Десмонд Бэгли - Landslide

‘There’s more?’

Susskind nodded sadly. ‘There’s more.’

‘Let me have it,’ I said flatly.

‘Okay. Again you were pulled in for drug addiction; this time you were mainlining on heroin. You just about hit the bottom there. There was some evidence that you were pushing drugs to get the dough to feed the habit, but not enough to nail you. However, now the cops were laying for you. Then came the clincher. You knew the Dean of Men was considering throwing you out of college and, God knows, he had enough reason. Your only hope was to promise to reform but you had to back it up with something — such as brilliant work. But drugs and brilliant work don’t go hand in hand so you were stupid enough to break into an office and try to doctor your examination marks.’

‘And I was caught at it,’ I said dully.

‘It would have been better if you were,’ said Susskind. ‘No, you weren’t caught red-handed but it was done in such a ham-fisted way that the Principal sent a senior student to find you. He found you all right. He found you hopped up on dope. You beat this guy half to death and lit out for places unknown. God knows where you thought you were going to take refuge — the North Pole, maybe. Anyway, a nice guy called Trinavant gave you a lift and the next thing was — Bingo! — Trinavant was dead, his wife was dead, his son was dead, and you were seven-eighths dead.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘That just about wraps it up,’ he said tiredly.

I was cold all over. ‘You think I killed this man, Trinavant, and his family?’

‘I think it was an accident, nothing more,’ said Susskind. ‘Now listen carefully, Bob; I told you the unconscious mind has its own brand of peculiar logic. I found something very peculiar going on. When you were pulled in on the heroin charge you were given a psychiatric examination, and I’ve seen the documents. One of the tests was a Bernreuter Personality Inventory and you may remember that I also gave you that test.’

‘I remember.’

Susskind leaned back in his chair. ‘I compared the two profiles and they didn’t check out at all; they could have been two different guys. And I’ll tell you something, Bob: the guy that was tested by the police psychiatrist I wouldn’t trust with a bent nickel, but I’d trust you with my life.’

‘Someone’s made a mistake,’ I said.

He shook his head vigorously. ‘No mistake. Do you remember the man I brought in here who sat in on some of your tests? He’s an authority on an uncommon condition of the human psyche — multiple personality. Did you ever read a book called The Three Faces of Eve ?’

‘I saw the movie — Joanne Woodward was in it.’

‘That’s it. Then perhaps you can see what I’m getting at. Not that you have anything like she had. Tell me, what do you think of the past life of this guy called Robert Boyd Grant?’

‘It made me sick to my stomach,’ I said. ‘I can’t believe I did that.’

‘ You didn’t,’ said Susskind sharply. ‘This is what happened, to the best of my professional belief. This man, Robert Boyd Grant, was a pretty crummy character, and he knew it himself. My guess is that he was tired of living with himself and he wanted to escape from himself — hence the drugs. But marijuana and heroin are only temporary forms of escape, and like everyone else he was locked in the prison of his own body. Perhaps he sickened himself but there was nothing he could do about it — a conscious and voluntary change of basic personality is practically an impossibility.

‘But as I said, the unconscious has its own logic and we, in this hospital, accidentally gave it the data it needed. You had third-degree burns over sixty per cent of your body when you were brought in here. We couldn’t put you in a bed in that condition, so you were suspended in a bath of saline solution which, to your unconscious, was a pretty good substitute for amniotic fluid. Do you know what that is?’

‘A return to the womb?’

Susskind snapped his fingers. ‘You’re with it. Now I’m speaking in impossibly untechnical terms, so don’t go quoting me, especially to other psychiatrists. I think this condition was tailor-made for your unconscious mind. Here was a chance for rebirth which was grabbed at. Whether the second personality was lying there, ready to be used, or whether it was constructed during the time you were in that bath, we shall never know — and it doesn’t matter. That there is a second personality — a better personality — is a fact, and it’s something I’d swear to in a court of law, which I might have to do yet. You’re one of the few people who can really call yourself a new man.’

It was a lot to take in at once — too much. I said, ‘God! You’ve handed me something to think about.’

‘I had to do it,’ said Susskind. ‘I had to explain why you mustn’t probe into the past. When I told you what a man called Robert Grant had done it was like listening to an account of the actions of someone else, wasn’t it? Let me give you an analogy: when you go to the movies and see a lion jumping at you, well — that’s just the movies and there’s no harm done; but if you go to Africa and a lion jumps at you, that’s hard reality and you’re dead. If you insist on digging into the past and succeed in remembering as personal memories the experiences of this other guy, then you’ll split yourself down the middle. So leave it alone. You’re someone with no past and a great future.’

I said, ‘What chance is there that this other — bad — personality might take over again spontaneously?’

‘I’d say there’s very little chance of that,’ said Susskind slowly. ‘You rate as a strong-willed individual; the other guy had a weak will — strong-willed people generally don’t go for drugs, you know. We all of us have a devil lurking inside us; we all have to suppress the old Adam. You’re no different from anyone else.’

I picked up the mirror and studied the reflected caricature. ‘What did I... what did he look like?’

Susskind took out his wallet and extracted a photograph. ‘I don’t see the point in showing you this, but if you want to see it, here it is.’

Robert Boyd Grant was a fresh-faced youngster with a smooth, unlined face. There was no trace of dissipation such as one might have expected — he could have been any college student attending any college on the North American continent. He wasn’t bad-looking, either, in an immature way, and I doubted if he’d had any trouble finding a girl-friend to put in the family way.

‘I’d forget about that face,’ advised Susskind. ‘Don’t go back into the past. Roberts, the plastic surgeon, is a sculptor in flesh; he’ll fix you up with a face good enough to play romantic lead with Elizabeth Taylor.’

I said, ‘I’ll miss you, Susskind.’

He chuckled fatly. ‘Miss me? You’re not going to miss me, bud; I’m not going to let you get away — I’m going to write the book on you, remember.’ He blew out a plume of smoke. ‘I’m getting out of hospital work and going into private practice. I’ve been offered a partnership — guess where? Right — Montreal!’

Suddenly I felt much better now I knew Susskind was still going to be around. I looked at the photograph again and said, ‘Perhaps I’d better go the whole way. New man... new face... why not new name?’

‘A sound idea,’ agreed Susskind. ‘Any ideas on that?’

I gave him the photograph. ‘That’s Robert Grant,’ I said. ‘I’m Bob Boyd. It’s not too bad a name.’

I had three operations in Montreal covering the space of a year. I spent many weeks with my left arm strapped up against my right cheek in a skin grafting operation and, no sooner was that done, than my right arm was up against my left cheek.