“Mr. Vine,” said the doctor, “a first interview of this sort is always a bit difficult. For the patient, I mean. Until you know me better, it will be difficult for you to overcome a certain natural reticence in discussing yourself. Would you prefer to talk, to tell things your own way, or would you rather I asked questions?”
He thought that over. He’d had a story ready, but those few words with Charlie in the waiting room had changed everything.
He said, “Perhaps you’d better ask questions.”
“Very well.” There was a pencil in Dr. Irving’s hand and paper on the desk before him. Where and when were you born?”
He took a deep breath. “To the best of my knowledge, in Corsica on August 15th, 1769. I don’t actually remember being born, of course. I do remember things from my boyhood on Corsica, though. We stayed there until I was ten, and after that I was sent to school at Brienne.”
Instead of writing, the doctor was tapping the paper lightly with the tip of the pencil. He asked, “What month and year is this?”
“August, 1947. Yes, I know that should make me a hundred and seventy-some years old. You want to know how I account for that. I don’t. Nor do I account for the fact that Napoleon Bonaparte died in 1821.”
He leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms, staring up at the ceiling. “I don’t attempt to account for the paradoxes or the discrepancies. I recognize them as such. But according to my own memory, and aside from logic pro or con, I was Napoleon for twenty-seven years. I won’t recount what happened during that time; it’s all down in the history books.
“But in 1796, after the battle of Lodi, while I was in charge of the armies in Italy, I went to sleep. As far as I knew, just as anyone goes to sleep anywhere, any time. But I woke up—with no sense whatever of duration, by the way—in a hospital in town here, and I was informed that my name was George Vine, that the year was 1944, and that I was twenty-seven years old.
“The twenty-seven years old part checked, and that was all. Absolutely all. I have no recollections of any parts of George Vine’s life, prior to his—my—waking up in the hospital after the accident. I know quite a bit about his early life now, but only because I’ve been told.