The Man Without a Shadow (19 page)

“I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know anyone who ‘challenged' Milton. Who is it? Who is filing charges against him?”

Kaplan names a former assistant professor at the university, now at the National Institutes of Health in Washington, D.C. Margot, who knows this individual fairly well, is astonished and disbelieving.

“I'll call him! He can't be serious.”

“You
will not
call him, Margot! Please.”

“What do you mean, ‘please'? How can I stand by while Milton is being falsely accused of misconduct? He will be broken, humiliated. His reputation will be ruined. He's seventy years old . . .”

“Because he has behaved unethically for more than a decade.
Because he has ruined some scientists' reputations—their lives. Young women's lives.”

“That's ridiculous! That is
not true
.”

“You've been blind. You haven't wanted to know.” Kaplan pauses, then says, cruelly, “He hasn't treated the others the way he's treated you, Margot. He'd always favored
you
—the other women, he simply used. It's your vanity that is driving this—not your professional judgment.”

Margot is struck dumb. Though Kaplan can't see, a fierce blush rises into her face that is part shame, and part exhilaration.
Always favored you
—she will remember this.

She says, stammering, “But—we can't hurt Milton. He may have behaved unconscionably—at times—but we have ‘consciences'—we can't break an old man's heart.”

Can't break an old man's heart
. Words out of a TV melodrama of the kind Margot never watches. Yet, Margot is sincere; she is trembling, and tears run down her heated face.

Spitefully Kaplan says, “He named you head of the project. Of course you feel grateful to him and protective of him.”

“He got you your job at Rockefeller! And he would have named you head of the project, except you wanted to move.”

“I didn't ‘want' to move—I was urged to move. By Milton.”

“You were? But why?”

“So he could promote you, why else? He'd always favored
you
.”

Spiteful as any sibling. And Margot can sense the hurt, and the fury beneath the hurt.

“But the fact is, Alvin, you wouldn't have your position at Rockefeller, you wouldn't have brought all that grant money with you, if Milton hadn't pushed for you.”

“That's an insult. That isn't worthy of you, Margot.”

“None of this is
worthy of you
,
Alvin.”

But by degrees Kaplan has begun to weaken. He is suffused with guilt and shame, Margot knows. Betraying the man who'd made their careers and their lives possible! Betraying their common father.

Kaplan speaks of a half-dozen others who are intent upon exposing Milton Ferris out of disgust with his “unsullied” reputation, and with the power he continues to wield in the scientific community. Some of these are individuals whom Margot knows, though not well. (Yes, one of those is the former colleague now teaching at Purdue. Margot knew this!) Kaplan tells her of other instances of questionable professional behavior on Milton's part which include “taking advantage” of his female associates; on this delicate matter, Kaplan is diplomatic, and doesn't humiliate Margot by listing other women by name. He allows her to know, however, that it is something like a general knowledge, that Ferris is “known, notorious” for taking advantage of the naïveté of young women scientists, sexually, professionally. Kaplan concedes, “Of course, Milton is also a very nice person—he can be. He's gracious, he's charming, he has won every award and has received every grant he's ever applied for. He's chair of the membership committee at the National Academy. If he hears of this, and if we don't follow through with our charges so that he's at least removed from that powerful committee, he will veto us for as long as he lives.”

“What do you mean, ‘if he hears of this'? I haven't accused him of anything—I've defended him. I was just in Mills's office defending him, and I will put my statement in writing, you can be sure.”

“You can't sabotage this investigation, Margot. You know very well that Milton Ferris should be made to retire.”

“I've told you, that is
not true
. I will never testify that
that is true
.”

In any case, Margot says hotly that she doesn't give a damn for being elected to the National Academy or any other professional organization. She is a
scientist,
not a
social climber.

Kaplan says that's bullshit. Of course she cares, and she should care.
He
cares.

Margot reiterates: she can't betray Milton Ferris. She will not—ever—betray Milton Ferris.

“He's going to retire soon. There's no point in destroying him now.”

After an exhausting hour or more on the phone, Kaplan relents. Or seems to relent. Margot thanks him, in a voice trembling with emotion. They hang up the phone, each edgy and excited.

Soon after, Margot hears from Harry Mills that proceedings against Milton Ferris have been “temporarily suspended.” Her remarks will be stricken from the record if she wishes.

