And what of Malik Sayid? Who would miss him, who would notice or care if he were simply to disappear? A sewer rat, a bastard, rotten scum. A loathsome wretch from the colonies who dared to walk the streets of the shining city, the birthplace of Voltaire, Baudelaire, Renoir. What right did he have, born of an illiterate mother and a murderous father, to call Paris his home? But with the new mantle of a borrowed identity and the burnished pedigree of a survivor of Soviet oppression, he could walk with his head high, and construct the golden future that otherwise might ever be out of reach.

Gessen laid down his pen, his fingers cramped from trying to order his thoughts and determine the next course of action. As outlandish as it seemed, it all made sense. Only now he would have to prove it. If he came out and accused Vidor of being Malik Sayid, Vidor would surely laugh in his face – show me the proof – and challenge Gessen to a duel of wills.

50

Gessen shut the curtains against the darkening sky, only to open them again a moment later, after experiencing a discomfort at being shut in, though the room was cheery enough with the fire in the grate and the tea tray on the table. The Christmas holiday had come and gone with little fanfare, apart from a special meal on the day itself. Yet he felt the usual post-holiday let-down all out of proportion to what was, after all, just another day in the calendar.

For the first time in many years, since his early days as a practicing psychiatrist, Gessen experienced a flutter of anxiety before meeting with a patient. Now that he had documented proof that Vidor suffered from either a severely repressed or dissociative identity, it was time to inform him that this disturbance in his psyche was likely the cause of his violent outbursts. As a doctor, Gessen had an ethical duty to tell his patient what was wrong, to candidly discuss the reasons behind his diagnosis, and to present him with a treatment plan. But in the case of dissociative identity, the space between informing Vidor he had two personalities, unbeknownst to each other, and getting him to accept it was a yawning chasm he would need to bridge.

If it was a case of a wilfully repressed identity, Vidor was either a very good actor or a sociopath. If unconsciously repressed, it would take a skilful treatment strategy to break through Vidor’s massively fortified ego defences. The revelation that he was someone else could lead to a catastrophic, and perhaps irremediable, breakdown. Gessen would have to tread carefully.