The Handyman smiled briefly, apparently pleased by Barney’s display of interest. “Because the memories are blocked out. For any number of reasons. Perhaps as time goes by the blocks become heavier and heavier, thicker and thicker, so that it’s more difficult to penetrate a block and retrieve the past. These blocks are mysterious. And they seem to change character as time goes on. For instance, old people suddenly begin to remember what happened fifty years ago and yet are hazy about what happened yesterday. The fact that they remember distant events indicates that memories may be permanently in the mind, hidden behind blocks.”
But what about me? Barney wanted to ask. Where do I fit in?
“I explained to you earlier how chemicals can alter the functions of the brain,” the Handyman went on, but slower in speech now, choosing his words carefully, like a man stepping through a field of broken glass. “Chemicals have been found to affect the memory. A scientist in Europe discovered during experiments with laboratory mice that those that were forced to learn new skills—such as finding their way through a maze or learning to balance on a trapeze—produced a chemical in their brains. A marvelous discovery, Barney, linking a chemical to learning and memory. A landmark event. Later, a scientist here in our own country took the opposite course. He injected mice with a chemical that interfered with the production of the learning chemical. Using this interfering drug, he found that mice that had learned new skills promptly forgot them. In other words, the scientist found that he could block out a short-term memory—the skill the mice had learned the day previously—by injecting the counter-chemical. This was the beginning of our studies of memory, and the control of memory by chemicals.”
“Am I a mouse in a maze?” Barney asked.
“You are much more than that, Barney. You are a precious human being. If we did not regard you as such, we would not have subjected you to the tests. It is unfortunate that you found your way to the laboratory upstairs, which has caused me to disclose this information prematurely.”
Unfortunate. Another one of the Handyman’s words. Meaning: too bad, tough, your luck has run out.
“Screens,” Barney said, running from his thoughts—his thoughts like mice in a maze. “You were talking about screens.”
“Exactly,” the Handyman said. “You have anticipated me. We have arrived at the point where the screen becomes involved.” He seemed unsure of himself now, pausing, tugging at his beard, eyes moving away from Barney for the first time. Sighed briefly, then eyes back on Barney again. “A screen, in terms of the memory system, is a device to hide a memory, an image. A chemical is utilized to wipe away this particular memory, in this case a small isolated patch of short-term memory. A screen is then substituted to suppress the original memory. Your screen was the experience of the car ride. While under the influence of a chemical, you were exposed to the experience of the automobile, seated in the improvised car, exposed to the events on the monitor. This experience became the screen—and the screen, Barney, was for your protection, blocking out the original memory whenever your mind threatened to retrieve it.”
“You mean all those times I dreamed—even while awake—of the car going down the hill and me driving it, that meant the old memory was trying to break through and come out?” Scared to death at his question. Tempo, rhythm.
“You have said it well,” the Handyman said. “The screen performed beyond all the projected expectations. There were occasional lapses. Some losses of control. Before you came here. But the proceedings here and, in particular, Dr. Croft’s work, succeeded admirably. Those earlier tests disturbed other facets of your memory. But only to a minimal degree. Occasionally you had trouble recalling a minor memory. This was a sort of fringe reaction. We subjected you to a form of hypnosis, with posthypnotic suggestions, to reinforce the chemical and the screens. You complained once that you could not recall your mother’s face, that it was like the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle. We supplied the proper screen.”
“Wait a minute,” Barney said, alarmed, wanting to leap to his feet, wanting to scream in fact, but keeping calm, letting the blood flow. “Back up, back up.…”
“What do you mean—back up?” the Handyman asked. Frowning, puzzled.
“What you’ve just said. Back up to it. You said: those earlier tests. Before I came here. But I was given the first memory test here. Just a couple of weeks ago. When Dr. Croft arrived.”
As Barney spoke, he saw the Handyman change before his eyes. For the first time the Handyman seemed to have lost his composure. His mouth was opened slightly and those eyes, usually so penetrating, were clouded over, as if a film veiled them. Had he mentioned those earlier tests without intending to, or was he realizing for the first time the effect the knowledge would have on his patient? Barney didn’t know, knew nothing but this terrible fear growing in him, like a siren howling in his mind, screaming through his veins and arteries. He didn’t like this perplexed Handyman he saw before him. He wanted the familiar all-knowing Handyman to return, to laugh off Barney’s question—“Do not be absurd, Barney”—and to say that it was all a mistake, another test, more merchandise to test his reactions.
But the old Handyman didn’t return. This new and troubled man sat behind the desk, deep in thought. As if waiting.
And now Barney knew what he was waiting for. He was waiting for Barney to ask a question and Barney knew what the question was. He had told the Handyman to back up but he hadn’t backed up far enough. Hadn’t gone as far back as the original memory.
“What was the memory you blocked out, doctor?” Barney asked, and his voice sounded like that of a stranger, a thin and quivering voice.
The Handyman rose wearily from the chair, leaned against the desk for a moment, and walked to the paneled wall, opened a small door that had been part of the wall a moment before. He withdrew a pitcher of water, poured a bit into a glass, took a pill from a small bottle, placed it on his tongue and swallowed it.
