The Book of M Read online

  I didn’t tell her it was because she was dehydrating to death. “They promised to make a decision by the morning,” I offered. “To figure something out by the third day.”

  “It’s been two days?” she asked. I tried to remember how it was reported to have been with Hemu Joshi. She seemed to be forgetting much faster than he had.

  The last time I visited her, at dawn on the third day, I was surprised to hear her already awake.

  “Do I know you?” she asked as I sat down.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said.

  We both waited awhile, until it felt normal for me to be sitting there again. “My name is Max,” I finally told her.

  “Max . . . ,” she said to herself, as if rolling the word around in her mouth. I felt cold as I sat there. She really didn’t remember me at all.

  “Marion.” I scooted closer and dropped my voice.

  “What is a Marion?”

  We sat in silence for a long time. “What’s it like? To forget everything?” I asked softly. “Are you afraid?”

  She settled against the door. “Maybe I was,” she said. “But now I’m not. Now it just feels . . . simple. It probably seems terrible, but it’s not. I just . . . At first I was angry. But every day I forget more. Maybe I’ll forget so much I won’t remember what I’ve lost, or that I’ve lost anything at all. You can’t miss what you don’t know you had, can you?”

  Do you remember Hallie? I wanted to ask her. Do you remember your daughter? Your husband? “Do you know what karma is?” I finally whispered.

  “No,” she answered.

  When I left her and sneaked back outside through the rear lounge door, the sun was so strong it felt like the grass was curling under my shoes. I came around the corner and tried to look like I’d been strolling through the trees this whole time. When I reached the patchwork lawn of blankets, I saw you walking toward me. Thank God. I started to jog. If you were outside, instead of in the ballroom, that could only mean one thing. You all had figured something out. You were going to do something to help Marion and the rest of the third scouting party. Your shoulders jumped in surprise when you saw me, and I started to smile with relief, but then I saw the look in your eyes.

  I argued, but no one listened. Not even you. It had taken your group three days to decide what to do, but actually I think all of you had known what was going to happen from the first moment. It just took you three days to rationalize it into something that would let us face one another every morning thereafter.

  The One Who Gathers

  THE NURSE LEANED DOWN AGAIN, HOLDING THE COFFEEPOT out to him.

  “No, thank you,” the amnesiac said.

  “I will have more, though,” Dr. Zadeh cut in, and raised his mug. He rubbed his face slowly, as if trying to stretch it into a different shape. “Jet lag.” He smiled, and she nodded sympathetically as she refilled his drink. Overhead, the central air conditioning clicked on, blasting the waiting room with icy wind. When they’d stepped off the plane, the air in Pune had been as warm and thickly humid as it was at home in New Orleans, but everywhere they’d gone since—the private government car sent to retrieve them, their five-star hotel, the car again to bring them to Maharashtra Regional Hospital, the now-quarantined psychiatric ward—was almost arctic cold. He just wanted to go outside and look. All the colors. The movement. Pune was so much more alive than the antiseptic, manicured courtyard of his assisted-living facility.

  “Did I like coffee?” the amnesiac asked when the nurse had moved away.

  “I don’t know. That wasn’t information I could find from your records or emails.”

  The amnesiac took another testing sip of the steaming dark liquid.

  “Maybe Charlotte will be able to tell you?” Dr. Zadeh tried tentatively.

  The amnesiac shrugged. He would ask her when they were back, but he didn’t know if it mattered. For this new him, the taste made his tongue curl. “I don’t like it now,” he said. “Would that mean I didn’t like it before?”

  “Sometimes.” Dr. Zadeh nodded. “It can.”

  He most likely did not like coffee before. He would add this fact to his flash cards.

  “Plenty of people don’t like it,” Dr. Zadeh continued, in case he was feeling excluded from some societal ritual. “They just drink it so as not to feel like a truck ran over them.” He took another sip. “Like right now.”

  “I feel fine,” the amnesiac replied.

  “Now that’s weird,” he said.

  They laughed. The amnesiac couldn’t stay angry at him. He had no one else in the whole world.

