The Amnesiac

by Sam Taylor

  In the end, he walked to the pub, determined to spend his last ten pounds on beer. He sat alone in the empty lounge and began to read the Borges story, ‘Funes El Memorioso’, about the man who could remember everything. He had started this story on his first night in the city, but that time he had been interrupted by the librarian. This time, he promised himself, nothing would disturb him. And nothing did, in fact, except the tides and eddies of his own memories, suspicions, fears, regrets.

  After an hour spent trying to make sense of the first paragraph, James gave up. His mind kept returning to the moment, earlier that evening, when he had entered the bedroom, just before he discovered that the money was gone. He had looked out of the window and seen a man in a dark coat. It could have been anybody, of course, but what if . . . James put the beer glass down suddenly. Now he thought about it, the man he had seen had been limping slightly. What if it was him? James thought. What if M had stolen the money? But why? His mind raced through all the detective stories he had ever read, until it reached a plausible motivation. Because he is trying to scare me off. Why would he want to do that? He must have some guilty secret that he needs to protect. James recalled the story about the dead student. What if it hadn’t been suicide? What if Ian Dayton had been murdered?

  James remembered the choking shame and anger he had felt when he looked at the black box that he couldn’t open. Three years of his life . . . gone. Now he felt sure that they had been stolen; that he had stolen them. James must have witnessed something; he must have known too much. If M is trying to get rid of me, James thought, he has failed spectacularly. I will get my revenge. I will expose his secret. This investigation is not over; it is only just beginning.

  And then James remembered that he had no money. He looked up from his empty glass and saw the walls of the labyrinth all around him, smooth and black and unclimbably high. James wondered briefly if he was hallucinating, but if anything it felt like the opposite was true: that his everyday life was a hallucination, and this scene of utter horror the truth that lay behind it. In that moment his despair was so pure, so perfect, that he thought of imitating Ian Dayton, of escaping through the labyrinth’s only exit. Instead, he decided to go through to the public bar. There at least he would be surrounded by people, voices, lights. There at least the labyrinth would be invisible.

  James sat at the bar and ordered a pint. The man at the stool next to his moved away soon after he arrived, which made him feel paranoid, but then he noticed that the man had left his newspaper. The local tabloid. Instinctively, James turned to the page with the stars.

  CANCER 21 June-22 July. Feels like it’s been raining for a long time, doesn’t it? And when it doesn’t rain, it pours. And always, only ever, on you. Well, get over it, sunshine. Everyone’s suffering, not just you. Why don’t you stop feeling sorry for yourself and actually start using your brain for a change? One thing’s for sure - you won’t find the answer until you remember what the question was.

  In the pub’s warm air, James could feel his face burn. He stared at the words on the page, unable to believe what he had just read. The sound of laughter rose suddenly, as though someone had turned up the volume of the room by remote control. What was this? James wondered. This wasn’t a horoscope; this was personal. He downed his pint and ordered another, then looked at the photograph of the astrologer again: Adam Golightly. That little squarish bald head, that neat beard, those staring eyes. I recognise you, thought James. Not from the newspaper, but from real life. At first he couldn’t remember where he’d seen the man before, but then it came to him. It was here, in The Polar Bear. The man who used to sit on his own while James ate his lunch. The one he’d wanted to talk to, but hadn’t because he was always reading. It had to be him.

  James sipped his second pint. The despair he had felt earlier was fading now, but the anger was still there. The difference now was that his anger had an object. If only he could find that little man. He would give that astrologer a piece of his mind.

  The next time James looked up, he saw him. Sitting at his usual table in the corner of the bar. He had a little book and a laptop computer. James watched him for several minutes, hardly daring to believe his eyes. The man would read something in the book, frown for a few seconds, and then type something into his laptop, as if he were translating. Finally James went over and said accusingly, ‘You’re an astrologer, aren’t you?’

  The man looked up, surprised, and replied, ‘Yes, that’s right. Can I help you with something?’ His voice was calm and gracious. His eyes were friendly. James handed him the newspaper and pointed to his sign. ‘Look what you’ve written about me.’

  The astrologer glanced at it and said, ‘Hmm. Seems about right. A little vague, of course, but that’s the nature of the beast with these twelve-sign newspaper columns. Would you like me to do a more detailed analysis?’