“You see, Barney?” he said, indicating the bottle. “We are not monsters here. We are human beings. We get headaches—I am subject to migraines—but we always hide these things from our patients. Sometimes I think that is a mistake. It makes us appear immune. And we are not immune. We are not gods, either, although some pretend they are.” He directed the eyes, brilliant once again, at Barney. “Yes, you had earlier tests before you arrived here. Three, in fact. You received the original screen there.”
“Where was I before I arrived, doctor?” Barney asked, voice still small, almost a whisper. “I can’t remember.”
“I know you can’t,” the Handyman said, kindly, gentle.
Barney feared the gentleness.
“Was that other place screened out, too?”
“I realize there is no easy way to tell you this, Barney. So let me say it plainly, the way you always insist. First, however, let me point out that you volunteered for this project. You were eager to participate at that other place. Your eagerness provided the first objective: to choose a subject who would benefit immediately, if perhaps only temporarily, by the experiment.”
“Go on,” Barney said, letting the blood flow, tempo, rhythm.
“You see, Barney, that place you came from, which you cannot remember, was a hospice. A facility for persons suffering from terminal diseases.”
Barney closed his eyes, wiping out the Handyman the way his own memory had been wiped out. He held himself stiffly, afraid to move, afraid that he might break into a thousand pieces if he tried to move. He said, “Oh, no,” in a frail and futile attempt to deny what he now knew to be true. He was like the others here, after all, like Billy the Kidney and Allie Roon and Mazzo, who used to be a bastard. He was one of them.
17
THE trick now was not only to live in separate compartments but to divide himself into separate compartments, so that the left hand did not know what the right hand was doing and his mind would be separate from his body. Actually, his hands worked together, each contributing to the task before him, tak
ing the car apart and moving the parts into the Complex, then into the elevator and up to the sixth floor. His legs walked, carrying his body to the junkyard, and his hands manipulated the screwdriver and the small hammer and the chisel he found useful to pry loose stubborn sections.
His mind was separate from these operations, dictating the actions to his body mechanically, the way a computer orders the movements of the machine that it is. He tried to make himself into a machine, functioning smoothly and efficiently, no unnecessary motions, his mind working keenly and analytically, planning ahead, solving the problems as they arose—like stationing Billy the Kidney at Old Cheekbones’ desk to divert her with carefully prepared questions while Barney pushed the wheelchair loaded with automobile parts across the corridor and into the elevator.
He kept his mind separate from his body and he banished his emotions altogether. Didn’t know how he managed to do this but did it. Realized his emotions were tied to thoughts, and, thus, certain thoughts triggered certain emotions. He kept those thoughts from developing. His screen, most of the time, was the car itself. Planning the theft, timing the movements of parts from junkyard to the Complex, envisioning the grand design and the final outcome. He pictured his mind as a series of rooms—all right, compartments—and there were certain compartments he did not enter. Except sometimes. Sometimes he could not keep the doors closed to all the compartments, and he found himself remembering, his memory, ironically, intact about certain things. Like that talk with the Handyman.
“You were doing me a favor, right, doctor?”
“If a certain patch of knowledge had to be erased, why not the most terrible knowledge of all?”
“You mean, I was going to die anyway and climbing the walls about it?”
“You were not resigned, Barney. Those stages I told you about when you first arrived? You went through them all but did not reach the stage of acceptance.”
“So you took the knowledge of my condition away.”
“The test was successful. With qualifications.”
“What do you mean—qualifications?”
“I mean that it was impossible to maintain complete control.”
“You mean you erased too much?”
Silence from the Handyman.
“Like my early life that I can’t remember? My mother’s face that I can’t recall sometimes? Where I lived before coming here?”
The Handyman’s face was like stone, gray like the side of a cliff.
While the plan proceeded beautifully, Allie Roon spitting and twitching and dancing and laughing, Billy the Kidney saying it was good to be on a caper again as Barney stole in and out of the Complex.
Timing was the key, avoiding the painters who were concentrating on the far end of the building, ducking Old Cheekbones, who seldom looked up from the papers that occupied her, but having close calls occasionally. Once at the elevator door, a maintenance man stepped out, pushing a floor waxer before him, regarding Barney curiously as he stood there behind the wheelchair loaded with automobile sections, the sections luckily covered with a sheet. But presenting a strange sight anyway. The maintenance man swerved quickly away and Barney was grateful for the thing about Section 12 that made people avoid it. The isolation of the section made the project go more smoothly, took away some of Barney’s apprehensions about discovery.
He looked up once to see the Handyman at the far end of the corridor. Barney had just stepped out of the elevator, pushing the empty wheelchair. Their eyes met, even at that distance, and held for a moment, and then the Handyman turned away. Barney wondered if the Handyman suspected what was going on, the Handyman who seemed to know everything. Or almost everything.
“I’ve been in remission, then?”
“Yes. They did not realize at the time of the first test that you were about to go into remission. Or did not anticipate that the test might induce remission. Remission has its peculiar mysteries. Emotions perhaps play a role.”
