Kitabı oxu: «The Man Without a Shadow»

CHAPTER TWO

Mr. Hoopes? Eli?”

“Hel-lo!”

“My name is Margot Sharpe. I’m Professor Ferris’s associate. We’ve met before. We’ve come to take up a little of your time this morning …”

“Yes! Wel-come.”

Light coming up in his eyes. That leap of hope in his eyes.

“Wel-come, Margot!”

Her hand gripped in his, a clasp of recognition.

He does remember me. Not consciously—but he remembers.

She can’t write about this, yet. She has no scientific proof, yet.

The amnesiac will discover ways of “remembering.” It is a non-declarative memory, it bypasses the conscious mind altogether.

For there is emotional memory, as there is declarative memory.

There is a memory deep-embedded in the body—a memory generated by passion.

Suffused with happiness, Margot Sharpe feels like a balloon rapidly, giddily filling with helium.

“MR. HOOPES? ELI?”

“Hel-lo! Hel-lo.”

He has not ever seen her before. Eagerly he smiles at her, leans close to her, to shake her hand.

In his large, strong hand, Margot Sharpe’s small hand.

“You may not recall, we’ve met before—‘Margot Sharpe.’ I’m one of Professor Ferris’s research associates. We’ve been working together for—well, some time.”

“‘Mar-got Sharpe.’ Yes. We’ve been working together for—some time.” E.H. smiles gallantly as if he knows very well how long they’ve been working together, but it is a secret between them.

Today E.H. has the larger of his sketchbooks with him. He has finished the New York Times crossword puzzle—the newspaper page is discarded as usual, on the floor.

E.H. has been sketching with a stick of charcoal, seated beside a window in the anterior of the fourth-floor testing-room. He appears to be oblivious of the plate glass window that is dramatically lashed with rain, as he is oblivious of his clinical surroundings; the objects of E.H.’s art, which excite his fierce attention, are almost exclusively interior, and he does not care to share them with others.

(Except sometimes, Margot Sharpe.)

(Though Margot knows not to ask E.H. to see his drawings but to wait for E.H. to offer to show her. The offer, if it comes, will come spontaneously.)

“Do you have any idea how long we’ve been working together, Eli?”—Margot always asks.

E.H.’s smile wavers. He speaks thoughtfully, gravely.

“Well—I think—maybe—six weeks.”

“Six weeks?”

“Maybe more, or maybe less. You know, I have some problem with what is called ‘memory.’”

“How long have you had this problem, Eli?”

“How long have I had this problem? Well—I think—maybe—six weeks.” E.H. smiles at Margot, with a pleading expression. He is still gripping Margot’s hand; gently, she has to detach it.

“Do you know what has caused this problem, Eli?”

“Well, it’s ‘neurological.’ I suppose they’ve done X-rays. I think I remember my head shaved. My skull was fractured in Birmingham, Alabama—no one knew at the time. A ‘hairline’ fracture. But then, at the lake back in July, a few months ago, there was a fire. I think that’s what they told me—a fire. Hard to believe that I was careless leaving burning embers in the fireplace but—something happened.” E.H. pauses, frowning like one who is struggling to pull up, from the depths of a well, something unwieldy, very heavy that is straining every muscle in his body. “A fire, that burnt up my damned brain.”

“A fever, maybe?”

“A fever is a fire. In the damned brain.”

It is a wet windy overcast morning in March 1969.

SHE THINKS, HIS name has been eerily prescient—Hoopes.

For Elihu Hoopes has lived, for the past four and a half years, in an indefinable present-tense. A kind of time-hoop, a Möbius strip that turns upon itself, to infinity.

Except “infinity” is less than seventy seconds.

There is no was in Elihu Hoopes’s life, there is only is.

Forever he will be thirty-seven years old. Forever, he will be confused about where he is, and what has happened to him.

A fire? I think it was a fire. Or, Granddaddy’s two-passenger single-prop plane crash-landed on the island, and burst into flames. And later in the hospital, I think there was a fire, too. My clothes and hair were wet, but smoldering. I could smell my hair singed. I may have breathed in some of the fire, and burnt my lungs.

They said that I had a high fever but—it was a fire, I could see and smell.

The girl was not found. There were rescue parties searching for her. In the woods around Lake George. On the islands.

If someone had taken her, it was believed he might’ve taken her to one of the islands. If he had a boat. If no one saw.

In his little, light Beechcraft aircraft painted bright chrome yellow like a giant bird Granddaddy flew above the lake. Many times Granddaddy flew above the lake, you would hear the prop-plane engine passing low over the roof of the house.

Granddaddy said, Come with me, Eli! We will search together for your lost cousin.

Not the first time the little boy had flown in the plane with his grandfather but it would be the last.

IN HIS BRIGHT affable voice E.H. begins to read from his notebook.

“‘There is no journey, and there is no path. There is no wisdom, there is emptiness. There is no emptiness.’”

Pausing to add, “This is the wisdom of the Buddha. But there is no wisdom, and there is no Buddha.”

He laughs, sadly.

“There is no test, and there is no ‘testes.’”

And he laughs again. Sadly.

SHE HAS BEEN instructed: to discover, you have to destroy.

To locate the source of behavior in the brain, you have to destroy much of the brain.

Monkey-, cat-and rat-brains. In search of elusive and mysterious memory. Years, decades, thousands of animal-brains, hundreds of thousands of hours of surgery. Systematically, methodically. Meticulous lab records. Unyielding cruelty of the research scientist to whom no (living) specimen is an end in itself but a (possible) means to a greater end. Hundreds of thousands of animals sacrificed in the pursuit of the “engram”—the brain’s ostensible record of memory.

A principle of experimental neuroscience.

No one can surgically explore a (living, normal) human brain, only just animal-brains. And all these decades, results have been inconclusive. Margot Sharpe notes in her amnesia logbook the (famous/infamous) conclusion of the great experimental psychologist Karl Lashley:

This series of experiments has yielded a good bit of information about what and where the memory trace is not. I sometimes feel … the necessary conclusion is that (memory) is just not possible.

THE CHASTE DAUGHTER. How lucky Margot Sharpe has been! And she wants to think—My career—my life—lies all before me.

By 1969 the phenomenon of the amnesiac “E.H.” is beginning to be known in scientific circles.

