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When Martin didn’t answer she repeated the question. “Is Martin Odum another of your fabricated identities, Mr. Odum?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Are you telling me you really don’t know?”

“I thought that’s what you were supposed to help me find out. One of the legends must be real. The question is which.”

“Well, this is certainly going to be more interesting than I expected. You have a very original take on MPD.”

“What the heck is MPD?”

“It stands for Multiple Personality Disorder.”

“Is what I have fatal? Why are you smiling?”

“Multiple Personality Disorder is far more likely to be functional than fatal, Mr. Odum. It permits patients who suffer from it to survive.”

“Survive what?”

“That’s what we’re going to try to work our way back to. Let me give you the short course on MPD. My guess is that somewhere along the line something happened to you. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the trauma took place in childhood—sexual assaults are high on the list of childhood traumas, but not the only things on the list. I had one case about four years ago where a patient turned out to have been traumatized because he played with matches and started a fire that resulted in the death of his baby sister. The trauma short-circuited the patient’s narrative memory. This particular patient developed seven distinct adult personalities, each with its own set of emotions and memories and even skills. He switched from one to another whenever he came under any stress. None of the seven alter personalities—what you would call legends, Mr. Odum—remembered the original childhood personality or the trauma associated with that personality. So you see, switching between personalities—almost always accompanied by a headache, incidentally—was a survival mechanism. It was his way of erecting a memory barrier, of shielding himself from an extremely frightening childhood experience, and it’s in this sense that MPD is considered to be functional. It allows you to get on with your life—”

“Or your lives.”

“Very good, Mr. Odum. Or your lives, yes. My instinct tells me you certainly don’t fit neatly into the literature on the subject, inasmuch as you developed your alter personalities out of operational necessity, as opposed to a psychological necessity. When your psyche decided it needed to disappear behind a memory barrier, you had a series of personalities crafted and waiting to be stepped into. It’s in this sense that you can be said to fit into the Multiple Personality profile.”

“How different were your patient’s seven personalities?”

“In my patient’s case, as in the majority of MPD cases, they were quite distinct, involving diverse habits, talents, interests, values, dress codes, mannerisms, body language, ways of expressing themselves. They even made love differently. The alter personalities had different names and several of them even had different ages. One of them was unable to communicate verbally while another spoke a language—in his case Yiddish—that the others didn’t understand.”

“How is it possible for one personality to speak a language that another of his personalities doesn’t understand?”

“It’s a perfect example of how compartmented what you call legends can be in the brain.”

“Were the seven personalities aware of each other’s existence?”

“Some were, some weren’t. This aspect can vary from case to case. More often than not several of the personalities seem to be aware of the existence of several other of the personalities—they think of them the way you would think of friends who you know exist but haven’t seen in awhile. And there is what we call a trace personality—in your case it would appear to be Martin Odum—who serves as a repository of information about all of the other personalities except the host personality that experienced the trauma. This would account for the sensation you have that, as you said a moment ago, in a corner of your brain you have access to the specialized knowledge or talents of another alter personality, or as you would put it, another legend.”

“I have a question, Dr. Treffler.”

“Listen, since we’re going to be working together for some time, how about if we move on to a first name basis. Call me Bernice and I’ll call you Martin, okay?”

“Sure. Bernice.”

“What’s your question, Martin?”

“I seem to be able to distinguish three operational identities. There’s Martin Odum. There’s Lincoln Dittmann. And there’s one I haven’t introduced you to—the Irishman, Dante Pippen. Today of all days, Dante would be out on a pub crawl in Dublin, seeing how many of the city’s pubs he could drink in before the sun set.”

“What’s so special about today?”

“It’s Bloomsday, for pete’s sake. All the action in Ulysses takes place ninety years ago today—16 June, 1904.” Martin shut his eyes and angled his head. “‘Bloom entered Davy Byrne’s. Moral pub. The publican doesn’t chat. Stands a drink now and then.’ On top of everything, it was a Tuesday, like today. In Ireland, that’s the kind of thing you don’t let pass without praying at what Dante liked to call licensed tabernacles.”

“Hmmm.”

“So here’s my question: Is one of my three legends genuine? Or is there a fourth personality lurking in the shadows who’s the original me?”

“Can’t respond to that one yet. Either premise could be correct. There could be a fourth legend, even a fifth. We won’t know until we start to break down the memory barriers, brick by brick, to get to the identity that recognizes himself as the original you.”

“For that to happen, the childhood trauma will have to surface?”

“Is that a question or a statement of fact?”

“Question.”

“I’m going to enjoy working with you, Martin. You’re very quick. You’re not frightened, at least not to the point where you’d walk away from this adventure. The answer to your question is: To get to what you call the original you, you’re almost certainly going to have to experience pain. How do you feel about pain?”

“Not sure what to answer. Martin Odum may feel one way about it, Lincoln Dittmann and Dante Pippen, another.”

“On that delightful note, what do you say we call it a day?”

“Uh-huh.” As an afterthought, Martin asked, “Could I take you up on that aspirin?”

1997: MARTIN ODUM DISCOVERS THAT NOT MUCH IS SACRED

FROM LOWER MANHATTAN, AS THE CROW FLIES, CROWN HEIGHTS is a mere four miles across the river but a world away. Since race riots raged in its streets in the early 1990s, this particular section of Brooklyn had enjoyed a degree of extraterritoriality. Riding in squad cars with the mantra “Courtesy Professionalism Respect” visible on the doors not spattered with mud, police officers patrolled the neighborhood during daylight hours, but only for the most flagrant crimes would they abandon the relative safety of their vehicles. Depending on which street you were on, in some cases which sidewalk, different mafias ruled. On the streets south of Eastern Parkway off Nostrand Avenue, the Lubavitchers, solemn men in black suits and black hats, busied themselves reading the Torah in neighborhood shuls and obeying its 613 commandments while they waited for the Messiah, who was expected to turn up any day now; by the weekend at the very latest. Because the end of the world was nigh, Lubavitchers were enthusiastic about mortgages, the longer the better; but they hesitated buying anything they couldn’t immediately consume, they didn’t get involved in fights they couldn’t finish before darkness fell. One block farther down President, on Rogers Avenue, the Lubavitchers gave way to African-Americans crowded into tenements; ghetto blasters with the volume turned up drowned out the occasional shrieks of addicts who needed a hit but didn’t have the cash to pay for it. The West Indian ghetto, with its tidy streets and social clubs and block parties that had young people strolling in the gutter until dawn, began a few blocks farther south, on Empire Boulevard. Where the denizens of the different ghettos rubbed shoulders, tensions ran high. Everyone understood it only needed a spark to set off a conflagration.