The Man Without a Shadow Read Online Free PDF Page B

for her touch.
    Forty intense minutes, then a break of ten minutes before tests continue at an ever-increasing pace. E.H. is eager and hopeful and cooperative but as the tests become more complicated, and accelerated, E.H. is thrown into confusion ever more quickly (though he tries, with extraordinary valor, to maintain his affable “gentlemanly” manner). As intervals grow longer, he seems to beflailing about like a drowning man. His short-term memory is terribly reduced—as short as forty seconds.
    After two hours of tests Ferris declares a longer break. The examiners are as exhausted as the amnesiac subject.
    E.H. is given a glass of orange juice, which is his favorite drink. He hasn’t been aware until now that he’s thirsty—he drinks the juice in several swallows.
    It is Margot Sharpe who brings E.H. the orange juice. This female role of nurturer-server is deeply satisfying to her for E.H. smiles with particular warmth at her.
    She feels a mild sensation of vertigo. Surely, the amnesiac subject is perceiving her.
    Restless, exhausted without knowing (recalling) why, E.H. stands at a window and stares outside. Is he trying to determine where he is? Is he trying to determine who these strangers are, “testing” him? He is a proud man, he will not ask questions.
    Like an athlete too long restrained in a cramped space or like a rebellious teenager E.H. begins to circle the room. This behavior is just short of annoying—perhaps it is indeed annoying. E.H. ignores the strangers in the room. E.H. flexes his fingers, shakes his arms. He stretches the tendons in his calves. He reaches for the ceiling—stretching his vertebrae. He mutters to himself—(is he cursing?)—yet his expression remains affable.
    â€œMr. Hoopes? Would you like your sketchbook?”—one of the Institute staff asks, handing the book to him.
    E.H. is pleased to see the sketchbook. E.H. is (perhaps) surprised to see the sketchbook. He pages through it frowning, holding the book in such a way to prevent anyone else seeing its contents.
    Then, he discovers his little notebook in a shirt pocket. This he opens eagerly, and peruses. He records something in the notebook, and slips it back into his pocket. He looks into the sketchbookagain, discovers something he doesn’t like and tears it out, and crumples it in his hand. Margot is fascinated by the amnesiac’s behavior: Is it coherent, to him? Is there a purpose to it? She wonders if, before his illness, he’d kept a little notebook like this one, and carried an oversized sketchbook around with him; possibly he had. And so the effort of remembering these now is not unusual.
    If he believes himself alone, with no one close to observe him, E.H. ceases smiling. He’s frowning and somber like one engrossed in the heart-straining effort of trying to figure things out.
    Margot thinks how sad, how exhausting, the amnesiac can’t remember that he has been involved in this effort for any sustained period of time. He might have been in this place for a few minutes, or a few hours. He seems to know that he doesn’t live here, but he has no clear idea that he is living with a relative in Gladwyne and not by himself in Philadelphia as he’d been at the time of his illness.
    No matter how many times a test involving rote memory is repeated, E.H. never improves. No matter how many times E.H. is given instructions, he has to be given the instructions yet another time.
    The amnesiac’s brain resembles a colander through which water sifts continually, and never accumulates; those years before his illness, which constitute most of the man’s life of thirty-eight years, resemble a still, distant water glimpsed through dense foliage as in a hallucinatory landscape by Cézanne.
    Margot wonders if there can be some residual, unfathomable memory in the part of E.H.’s brain that has been damaged? Whether, at the periphery of the damage, in