An extraordinary case of total anterograde amnesia! And the subject otherwise in good health, intelligent, cooperative, sane—a rarity in brain pathology research where living patients are likely to be psychotic, moribund, or brain-rotted alcoholics.

Articles by Milton Ferris of the University Neurological Institute at Darven Park on “E.H.” have begun to appear in the most prestigious neuroscience journals; usually these articles list Ferris’s research associates as co-authors, and Margot Sharpe is among them. Seeing her name in print, in such company, has been deeply gratifying to Margot, and it has happened with surprising swiftness.

Rich with data, graphs, statistics, and citations, the articles bear such titles as “Losses in Recent Memory Following Infectious Encephalitis”—“Retention of ‘Declarative’ and ‘Non-declarative’ Memory in Amnesia: A History of ‘E.H.’”—“Short-Term Retention of Verbal, Visual, Auditory and Olfactory Items in Amnesia”—“Encoding, Storing, and Retrieval of Information in Anterograde Amnesia.” Their preparation is a lengthy, collaborative effort of months, or even years, with Milton Ferris overseeing the process. No paper can be submitted to any journal, of course, without Ferris’s imprimatur, no matter who has actually designed and executed the experiments, and who has done most of the research and writing. Recently, Margot has been given permission by Ferris to design experiments of her own involving sensory modality, and the possibility of “non-declarative” learning and memory. In the prestigious Journal of American Experimental Psychology a paper will soon appear with just the names of Milton Ferris and Margot Sharpe as authors; this is a forty-page extract from Margot’s dissertation titled “Short-Term and Consolidated Memory in Retrograde and Anterograde Amnesia: A Brief History of ‘E.H.’” It is, Milton Ferris has told Margot, the most ambitious and thoroughly researched paper of its kind he has ever received from a female graduate student—“Or any female colleague, for that matter.”

(Ferris’s praise is sincere. No irony is intended. It is 1969—it is not an age of gender irony in scientific circles, where few women, and virtually no feminists, have penetrated. To her shame, Margot has been thrilled to hear Milton Ferris spread the word of her to his colleagues, who’ve made a show of being impressed. Margot doesn’t want to think that her mentor’s praise is somewhat mitigated by the fact that there are only two women professors in the Psychology Department at the university, both “social psychologists” whom the experimental psychologists and neuroscientists treat with barely concealed scorn.)

That the lengthy article has been accepted so relatively quickly after Margot submitted it to the Journal of American Experimental Psychology must have something to do with Ferris’s intervention, Margot thinks. It has not escaped her notice that one of the editors of the journal is a protégé of Ferris of the late 1940s; Ferris himself is listed among numerous names on the masthead, as an “advisory editor.”

In any case, she has thanked Ferris.

She has thanked Ferris more than once.

Margot is conscious of her very, very good luck. Margot is anxious to sustain this luck.

It isn’t enough to be brilliant, if you are a woman. You must be demonstrably more brilliant than your male rivals—your “brilliance” is your masculine attribute. And so, to balance this, you must be suitably feminine—which isn’t to say emotionally unstable, volatile, “soft” in any way, only just quiet, watchful, quick to absorb information, nonoppositional, self-effacing.

Margot thinks—It is not difficult to be self-effacing, if you have a face at which no one looks.

“HEL-LO!”

“Hello, Mr. Hoopes—‘Eli.’ How are you?”

“Very good, thanks. How are you?”

In the vicinity of E.H. you feel the gravitational tug of the present tense.

In the vicinity of E.H., you glance about anxiously for your own shadow, as if you might have lost it.

Margot is very lonely except—Margot is not lonely when she is with E.H. Others in Ferris’s lab would be astonished to learn that Margot Sharpe who is so stiffly quiet in their presence speaks impulsively at times to the amnesiac subject E.H.; she has confided in him, as to a close and trusted friend, when they are alone together and no one else can hear.

She has volunteered to take E.H. for walks in the parkland behind the Institute. She has volunteered to take E.H. downstairs to the first-floor cafeteria, for lunch. If E.H. is scheduled for medical tests she volunteers to take him.

She is cheerful in E.H.’s company, as E.H. is cheerful in hers. She has boasted to E.H. of her academic successes, as one might boast to an older relative, a father perhaps. (Though Margot doesn’t think of Elihu Hoopes as fatherly: she is too much attracted to him as a man.) She has admitted to him that she is, at times, very lonely here in eastern Pennsylvania, where she knows no one—“Except you, Eli. You are my only friend.” E.H. smiles at this revelation as if their exchange was a part of a test and he is expected to speak on cue: “Yes—‘my only friend.’ You are, too.”

Margot knows that E.H. lives with an aunt, and assumes that he must see family members from time to time. She knows that his engagement was broken off a few months after E.H.’s recovery from surgery, and that his fiancée never visits him. What of his other friends? Have they all abandoned him? Has E.H. abandoned them? The impaired subject will wish to retreat, to avoid situations that exacerbate stress and anxiety; E.H. is safest and most secure at the Institute perhaps, where he can’t fail to be, almost continuously, the center of attention.

Margot thinks how for the amnesiac subject, are not all exchanges part of a test? Is not life itself a vast, continuous test?

It isn’t clear during their intimate exchanges if E.H. remembers Margot’s name—(frequently, he confuses her with his childhood classmate)—but unmistakably, he remembers her.

He understands that she is a person of some authority: a “doctor” or a “scientist.” He respects her, and relates to her in a way he doesn’t relate to the nursing staff, so far as Margot has observed.

Of course, you can say anything to E.H. He will be certain to forget it within seventy seconds.

And how difficult this is to comprehend, even for the “scientist”: what Margot has confided in E.H. is inextricably part of her memory of him, but it is not part of his memory of her.

Margot confides in E.H.: her imagination is so aflame she has trouble sleeping through the night. She wakes every two or three hours, excited and anxious. New ideas! New ideas for tests! New theories about the human brain!

She tells E.H. how badly she wants to please Milton Ferris; how fearful she is of disappointing the man—(who is frequently disappointed with young colleagues and associates, and has a reputation for running through them, and dismissing them); she wants to think that Ferris’s assessment of her “brain for science” is accurate, and not exaggerated. It’s her fear that Ferris has made her one of his protégées because she is a young woman of extreme docility and subservience to him.