  “Why me?” he finally asked. Dr. Zadeh glanced up. “Why was I chosen to meet Hemu Joshi?”

  “Well, it was mostly my doing.” Dr. Zadeh grinned sheepishly. “When I saw the first videos of Hemu after he began experiencing memory loss, I called the Indian Psychiatric Society. Explained who I was, emailed copies of my articles, my research on you. They eventually managed to put me all the way through to the team here. I told them about my idea.”

  “I know that,” the amnesiac said. “I meant, there must be hundreds of retrograde amnesia cases in India from which they could have chosen. Why fly us out here?”

  “Because you forgot so much,” he answered. “Everything, really. Most RA cases aren’t as complete as yours. And it happened at almost the same time as Hemu Joshi’s incident. You’re both still experiencing the effects of your diagnoses on your lives, learning how to cope with the loss. You were the closest match to him that we could find.”

  “Do you really think I can help him?”

  “I think you have a better shot at understanding him than any of us do,” he said. After a moment, he put his hand on the amnesiac’s shoulder. “Just speak with him. That’s all. Don’t worry about the results, okay?”

  The amnesiac nodded.

  “Excuse me—we’re ready for you now,” a voice called. They turned from their seats to see an older woman in purple scrubs, perhaps sixty or so, her long silver braid shining against the warm brown of her skin.

  “David Zadeh,” Dr. Zadeh said, extending his hand as he went over to her. “This is . . .” He paused, grasping for a way to explain the amnesiac’s aversion to his legal name. “. . . my patient. He prefers to be addressed by description rather than by what he was named prior to the accident. ‘The visitor,’ in this situation, perhaps. Or any relevant equivalent.”

  “A method of your rehabilitation?” she asked Dr. Zadeh.

  “For him, I suppose yes,” he said thoughtfully.

  The woman nodded. “Dr. Zadeh, Visitor, I’m Dr. Avanthikar,” she said. “Lead researcher for Mr. Joshi’s team.”

  The amnesiac put out his hand to her as well. Her grip was firm—and excited, he thought.

  “We’ve informed him you’re coming,” she continued as the two of them followed her down the hall. “He remembered twenty minutes ago when I checked.” An aide caught the tail end of her sentence as they entered a small control room and shook her head. “Oh.” Dr. Avanthikar sighed. “Never mind.”

  “Thank you again for this invitation,” Dr. Zadeh said. “To be able to help with this, even in a small way, it’s an honor.”

  “Well, let’s hope it does help,” Dr. Avanthikar replied. “I don’t have to tell you—I mean, I’m sure you’ve been following the news.”

  “Nothing’s working,” the amnesiac finished for her.

  “I’ve just—” She paused, words failing her. “I’ve just never seen anything like it.”

  “Okay, we’re all set. Patient is inside,” another aide interrupted softly.

  “Right.” Dr. Avanthikar straightened up. “Okay. Let’s take you in there and introduce you, and then once you’re both comfortable, we’ll hook up the sensors so we can get some data. See if you two can maybe inspire each other into . . . anything, really.”

  The amnesiac didn’t know what to expect. He braced as Dr. Avanthikar went to the side door into the observation
room and pulled it open.

  “Oh.” He blinked, surprised. He walked in. It didn’t look like a hospital or a rehabilitation center or a patient observation room at all. It looked just like a living room, or what he imagined a living room in an Indian house might look like. There were couches and a few chairs in vibrant patterns, a rug, potted plants in full bloom. In the corner hung a wide wooden swing. The walls had been painted a warm color and adorned with framed photographs. In the center, sitting cross-legged on one of the couches, was a young man in a simple white tunic. Hemu Joshi.

  This is his living room, the amnesiac realized. They had re-created it here to try to spark something during his therapy.

  “I have a visitor for you,” Dr. Avanthikar said from behind the amnesiac. Hemu looked at him blankly, waiting for more information from her. The amnesiac smiled. It was a new, wonderful feeling; to meet someone who didn’t already know more about him than he did—in fact, who didn’t know anything about him at all. “He’s also lost his memory. Everything from the moment he was born until just a few weeks ago.”

