The Memory Artists

by Jeffrey Moore

  “Did you ever try to get help? Did you ever see a psychiatrist or neurologist or—”

  “Yeah, hordes of them. Dr. Vorta among them.”

  “Did he help?”

  “He did, but his colleagues didn’t. One put me on lithium carbonate, which made things worse, another tried acupuncture, which might’ve worked if he’d known what he was doing, another gave me nineteen electro-convulsive treatments, which almost left me brain-dead. And then they all got together and wrote articles about me.”38

  “They didn’t help you to control it, or channel it …”

  “I more or less found out how to stop it on my own.”

  “With classical music? And certain tastes?”

  “Yeah, and I’ve learned to put myself into a kind of trance, deliberately emptying my mind.”

  “Like Zen Buddhists?”

  “Only if they get terrible headaches while doing it.”

  “Are your dreams as wild? As colourful?”

  “Not at all. They’re in black and white most of the time, and usually involve quiz shows or labyrinths ... And I usually wake up with this wish to be transported on my mattress back to my bedroom in Babylon …” Noel’s mind, vibrant and viatic, began to travel but he forced it to stop, pressing his hands against his temples. “In high school, in Montreal, everybody wanted me to go on this quiz show called Reach for The Top. But I refused and everybody was furious with me for the rest of the year, the principal most of all. Especially when our school didn’t make it past the first round …”

  Samira laughed. “I remember that show. So you’re still dealing with high school trauma. Still trying to find a way out of the maze.”

  My mind is a maze, thought Noel. With no exits but only entrances into more mazes. A Gordian knot of coils and loops and convolutions. “Maybe.”

  “What does Dr Vorta have to say about all that?”

  “About my dreams? Nothing much. What’s your … take?”

  “Well, people are always testing you, testing your memory, so that may explain the quiz shows. As for the maze, it may represent, I don’t know, your trying to escape your … problems.” Samira shrugged. “I’m no expert. I know that for the Egyptians the labyrinth represented creativity, or creation. A mysterious feminine power that brings life, and then as the queen of night or queen of darkness, the sleep of death … As you probably know.”

  Noel turned these words over. When you find the exit, death is waiting. You’re dead on arrival. “I didn’t know that.”

  Through a heating duct in the ceiling came a muffled sound: a gust of carolling laughter from JJ.

  “Why don’t you just memorise everything? It’d be so much fun to walk around with Shakespeare’s entire works in your head, or Jane Austen’s or the Encyclopedia Britannica or twenty different languages. No?”

  “There’s no room left. My brain’s crammed to bursting point. And besides, my problem has always been using the stuff I remember, making a synthesis, something new.”

  “Do you remember everything that happens to you? Everything you read or hear?”

  “No, I usually have to make an effort. Most of the stuff I’ve stored is from my childhood, when I tried to retain it with memory maps. Poems mostly, children’s stories … Or I else I sort of photograph it—if I concentrate the coloured letters or coloured voices will remain fixed in my mind forever … or quite a while. A lot of the stuff wasn’t hard to memorise— because I’d read certain stories or poems over and over again, or I asked my parents to read me the same stuff over and over again.”

  “So it’s mostly just poems and children’s stories?”

  “I’ve stored lots of data about Byron, because he’s an ancestor according to my dad, though not according to my mom, and also on chemistry and pharmacology. And now memory disorders. I don’t really try to memorise anything else, it just happens. Sometimes I feel like my brain is going to burst some day, like a vacuum cleaner bag. Memory dust flying all over the place.”

  Samira laughed. “Time for a bag change, I guess. Or a lobotomy?”

  Noel smiled bleakly. He’d once considered that. “As a kid I used to fantasize about finding some magical elixir to help me out, some nepenthean potion. Especially after my dad died.”

  “Nepenthean potion?”

  “It was used to induce forgetfulness, by the ancients. It’s mentioned in The Odyssey. And The Faerie Queene.”

  “I’ll bet you know the lines.”

  Noel closed his eyes, perused his portable photo-library. “No, not in the Odyssey. Nothing’s coming in.”