Margot confesses to E.H. how sometimes she falls into bed without removing her clothing—“Without showering. Sleeping in my own smell.”

(So that E.H. is moved to say, “But your smell is very nice, my dear!”)

She confesses how exhausted she makes herself working late at the lab as if in some way unknown to her she disapproves of and dislikes herself—can’t bear herself except as a vessel of work; for she will not be loved if she doesn’t excel, and there is no way for her to excel except by working and pleasing her elders, like Milton Ferris. She recalls from a literature class at the University of Michigan a nightmarish short story in which the body of a condemned man is tattooed with the law he’d broken, which he is supposed to “read”—she doesn’t recall the author’s name but has never forgotten the story.

E.H. says, with an air of affectionate rebuke, “No one forgets Franz Kafka’s ‘In the Penal Colony.’”

He too had read it as an undergraduate—at Amherst.

Margot is surprised, and touched. “You remember it, Eli? That’s—of course, that’s …” It is utterly normal and natural for E.H. to remember a story he’d read years before his illness. Yet, Margot who’d read the story not nearly so long ago, could not recall the title.

E.H. begins to recite: “‘“It’s a peculiar apparatus,” said the Officer to the Traveler, gazing with a certain admiration at the device … It appeared that the Traveler had responded to the invitation of the Commandant only out of politeness, when he’d been invited to witness the execution of a soldier condemned to death for disobeying and insulting his superior … Guilt is always beyond doubt.’”

E.H. laughs, strangely. Margot has no idea why.

Something about the man without a shadow reciting these lines makes her fearful—I don’t want to know. Oh please!—I don’t want to know.

THEY HAVE NEVER told him—Your cousin is dead. Your cousin was dead as soon as she disappeared.

No one saw. No one knows.

Wake up, Eli! Silly Eli, it’s only a dream.

So much Eli has seen that summer, only a dream.

SHE RENTS A single-bedroom unit in dreary university graduate housing, overlooking a rock-filled ravine at the edge of the sprawling campus. (The University Neurological Institute at Darven Park is several miles away in an upscale Philadelphia suburb.) She avoids her neighbors, who seem so much less serious than she, given to playing music loudly, and talking and laughing loudly; especially, she avoids married couples—the thought of marital intimacy, the pettiness of domestic life and sheer waste of time required for such a life, makes her feel faint. She has no time for friends—she has ceased writing to her friends from college; they seem diminished to her now, like pygmies. One or two of the men in Ferris’s lab have—(she thinks, she isn’t absolutely sure)—have made sexual advances to her, awkwardly and obliquely; with similar awkwardness, and much embarrassment, she has discouraged them—No I don’t think so. I—I don’t think—it’s a good idea to see each other outside the lab … Seeing her fellow researchers in such relentless intimacy, day following day, for hours each day, it is not possible for Margot to harbor romantic feelings toward the men, or feelings of friendship for the other women; like rivalrous siblings they are easily irritated by one another, and easily provoked to jealousy, for each is vying with the others continuously—(how fatiguing this is!)—for admiration, approval, affection from Milton Ferris.

Work has become her addiction, as work has become her salvation. In human relations you never know where you stand; in your work you can mark progress clearly, and your progress will be noted by others—your distinguished elders.

It is slightly shameful to Margot, how she lives for Milton Ferris’s praise—Good work, Margot!—a murmur like a caress along the length of her body.

At times she is sure that there is an (implicit, unstated) promise between her and Ferris, like a match not yet struck.

At other times, seeing how Ferris’s interest waxes, wanes, waxes, she is sure of nothing.

He, Ferris, with his wiry white beard, bristling manner and sharp-glinting eyeglasses, his flashes of wit, sarcasm, insight, and frequent brilliance—(all who work with the man are convinced of his genius)—has become a figure of considerable (if forbidden) romance to Margot Sharpe. He is fifty-seven years old, he has become famous in the field of neuropsychology; he has long been a member of the National Academy of Science. He is (said to be) happily married, or in any case stolidly married. Yet—We are special to each other.

Margot feels a sensation of weakness, faintness—when Ferris singles her out for praise in the lab. Her face flushes with blood, her heart beats with great happiness. It has often been so, for Margot has been, through her life, the exemplary good-girl student: the Daughter.

She is the Chaste Daughter. She is the one who, if you believe in her, will never betray you.

Yet Margot thinks—I am not in love with Milton Ferris.

Then—I must never allow him to know.

In the night in her bed. In this strange darkness, in her bed. Sometimes she slides her arm around her waist, in mimicry of an embrace. Sometimes she caresses her ribs through her skin, taking a kind of mournful pleasure in so intimate (and unthreatening) a touch. Shuts her eyes tight to summon sleep. And there is Elihu Hoopes standing before her with his eager, hopeful smile and stricken eyes—Margot? Hel-lo.

E.H. says—Margot? I am so lonely.

(IN LIFE, MARGOT knows that E.H. will never say these words. For E.H. will never remember Margot from one encounter to another.)

“He is our ‘amnesiac’—his identity must be kept absolutely confidential.”

Milton Ferris speaks lightly—there is something meant to be playful about the words our amnesiac—but of course he is utterly serious. Everyone at the Institute who comes into contact with Elihu Hoopes, who knows his identity, is sworn to secrecy; others are not told his name—“For legal reasons.”

Since Ferris has begun to publish his “exciting” and “controversial” research on E.H., scientists at other universities have contacted him with requests for interviews with the amnesiac subject. Ferris has refused most of these requests as impractical, since, as he says, he and his researchers are currently studying E.H., and it is not possible to subject E.H. to further testing.

“He is our subject, exclusively. That is the agreement.”

Milton Ferris has become vehement on the subject. Exclusively is an unmistakable claim.

PROFESSOR SHARPE, DID you ever consider at any time that you and your fellow researchers were exploiting the individual known in scientific literature as “E.H.”?

No. I did not.

Really? At no time, Professor Sharpe, during the thirty-one years you studied him, did it occur to you that you might be behaving unethically, in exploiting his handicap? His “amnesia”?

I said no. I did not.

And do you speak for your fellow researchers, as well? Do you speak for the neuroscientific community?

I speak for myself. The others can speak for themselves.

But “E.H.” could not speak for himself—could he? Did “E.H.” ever comprehend the nature of his affliction?

