High Citadel / Landslide (39 page)

‘No dice, Mac,’ I said. ‘You won’t get it out of me until I’m ready, and I’m a long way off yet.’

‘All right,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve told you a lot—enough to get my head chopped off if Matterson hears about it. I’ve put my neck right on the block.’

‘You’re safe with me, Mac.’

He grunted. ‘I sure as hell hope so. I’d hate to be fired now with no good coming of it.’ He got up and took a file from a shelf. ‘I might as well give you a bit more. It struck me that if Matterson wanted to erase the name of Trinavant the reason might be connected with the way Trinavant died.’ He took a photograph from the file and passed it to me. ‘Know who that is?’

I looked at the fresh young face and nodded. I had seen a copy of the same photograph before but I didn’t tell McDougall. ‘Yes, it’s Robert Grant.’ I laid it on the table.

‘The fourth passenger in the car,’ said McDougall, tapping the photograph with his fingernail. ‘That young man lived. Nobody expected him to live, but he did. Six months after Trinavant died I had a vacation coming, so I used it to do some quiet checking out of reach of old Bull.
I went over to Edmonton and visited the hospital. Robert Grant had been transferred to Quebec; he was in a private clinic and he was incommunicado. From then on I lost track of him—and it’s a hard task to hide from an old newspaperman with a bee in his bonnet. I sent copies of this photograph to a few of my friends—newspapermen scattered all over Canada—and not a thing has come up in ten years. Robert Grant has disappeared off the face of the earth.’

‘So?’

‘Son, have you seen this man?’

I looked down at the photograph again. Grant looked to be only a boy, barely in his twenties and with a fine full life ahead of him. I said slowly, ‘To my best knowledge I’ve never seen that face.’

‘Well, it was a try,’ said McDougall. ‘I had thought you might be a friend of his come to see how the land lies.’

‘I’m sorry, Mac,’ I said. ‘I’ve never met this man. But why would he want to come here, anyway? Isn’t Grant an irrelevancy?’

‘Maybe,’ said McDougall thoughtfully. ‘And maybe not. I just wanted to talk to him, that’s all.’ He shrugged. ‘Let’s have another drink, for God’s sake!’

That night I had the Dream. It was at least five years since I had had it last and, as usual, it frightened hell out of me. There was a mountain covered with snow and with jagged black rocks sticking out of the snow like snaggle teeth. I wasn’t climbing the mountain or descending—I was merely standing there as though rooted. When I tried to move my feet it was as though the snow was sticky like an adhesive and I felt like a fly trapped on flypaper.

The snow was falling all the time; drifts were building up and presently the snow was knee-high and then at midthigh. I knew that if I didn’t move I would be buried so I
struggled again and bent down and pushed at the snow with my bare hands.

It was then that I found that the snow was not cold, but red hot in temperature, even though it was perfectly white in my dreams. I cried in agony and jerked my hands away and waited helplessly as the snow imperceptibly built up around my body. It touched my hands and then my face and I screamed as the hot, hot snow closed about me burning, burning, burning…

I woke up covered in sweat in that anonymous hotel room and wished I could have a jolt of Mac’s fine Islay whisky.

The first thing I can ever remember in my life is pain. It is not given to many men to experience their birth-pangs and I don’t recommend it. Not that any commendation of mine, for or against, can have any effect—none of us chooses to be born and the manner of our birth is beyond our control.

I felt the pain as a deep-seated agony all over my body. It became worse as time passed by, a red-hot fire consuming me. I fought against it with all my heart and seemed to prevail, though they tell me that the damping of the pain was due to the use of drugs. The pain went away and I became unconscious.

At the time of my birth I was twenty-three years old, or so I am reliably informed.

I am also told that I spent the next few weeks in a coma, hovering on that thin marginal line between life and death.

I am inclined to think of this as a mercy because if I had been conscious enough to undergo the pain I doubt if I would have lived and my life would indeed have been short.

When I recovered consciousness again the pain, though still crouched in my body, had eased considerably and I found it bearable. Less bearable was the predicament in which I found myself. I was spreadeagled—tied by ankles and wrists—lying on my back and apparently immersed in liquid.
I had very little to go on because when I tried to open my eyes I found that I couldn’t. There was a tightness about my face and I became very much afraid and began to struggle.

A voice said urgently, ‘You must be quiet. You must not move. You must
not
move.’

It was a good voice, soft and kind, so I relaxed and descended into that merciful coma again.

A number of weeks passed during which time I was conscious more frequently. I don’t remember much of this period except that the pain became less obtrusive and I became stronger. They began to feed me through a tube pushed between my lips, and I sucked in the soups and the fruit juices and became even stronger. Three times I was aware that I had been taken to an operating theatre; I learned this not from my own knowledge but by listening to the chatter of nurses. But for the most part I was in a happy state of thoughtlessness. It never occurred to me to wonder what I was doing there or how I had got there, any more than a newborn baby in a cot thinks of those things. As a baby, I was content to let things go their own way so long as I was comfortable and comforted.

