Mr. Nobody(91)
I try to focus, to distance my understanding of Matthew from the person now sitting in front of me.
“Do you think, Matthew, there’s a chance that you might have been involved with the military?”
His eyebrows rise at my use of the name Matthew. I realize I haven’t said it out loud since the beach. But what else can I call him? He’s definitely not Stephen and I have nothing else to go on.
He shakes his head “No, I wasn’t in the army but I might have, um—” He rubs a hand over his tired eyes. “Okay. I think it’s…Please don’t get scared, Emma, but I think one of the people I’ve…been at some point was a soldier. I think I took a soldier’s identity.” He pauses, eyeing me warily. “I pick people near my age, my build, people who look similar. I think maybe the military people who showed up yesterday thought I was that missing soldier. He will have disappeared. I might have been him for a while.”
Matthew took another man’s identity. He killed a soldier. He killed Stephen. He picks people and then becomes them, he literally and figuratively takes their lives. Images from nature flash through my mind: cuckoos, chameleons, hermit crabs. Existential adaptive behavior.
In a sense, I suppose, I am safe—Matthew can’t become me. But then again, that might not stop him from killing me.
How did the military not pick up on any of this in their interview yesterday? But then, perhaps they did, maybe they had their suspicions but needed more time. How didn’t I? It occurs to me that this may be the very reason Matthew has chosen now to show himself to me, before things start to slip, before we run out of time together. I can only hope Dr. Samuels picked up on something yesterday, sensed that something was wrong. And someone must have noticed I am missing today. I remember Peter’s missed calls and I pray he raises the alarm.
“Do you think the military know who you really are, Matthew?” I ask.
He shakes his head thoughtfully. “No,” he says. There’s a finality to it that makes my heart sink. “They know I’m not him, the missing soldier, and that seemed to be enough. We just look similar. I think they have nagging doubts, but I’m not what they’re looking for. Every now and then, forgetting things has its upside.” He smiles ruefully. “I didn’t know the answers to any of their questions. I genuinely didn’t recognize the soldier’s name when they said it. It’s strange how quick people are to make up their minds when faced with simple incomprehension. I’d rather not have what I have, but sometimes, it seems, it does take care of me.”
He fooled them. Well, not fooled exactly…but they certainly didn’t find out the truth. The military don’t know, the police don’t know, and I’m guessing realistically Peter doesn’t know. They’ll work it out at some point, but will that be soon enough? Right now no one knows what he’s capable of, which means no one is coming for me. It’s just Matthew and me until this ends however it ends. I try to calm my panicked thoughts. As long as I am his doctor and he is my patient, as long as I keep this symbiotic relationship active, then I am safe.
“You said you’d rather not have what you have? What does that mean, Matthew? What do you think you have?” I ask. This is why he needs me and this might be my trump card.
“I don’t know but this isn’t the first time all of this has happened to me, I know that. The memory loss. A reset in my brain. It’s always been like this. I don’t think my condition has ever been an exact science, even to me.”
“Your condition? The fugue has happened before?” I blurt out in spite of myself.
He nods. “It’s happened periodically throughout my life. I never know when. No warning. Sometimes I get years uninterrupted, sometimes only months. I used to have no control over it. One moment I’m living my life and the next I wake up with nothing. I’ll come to in an alley, or a park, or a beach somewhere, it doesn’t matter where. I’ll have nothing, and I’ll have been robbed or attacked, or whatever it is that time around, and I’ll have no memory of how I got there or what came before. My mind’s a blank, then it resets, and slowly, day by day, piece by piece, it comes back. Tiny triggered memories bring things crashing back. A face, a word, a sound, a feeling. And all the things I’ve learned about myself, jumbled and cryptic. The facts, memories in no order. A mess of information, and I try to piece it together. Where my own memories and the lives of others collide, it becomes confusing. And then, of course, there are some memories that never come back.”
“Like what?” I ask, my interest piqued in spite of everything.
“You asked who I am. I don’t know. I don’t know who I was to begin with. I don’t think I ever know, in any cycle of this—I don’t think that ever comes back. But I can control the condition to a degree these days. Living like this, it’s hard, but over time I’ve developed coping mechanisms to deal with the resets—to some extent, I have strategies. A few years ago I realized I could bring them on myself. I worked out I could leave myself memory prompts, small things, messages. That’s what helps me these days. I found messages this time around. I have to leave a trail between cycles, like breadcrumbs, or it all goes. And I can’t have that. I can’t start from nothing all over again. I just can’t. You can’t imagine what that is like. No piece of grit to form yourself around.” He holds my gaze with a steely intensity, all his usual warmth gone.