I’ve told you, I speak for myself. That is all.

“That is all”—Professor Sharpe? After thirty-one years?

HE IS NOT being exploited, he is being protected from exploitation!

Margot Sharpe wants to protest. In time, Margot Sharpe will protest publicly.

For E.H. is a neurological wonder, capable of odd, unpredictable feats of memory while incapable of remembering “familiar” faces or what he has just eaten for lunch, or whether he has eaten at all. He has astonished observers by interrupting a rote-memory test to recite the names of his grade school classmates at Gladwyne Elementary School in 1935, desk by desk. On other occasions E.H. has recited Major League Baseball statistics, dialogue from favored comic strips Dick Tracy, Terry and the Pirates, Little Orphan Annie, and song lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein. He can recite passages from speeches by Lincoln, Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. By heart he knows the entirety of the American Declaration of Independence and portions of John Locke’s The Rights of Man. He knows passages from Thoreau’s Walden, Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Jean Toomer’s Cane. On the Institute court he plays tennis with zest and cunning; he can play piano by “sight” reading—some classics, some American popular songs, and Czerny exercises to grade eight. He is remarkably gifted at jigsaw puzzles, crossword puzzles, plastic puzzles of the kind that fit in the palm of the hand and involve moving numbered squares about in a specific pattern. (How Margot hates those damned plastic puzzles!—she’d never been able to do these with the skill of her brothers, whose grades in school were always inferior to hers; when E.H. offers his puzzle for her to try she pushes it away.) If journalists hear of E.H., Margot can imagine sensational TV coverage, articles in People, Time, and Newsweek, the Philadelphia Inquirer and other local publications. Neighbors, acquaintances, medical workers and researchers who know E.H. would be plied with interview requests. Fortunately the Hoopes family isn’t in need of money, so there is little likelihood of E.H. being exploited by his own relatives.

Margot thinks—I vow, I will protect Elihu Hoopes from exploitation.

“‘Elihu Hoopes.’”

These syllables, he hears murmured aloud. The sounds seem to come out of the air about his head.

The strangeness of the proposition—(he cannot think it is a fact)—that these syllables, these sounds, four stresses, constitute a “name”—and the name is “his.”

His body, his brain. His name. Yet, where is he?

It is a peculiar way of speaking, he’d thought long ago as a child—before the fever burnt up his brain. Why would anyone say—I am Elihu Hoopes.

Again he hears the syllables, in a hoarse, slightly derisive voice.

“‘Elihu Hoopes’—who was.”

IS HE AT Lake George? But where? Not on one of the islands, which have no trails so clearly defined as the trail he sees here, leading through a pinewoods, and out of sight.

Nor is there a plank bridge at the lake quite like this bridge, so far as he can recall.

How lost he feels! No idea how old he is, or where the others are. No idea if he is hungry, if he has eaten recently or not for a very long time.

The others. Scarcely knows what this means: parents, grandparents, adult relatives, young and elder cousins. A child has but a vague sense of others. Apart from relatives, many adults seem interchangeable—faces, names. Ages.

So many adults, in a child’s life! Children nearer his age, for instance young cousins, are more vividly delineated and named.

Where is Gretchen?—she has gone away.

When will you see Gretchen again?—maybe not for a while.

He is trying to recall if this is before the “search party”—(but why would there be a “party”—in the woods? Why a “party” when the girl is gone away somewhere, and the adults are sad?)—or after; if this is before Granddaddy insisted upon taking up the Beechcraft, and had to make an emergency landing on one of the islands.

Trying to recall if the fever in his brain is the fire from the crash, or the fire in the hospital.

Beyond the plank railing is a shallow stream. He has been hearing the murmurous sound of the flowing water for some time, without realizing. Only when he sees the stream, and identifies the flowing water, does he hear it.

Gripping the railing tightly in both hands. Standing with his feet apart, to brace himself against a sudden wind. (Though there is no wind.) Facing a marshy area dense with swamp grasses, tall reeds, pussy willows and cattails. Trees denuded of bark, hunched over like elderly figures, choked with vines. A smell of wet, rotted things. And everywhere, strips of shimmering water like strips of phosphorescence that glow in the dark as warnings.

Below the plank bridge—so loosely fitted, you can see between the boards—is the shallow stream that flows so slowly you can scarcely determine in which direction water is flowing.

And on the water’s surface he sees something curious, that makes him smile: small antic winged insects—“dragonflies.”

He has not seen these glittery insects until now, leaning over the railing. And there are others—“skaters.” (How does he know these names? Effortless as the meandering stream, and as near-imperceptible, “skaters” and “dragonflies” float into his thoughts.)

He has heard of “dragon”—and he has heard of “fly.” It is a novel thing, to put them together: “dragonfly.” He did not do this, he thinks. But someone did.

He has been leaning over the plank railing, staring down. His mouth is slightly open, he breathes quickly and anxiously. For he is in the presence of something profoundly significant whose meaning is hidden to him—which causes him to think that he must be very young. He is not the other, older Elihu—that has not happened yet.

This is a relief! (Is this a relief? For whatever will happen, will happen.)

He sees: what is arresting about the insects is that their shadows are magnified in the streambed a few inches below the surface of the water upon which they swim. If you observe the shadows that are rounded and soft-seeming you could not deduce that they have been cast by the insects with their sharply-delineated wings.

If you observe the shadows below, you can’t observe the insects. If you observe the insects, you can’t observe the shadows.

He is beginning to feel a mild anxiety in the region of his chest—he does not know why.

He sees, beyond the marsh are low-lying shapes—“hills.” Though these could be stage sets, painted to resemble “hills.”

He has not turned to look around, to see what is behind him. It is crucial, he must not look behind him. That is why he is gripping the plank railing so tightly, and why he stands with his feet apart, to steady himself.

Will not look. Has not (yet) seen the girl’s body in the shallow stream.

“ELI, THANK YOU!”

Carefully, Margot spreads E.H.’s most recent drawings and charcoal sketches on a table.

Dozens of pages from E.H.’s oversized sketchbook.

Dark, shadowed scenes—it isn’t clear what their subjects are—interiors? forests? caves? Here and there, a barely recognizable human figure, crouching in darkness.