The time came when they cut the bandage from my face and eyes. A voice, a man’s voice I had heard before, said, ‘Now, take it easy. Keep your eyes closed until I tell you to open them.’

Obediently I closed my eyes tightly and heard the snip of the scissors as they clipped through the gauze. Fingers touched my eyelids and there was a whispered, ‘
Seems
to be all right.’ Someone was breathing into my face. The voice said, ‘All right; you can open them now.’

I opened my eyes to a darkened room. In front of me was the dim outline of a man. He said, ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’

A white object swam into vision. I said, ‘Two.’

‘And how many now?’

‘Four.’

He gave a long, gusty sigh. ‘It looks as though you are going to have unimpaired vision after all. You’re a very lucky young man, Mr Grant.’

‘Grant?’

The man paused. ‘Your name is Grant, isn’t it?’

I thought about it for a long time and the man assumed I wasn’t going to answer him. He said, ‘Come now; if you are not Grant, then who are you?’

It is then they tell me that I screamed and they had to administer more drugs. I don’t remember screaming. All I remember is the awful blank feeling when I realized that I didn’t know who I was.

I have given the story of my rebirth in some detail. It is really astonishing that I lived those many weeks, conscious for a large part of the time, without ever worrying about my personal identity. But all that was explained afterwards by Susskind.

Dr Matthews, the skin specialist, was one of the team which was cobbling me together, and he was the first to realize that there was something more wrong with me than mere physical disability, so Susskind was added to the team. I never called him anything other than Susskind—that’s how he introduced himself—and he was never anything else than a good friend. I guess that’s what makes a good psychiatrist. When I was on my feet and moving around outside hospitals we used to go out and drink beer together. I don’t know if that’s a normal form of psychiatric treatment—I thought head-shrinkers stuck pretty firmly to the little padded seat at the head of the couch—but Susskind had his own ways and he turned out to be a good friend.

He came into the darkened room and looked at me. ‘I’m Susskind,’ he said abruptly. He looked about the room. ‘Dr Matthews says you can have more light. I think it’s a good
idea.’ He walked to the window and drew the curtains. ‘Darkness is bad for the soul.’

He came back to the bed and stood looking down at me. He had a strong face with a firm jaw and a beak of a nose, but his eyes were incongruously soft and brown, like those of an intelligent ape. He made a curiously disarming gesture, and said, ‘Mind if I sit down?’

I shook my head so he hooked his foot on a chair and drew it closer. He sat down in a casual manner, his left ankle resting on his right knee, showing a large expanse of sock patterned jazzily and two inches of hairy leg. ‘How are you feeling?’

I shook my head.

‘What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?’ When I made no answer he said, ‘Look, boy, you seem to be in trouble. Now, I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.’

I’d had a bad night, the worst in my life. For hours I had struggled with the problem—
who am I
?—and I was no nearer to finding out than when I started. I was worn out and frightened and in no mood to talk to anyone.

Susskind began to talk in a soft voice. I don’t remember everything he said that first time but he returned to the theme many times afterwards. It went something like this:

‘Everyone comes up against this problem some time in his life; he asks himself the fundamentally awkward question: ‘Who am I?’ There are many related questions, too, such as, ‘Why am I?’ and ‘Why am I
here
?’ To the uncaring the questioning comes late, perhaps only on the death-bed. To the thinking man this self-questioning comes sooner and has to be resolved in the agony of personal mental sweat.

‘Out of such self-questioning have come a lot of good things—and some not so good. Some of the people who have asked these questions of themselves have gone mad, others have become saints, but most of us come to a
compromise. Out of these questions have arisen great religions. Philosophers have written too many books about them, books containing a lot of undiluted crap and a few grains of sense. Scientists have looked for the answers in the movement of atoms and the working of drugs. This is the problem which exercises all of us, every member of the human race, and if it doesn’t happen to an individual then that individual cannot be considered to be human.

‘Now, you’ve bumped up against this problem of personal identity head-on and in an acute form. You think that just because you can’t remember your name you’re a nothing. You’re wrong. The self does not exist in a name. A name is just a word, a form of description which we give ourselves—a mere matter of convenience. The self—that awareness in the midst of your being which you call
I
—is still there. If it weren’t, you’d be dead.

‘You also think that just because you can’t remember incidents in your past life your personal world has come to an end. Why should it? You’re still breathing; you’re still alive. Pretty soon you’ll be out of this hospital—a thinking, questioning man, eager to get on with what he has to do. Maybe we can do some reconstructions; the odds are that you’ll have all your memories back within days or weeks. Maybe it will take a bit longer. But I’m here to help you do it. Will you let me?’

I looked up at that stern face with the absurdly gentle eyes and whispered, ‘Thanks.’ Then, because I was very tired, I fell asleep and when I woke up again Susskind had gone.

But he came back next day. ‘Feeling better?’

‘Some.’

He sat down. ‘Mind if I smoke?’ He lit a cigarette, then looked at it distastefully. ‘I smoke too many of these damn’ things.’ He extended the pack. ‘Have one?’

‘I don’t use them.’

‘How do you know?’

