can’t change.”

      Margot is dismayed to hear this and moved to protest. “Eli might be tempering his response because of his respect for the situation. His sense of what the Institute is—the fact that you are a ‘professor.’ He’d like to swear at you, strike you—at least, squeeze your hand in retaliation as he’d done last time—but he doesn’t dare. He suffers the squeezed hand in silence because he’s a socialized being. He has been schooled in non-violence, in the civil rights movement. He has been conditioned to be polite.”

      “Bullshit! Poor bastard is a robot. There’s a key in his back we have to wind. He can’t ‘remember’ being hurt beyond a day or two. Even then, he doesn’t really ‘remember.’”

      “He feels something like a premonition. That’s a kind of memory.”

      “‘Premonition’—what is that? There is no neurological basis for ‘premonition.’”

      “I don’t mean ‘premonition’ literally. You know that.”

      Margot raises her hand as if to strike Kaplan in the face. Instantaneously Kaplan shrinks back, lifting an arm to protect himself. Margot cries in triumph, “You see? What you did just now? You protected yourself—it’s a reflex. That’s what E.H. has been doing—protecting himself against you.”

      Kaplan is mildly shocked by Margot Sharpe. Indeed, it will not ever be quite forgotten by Kaplan that the subordinate Margot Sharpe actually “raised” her hand against him even to demonstrate the phenomenon of involuntary reflexive action.

      “Look, the subject is brain-damaged. We’re experimenting to determine if there’s another avenue of ‘memory’ in amnesia. Why are you so protective of this poor guy? Are you in love with him?”

      Kaplan laughs as if nothing can be more ridiculous, and more unlikely.

      But Margot Sharpe has already turned, and is walking away.

       Go to hell. We hate you. We wish you would die.

      MARGOT DOWNS A shot of whiskey her lover has poured for her.

      Fire-swift, her throat illuminated like a flare. Her chest, that seems to swell with elation—the thrill of despair.

       I have abased myself before this man. My shame can go no further.

      Yet, she is smiling. She sees in her lover’s eyes that he wants her, still—she is a young woman, in the eyes of this man who is thirty-two years her senior.

      Their time together is hurried, like a watch running fast. He tells her of his early, combative life in science: his impatience with the limitations of behaviorism, his feuds with colleagues at Harvard (including the great B. F. Skinner himself), his eventual triumphs. The several men who were his mentors, and those who were his detractors and who tried to sabotage his career (again, the “tyrannical” Skinner). His first great discoveries in neuropsychology. His academic appointments, his research grants, his awards and election to the National Academy at the age of thirty-two—one of the youngest psychologists ever elected to the Academy. He tells her of his children’s accomplishments, and he tells her that his wife is a good, kind, decent woman, an “exemplary” woman whom he has nonetheless hurt, and continues to hurt. He tells Margot that he loves her, and does not intend to hurt her.

      Is this a pledge? A vow? It is even true?

      Another shot of whiskey?—her zealous lover pours her a drink without asking her, and Margot does not say no.

       CHAPTER THREE СКАЧАТЬ