In admiring silence Margot stares at the pages from E.H.’s sketchbook. The pencil drawings are meticulously drawn, the charcoal sketches light and feathery. Margot has learned to be cautious in her response to E.H.’s art—the man’s affable manner can alter swiftly at such times. (There is a side to E.H. few have seen: sudden fury, unexpressed except by a tightening of facial muscles, a clenching of fists.) In fact, Margot Sharpe is the only person she knows, including Milton Ferris himself, who has been allowed by E.H. to see his art. This is flattering—E.H. trusts her.

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

Hel-lo!”

“Eli, hello.”

(Does he remember her? Margot is beginning to believe yes, the amnesiac definitely remembers her.)

“We have some very interesting tests for today, Eli. I think you will like them.”

“‘Tests’—yes. I am good at tests—it seems.”

E.H. rubs his hands together. His smile is both anxious-to-please and hopeful.

It is true, E.H. is very good at tests! And when E.H. fails a test, it is sometimes nearly as significant (in terms of the test) as if he had not failed.

Before they begin, however, E.H. insists that Margot try his favorite “brainteaser” puzzle, which fits in the palm of a hand, and consists of numbered, varicolored squares of plastic which you move around with a thumb until there is an ideal conjunction of numerals and colors. E.H. is something of a marvel at the Institute where no one on the staff, not even the younger, male attendants, can come near his speed in solving the puzzle; others, including most of the women, and certainly Margot Sharpe, are totally confused by the little puzzle, and made to feel like idiots desperately shoving squares about with their thumbs until E.H. takes it from them with a bemused chuckle—“Excuse me! Like this.”

And within seconds, E.H. has lined up the squares, to perfection.

Margot pleads with E.H., please no, she doesn’t want to try the maddening little thing, she knows there is a trick to it—(obviously: but what is the “trick”?)—and she doesn’t have time for such a silly game; but E.H. presses it on her like an eager boy, and so with a sigh Margot takes the palm-sized plastic puzzle from him and moves the little squares about with her thumb—tries, tries and tries—and fails, and fails—until her eyes fill with tears of vexation at the damned thing and E.H. takes it from her with a bemused chuckle—“Excuse me! Like this.”

And within seconds, E.H. has lined up the squares, to perfection.

His smile is that of the triumphant, just slightly mocking pubescent boy.

“HEL-lo!”

“Eli, hello.”

Does he remember her? Margot is certain that he does—in some way.

He doesn’t understand that he is an experimental subject. He is data. He thinks—

(But what does E.H. think? Even to herself Margot is reluctant to concede—The poor man thinks he is one like us.)

E.H. has been told many times that he is an “important” person. He believes that this fact—(if it is a fact)—both predates his illness (when he’d had a position of much responsibility in his family’s investment firm and had been a civil rights activist) and has something to do with his illness (if it is an “illness” and not rather a “condition”)—but he isn’t certain what it entails.

The “old” Elihu Hoopes—a man of considerably higher than average intelligence, achievement, and self-awareness—cohabits uneasily with the “new” Elihu Hoopes who feels keenly his disabilities without being able to comprehend them.

“Good that our hunting rifles and shotguns are kept at the lake,” E.H. has said to Margot Sharpe, with a sly wink. “And good that such weapons are not kept loaded.”

What does this mean? Margot feels a frisson of dread.

More than once the amnesiac subject has made this enigmatic remark to Margot Sharpe but when she asks him to explain it, E.H. simply smiles and shakes his head—“You’re the doctor, Doctor. You tell me.”

MARGOT REPORTS TO Milton Ferris: “I think that—sometimes—unpredictably—E.H. is ‘remembering’ things in little clusters that, so far as we know, he shouldn’t be able to remember. For instance, last week we watched a short film on Spain, and while E.H. has forgotten having seen the film, and has forgotten me, he seems to be remembering some fragments from the film. He’s been ‘thinking of Spain,’ he told me, out of nowhere. And I think he remembers some of the Spanish music from the film, I’ve heard him begin to hum when we’re working together. And he’s been making sketches that are different from his usual sketches—‘They just come to me, Doctor. Do you know what they are?’—and they are scenes that look vaguely Spanish. An exotic building or temple that resembles the Alhambra, for instance …”

It is like a tightrope performance, speaking to Milton Ferris.

There is the content of Margot’s words, and there is the tension of speaking to him.

“Very good, Margot. Good work. Keep records, we’ll see what develops.”

Laying his hand on Margot’s shoulder lightly, to thank her, and also to dismiss her. For Milton Ferris is a busy man, and has many distractions.

Margot pauses feeling a sensation like an electric current coursing through her body. Margot swallows hard, her mouth has gone dry.

Between them, a moment’s rapport—sexual, and covert.

But soon then, disappointingly, E.H. seems to forget Spain. He stops humming Spanish-sounding music when Margot is near, and he returns to his familiar sketch-subjects. When Margot carefully pronounces “Spain”—“Spanish”—“Alhambra”—E.H. regards her with a polite, quizzical smile and no particular recognition; when she shows him photographs of Spanish settings, he says, “Either Spain or a South American country—though I guess that must be the Alhambra.”

“Did you ever visit the Alhambra, Eli, that you can remember?”

“Well! I can hardly say that I’ve visited the Alhambra that I don’t remember.”

Pleasantly E.H. laughs. Margot sees the unease in his eyes.

In fact, Margot knows that E.H. has not visited Spain. Surprisingly for a man of his education, social class, and artistic interests, E.H. has not traveled extensively abroad; the energies of his young manhood were focused upon American settings.

“Were you there, with me? Are these photographs we took together?”—E.H.’s remark is startling, and difficult to interpret: flirtatious, belligerent, ironic, playful.

Margot understands that the amnesiac subject tries to determine the plausible answer to a question by questioning his interrogator. At such times his voice takes on an almost childlike mock-innocence as if (so Margot speculates) he knows that you are onto his ruse but, if you liked him, you might play along with it.

“Yes, Eli. We were there together, you and me. For three weeks in Spain, when …”

It is wrong of Margot Sharpe to speak in such a way, and she knows it. But the words leap from her, and cannot be retrieved.

“Were we! And were other travelers with us, or—”

E.H. gazes at her plaintively, yearningly.

Margot regrets her impulsive remark, and is grateful that no one is close by to overhear.

“—were you my ‘fiancée’—is that why we were together?”

“Yes, Eli. That is why.”

