The Man Without a Shadow

Though E.H. has met Kaplan many times, he appears to have no memory of him, as usual.

Or does he? As Kaplan reaches out to shake E.H.’s hand, E.H. hesitates, as he has never hesitated previously; clearly, he is wary about shaking this stranger’s hand, assesses the situation and seems to make a stoic decision yes, he will shake Kaplan’s hand—and again, Kaplan squeezes his hand unnaturally hard, and E.H. reacts with surprise and pain, in wincing silence; and quickly disengages his hand.

Yet—once again—Kaplan doesn’t betray any social cue that he has deliberately caused E.H. pain, nor even that he notices E.H.’s reaction. So far as you would guess Kaplan has shaken E.H.’s hand “normally”—but E.H. has reacted “abnormally.”

After just a few minutes the encounter ends with a remark of Kaplan’s—a signal to the graduate student who has been filming.

“Very nice to meet you, Mr. Hoopes! I’ve heard much about you.”

E.H. smiles, guardedly. But doesn’t ask what the visitor has heard.

Kaplan and Margot exchange a glance—it is a fact, the amnesiac hasn’t reacted identically each time, with each handshake. His behavior has been modified by the “cruel handshake”—even as he has forgotten the specific circumstances of the handshake.

In the women’s restroom to which she flees as soon as she can, Margot trembles with excitement over this discovery. It is a profound discovery!

The amnesiac subject is “remembering”—in some way.

As a seemingly blind person may “see”—in some way.

Some part of the brain is functioning like memory. This is not supposed to be happening, yet it is happening.

Suddenly Margot is feeling nauseated. The very excitement she feels over her discovery is making her sick.

At the sink she bends double, and gags. Yet she does not vomit.

The sensation returns several times. She gags, but does not vomit. To the mirror-face she says, “Oh God. What are we doing to him. What am I doing to him. Eli! God forgive me.”

AS PLANNED KAPLAN enters the testing-room. It is 11:08 A.M. of the following Wednesday—a week after the most recent confrontation.

Margot Sharpe and two other researchers have been working with E.H. for much of the morning. The tests they’ve been administering to the amnesiac are variants of the “distraction” test, with visual, auditory, and olfactory cues and interruptions. Margot has remained in the room with E.H. more or less continuously through the morning, and he has not seemed to “forget” her; though, when she slips away to use a restroom, and returns, she half-suspects that the amnesiac is only just pretending he isn’t surprised to see her, a stranger close beside him, smiling at him as if she knows him.

He has learned to compensate for the mystery that surrounds him. Surprise to the amnesiac no longer registers as “surprise.”

Such observations and epiphanies, Margot Sharpe records in her log, still in notebook form. One day, these will be included in the appendix of her most acclaimed book—The Biology of Memory.

“Have we met before, Mr. Hoopes?” Kaplan asks.

E.H. shakes his head no. He looks to Margot Sharpe, his “friend” in the lab, who says, with a pause, “I don’t think so, Professor. I don’t think that you and Mr. Hoopes have met.”

Kaplan glances sidelong at Margot Sharpe. “Mr. Hoopes and I have not met—it isn’t a matter of what you think, Miss Sharpe, but of what I know.”

It’s as if Kaplan has struck Margot with the back of his hand, to discipline her. Margot feels a stab of rage. Tell your own lies, you bastard. Cold heartless unfeeling son of a bitch.

Of course, they have rehearsed the cruel handshake. It is not a very difficult experiment, if it’s even an “experiment”—Margot knows how she should behave.

Yet, what does it matter? E.H. will begin to forget within seconds.

“Eli, I’d like you to meet my colleague Professor Alvin Kaplan …”

But this time, as Kaplan approaches E.H. with his usual smile, the amnesiac stands very still, and visibly stiffens. E.H. is smiling a wide, forced smile even as his eyes glare.

Then, he extends his hand bravely to be shaken—but before Kaplan can squeeze his hand, E.H. squeezes Kaplan’s hand, very hard.

Kaplan winces, and jerks his hand away. For a moment he is too surprised to speak.

Then, red-faced and teary-eyed, he manages to laugh. He glances sidelong at Margot Sharpe, who is astonished as well.

“Mr. Hoopes, you’ve got a strong handshake! Man, that hurt.”

Kaplan is so stunned by the amnesiac’s unexpected reaction, he has reverted to a way of speaking that isn’t his own but copied from undergraduate speech. Margot laughs nervously, yet with relief.

Coolly, E.H. gives no sign that he has behaved out of character. His smile is less forced, you might say it is a triumphant smile, though much restrained.

And restrained too, E.H.’s ironic remark: “One of us is a tennis player, I guess—‘Professor.’ That’s how you get a ‘strong handshake.’”

MARGOT AND KAPLAN are impressed with E.H.’s most recent response to the handshake. The amnesiac seems to have learned without conscious memory; he has acted reflexively. Subject “remembers” pain. Behavior indicates non-declarative memory.

Their joint paper will be “Non-declarative Memory in Amnesia: The Case of E.H.” (1973–74). But the experiment is far from complete.

Next time the “visitor” returns to shake E.H.’s hand, a week later, the amnesiac subject behaves as if he is “trusting”—somewhat stoically, he extends his hand to be shaken, and endures the painful handshake without wincing.

Margot thinks that this is evidence of E.H. having retained some memory; Kaplan does not.

To Margot’s surprise Kaplan is dismissive of E.H. He has seen in the amnesiac virtually nothing of the subtlety of response Margot is certain she has seen and recorded in her meticulously kept notebook. (To Margot’s dismay this subtlety isn’t clear in the grainy video a graduate student provides.)

Kaplan says flatly, “The subject behaves mechanically. His reactions are programmed. He is almost exactly the same each time. Only if we shorten the interval to twenty-four hours does he ‘remember’ something. Otherwise, the neurons in his brain must be firing in precisely the same way each time. He’s a zombie—worse, a robot. He can’t change.”

Margot is dismayed to hear this and moved to protest. “Eli might be tempering his response because of his respect for the situation. His sense of what the Institute is—the fact that you are a ‘professor.’ He’d like to swear at you, strike you—at least, squeeze your hand in retaliation as he’d done last time—but he doesn’t dare. He suffers the squeezed hand in silence because he’s a socialized being. He has been schooled in non-violence, in the civil rights movement. He has been conditioned to be polite.”

“Bullshit! Poor bastard is a robot. There’s a key in his back we have to wind. He can’t ‘remember’ being hurt beyond a day or two. Even then, he doesn’t really ‘remember.’”

“He feels something like a premonition. That’s a kind of memory.”

“‘Premonition’—what is that? There is no neurological basis for ‘premonition.’”

“I don’t mean ‘premonition’ literally. You know that.”

Margot raises her hand as if to strike Kaplan in the face. Instantaneously Kaplan shrinks back, lifting an arm to protect himself. Margot cries in triumph, “You see? What you did just now? You protected yourself—it’s a reflex. That’s what E.H. has been doing—protecting himself against you.”

Kaplan is mildly shocked by Margot Sharpe. Indeed, it will not ever be quite forgotten by Kaplan that the subordinate Margot Sharpe actually “raised” her hand against him even to demonstrate the phenomenon of involuntary reflexive action.

“Look, the subject is brain-damaged. We’re experimenting to determine if there’s another avenue of ‘memory’ in amnesia. Why are you so protective of this poor guy? Are you in love with him?”

Kaplan laughs as if nothing can be more ridiculous, and more unlikely.

But Margot Sharpe has already turned, and is walking away.

Go to hell. We hate you. We wish you would die.