  “And The Faerie Queene?”

  Am I too tired? Noel wondered while reclosing his eyes. The downloaded letters were misty, like breath-fog writing. “Nepenthe … whereby all cares forepast Are washt away quite from their memorie.”

  “How lovely. Continue. Do you mind?”

  Yes, but I’ll do it for you, thought Noel. He squeezed his eyes shut. The coloured letters were now cock-eyed, chaotic, an alphabet soup of images:

  “I’m a bit rusty, Sam, I … don’t often do this sort of thing. Anymore. And I’m not always a hundred per cent accurate.” He waited for the letters to realign themselves, concentrating until his head hurt. “Let’s see:

  Nepenthe is a drinck of soverayne grace,

  Devized by the Gods, for to asswage

  Harts grief, and bitter gall away to chace,

  Which stirs up anguish and contentious rage:

  Instead thereof sweet peace and quiet-age

  It doth establish in the troubled mynd.”

  Samira was leaning forward, her gleaming eyes mesmerized. She shook her head in disbelief. “That’s amazing, Noel. An amazing … gift. So the colours or shapes of the letters, or voices, or the mental maps you draw are there … always? Indestructible? Like an airplane’s black box?”

  Noel rubbed his eyes. “More like a computer with more input than it was designed to process. Slow down, freeze, crash, reboot—my life in a nutshell.”

  Silence gathered as Samira digested these last words. Her eyes focused on Noel’s, sharply, as if she could see into his skull and was panged by what was there.

  “That can’t be easy,” she said finally. “Especially when you store memories you’d rather get rid of. Dark and oppressive memories …”

  “Like the day I learned my father killed himself. When his boss and two cops came to the door. I replay that day, the colours and shapes, over in my brain almost every day. And some traumatic things that happened to me in school as well. But I’m hardly alone in that respect. That’s what psychiatrists are for. For people who can’t forget.”

  “Is that why people are depressed? Because they can’t forget? Or have a hard time forgetting?”

  “It’s hard to say which came first. Are people depressed because they can’t forget, can’t properly process and digest things? Or is it that they can’t properly process and digest because they’re depressed?”

  “But thinking about bad things all the time, having unwanted memories continually coming to the surface—that leads to depression. Post-traumatic stress disorder. Right? What they used to call shell shock?”

  “You know as much as I do.”

  “I just learned that last week, in my art-therapy class. Have you ever tried to paint, by the way? As an outlet, a way of exorcising the demons of the past? Or write?”

  Noel gazed up at the window again, watched the snow falling … the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling … See? There I go again, he thought. I’m capable only of remembering other people’s descriptions of nature, other people’s expressions of emotion. I’m like Christian in Cyrano, who never learned the language of sentiment, who had to get someone else to express …

  “Uh, Noel?” For a second she was worried; he seemed on the verge of a seizure or something. “Noel?”

  He looked at her in surprise. “Sorry, it’s … I was just … it’s something you’ll have to get used to, I’m afraid. N
orval says it looks like I’m noddingoff on heroin. But it’s not as bad as it looks. What were you saying?”

  “I asked if you’ve ever tried to write or paint or compose …”

  “All of the above. Lots of times. But when I finally come up with something, I realise it’s something dredged from memory, recovered from … the black box.”

  “But why is Norval so convinced that one day you’ll—”

  “Norval doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I belong to a certain class of people who never accomplish anything, it’s as simple as that. Who try to make beautiful things, or beautiful discoveries, but can’t. Every line I write conjures up other lines, better lines, from other writers. Every image I paint, or song I write, conjures up better images from better painters, better music from better composers. Every scientific ‘discovery’ I make has already been discovered. So I decided long ago to stop beating at doors I’ll never enter.”

  Samira felt another tug—or stab—at the heartstrings as the seconds ticked by. It wasn’t so much his words as his look of sadness. She waited until Noel lifted his gaze from the floor, which took a while.

  “You can do anything, Noel, if you want it bad enough.”

  Desire is creation. If you could measure desire, you could foretell achievement. His father told him that. “I’m not sure that’s true.”