“Or was it our honeymoon? Was that it?”

“Yes. Our honeymoon.”

“Were we happy?”

“Oh, very happy!”—Margot feels tears flooding her eyes.

“And are we married now? Have you come to take me home?”

“Soon, Eli! When you’re discharged from this—clinic … Of course, I will take you home.”

“Do you love me? Do I love you?”

Margot is trembling with excitement, audacity. She has gone too far. She has no idea why she has said such things.

It is a Skinnerian experiment, Margot thinks: stimulus/response. Behavior/reward/reinforcement.

A Skinnerian experiment in which Margot Sharpe is the subject.

It is clear, and she should prevent it: when E.H. smiles at her in a way that suggests sexual craving, Margot feels a surge of visceral excitement, a thrill of happiness, and can barely restrain herself from smiling at him in turn.

Instinctively—unconsciously—the amnesiac subject is conditioning her, the neuropsychologist, to respond to his feeling for her; and as Margot responds, she is further conditioning him.

She has begun to notice a twinge of excitement, yearning, in the region of her heart when she enters the perimeter of E.H.’s awareness. He does not see Margot Sharpe, whose name he can’t remember, but he sees her: a young woman whose face he finds attractive partly or wholly because it reminds him of a face out of his childhood, a comfort to him in the terrible isolation of amnesia. He is looking at Margot with such yearning you would certainly think that he is, or has once been, her lover.

“Do you love me? Do I love you?”—it is a genuine question.

Margot feels a wave of guilt. And anxiety—for what if Milton Ferris were to know of her unprofessional behavior, her weakness!

She must break the transference—the “spell.” Quickly she calls over a nurse’s aide to watch over E.H. while she goes to use a restroom; and when she returns she sees E.H. in an animated conversation with the young female aide, who laughs at the handsome amnesiac’s witty remarks as if she has never heard anything quite so funny.

He has totally forgotten Margot Sharpe of course.

When Margot approaches he turns to her, with a quick courteous smile, like one who has become accustomed to being the center of attention without questioning why, only perceptibly annoyed at being interrupted—“Hello! Hel-lo!”

“Hel-lo!”

“Eli, hello.”

Does he remember her? It is very tempting for Margot Sharpe to think yes, he remembers her.

Though she knows better of course. As a scientist of the brain she knows that this terribly damaged man cannot truly remember her.

This is a day when Margot Sharpe has come to the Institute alone. She has driven alone in her own vehicle, a Volvo sedan; she has not ridden with the other lab colleagues, as usual; she is feeling somewhat agitated, after a night of disturbing dreams, and is grateful not to have to talk and relate to anyone else.

She is particularly grateful that she has been scheduled to work with the amnesiac subject alone that day. For being with the amnesiac subject as he takes his interminable tests is not like being with another person, even as it is not like being alone with oneself.

(It is not a very happy day in Margot Sharpe’s life. It has not been a very happy week in Margot Sharpe’s life, nor has it been a happy month in Margot Sharpe’s life. But Margot Sharpe is not one to acknowledge personal problems when she is performing professionally.)

More frequently in recent years, Milton Ferris has designated Margot Sharpe his surrogate in Project E.H. Ferris trusts Margot Sharpe “without qualification”—(he has told her, and this is greatly flattering to her)—and behaves as if she were now his favored protégée at the university; he has been responsible for Margot being hired in a tenure-track position in the Psychology Department, and at a good salary. Of his numerous younger colleagues, Margot Sharpe seems to be the one Milton Ferris trusts most in the wake of the departure of Alvin Kaplan.

There has been some good news for the university memory lab—a renewal and an expansion of their federal grant, the elaborate proposal for which Margot did much of the work. And now Milton Ferris has become a consultant for a popular PBS science program and is often in Washington, D.C., at the National Institutes of Health; and he is often traveling abroad, with a need for someone like Margot in the lab whom he can trust as his protégée, his emissary, his representative. At the present time, Milton Ferris has embarked upon an ambitious lecture tour in China under the auspices of the USIA.

Alvin Kaplan, Ferris’s male protégé, has recently left the university. He has been promoted to professor of experimental psychology at Rockefeller University—a remarkable position for one so young. Like Margot Sharpe, now assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at the university, Kaplan has co-published numerous papers with Milton Ferris.

Both Alvin Kaplan and Margot Sharpe delivered papers on their groundbreaking research in amnesia at the most recent American Association of Experimental Psychology conference in San Francisco.

Saw your name in the newspaper!—occasionally someone will call Margot Sharpe. Family member, relative, old friend from the University of Michigan. Sounds just fascinating, the work you are doing.

Sometimes, Margot will receive a call or a letter—Why don’t we ever hear from you any longer, Margot? Do I have the wrong address?

Once, Margot couldn’t resist showing E.H. a copy of the prestigious Journal of American Experimental Psychology in which the major article appeared under her name—“Distraction, Working Memory, and Memory Retention in the Amnesiac ‘E.H.’” Her heart beat rapidly as E.H. perused it with a small wondering smile.

(Was she behaving unprofessionally? She would have been devastated if a colleague found out.)

Gentlemanly E.H. reacted with bemusement, not resentment—

“Is ‘E.H.’ meant to be me? Never knew I was so important.” He asked if he might take the journal home with him so that he could read it carefully—to try to “understand what the hell is going on inside my ‘scrambled brains’”—and Margot said of course. And so Margot placed the journal on a table in the testing-room for E.H. to take home with him.

(Confident that the amnesiac would forget the journal within seventy seconds and she could easily slip it back into her bag without him noticing.)

Since then Margot has several times showed E.H. journals with articles about “E.H.”—some of them co-authored by Milton Ferris and his team of a half-dozen associates including Margot Sharpe, others by just Milton Ferris and Margot Sharpe.

By degrees, they have become associated with each other as scientists. Collaborators.

It has been years. Has it been years?

In the memory lab, time passes strangely.

It was only the other day (it seems) when Margot was first introduced to “Elihu Hoopes”—who’d stared at her with a kind of recognition, hungry, yearning, and squeezed her small pliant hand in his.

I know you. We know each other. Don’t we?

We were in grade school together …

E.H. squeezes Margot’s hand in his strong dry fingers. She has been anticipating this—she doesn’t pull her hand away from his grasp so quickly as she does when others are in the room with them.