“Yes, strike everything. Including this conversation. Good night!”

In exhausted triumph Margot thinks—
I would never do such a thing to you, Milton. We loved each other so much.

IT WAS MILTON
Ferris who taught her to drink. Taught her to prefer his favorite whiskey—Johnnie Walker Black Label.

Flamey-hot going down, and all of her body suffused with flame so she stumbles into her darkened bedroom and falls half-dressed onto her bed. Drifting into the sweetest and most delicious sleep from which it is becoming ever harder to awaken.

E
li? Eli!

Standing on a plank bridge in a low-lying marshy place with feet just slightly apart and firmly on his heels to brace himself against a sudden gust of wind.

Standing on a plank bridge in this place that is new to him and wondrous in beauty. Thinking it must be at Lake George—but he isn't sure. He has not seen this particular place before—he is sure of this. He seems to know that he must brace himself, he grips the railing with both hands, tight.

This is a place new to him and wondrous in beauty yet he is fearful of turning to see, in the shallow stream flowing beneath the bridge, behind his back, the drowned girl.

. . .
naked, about eleven years old, a child. Eyes open and sightless, shimmering in water. Rippling-water, that makes it seem that the girl's face is shuddering. Her slender white body, long white tremulous legs and bare feet. Splotches of sunshine, “water-skaters” magnified in shadow on the girl's face.

They would shake him hard, they would say to him
Eli you
did not see. You did not see your cousin in the woods. You did not see Gretchen at all that day, you are mistaken.

They would shake him hard, and harder. They would say to him
For God's sake you are having a bad nightmare, Eli. You can't give in to nightmares, you will drive us all crazy.

“Mr. Hoopes?”

He turns. He is startled to see that someone has come up quietly behind him or has been standing behind him for some time, and he'd had no idea.

“We should go back now, Mr. Hoopes. You have an appointment at one o'clock, remember.”

“Yes! That is correct.”

He speaks lightly. He smiles.

It is perplexing to him, the sudden appearance of the girl. She is not the girl he has been imagining—she is not the girl he has been
seeing
. She is much older, in her twenties. She is caramel-skinned, with dark tight-braided hair in a complex weave on her head. She wears a pale green cotton smock over dark green cotton slacks. On her feet are crepe-soled white shoes and on her left lapel a laminated white ID badge. Probably a medical worker. Nurse's aide or an attendant. He squints with his good eye to read her name—
YOLANDA
.

Confused. Tries to disguise his alarm. (He knows) there is something behind him at which he is forbidden to look, beyond the railing of the plank bridge, the shallow stream flowing beneath the bridge. Frightened of seeing what this is but Yolanda continues to smile at him in a way to suggest that nothing is wrong in the slightest. She knows him—“Mr. Hoopes.” She is not surprised or dismayed, she is not horrified.
She does not know about the child in the stream.

“You been havin a nice time walkin out here, Mr. Hoopes? Real nice here in't it? My favorite place, around here.”

“Yes. Mine also.”

His voice which is the voice of an adult male. Feels this voice—deep baritone in his throat—and realizes that he is not a child, himself: he is not five years old. Much older, his body hangs on him like an oversized coat.

And whatever has happened, happened at some other time. And in some other place.

“Mr. Hoopes? You forgettin your—your drawin book . . .”

The caramel-skinned girl points to an artist's sketchbook that has been propped against the bridge railing with a look of having been distractedly put aside. The sketchbook is shut, there is no stick of charcoal or pencil in his hand but he has a pleasurable memory of having grasped something between his fingers—indeed, there is a charcoal stick in a pocket of his jacket. Evidently he has been sketching the rich marshland on the farther side of the bridge where redwing blackbirds and starlings have flocked.

“Thank you! I wouldn't want to leave this behind.”

“That's right, Mr. Hoopes. Last time you left that book, I had a hard time finding it.”

“‘Yo-landa'—do you like to walk here, too? Do you live nearby?”

“No, Mr. Hoopes! Don't live anywhere near this place.”

The girl laughs, showing small white teeth. Her accent is soft, pillowy. She is “from the islands”—he guesses, by her accent, Dominican Republic.

“Am I late, Yolanda? I hope not.”

“No, Mr. Hoopes! That's why I'm here—to make sure you are not late.”

