“No,” the amnesiac said. None of them knew, and all of them did.
The amnesiac took out his copy of Hemu’s elephant notebook that Dr. Avanthikar had copied and printed for him before they left, as a parting gift. On the first sheet, he traced the outline of Gajarajan’s towering body with his finger. His pale trunk stared back, in front of his pale face.
The amnesiac paused. The picture wasn’t the same as before. He flipped through the other pages, faster and faster. Gajarajan was ivory-colored in every one of them, instead of deep gray. Not just the trunk, but all of him now. He closed the book and pretended to sleep.
“You’re trembling,” Dr. Zadeh said.
“I’m just cold,” he lied.
A small ding echoed overhead, and then Dr. Zadeh asked the flight attendant who appeared, “Could we get another blanket?”
The spice market. Gajarajan’s form. One mystery could be ignored. Two could not. Magic, Hemu had whispered to him, terrified, but too addicted to stop.
“We have to go back,” the amnesiac said.
“Our visas have been revoked,” Dr. Zadeh replied. “Pune border security would never let us off the plane.”
“This is more important than that,” the amnesiac said. “Hemu is on to something with the elephants.”
“What?” Dr. Zadeh blinked.
He didn’t know how to explain it, but he could feel the threads there: the unbinding of shadows from their people; the market Hemu had loved to spend time in; the inexplicable thing that had happened when he forgot it. How the more important the original memory had been to the shadowless, the stronger the power they had over it in the real world when they gave in to the pull. If only there was a way to reverse it, so the magic protected things instead of endangered them, the way the elephants somehow did. The amnesiac flipped through his papers until he found the right one. “Read this,” he said, shoving the old article into Dr. Zadeh’s bewildered face. “This is Gajarajan.”
WHEN THEY TOUCHED DOWN IN NEW ORLEANS, THEY PLANNED to turn right back around and book a flight to D.C. Perhaps they could get the Indian ambassador to the United States to make an exception, if they could get him to listen.
“Let’s jog,” the amnesiac suggested, but there was a gate agent waiting solemnly at the end of the jetway for them. He caught Dr. Zadeh’s arm gently as they passed. “Excuse me—you’re Dr. Zadeh, correct?” he interjected. In his hand was a slim white envelope. “I was instructed to deliver this message to you as soon as you disembarked.”
“What is it?” Dr. Zadeh asked. He slid his fingernail under the corner of the flap.
The agent shook his head. “I received it from customer service already sealed.” He tipped his head as he departed.
The amnesiac watched Dr. Zadeh’s eyes flick down the page, faster and faster. “What does it say?” he asked.
Dr. Zadeh said nothing for a long moment. He looked up as if lost. “There was an accident. Hemu’s dead.”
No.
Magic, the amnesiac heard Hemu whisper again. He put his hands over his face.
“He was allergic to peanuts,” Dr. Zadeh continued numbly. “Dr. Avanthikar didn’t know, and the sandwich—he must have forgot, or . . .” His voice trailed off. He couldn’t consider the alternative.
Magic. The amnesiac watched the rest of the passengers drift past in silence. He knew this time, for once, Hemu hadn’t forgotten at all. It was only that the amnesiac gave the sandwich to him too late.
BECAUSE HEMU JOSHI’S RESEARCH UNIT HAD BEEN SHUT down, every request to the prime minister that they put through the Indian embassy in Washington, D.C., was ignored. They couldn’t find Dr. Avanthikar either—she’d been transferred to another shadowless case, either in Mumbai or Nashik, all of which were now classified.
At the assisted-living facility, Dr. Zadeh rang Charlotte, as he’d promised. The amnesiac tried not to listen and just wait. On TV, the news was reporting a shadowless incident in Brazil, the first one outside India. A child, during lunch recess.
After he hung up, Dr. Zadeh said that she told him she would come again in a little while, once she thought she could handle it. The delay made no difference to the amnesiac, as long as she would come. He wouldn’t remember anything without her—one day or one month changed nothing. But then the Forgetting touched Boston, suddenly and thoroughly. Time before the accident had frozen forever, but time after it suddenly sped up. Dr. Zadeh let the amnesiac try to call her again, but cases had already started to appear nearby, in Atlanta and Baton Rouge, and it was too late. He didn’t see her again.