“Mr. Hoopes—‘Eli.’ I’m so happy to see you.”

“I’m so happy to see you.”

There is something different about this morning, Margot thinks.

Margot thinks—But I can’t. It would be wrong.

Still they are clasping hands. With no one else in the testing-room to observe they are free of social restraint. Between them, there is but the residue of instinct.

“Do you remember me, Eli? ‘Margot.’”

“Oh yes—‘Margot.’”

“Your friend.”

“Yes, my friend—‘Mar-got.’”

Conscientiously, E.H. pronounces her name Mar-go. So quick at mimicry is E.H., one would think his skill a kind of memory.

“I think I knew you in—was it school? Grade school?”

“Yes. Gladwyne.”

We were close friends through school. Then you went to Amherst, and I went to Ann Arbor.

We were in love, but—something happened to part us …

(Wouldn’t Eli realize, Margot Sharpe is much younger than he is? At least seventeen years?)

(Yet: E.H. is a perpetual thirty-seven and Margot Sharpe is now thirty-four. If E.H. were capable of thinking in such terms he would be thinking that, magically, the young woman psychologist has caught up with him in age.)

“I’ve been looking forward to today since—last Wednesday. We’re doing such important work, Eli …”

“Yes. Yes we are, Mar-go.”

It is very exciting, their proximity. Their privacy. Margot can feel the man’s breath on her face as he leans over her.

E.H. seems to be inhaling Margot. She wants to think that her scent has become familiar to him. (She has conducted olfactory memory tests with him of her own invention indicating that yes, E.H. is more likely to remember smells than other sensory cues; his memory for smells of decades ago is more or less undiminished.)

E.H. is taller than Margot by at least five inches, so that she is forced to look up at him and this is pleasurable to her, as to him.

Is E.H. nearly forty-seven now? How quickly the years have passed! (For E.H. no time at all has passed.)

His hairline is receding from his high forehead, and his russet-brown hair is fading to a beautiful shade of pewter-gray, yet E.H. remains youthful, straight-backed. His forehead is lightly creased with bewilderment or worry that quickly eases away when he smiles at a visitor.

“Eli, how have you been?”

“Very good, thank you. And you?”

The question is genuine. E.H. is anxious to know.

All of the world is clues to the amnesiac. Like a box of jigsaw puzzle pieces that has been overturned, scattered. Through some effort—(a superhuman effort beyond the capacity of any normal individual)—these countless pieces might be fitted together again into a coherent and illuminating whole.

Is E.H. “very good”? Margot knows that the poor man had bronchitis for several weeks that winter. Terrible fits of coughing, that made testing impossible at times. Not only were short-term memories slipping out of the amnesiac’s brain as through a large-holed colander but the severe coughing seemed to exacerbate loss of memory.

(Margot has been concerned about E.H.’s health in recent years. She is assured that the amnesiac receives physical examinations at the Institute, that his blood, blood pressure, and other vital signs are routinely tested. In her own case, Margot often forgets to schedule dental appointments, gynecological appointments, eye examinations—and how much more likely to neglect himself is a man with memory deficits.)

E.H. has forgotten the bronchitis and its discomforts. E.H. has forgotten his original, devastating illness. E.H. quickly forgets all physical distress, maladies. He may be susceptible to moods—but E.H. quickly forgets all moods.

He has lost weight, Margot estimates about five to eight pounds. His face is the face of a handsome ascetic. He retains the alert and agile air of an ex-athlete but he has become an ex-athlete who anticipates pain.

Today he is wearing neatly pressed khakis, an English-looking striped shirt, and a dark green cashmere sweater. His socks are a very dark purple patterned in small yellow checks. All of his clothing is purchased at expensive men’s stores like J. Press, Ralph Lauren, Armani. Margot has seen these clothes before, she thinks, but not for some time. (Who assists E.H. with his wardrobe? Sees that his things are laundered, dry-cleaned? Margot supposes it must be the watchful and loving guardian-aunt with whom he lives.) Even in the throes of amnesia E.H. exhibits a touching masculine vanity. Margot always compliments him on his clothing, and E.H. always says, “Thank you!”—and pauses as if he has more to say, but can’t remember what it is.

Margot Sharpe has done what few of her science colleagues would do, or would consider it proper for a scientist to be doing: daringly, like an investigative reporter, or indeed a detective, she has looked into the background of the amnesiac subject E.H. In all she has spent several days in Philadelphia meeting with former associates of Elihu Hoopes including black community organizers who knew him in the late 1950s and 1960s as one of a very small number of white citizens who gave money to their causes, as well as to the NAACP and Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference; she has learned that, in some quarters, Eli Hoopes is considered a “hero”—that is, he’d behaved “heroically” in joining civil rights activists who’d picketed City Hall, protested Philadelphia police brutality and harassment, campaigned for better schools in South Philly, better health-care facilities, an end to discriminatory hiring in municipal government. He’d established a fund for university scholarships at Penn, earmarked for “disadvantaged youths.” He’d given money to Philadelphia Inquiry, a local version of Mother Jones that appeared sporadically during the 1960s. (In one of the issues, which the former editor passed on to Margot Sharpe, there appeared a personal account by Elihu Hoopes titled “Hiding in the Seminary & the Afterlife”—a provocative memoirist piece in which Elihu Hoopes speaks of his experience at Union Theological Seminary and why he’d dropped out after two years: “I felt that I was living in a cocoon of privilege. My eyes were opened by a black Christian who told me of lynchings in the South—following World War II.”)

As a way of being friendly and winning the amnesiac subject’s trust, Margot has several times asked E.H. about his “activist” life and his “seminary” life; E.H. is likely to become overexcited talking of these past lives which he seems to know are “past”—yet has no idea how he knows this, and what has happened in the interim. He has a vague understanding that he has not seen, for instance, the black community organizer with whom Margot had spoken, for some time; yet, since he believes himself to be thirty-seven years old, and living still in Philadelphia, he is confused about why he hasn’t seen the man—and whether the Philadelphia Civil Rights Coalition has disbanded. (Margot is hesitant to tell E.H. that the Coalition has not disbanded; she fears he would not understand why it isn’t possible for him to reconnect with it.) E.H.’s memories of the seminary are both vivid and vague as in a film that goes in and out of focus. And his memory of his recent past is becoming strangely riddled with blank spaces. He is beginning to forget proper names—a symptom, Margot doesn’t like to note, of the more general, inevitable amnesia of an aging brain.