“How long will the remission last?”
“That is impossible to tell, Barney.”
“It could end ten minutes from now?”
“Or it may continue indefinitely.”
“Those aftermaths you always talked about, doctor. Were they really aftermaths or the thing itself?”
By thing, he meant the thing that was killing him. Slowly maybe, postponed for a while, but still killing him.
“Perhaps a bit of both.”
And now the car began to take shape beneath his hands as he sneaked up to the attic at all times of the day and night, when the coast was clear or everybody slept, timing again, flirting with discovery. When he had finally laid the car sections on the floor, they resembled the pieces of a toy bought for the child of a giant, waiting now for the giant to come along and assemble them. Barney felt like a giant as he began his work, whistling, chewing the insides of his cheeks, concentrating on the job, keeping his mind blank, the doors closed, his hands busy, busy hands are happy hands, like the sister in school said one time. What sister? What school? Didn’t know. Didn’t want to know at this moment. Didn’t want to think. But had to think, of course, impossible not to think, especially about the Handyman.
“Why did you pick the car as the screen? The car going down the hill?”
“The image required power, Barney. The power to block the truth about your condition. Emotional power. Fear, apprehension.”
“The girl in the screen? The one who stepped off the curb, whose face I never saw. Who was she?”
“You were meant not to see her face.”
“Why?”
“Because then she became every girl to you, every girl you might have loved or desired, or longed to love and desire. Thus, it did not matter who she was.”
“But there’s more to it, isn’t there?”
Pause. “Yes, Barney.”
“My parents. It was something to do with my parents.”
“Your parents died in an automobile accident, Barney. Not as in your screen. The automobile in which they were riding went out of control, struck a pole, overturned, and ignited.”
“So a car was linked in my mind with something terrible. Terrible enough to blot out something just as terrible. Or worse.”
“That is a simplification, Barney. But yes, it is the truth.”
“How old was I when they died?”
“Seven years and eight months.”
“Where did I live?” Somehow he knew.
“A series of foster homes.” Like Billy the Kidney.
“Is my name really Barney Snow?”
“Yes, Bernard J. Snow. J. for Jason. Your father’s name was Jason. Your mother’s name was Emily.”
“My mother’s bracelets. And her face that comes and goes. Are they screens, too?”
“The visual screens were supplemented with audio screens.”
“You mean there are bracelets somewhere in that room upstairs?”
“The bracelets exist only as sounds on a bit of tape.”
“Did my mother really wear a lot of bracelets?”
“There is no evidence to indicate that she did.”
“But you had to invent something to link me with her?”
“For your protection, Barney.”
“What about her face? The face I see sometimes. Is that someone else’s face?”
“No. A photograph of your mother was enlarged.”
“And flashed in front of me?”
“Projected on a screen.”
“So that it burned itself into my mind?”
The Handyman nodded.
Barney did not want to hear any more. The emptiness of not knowing was better. Here and now was better. In the Complex. With the car. A mission to carry out.
Sometimes he ascended the wooden stairs and threw open the skylight, resting his chin on the sill, letting the wind assail his face, studying the outside world, the bleak landscape of abandoned buildings and the distant cemetery. He looked at the junkyard and thought of the resemblance betwee
n the junkyard and the Complex, both filled with busted and broken things. A door opened in his mind: He was going to die. He looked down the slanted roof and pondered how easy it would be to tumble over the sill and let himself plunge below. But he pulled back, dazed and numbed. He had a job to do first. Later. Maybe later.
Billy the Kidney began to regard him suspiciously, studying him keenly, eyes narrowed, thin face taut. Barney tried to avoid him, busy in his comings and goings. Until Billy trapped him as he emerged from the elevator.
“Hold it a minute, Barney.”
“I’m in a hurry.” Avoiding Billy’s eyes.
“What’s the matter, anyway? Is something wrong, Barney?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“You’re a liar,” Billy said, eyes flashing, flashing as always with the pain but something else in the flashing now. “Did something happen to the car?”
“The car’s fine. Coming along beautifully.”
“Then what’s the matter?”
Stubborn Billy. Better play the game with him. “Okay. I’m kind of tired. Feel lousy. All that work, maybe. And I can’t sleep at night.”
Billy’s eyes were watchful, still suspicious. Then he relaxed, face softened. “I wish I could help, Barney.”
“You’ve already helped, Billy. Listen, it’s almost finished. Then I can take it easy.”
He was telling the truth. The car was growing as if by magic in his hands and Barney felt like a creator, fitting the pieces together, watching it take shape once more, the crimson catching the skylight sun and spinning it before Barney’s eyes. He swore sometimes when the work didn’t go well, when he dropped the screwdriver or it missed its mark and gouged his hand. The screwdriver tore into the webbing of his left hand, bringing blood, and he had no handkerchief or Kleenex and the blood mixed with the color of the car and he smiled at the thought, his own blood staining the car, becoming a part of it. But the blood started the thoughts coming, seeping into the compartments.
“We can send you away, Barney.”
“Where would I go?”