“Sure. Amnesia.”
“Sure, amnesia. Just like that. But I haven’t kept it any secret that I never got over that amnesia. I’m thirty years old—or am I? My memory goes back three years. Do you know what it feels like to have a blank wall in your memory only three years back?
“Oh sure, I know what’s on the other side of that wall. I know because everybody tells me. I know I started here as a copy boy ten years ago. I know where I was born and when and I know my parents are both dead. I know what they look like—because I’ve seen their pictures. I know I didn’t have a wife and kids, because everybody who knew me told me I didn’t. Get that part everybody who knew me, not everybody I knew. I didn’t know anybody.
“Sure, I’ve done all right since then. After I got out of the hospital—and I don’t even remember the accident that put me there—I did all right back here because I still knew how to write news stories, even though I had to learn everybody’s name all over again. I wasn’t any worse off than a new reporter starting cold on a paper in a strange city. And everybody was as helpful as hell.”
Candler raised a placating hand to stem the tide. He said, “Okay, Nappy. You said no, and that’s enough. I don’t see what all that’s got to do with this story, but all you had to do was say’ no. So forget about it.”
The tenseness hadn’t gone out of him. He said, “You don’t see what that’s got to do with the story? You ask—or, all right, you don’t ask, you suggest—that I get myself certified as a madman, go into an asylum as a patient.
When—how much confidence does anyone have in his own mind when he can’t remember going to school, can’t remember the first time he met any of the people he works with every day, can’t remember starting on the job he works at, can’t remember anything back of three years before?”
Abruptly he struck the desk again with his fist, and then looked foolish about it. He said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get wound up about it like that.”
Candler said, “Sit down.”
“The answer’s still no.”