  “Can’t you combine the things in your memory, creatively, or use them as a base or … I don’t know, influence? I know you can. Don’t ever give up.”

  Noel’s mind raced back to a certain game of Remembrance, when his father expressed this same thing …

  “Noel? Can’t you combine things, combine imagination with memory?”

  “No, I can’t even do that. I have trouble making new patterns, new combinations. My mind’s a museum, a library—not a debating hall, not a crucible.”

  “Maybe you just need encouragement or someone to …” She let her sentence trail as she watched Noel’s expression cloud over, darken. “Noel?”

  “Yes?”

  “I know Norval’s your best friend, but I was wondering if you had someone else to… if you had a girlfriend, or if you go out with … you know, girls, women. I know that sounds stupid …”

  The question caught Noel off guard, and it took him a while to frame a coherent reply. “Well, I really haven’t had time for women … I’ve spent most of my free time in labs and libraries. And now my mom takes up most of my time. And besides, women aren’t really … never mind.”

  “Aren’t really what? Your cup of tea?”

  “No. I mean yes, they are … my cup of tea. It’s just that I can’t really get close to anybody, I’m sort of blocked. I have trouble expressing … One psychologist suggested I take ecstasy.”

  Samira laughed. “You’re joking. What for?”

  “In his words, for ‘heightened emotional responsiveness, lowering of defensive barriers, openness and sense of closeness to others.’”

  “Did it work?”

  “No, but I continue to take it—four times a year, every equinox. Any more than that and the drug’s a total waste.”

  “And has it helped with your relationships? With women?”

  “No, women aren’t really … I seem to have this anti-talent for attracting them, the Midas touch in reverse.”

  “I have a similar talent—for attracting the wrong men. But you’ll find someone with the right chemistry, I know it. Sometimes it’s just a question of patience. And luck.”

  Noel closed his eyes as he spoke: “Tendency to brood, emotional numbness, general confusion.” He reopened his eyes. “The words of another doctor. No woman can handle that, no woman will ever take me on. Plus I’m always going overboard, head over heels, whenever I meet the woman of my dreams. It scares women off. And if I don’t know the woman that well, I have to concentrate so hard that I usually end up with a horrendous migraine. Scintillating scotoma. I’m afraid I’m quite hopeless. Women generally think I’m retarded.”

  As I first did, thought Samira. “Scintillating scrotoma?”

  “Scotoma. Migraine aura—I see this brilliantly lit image, a kind of throbbing, zigzagging line.”

  “And you get this when you make love?”

  “Most of the time, yeah. I also get it when I meet someone … special, for the first time. A woman, I mean.”

  “Did you get it with me?”

  “Well … yes. So now I’m into abstinence, coitus nonexistus. It’s a lot less complicated.”

  “Join the club. I’m on the sexual wagon too. Be right back.”

  As he waited a half-dozen lines, all flattering, swirled through Noel’s intoxicated brain. You are a vision of loveliness was one; I find it impossible not to gaze at you with uncivil persistency was another, which he’d heard Norval use to good effect. Norval. The great satrap with his twenty-six concubines. Wonder what letter’s next for His Serene Highness …

  “You are a vision of uncivil persistency,” Noel mumbled when Samira returned, holding an unlit cigarette between her fingers.

  “I’m sorry?”

  Noel shook his addled head. “Nothing. You … you look lovely, Sam.”

  She regarded him with raised brows. “You tell one more lie, Noel, and you’ll turn to stone.”

  Noel opened a drawer beneath the lab bench and pulled out a tarnished lighter, which he’d refuelled but never used. His hand trembled like a compass needle as he held a flame under Samira’s cigarette. Should I ask if Norval is past S? No, don’t be an idiot. Relax, take a deep breath … He raised and closed the lighter’s lid, stared at its faded insignia, a tegulated AP. His father’s final employer.

  “Thanks,” said Samira, with a puzzled expression.

  Far things felt near.“When I was young I … no, never mind.”

  “What? Tell me.”