  Hemu’s eyes slid to the carpet, to where the amnesiac’s shadow stood patiently behind him against the fibers.

  “He lost his memory in a car accident,” she clarified. The amnesiac felt her hand on his shoulder. “Please make yourself comfortable.” She pointed to the only giveaway the room was actually a medical facility, a rectangular two-way mirror hanging in the center of the same wall as the door he’d used to enter. “We’ll be just on the other side, if you need anything.”

  The amnesiac sat down on the plush chair opposite Hemu’s couch. “Hi,” he said when they were alone.

  “Hi,” Hemu said. He was studying the amnesiac’s face intently. “Do I know you?”

  “Not in the slightest,” he said. “We’ve never met before.”

  Hemu perked up then. Something new. Not a replay. “And you really remember nothing? Even with a shadow?”

  “It was due to an injury. My head hit the windshield at a bad angle. So they tell me.”

  “What’s a windshield?”

  “The front window of a car.”

  Hemu squinted for a few moments, trying to make sense of the words.

  “Not important,” the amnesiac said. “I hit my head very hard, and it damaged my memory.”

  “Hmm.” Hemu studied the smooth scar where the amnesiac’s left eye should have been. “And you won’t . . . you won’t regain your memories someday?”

  “My doctor is hopeful. But the chances are very slim.”

  Hemu looked down at his hands for a few moments. “I hope you do,” he said.

  “I hope you do, too.”

  Hemu studied the amnesiac for a while, pondering something. “What was it like when you woke up?” he asked. “Could you even speak?”

  “Oh, yes, I could speak,” the amnesiac answered. “Uh. It’s complicated, retrograde amnesia. That’s what they call mine. You often remember the way things work, but not your personal experience of them. I knew what a mother was, but not anything about mine. How to read, but not how I learned it. I remember the rules of football, but I don’t know if I’ve ever played.”

  “That’s interesting,” Hemu mused. “I’m forgetting, but not in any order. I don’t remember—I don’t know what they call it, but I remember primary school before it, and university after. There must have been something in between, but it’s blank.”

  “You still remember more about yourself than me.” The amnesiac smiled.

  Hemu scrunched his face up, thinking. Suddenly he sat forward, his expression intensely serious. “Do you remember what sex is?”

  The amnesiac laughed. He liked this Hemu.

  THEY WAITED FOR DR. AVANTHIKAR’S AIDES TO PEEL OFF THE adhesive backings and apply the sensors to their foreheads and temples. It was more normal to do it with someone else, the amnesiac thought as he watched them brush Hemu’s hair out of the way and stick a little white circle above his dark eyebrows, then attach a thin cable to it.

  “Of course you already know,” one of the aides said to them both. “But please refrain from large or sudden movements, so as not to disconnect the wires.”

  Hemu watched them file out and close the door behind them. “The way your amnesia works, you wouldn’t remember your favorite food then, would you?” he asked the amnesiac.

  “No, unfortunately.”

  “That might be for the best,” he said. “I still remember mine, and it makes what they feed me here that much worse. So healthy. So tasteless.”

  “I like your food,” the amnesiac said. “Indian food, I mean.”

  “Not this stuff,” he sighed. “It’s all just medicinal mush. I want something different—like American food. Yeah, I want American food.”

  “What American food do you like?”

  “All the stuff you can get in the Western restaurants downtown. Pizza, french fries, macaroni and cheese.” He paused. “You know, they say that in the latest stages, the shadowless forget to eat. Apparently it’s happening with some of the others in Nashik. They’re fitting them with stomach tubes now so they don’t starve or dehydrate.”

  “Oh,” the amnesiac said, looking down. The thought was horrible.

  Hemu glanced around awkwardly. He held his hands in the shape of a small brick. “I, uh, I met an American tourist near the cricket field once,” he continued, trying to steer the conversation away from the dark place it had gone. “He told me about a sandwich Americans eat as children. A jelly peanut sandwich?”

  “A peanut butter and jelly sandwich.” The amnesiac smiled. He pictured it in his mind, and wondered if he’d also never had one.

