After Dachau by Daniel Quinn Read Free Book Online

their past at all. It’s a blank, right?”
    “Right.”
    “Let’s say this happens to someone called Tom Williams. He gets hit in the head by a falling roof beam, and when he wakes up in the hospital, his mind is a total blank. He doesn’t know his name, doesn’t recognize his wife or his children, and so on.”
    “Okay.”
    “So what do you think? Has he ceased to be Tom Williams? I don’t know about you, but I’d have to say not. He’s still Tom Williams, even if he can’t remember
being
Tom Williams.”
    “Okay, I can see that.”
    “But now let’s look at a much rarer case. In this one-in-a-billion case, the amnesiac wakes up in the hospital, but her mind isn’t a blank. Instead, she has a complete set of memories of being someone else. That’s what happened to you, isn’t it?”
    She nodded.
    “Who were you in that previous life, Mallory? What was your name?”
    “Gloria MacArthur.”
    “So that’s the difference between you and Tom Williams. When he woke up, he was nobody, and when you woke up, you were Gloria MacArthur. But by any measure anyone can make, he was still Tom Williams and you’re still Mallory Hastings.”
    “I can see all that, but …”
    “Yes?”
    “I just can’t buy into this soul business.”
    “Neither can I.”
    Her eyes widened at that. “I don’t get it. What are you saying?”
    “I’m saying that what I’ve given you is a theory, a way of explaining something that happens—and it’s the best I have at the moment. Give me a better one that doesn’t involve this ‘soul business,’ and I’ll embrace it like a shot, believe me. But most people just throw out the baby with the bath water.”
    “Meaning what?”
    “Many people are unable to distinguish the theory from the phenomenon it tries to explain. They figure that if the theory is nonsense, then the phenomenon must be nonsense too. If I tell people that Mallory Hastings is the reincarnationof Gloria MacArthur, they’ll just say I’m crazy.”
    “You mean, according to them, I’m faking all this.”
    “Or imagining it. Maybe you just wanted a new life for yourself—were fed up with being second banana at the library.” That won a hesitant sort of smile, as if smiling were something she’d forgotten along with all the rest.
    “So what do we do now?” Gloria/Mallory asked.
    “What do you
want
to do?”
    “It’s funny,” she said after thinking for a moment. “I needed to be rescued.”
    “You evidently felt you couldn’t get out of here under your own power.”
    “That’s right.”
    “And this is what you want to do? Get out of here?”
    “You bet.”
    “And go where?”
    The question seemed to perplex her. Finally she said, “I don’t understand what you’re doing here. I know why
I
wanted you to be here, but I don’t know why
you
wanted to be here. What is it you want?”
    “I work for a nonprofit organization that studies events like this, events that seem to demonstrate the reality of reincarnation. In your case, I’m here to try to verify the memories of your former life. Working together, we’ll try to find the person who acquired those memories during her life as Gloria MacArthur.”
    She emitted a little sigh of exasperation. “Why can’t you talk like ordinary people? ‘The person who acquired those memories’? What’s that mean?”
    “I’m sorry. You’re right, I’m being a little cryptic. Where did you grow up as Gloria MacArthur?”
    Darting me a suspicious look, she asked why I wanted to know that.
    “Gloria MacArthur is—or was—a real person who lived sometime in the past. Together, the two of us are going to track her down and find out how closely your memories match the reality of her life.”
    “No, we’re not,” she said simply but definitely.
    “We’re not?”
    “No.”
    “I see,” I said, getting up out of my chair. “Well, let’s get you discharged, then we can go from there. Did you by any chance find out where Mallory Hastings