“Impossible,” the amnesiac said, looking up from the article.
“Isn’t it?” Hemu asked. “Gajarajan never left the temple after he was captured as a calf. He never met the biologist—non-Hindus aren’t allowed on the temple grounds. No one showed him the—the—” He had forgotten the word for sister, as he had also forgotten his own brothers. “—the other elephant’s art.”
The amnesiac gave Hemu back the book. He didn’t know what to say. Something was sparking in the back of his mind, like a tiny shock. Electrical impulses on synapses, Dr. Zadeh always said. It felt like more than that though. The Rigveda stories an entire country knew, the legend of Surya and his wife and her shadow, Gajarajan, his herd, their paintings. The shock trailed off somewhere deep when he tried to follow. Everything Hemu said—about the gods, about this elephant’s urban legend—always drifted off, fragmented, incomplete. But the chatter wasn’t aimless, any which way. He was talking in circles, around and around a thing he knew was important but couldn’t reach.
“It’s probably impossible to have amnesia, as an elephant. The other elephants would remember for you,” Hemu said to himself. He touched the picture of Gajarajan. “Too bad we’re human.”
The amnesiac watched Hemu’s face. Perhaps on the doctor’s screens, their brains looked identical, blobs of color firing randomly on black backgrounds, but inside the room they were not the same at all. He had to deal only with having forgotten—he never had to live the actual forgetting.
“Hemu, are you afraid?” he asked softly.
“Yes,” Hemu said.
The amnesiac tried to smile. “Don’t be. I know it’s not much comfort, but I—I mean, I’m doing all right. You will, too.”
Hemu shook his head, eyes wide. “You don’t get it, though.” His voice was so quiet, almost just breath. The sensors glued to their heads could see electrical pulses but not know the exact words. The amnesiac realized Hemu didn’t want the others to hear. He looked around quickly—for microphones, for cameras—as the young man leaned near. “It’s not the same thing,” Hemu whispered.
“Why?”
“Because you forgot everything on accident.”
There was a moment when the amnesiac expected the door to crash open and the aides to run in, but nothing happened. It felt as though he had become lighter, or gravity had become infinitesimally weaker. He leaned in too, as close as he could. “What do you mean, on accident?” he asked. “You didn’t?”
Hemu’s eyes searched the amnesiac’s desperately. “After your shadow is gone, there’s a pull,” he said.
“What pull?”
“To forget.”
All the air had left the room. “The loss of your shadow makes you forget,” the amnesiac said slowly, reiterating what Dr. Avanthikar had said. That was what the research group and all its consultants had posited so far—there was some correlation there, even though no one knew what.
Hemu shook his head. “No, no, I don’t think so. Not really.” He looked down at the couch, where nothing else sat on it with him. “It just makes it possible. But you don’t have to. An elephant who has had its chains cut off doesn’t have to leave its temple.”
The amnesiac trembled as Hemu stared back at him. The look on his face was desperate. The amnesiac didn’t understand at all, but he knew that what Hemu was trying to tell him was something far more important than anything else he’d shared. It was maybe the most important thing in the world now.
“There’s a feeling,” Hemu whispered. “A pull. I went toward it because I didn’t know what was happening at first. Every time, it felt better and better. Once I realized what I was giving up in exchange—my memories—it was too late. Now it’s just too strong. I can’t stop it.” He swallowed hard. “I don’t know if I want to.”
“But what is forgetting yourself giving you?” the amnesiac asked.
Hemu peeled off the sensors in one swift motion. Above, an alarm in the ceiling began to beep, drowning out their voices even further. “Magic.”
IF YOU COULD ASK ME NOW, YOU’D WANT TO KNOW WHEN I decided. That I was going to run away. That’s fair, I suppose.
It was the night before I did it that I became sure.
At first I was terrified of your leaving me alone for the day. I don’t know what it’s going to be like once I start forgetting the big things, but it can’t be good. And you didn’t want to leave either. You just wanted to lie in bed with your arms wrapped around me and my hair up your nose as you spooned me. That’s what we did for the first four days after it happened—just laid there. Like if we did nothing, just stayed frozen in the moment, then time really wouldn’t pass, and I wouldn’t forget. I’d just hang suspended forever in the first few hours after I lost my shadow.