  Hemu nodded. “Yes, that was it. That’s what I want. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

  “I can try and get you one,” the amnesiac offered.

  “No—I’m sorry,” Hemu apologized. “I didn’t mean to impose. I was just complaining.”

  “I think it would be no trouble,” the amnesiac said. He considered their hotel. He was sure the lobby restaurant could make one if he asked, or at least tell him and Dr. Zadeh where a Western grocery store might be so they could buy the ingredients themselves.

  “I’m grateful,” Hemu said. “Only if it’s easy. Please don’t go out of your way.”

  “Really, I’m happy to.”

  Hemu nodded thoughtfully. “I want to share something with you. To repay you, for the sandwich.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to,” the amnesic protested, but Hemu waved him off.

  “It’s not much, really. Given . . .”—he gestured to the room, to mean his enforced stay in the hospital—“I really can only give you memories—that’s basically all I’ve got. Well, I’ve got them for now.”

  The amnesiac bowed his head solemnly.

  “There’s an old story from our mythology—sort of related to all this.” Hemu nodded at the amnesiac’s shadow. “Have you ever heard the legend of Surya, the Hindu god?”

  “Uh,” the amnesiac said. “In these first few weeks of my life, probably not.”

  Hemu sat up straighter, visibly pleased. The amnesiac knew the expression all too intimately—the pride at knowing something the person to whom you were speaking did not. It was the closest simulacrum to personal memory either of them could experience. “Very important. He’s chief of the Navagraha and presiding deity of Sunday. Surya rides a chariot drawn by a horse with seven heads, and has four arms in which he holds—” Hemu paused to collect himself, realizing he was getting carried away. “He’s one of the oldest gods. From the Rigveda, the oldest book. The oldest memories, in a way—not that any of us were there, but we all know the stories. We all know them in almost the same words. It makes me happy to think about them. To realize I still remember them, too.” He put up a finger, to indicate something important was about to follow. “The point, though—Surya is the god of the sun. And his consort was made from a shadow.”

  Now that seemed like something that might go somewhere. The amnesiac
wished they’d given him a notepad, or even just a piece of paper. “Really?” he asked.

  Hemu nodded. “In the Rigveda, Surya marries Sanjna, goddess of clouds, mother of the twin Asvins. Those—the Asvins—symbolize the shining of sunrise and sunset. Each one crosses the sky once a day in their chariot, bringing either the light or dark. They—” He paused again, scratching at one of the sensors. “Sorry,” he said. “The twins are also beside the point. Sometimes I just . . . It makes me happy to realize how many details about something I still remember, if that makes sense.”

  The amnesiac shook his head. “I understand,” he said. “Honestly, I’m impressed even people with shadows can remember this much. All of you know these stories?”

  “It seems to me no different than knowing all the names and statistics of current and past heroes from your favorite American football team, and the moments of their careers,” Hemu shrugged.

  He had a point. “But you were saying,” the amnesiac said, remembering their audience on the other side of the observation panel. He was supposed to keep them on track.

  “Yes, yes,” Hemu continued, grinning again. “So Surya marries Sanjna with her father’s blessing. But when Sanjna comes to Surya’s house, because he’s the god of the sun, she realizes that she can’t bear the brilliant radiance of his light. She’s unable to even be in the same room as him, let alone look at him. Sad, no?”

  The amnesiac nodded.

  “This is the interesting part. To escape the blinding light, Sanjna takes her own shadow and makes it into Chhaya, an identical copy of herself, then transforms into a mare so Surya won’t recognize her. She flees to the forest, leaving Chhaya in her place to take care of the house and manage her domestic duties. Sometimes Chhaya is referred to in the Rigveda as Savarna, ‘same kind’—identical to Sanjna because she was made from her shadow, but mortal.”

  The amnesiac realized he’d been leaning so far forward in his armchair that the back two legs had begun to hover a hair off the ground. Stories, yes—but he felt like Hemu was trying to get at something. The pieces seemed like they belonged to the same puzzle, even if they went at the other end of the finished picture. “What happened?” he asked.