I thought about that for fully five minutes while Susskind waited patiently without saying a word. ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, I don’t smoke. I
know
it.’

‘Well, that’s a good start,’ he said with fierce satisfaction. ‘You know
something
about yourself. Now, what’s the first thing you remember?’

I said immediately, ‘Pain. Pain and floating. I was tied up, too.’

Susskind went into that in detail and when he had finished I thought I caught a hint of doubt in his expression, but I could have been wrong. He said, ‘Have you any idea how you got into this hospital?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I was
born
here.’

He smiled. ‘At your age?’

‘I don’t know how old I am.’

‘To the best of our knowledge you’re twenty-three. You were involved in an auto accident. Have you any ideas about that?’

‘No.’

‘You know what an automobile is, though.’

‘Of course.’ I paused. ‘Where was the accident?’

‘On the road between Dawson Creek and Edmonton. You know where those places are?’

‘I know.’

Susskind stubbed out his cigarette. ‘These ash-trays are too damn’ small,’ he grumbled. He lit another cigarette. ‘Would you like to know a little more about yourself? It will be hearsay, not of your own personal knowledge, but it might help. Your name, for instance.’

I said, ‘Dr Matthews called me by the name of Grant.’

Susskind said carefully, ‘To the best of our knowledge that is your name. More fully, it is Robert Boyd Grant. Want to know anything else?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘What was I doing? What was my job?’

‘You were a college student studying at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Remember anything about that?’

I shook my head.

He said suddenly, ‘What’s a mofette?’

‘It’s an opening in the ground from which carbon dioxide is emitted—volcanic in origin.’ I stared at him. ‘How did I know that?’

‘You were majoring in geology,’ he said drily. ‘What was your father’s given name?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said blankly. ‘You said “was”. Is he dead?’

‘Yes,’ said Susskind quickly. ‘Supposing you went to Irving House, New Westminster—what would you expect to find?’

‘A museum.’

‘Have you any brothers or sisters?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Which—if any—political party do you favour?’

I thought about it, then shrugged. ‘I don’t know—but I don’t know if I took any interest in politics at all.’

There were dozens of questions and Susskind shot them at me fast, expecting fast answers. At last he stopped and lit another cigarette. ‘I’ll give it to you straight, Bob, because I don’t believe in hiding unpleasant facts from my customers and because I think you can take it. Your loss of memory is entirely personal, relating solely to yourself. Any knowledge which does not directly impinge on the ego, things like the facts of geology, geographical locations, car driving know-how—all that knowledge has been retained whole and entire.’

He flicked ash carelessly in the direction of the ash-tray. ‘The more personal things concerning yourself and your relationships with others are gone. Not only has your family been blotted out but you can’t remember another single person—not your geology tutor or even your best buddy at
college. It’s as though something inside you decided to wipe the slate clean.’

I felt hopelessly lost. What was there left for a man of my age with no personal contacts—no family, no friends? My God, I didn’t even have any enemies, and it’s a poor man who can say that.

Susskind poked me gently with a thick forefinger. ‘Don’t give up now, bud; we haven’t even started. Look at it this way—there’s many a man who would give his soul to be able to start again with a clean slate. Let me explain a few things to you. The unconscious mind is a funny animal with its own operating logic. This logic may appear to be very odd to the conscious mind but it’s still a valid logic working strictly in accordance within certain rules, and what we have to do is to figure out the rules. I’m going to give you some psychological tests and then maybe I’ll know better what makes you tick. I’m also going to do some digging into your background and maybe we can come up with something there.’

I said, ‘Susskind, what chance is there?’

‘I won’t fool you,’ he said. ‘Due to various circumstances which I won’t go into right now, yours is not entirely a straightforward case of loss of memory. Your case is one for the books—and I’ll probably write the book. Look, Bob; a guy gets a knock on the head and he loses his memory—but not for long; within a couple of days, a couple of weeks at the most, he’s normal again. That’s the common course of events. Sometimes it’s worse than that. I’ve just had a case of an old man of eighty who was knocked down in the street. He came round in hospital the next day and found he’d lost a year of his life—he couldn’t remember a damn’ thing of the year previous to the accident and, in my opinion, he never will.’

He waved his cigarette under my nose. ‘That’s general loss of memory. A
selective
loss of memory like yours isn’t
common at all. Sure, it’s happened before and it’ll happen again, but not often. And, like the general loss, recovery is variable. The trouble is that selective loss happens so infrequently that we don’t have much on it. I could give you a line that you’ll have your memory back next week, but I won’t because I don’t know. The only thing we can do is to work on it. Now, my advice to you is to quit worrying about it and to concentrate on other things. As soon as you can use your eyes for reading I’ll bring in some textbooks and you can get back to work. By then the bandages will be off your hands and you can do some writing, too. You have an examination to pass, bud, in twelve months’ time.’

Susskind drove me to work and ripped into me when I lagged. His tongue could get a vicious edge to it when he thought it would do me good, and as soon as the bandages were off he pushed my nose down to the textbooks. He gave me a lot of tests—intelligence, personality, vocational—and seemed pleased at the results.