Man Walks Into a Room Read Online Free PDF Page B

reached his collar. His face was fleshy, as if his features were under the reign of some greater force of gravity pulling down the jowls and stretching the nostrils. There were dark pouches under his eyes. He had stubby fingers and one of them was cinched by a wedding ring that looked more like an artifact stuck on his finger than the symbol of any committed passion. Lavell wasn’t the sort of man easily associated with passions; he had the phlegmaticmovements of a bottom feeder. Samson had been told that over the years Lavell had spent more and more time in the research laboratory, and was known around the institute for his brilliant mind. An ambulatory thinker, he often walked out of meetings or grand rounds in pursuit of an idea. Sometimes he laughed aloud when no one else did, or fell asleep in his seat. But although Lavell was polite to everyone, and popular among the residents, he seemed not to reciprocate their feelings. Samson sensed he was somewhat ambivalent about people, more loyal to the organ of the brain than the personality it produced. Perhaps this is why as the years went on he had practiced medicine less and spent more time in the laboratory, drawn out only by the most interesting cases.
    And if Samson, in turn, was drawn to him it was perhaps for this very ambivalence. It was an emotion that in those first remarkable days, returned to his life, Samson understood. For despite the beauty of Anna, the charming photographs, the loveliness of his apartment full of the souvenirs of a life well lived, Samson could dredge up no feeling for his own life but that of vague admiration.

SAMSON WOKE TO the alarm and felt Anna wake, roll, and climb out of bed. Her bare feet across the wooden floor. A splash of water in the sink, the shower. He lay still under the covers as she dressed, preserving her as one sense, a series of sounds. Then he felt her standing above him, lowering her head toward him. As her lips touched his forehead he opened his eyes, long enough to register her face above him. Then he shut them again and waited for the sound of the dog in the hall, the key in the lock.
    He had already been home a month, and he and Anna had improvised a makeshift existence. They avoided subjects they both knew were waiting like fault lines to split the ground beneath them. Instead they talked about things Samson still couldn’t get his head around: the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russians now being our big friends,the fact that nobody seemed to be very worried any more about the threat of nuclear war.
    When friends called anxious to speak to Samson, Anna briefed him on who they were before he reluctantly took the receiver. Eventually he stopped taking the calls, and listened from the other room as Anna spoke in weary, hushed tones about his condition: the tests showed no signs of the tumor’s regeneration; he was still seeing the doctors; no memories had returned beyond childhood; she was a complete stranger to him; and he himself was different, not the same person at all.
    She paced the floor as she spoke and sometimes she wept into the phone.
    Sometimes on the street they ran into people he’d once known. Most wore a curious, pained expression, though others made more cheerful jokes or recounted funny things Samson had once done or said, great times they’d had together. As they walked away they promised to call soon, and some of them did and some of them didn’t.
    When he finally worked up enough courage to ask Anna what had happened to his mother, she paused and touched his face.
    “She had cancer. It was five years ago.”
    He didn’t know what he had expected, but when he heard this, his mother’s death finally emerged as a hard, sharp fact. Although he tried to be gracious about all he was being asked to accept, there were moments when that seemed too much to ask. That Soviet Communism had fallen, that Governor Reagan had become President, that John Lennon had been assassinated, were one thing. That