  He took a deep breath. “Well, you’ll probably laugh but I used to dream about meeting an Arab woman like you. An Arab princess, actually. Probably because my favourite book of all time was … well, this one here.” With his cheeks afire and heart beating louder than his breathing, he nodded towards a volume of The Thousand and One Nights. “Do you speak Arabic?” he blurted into the vacuum of silence.

  A smile played about Samira’s lips. “Yeah, although I probably sound like a ten-year-old. Or younger. My parents came to Montreal as children, so we spoke mostly English at home, except when my grandfather was around. He’s the one who sent me to a madrasa for two years, where I dutifully memorised my lessons.”

  “What nationality are they—your grandparents?”

  “Persian—although my grandmother’s people were from Egypt. Alexandrian Jews.”

  “Persian? How old are they? Or is that a euphemism for Iranian?”

  Samira smiled. “They came to Montreal in the thirties—when the country was still called Persia.”

  Noel nodded. “And Egyptian Jews. Did you know that The Arabian Nights draws extensively on Jewish sources?”

  “No, I’m not really up on … either.”

  “In ‘The Sultan and His Three Sons,’ for example, and ‘The Angel of Death,’ and ‘Alexander and the Pious Man’ and …” He stopped when he saw tears forming in Samira’s eyes—from a protracted yawn. I’m literally boring her to tears, he thought. “Would you like some more of this?” He held up the bottle. “Will we get to seventeen, do you think?”

  “I think I’ve reached my limit. But go ahead.”

  “No, I’ve reached mine too.” He replaced the glass stopper in the bottle. “So you … grew up here. You went to university in Montreal?”

  “No, the States.”

  “Where?”

  “Cornell.”

  “Really? That’s where Nabokov taught. While writing his autobiography.”39

  “And Lolita.”

  “We used to live down there—in New York State, I mean. Long Island. I was there until the second grade. I’d love to go back one day …” Letters and numbers began percolating inside Noel’s s
kull: the chiselled Baskerville capitals of BABYLON ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, the pebbled black plastic 22 on his classroom door, the sinistral chalk letters of Miss Schonborn … Noel rubbed his eyes, refocused. “Ever been there?”

  “Long Island? Once. I went to see an Islanders game.”

  Cards began to fly from the pack, bouncing off Noel’s inner walls: dog-eared cards of Mike Bossy and Denis Potvin, Bryan Trottier and Bobby Nystrom, Clark Gillies and Butch Goring … Their stats, as in a centrifuge, began to spin and scatter. He pressed his thumb and forefinger against his eyeballs, hard. “So … what’d you study? At Cornell.”

  “Well, my father had this master plan. He thought I should study marketing, so I could help expand the family business. He owned a restaurant in Lachine.”

  “Which one?”

  “Le Tapis Magique.”

  “You’re kidding! That restaurant by the water, near Saul Bellow’s old neighbourhood? That’s an institution.”

  “Maybe I served you.”

  “No, I’ve never been there.” Noel ran his fingers up and down the skull-and-crossbones label on the bottle. “So you got your MBA?”

  Samira shook her head. “I was totally not interested in business, so after a semester of boredom—of pain—I switched over to the arts. Without telling my father, who hated … impractical things.”

  “What’d you take?”

  “Impractical things. English lit, astronomy, psychology, art history. Oh, and theatre arts.”

  “Which is how you got the film part?”

  “Not really, no. My roommate happened to see a poster on campus, some film production company looking for an ‘Arabic-American teenager.’”

  “So you went for an audition.”

  “To this day, I have no idea why. It’s not something I ever wanted to do, at least not professionally. I guess I went because I had almost no money, and was tired of taking orders from the assistant manager of Wendy’s. Next thing I knew I was flying to Venice.”

  “Where you met Stirling Trevanne.”

  “Yeah. Whose real name is Lionel Lifschitz. An asshole, as it turned out, like all my boyfriends, but breathtakingly handsome—as his teenage fans kept reminding me. Daily. Anyway, after the shooting I moved out of my apartment, took a bus to New York and the red-eye to LA.” The vertical city to the horizontal one, she recalled thinking, a tremor of excitement running through her as she gazed on each from the sky.