“Am I late sometimes? Is that why you follow me around?”

The girl laughs, as if Elihu Hoopes has tickled her. “Mr. Hoopes, I don't ‘follow you around'—I walk with you.”

“So I don't get lost.”

“For sure, you won't get lost.”

“I hope they pay you sufficiently, to keep people like me from getting lost.”

It is a query—
People like me
. Elihu Hoopes hopes to determine by the young woman's response whether there are indeed
people like me
or whether he is
one of a kind.

To be
one of a kind
is a terrible fate. He is afraid that is what he is.

But Yolanda is walking ahead, and it isn't clear if she is really listening to him. Speaking with strangers is like volleying a tennis ball: if you can keep the volley going there is a connection, an urgent and exciting connection, but once the connection is broken—you are flailing, lost.

He has forgotten the plank bridge, the stream beneath the bridge, the shadowy shimmering rippling water at which he wasn't supposed to look—he has forgotten the warning against looking. Turning his head.

But he has turned his head, and there is nothing. What has so frightened him? He feels his heartbeat begin to slow, for the danger is past.

He rubs his hands together, chill perspiration of palm to palm.

Now he sees: they are on a wood chip path. He is not in the Adirondacks or any wild place but in what appears to be a parkland of some kind. Ahead, partially visible through a stand of trees, is a building of pale-glimmering glass.

A place of affluence, his heart sinks. Affluence is artifice, that deflates the soul.

Behind him is a marshy area fecund with reeds and cattails,
glittering with strips of water like the shards of a broken mirror. Monarch butterflies, redwing blackbirds. And on the rippling surface of the water a continual skittish play of water-insects like firing neurons.

Behind him and passing into forgetfulness, the plank bridge and the shallow stream.

Trails are marked here but they are all wood chip trails that probably just loop back upon themselves in a quarter mile as in a maze. He is disappointed, he isn't at Lake George—obviously, he is nowhere near Lake George—but in this place of fastidiously maintained trails, granite benches named for deceased donors, beds of colorful autumn flowers—zinnias, marigolds, asters.

The marshland is a natural place, he supposes. Someone had the idea of creating parkland to abut it. Affluence flows into nature and alters it, in its image.

Strange how he seems to know the direction in which they are headed, though he has never been here before. When the wood chip trail branches, both the caramel-skinned girl and Elihu Hoopes take the left branch without thinking.

The girl whose name he has forgotten—(he knows that it is a beautiful exotic name)—strides ahead on the path. Splotched sunshine falls like coins about their heads. He feels an urge to reach out to her, to touch her—the slender shoulder in the pale green smock, the hair at the back of her head that is so tightly braided. But he knows—
You can't. You must not. Not ever again.

He is not aroused. Not sexually aroused. But he yearns to touch her, he is so lonely.

Must not. Not ever again.

As if she can read his anxious thoughts the girl turns to him, smiling. “Mr. Hoopes, you going to tell me the birds again? Seems like, I get them all mixed-up.”

They are standing at the edge of a large pond bordered by willow trees. On the pond are waterfowl—mallards, geese, majestic white swans. And at the shore, smaller birds pecking excitedly at grain that someone has scattered for them.

He points to the ducks—“blue-winged teals”—“mallards”—“American wigeons.” He points to the geese—“Canada geese”—“snow geese.” He points to the swans—“whistling swans.” The smaller birds are “cardinals”—“slate-colored juncos”—“vesper sparrows”—“song sparrows”—“field sparrows.” The names of the birds come to him unbidden, as through a magical action of his finger's pointing and the birds themselves, provoking the girl to laugh in delight as if he has performed a remarkable trick.

“Except,” Elihu Hoopes says, “the birds don't know their names. Only we know their names, because we have given them their names.”

The caramel-skinned girl laughs uncertainly. She regards Elihu Hoopes with the wary reverence with which she would regard any middle-aged male patient at the Institute whose malady is hidden inside his head.

“And what kinda cloud is that, Mr. Hoopes?”

His gaze swings upward. The sky is somehow surprising, unexpected—steep canyons of cloud that look as if you could fall into them, without end. And beyond, the soft pale blue of rainwashed glass.

“Mostly cirrocumulus—‘mackerel sky.' At the horizon, stratocumulus—rain clouds.”