So, Margot has learned that it is wisest to steer the amnesiac subject into activities and routines that don’t arouse his emotions, or provoke his memory. This morning she leads him through the first of a battery of tests designed to measure “working memory.” Initially E.H. performs well, like a bright twelve-year-old; these are complicated tests, tests of some ingenuity—(Margot designed them herself); yet as Margot works with E.H. she is less buoyant than usual.

She forgets to praise the amnesiac, who so yearns to be praised but will not recall what is missing if you don’t praise him; tears gather in her eyes and threaten to spill down her cheeks. She is so unhappy!

At last E.H. asks what is wrong?

Nothing! Of course, nothing is wrong.

Margot proceeds with the testing like one with eyes riveted straight ahead. To glance to either side is the danger.

“I’M SORRY. I shouldn’t be telling you this.”

This should have been the strategy. In Margot’s memory, something like this will have been the strategy.

But it happens, Elihu Hoopes is so gentlemanly, yet so tender and solicitous, Margot begins to weaken and confide in him, far more than she’d intended.

Margot thinks—This man was training to be a minister. His soul is so much vaster than mine.

Margot hears herself tell E.H., who is her amnesiac subject, that—that she is very unhappy … She trails off into silence wiping at her eyes.

At once E.H. tells her yes, he understands. He is sorry for her and wonders if he can help her.

No, Margot says. No one can help her.

But is she sure?—E.H. asks.

In the sequestered privacy and quiet of the testing-room they are speaking together quietly. The tests have been set aside—for the moment.

It would be a matter of great astonishment if anyone (outside the testing-room) could hear what they are saying.

Margot had no intention of telling anyone—certainly not E.H.—of the singular unhappiness of her life, which she believes to be entirely her own fault, a misery inflicted upon herself. Yet, Margot hears herself confessing, unforgivably—she is in love with someone who does not love her in return.

She is in love with a man who is married—a man who is thirty-two years older than she is.

She is so ashamed. She can’t believe such a thing has happened to her.

Seeing the expression in E.H.’s face—surprise, concern, sympathy—Margot begins to laugh. It is all so—ridiculous!

Well, she will concede—she believes she is in love. Naïvely she has believed that the man is in love with her.

She has made mistakes in her relationship with this man. She has acted stupidly, blindly.

Yes, the man is a professional colleague. Yes, he is her senior in every way—her mentor, her dissertation advisor.

So many mistakes Margot Sharpe has made, in her ill-considered plunge into—would you call it passion? In his office at the university when they’d worked together late or when she’d remained late under the pretext of needing to confer with him. Seeing his eyes moving onto her, and feeling that sensation of faintness, helplessness, that is both exhilarating to her, and distressing. For never has Margot Sharpe been a naïve person, never has Margot Sharpe wished to believe that (male, sporadic) interest in her has been anything to take seriously, and to cultivate. On the contrary: she recalls as a girl with two older brothers overhearing how crudely, how coarsely boys speak of girls when they think no one else is listening, or no one who matters is listening. A female is her body-parts. A female is to be ridiculed, to the degree that she is vulnerable to the male.

And there were incidents from high school and college, not traumatic, not humiliating, only just mildly degrading and embarrassing—the sort of quasi-sexual experiences all girls and young women have—which have reinforced Margot’s air of caution and detachment.

Milton Ferris, however, exerted from the start a powerful gravitational pull. Working in close quarters with the man as she was, it was not sufficient for Margot to avoid looking at him: simply being proximate to him, hearing his voice, his dry, droll, kindly, jocular, teasing, deep-baritone voice was distracting to her, overwhelming. And all that she’d succeeded in ignoring in the man’s presence would rush upon her when she was alone. And all that he represents, as a scientist of great distinction. All that he is.

Of course, there were rumors about Milton Ferris. His relationships with female colleagues, associates. His “exploitations” of the naïve and trusting. Such rumors, Margot steadfastly ignored.

She’d been in love with him from the start. Maybe.

She is not in love with Milton Ferris! Certainly not.

Yet she’d indicated to the older man that yes, she was attracted to him. Or rather, she had not blocked his interest in her.

Once these signals were sent and received, once certain reflexes were triggered, there seemed to Margot no turning back. An irrevocable decision to accept her advisor’s invitation to accompany him to a neuroscience conference in Atlanta—Your way will be paid of course, Margot. Every expense.

She had said yes. She had not said no but yes.

Yes is not to be undone. Yes would be the devastation of her career, if it were undone.

He’d laid his hand on her shoulder, then. Not a heavy hand, yet Margot understood—He is making his claim.

A sort of delirium had come over her. A young woman unaccustomed to the attentions of men, especially men of distinction—a young woman somewhat ill at ease in her skin—how could she resist? E.H. listens to Margot without judging her, of course. He is unusually quiet. Margot feels again a sensation of great affection for him, which brings tears to her eyes. She is thinking—when was the last time she’d cried? At her father’s funeral?—at the burial in the cemetery?—she feels dread at the possibility of remembering too vividly.

Margot is very indiscreet, to speak Milton Ferris’s name. Yet she hears herself ask E.H. if he remembers “Milton Ferris”—of course, Margot knows that he does not. But E.H. nods sagely, to encourage her. They are facing each other across a table, leaning toward each other so intensely, Margot feels the strain in her back.

E.H.’s hand fumbles for hers, to comfort.

Margot’s hand does not ease away …

Margot tells E.H. that Milton Ferris has been her Ph.D. advisor, her mentor, since she’d come to the university ten years before. He has helped her as a scientist—incalculably. He has arranged for her to be invited to give papers at conferences. He has been instrumental in her dissertation being published by the University of Pennsylvania Press and her having been hired at the university—the first woman appointment in cognitive neuropsychology.

In the past eleven months, however, their relationship has changed. Considerably.

And now, Milton Ferris is touring China for six weeks. There’d been a vague suggestion that Margot Sharpe would accompany him, as a younger colleague involved in original research on amnesia, but somehow that suggestion faded, and when Margot summoned all her strength to ask Ferris about it, whether she was coming with him, whether she should make travel arrangements, he’d told her evasively that his plans had changed.