The Seventh Candidate by Howard Waldman

had been hurt in the explosion, the one still
in coma. No identity papers had been found in what was left of his
clothing. The inspector surmised that one of the other candidates
had taken advantage of the confusion to steal the man’s wallet.
Second nature for this generation. Example: the Events, the looting
that went on in broad daylight. What had happened to values?
    The director was irritated at hearing his
own ideas in the mouth of an ungrammatical vulgarian. He said that
he didn’t know the man’s name. He went on kneading the clay.
    “You have to know his name. Your secretary
says you got letters of application. She couldn’t find them in the
office. What was left of it. And she couldn’t find them in your
apartment either. They must be somewhere.”
    Lorz stopped kneading and stared. “You
actually forced my assistant to search my apartment?”
    “Her idea. She had the keys. So where are
those letters? There was a wooden filing cabinet in the office. It
burned. Were they there? You don’t remember? What do you mean, you
don’t remember? Don’t you remember anything about the man?”
    “He corrected a poster like a professional.
That’s all I know about him.”
    He saw the wall again and felt the rise of
panic.
    “Had you ever seen him before?”
    He should have been prepared for the
question but it caught him off guard. For the first time on this
side of the darkness, he saw the boy’s face. It was inseparable
from imminent disaster. He tried concentrating on his assistant’s
white flowers in the corner. Then on the image of her ferreting in
his flat. The boy’s face persisted. It grew tremendous with
peril.
    The inspector snapped him out of it by
exclaiming: “You knew him!”
    Back in the white room, Lorz looked past the
inspector’s triumphant red face at a hazy tree in leaf framed by
the window like a captionless poster. He must remember to have new
glasses made up.
    “I didn’t say that.”
    “Say it one way or the other. You knew him
or you didn’t know him. It looked like you knew him.”
    “I don’t remember if I knew him.”
    The inspector stared down at him and asked
what that meant: he didn’t remember if he knew him.
    Before he could try to explain what that
meant, the door opened. The sharp-nosed young doctor who had
tickled his soles greeted both of them. Excusing the interruption,
he squatted and examined the chart at the foot of the bed. He
started taking notes. The inspector ignored him and kept on staring
at Lorz.
    What did that mean? Lorz reflected a
second.
    “That means … that perhaps when I saw him I
thought I knew him, but now … I can’t be sure if that’s what I
thought.”
    The inspector stared down at him again in
longer silence. Visibly he was turning Lorz’s phrase about,
examining it from all possible angles. Finally he said that his
statement didn’t make sense. But it didn’t matter. The man was here
in the hospital in the Life Support Unit. Lorz could try to
identify him.
    “Now?” the director asked, badly
frightened.
    “They can push you there in a wheel-chair,
can’t they?”
    Without looking away from the chart, the
young doctor vetoed the idea. Certainly not today. Perhaps in two
or three days. In any case the medical staff, not the police,
decided such matters. He went on with his notes.
    “I’ll contact you in two days, then,” said
the inspector, impassive. He moved massively towards the door. “Or
three days,” said the doctor to his back. “But it’s not sure,” he
added. Without answering, the inspector left the room.
    The doctor left the room too and the image
started up again for the hundredth time, the way it always did,
without warning.
     
    Without warning the wall would loom. The boy
would smile up at him, expecting recognition. There was no
recognition. And the strange thing was, Lorz couldn’t picture his
face abstracted from the encounter. At best he was able to snatch
an isolated feature, like a piece of a jig-saw