These names, too, come to Elihu Hoopes unbidden. He can sense that the girl has asked these questions of him before since his answers don't greatly surprise her; nor will she recall them, for essentially they do not interest her.

He wants to tell the beautiful caramel-skinned girl
I tell you these things because I love you. Whoever you are.

He smiles, in secret. How surprised the girl would be, if she knew!

“Mr. Hoopes, you are a—teacher? Professor?”

“Sorry, no.”

“Lawyer?”

“No. Don't think so.”

“Somethin in business, then.”

“‘Somethin in business, then.' Yes.”

Though when he tries to recall the work he'd done, desk-work, office-work, telephone, columns of numerals, calculations—when he tries to recall his father speaking urgently to him on matters of Hoopes, Inc.—something in his brain seizes. Like ice cracking. Can't bring himself to recall whatever it is, or was. All that is finished.

“This is a beautiful park the Institute has here, in't it, Mr. Hoopes?”

“Is it?”

“You saying it is
not
?”

“Too tame for me, Yolanda.”

He sees (again) that the girl's name is Yolanda. Yet he is careful to pronounce the name casually, as if he has known it all along.

He has come to be hypersensitive to the expectations of others and has come to know by the most subtle, near-invisible alterations of another's facial muscles if what he says is plausible and reasonable or if it is senseless and irrational and will alert the listener that
something is wrong with this person
.

But Yolanda laughs as if Elihu Hoopes has said something scandalous.

“
Too tame?
How d'you like a place then, Mr. Hoopes—
wild
?”

“Yes, Yolanda. Wild.”

Elihu speaks wistfully. Yolanda looks pained. He realizes that she has been enunciating
Mr. Hoopes
carefully: he has to wonder if the name
Hoopes
has associations for her, if she is from Philadelphia and has encountered the name previously, in quasi-exalted circumstances; or, more likely, if it is just a name to her, a curious name, as
Elihu Hoopes
seems to be a curious individual, one of those
not quite right in the head.

Glancing down at himself: neatly pressed khakis, linen shirt, oxblood loafers. It seems that Eli is not wearing any sort of hospital attire, and so he is not a “patient.”

Yet: he might be an “out-patient.”

(Though he doesn't feel physically “unwell.” His sense of pain—tactile, internal—seems blunted, numbed. As if parts of his body have gone to sleep.)

He would like to ask Yolanda where they are, and why—but can't summon the right, lightly bantering words.

“We goin up there right now, not a minute late, Mr. Hoopes”—Yolanda assures him, as if she can read his thoughts.

Leaving the private park now. Following a graveled walk to the rear entrance of the pale-glimmering building that is, he quickly counts, eight storeys high.

Hospital? Medical center?

Compulsion for quick counting of things that can be reduced to numerals but a compulsion that has little practical use for any numeral that comes into his head—(he knows, he understands this but not why)—very soon drifts out of his head, and is gone.

Averting his gaze so he can't count God-damned cars in the parking lot but the method is: how many cars in each row, how many rows, multiply.

“H'lo there, Mr. Hoopes! You havin a good walk?”

“H'lo, Eli. Yolanda takin good care of you, is she?”

Smiling strangers appear out of nowhere. Two women, a man also in uniform: pale green smocks or jackets, dark green trousers and crepe-soled white shoes. They seem to know him and to like and respect him—this is a positive thing. He makes no effort to read their ID badges for (he senses) he should know their names.

It is a positive thing to be liked and respected for it is not probable then that you will be hurt.

He'd been beaten, once. More than once. He can shut his eyes and recall the astonishment of being hit, punched, kicked, screamed at—
Nigger lover! Fucking Jew!
So quickly you are knocked to the ground and once you are on the ground, you are helpless. Try to protect your head, try to protect your face, stomach. He can recall the terror of believing that he would die, and a curious stillness within the terror, as if a part of him, his soul perhaps, had curled up tight in self-protectiveness, and had passed into oblivion.

Like islands emerging in a dark marshland, these memories. But he doesn't clutch at them, he has learned to let such memories rise, and fall back again into oblivion, for he has learned not to exhaust himself in an effort futile beyond all calculation. What drifts into his mind, will drift into his mind without this effort. And no matter the effort, it will disperse again and drift away.