Landslide. Desmond Bagley
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been retained whole and entire.’
He flicked ash carelessly in the direction of the ash-tray. ‘The more personal things concerning yourself and your relationships with others are gone. Not only has your family been blotted out but you can’t remember another single person – not your geology tutor or even your best buddy at college. It’s as though something inside you decided to wipe the slate clean.’
I felt hopelessly lost. What was there left for a man of my age with no personal contacts – no family, no friends? My God, I didn’t even have any enemies, and it’s a poor man who can say that.
Susskind poked me gently with a thick forefinger. ‘Don’t give up now, bud; we haven’t even started. Look at it this way – there’s many a man who would give his soul to be able to start again with a clean slate. Let me explain a few things to you. The unconscious mind is a funny animal with its own operating logic. This logic may appear to be very odd to the conscious mind but it’s still a valid logic working strictly in accordance within certain rules, and what we have to do is to figure out the rules. I’m going to give you some psychological tests and then maybe I’ll know better what makes you tick. I’m also going to do some digging into your background and maybe we can come up with something there.’
I said, ‘Susskind, what chance is there?’
‘I won’t fool you,’ he said. ‘Due to various circumstances which I won’t go into right now, yours is not entirely a straightforward case of loss of memory. Your case is one for the books – and I’ll probably write the book. Look, Bob; a guy gets a knock on the head and he loses his memory – but not for long; within a couple of days, a couple of weeks at the most, he’s normal again. That’s the common course of events. Sometimes it’s worse than that. I’ve just had a case of an old man of eighty who was knocked down in the street. He came round in hospital the next day and found he’d lost a year of his life – he couldn’t remember a damn’ thing of the year previous to the accident and, in my opinion, he never will.’
He waved his cigarette under my nose. ‘That’s general loss of memory. A selective loss of memory like yours isn’t common at all. Sure, it’s happened before and it’ll happen again, but not often. And, like the general loss, recovery is variable. The trouble is that selective loss happens so infrequently that we don’t have much on it. I could give you a line that you’ll have your memory back next week, but I won’t because I don’t know. The only thing we can do is to work on it. Now, my advice to you is to quit worrying about it and to concentrate on other things. As soon as you can use your eyes for reading I’ll bring in some textbooks and you can get back to work. By then the bandages will be off your hands and you can do some writing, too. You have an examination to pass, bud, in twelve months’ time.’
II
Susskind drove me to work and ripped into me when I lagged. His tongue could get a vicious edge to it when he thought it would do me good, and as soon as the bandages were off he pushed my nose down to the textbooks. He gave me a lot of tests – intelligence, personality, vocational – and seemed pleased at the results.
‘You’re no dope,’ he announced, waving a sheaf of papers. ‘You scored a hundred and thirty-three on the Wechsler-Bellevue – you have intelligence, so use it.’
My body was dreadfully scarred, especially on the chest. My hands were unnaturally pink with new skin and when I touched my face I could feel crinkled scar tissue. And that led to something else. One day Matthews came to see me with Susskind in attendance. ‘We’ve got something to talk about, Bob,’ he said.
Susskind chuckled and jerked his head at Matthews. ‘A serious guy, this – very portentous.’
‘It is serious,’ said Matthews. ‘Bob, there’s a decision you have to make. I’ve done all I can do for you in this hospital. Your eyes are as good as new but the rest of you is a bit battered and that’s something I can’t improve on. I’m no genius – I’m just an ordinary hospital surgeon specializing in skin.’ He paused and I could see he was selecting his words. ‘Have you ever wondered why you’ve never seen a mirror?’
I shook my head, and Susskind chipped in, ‘Our Robert Boyd Grant is a very undemanding guy. Would you like to see yourself, Bob?’
I put my fingers to my cheeks and felt the roughness. ‘I don’t know that I would,’ I said, and found myself shaking.
‘You’d better,’ Susskind advised. ‘It’ll be brutal, but it’ll help you make up your mind in the next big decision.’
‘Okay,’ I said.
Susskind snapped his fingers and the nurse left the room to return almost immediately with a large mirror which she laid face down on the table. Then she went out again and closed the door behind her. I looked at the mirror but made no attempt to pick it up. ‘Go ahead,’ said Susskind, so I picked it up reluctantly and turned it over.
‘My God!’ I said, and quickly closed my eyes, feeling the sour taste of vomit in my throat. After a while I looked again. It was a monstrously ugly face, pink and seamed with white lines in arbitrary places. It looked like a child’s first clumsy attempt to depict the human face in wax. There was no character there, no imprint of dawning maturity as there should have been in someone of my age – there was just a blankness.
Matthews said quietly, ‘That’s why you have a private room here.’
I began to laugh. ‘It’s funny; it’s really damn’ funny. Not only have I lost myself, but I’ve lost my face.’
Susskind put his hand on my arm. ‘A face is just a face. No man can choose his own face – it’s something that’s given to him. Just listen to Dr Matthews for a minute.’
Matthews said, ‘I’m no plastic surgeon.’ He gestured at the mirror which I still held. ‘You can see that. You weren’t in any shape for the extensive surgery you needed when you came in here – you’d have died if we had tried to pull any tricks like that. But now you’re in good enough shape for the next step – if you want to take it.’
‘And that is?’
‘More surgery – by a good man in Montreal. The top man in the field in Canada, and maybe in the Western Hemisphere. You can have a face again, and new hands, too.’
‘More surgery!’ I didn’t like that; I’d had enough of it.
‘You have a few days to make up your mind,’ said Matthews.
‘Do you mind, Matt?’ said Susskind. ‘I’ll take over from here.’
‘Of course,’ said Matthews. ‘I’ll leave you to it. I’ll be seeing you, Bob.’
He left the room, closing the door gently. Susskind lit a cigarette and threw the pack on the table. He said quietly, ‘You’d better do it, bud. You can’t walk round with a face like that – not unless you intend taking up a career in the horror movies.’
‘Right!’ I said tightly. I knew it was something that had to be done. I swung on Susskind. ‘Now tell me something – who is paying for all this? Who is paying for this private room? Who is paying for the best plastic surgeon in Canada?’
Susskind clicked his tongue. ‘That’s a mystery. Someone loves you for sure. Every month an envelope comes addressed to Dr Matthews. It contains a thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills and one of these.’ He fished in his pocket and threw a scrap of paper across the table.
I smoothed it out. There was but one line of typescript on it: FOR THE CARE OF ROBERT BOYD GRANT.
I looked at him suspiciously. ‘You’re not doing this, are you?’
‘Good Christ!’ he said. ‘Show me a hospital headshrinker who can afford to give away twelve thousand bucks a year. I couldn’t afford to give you twelve thousand cents.’ He grinned. ‘But thanks for the compliment.’
I