  Something in his manner undid James’s anger. He sat down next to the man and said, ‘OK.’

  The astrologer asked for the date and time of James’s birth. James told him. He nodded and typed it into his laptop. There was a pause while he looked at something on the screen. He began muttering about Moon in Aries conjunction in mid-heaven, and then said, in a louder voice, ‘Let me put it in layman’s terms. You are obsessed with the idea of fame, of standing out from the crowd. As a young man you wanted to be an actor, or a musician, or an artist. Something along those lines.’

  James shook his head, relieved. It took an effort of will to stop himself laughing.

  More muttering - ‘Sun ascendant, Mercury in Cancer,’ - and then, louder: ‘You are a man of many moods. You present a tough and solid face to the world but inside you are slippery and incoherent.’ He looked at James and said, ‘Does that sound about right?’

  James shrugged. He could have been talking about almost anyone.

  ‘Saturn in Gemini,’ whispered the astrologer. ‘Transit Saturn now approaching sun . . .’ He nodded and then said to James: ‘Everything’s gone crazy in the past couple of months, I suppose? You gave up your old life and now you’re trying to find something important. You’re not sure what it is you’re looking for. A key of some kind.’

  James gasped.

  ‘You believe that you’ve lost it but you are wrong.’ The astrologer’s voice seemed immense now; it seemed to fill the entire room. ‘What you think is lost is only misplaced. If you look for it in the right place, you will find it.’

  James stared at him.

  The astrologer smiled and said, ‘Was that all right or would you prefer a second opinion?’

  ‘A second opinion?’

  ‘Bill?’

  A grizzled old man at the next table turned around and said, ‘Your analysis is fine, Adam.’ He looked at James and added, in a stern voice: ‘Do not abandon what you have started, young man. You must not be afraid to go back. And if you are afraid, you must overcome your fear. It is the only way. It is your destiny.’

  A giggle escaped James’s mouth. This man sounded like a character from Star Wars.

  ‘What’s funny?’

  ‘You said it was my destiny.’

  ‘Uh-huh?’

  ‘Oh come on. You don’t really believe that?’

  The old man looked confused. ‘What other term would you prefer?’

  ‘Chance?’ suggested James, and heard a few titters at the next table. ‘Free will?’ At this, there was open laughter.

  ‘Ah, right,’ said the old man, suppressing a grin. ‘And I suppose you believe in mortality too. And, er, evolution. Not to mention the power of . . . reason.’ At each stressed word his companions grew more hysterical, and so did the people around them until it seemed that everyone in the bar was laughing at James. Astonished, he stared out at them: the edges of his vision were blurred by alcohol, but it seemed to him that these people looked like the normal Polar Bear crowd. At least they weren’t wearing purple cloaks or pointed hats.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re laughing about,’ James said, contr
olling his emotions. ‘There’s nothing funny or odd about any of those concepts. Chance and free will. Mortality and evolution. They’re completely orthodox . . .’ His voice was being drowned out by squealing, grunting, crying laughter now, so he had to shout. ‘At least I don’t believe in the influence of the fucking stars!’

  The laughter died; was replaced by headshakes and tuts of disapproval. James was shot some dirty looks. He heard somebody say, ‘Bloody cranks.’ A woman shouted from the back of the room: ‘I suppose you only believe what your physical senses tell you, do you, Mr Weirdo?’

  He was about to stand up and shout back that yes, as it happened, he did rely on his physical senses to perceive the world, just as any other sane person would, but the bald astrologer put a hand on his and said, ‘Calm yourself.’ James noticed that his own hand was shaking. Then to the other people in the room the astrologer added: ‘There’s no need to be cruel. Everyone is entitled to believe what they believe. If our friend here chooses to put his faith in ideas like “logic” and “facts”, then that is . . .’ - he waited for the laughter to die down again - ‘that is, manifestly, his destiny.’

  At this last word the people in the bar grew respectfully quiet. James tried to laugh, but found that he couldn’t. The astrologer said, ‘Allow me to buy you a drink.’ James nodded. For some reason, he felt embarrassed by what he had said, and grateful towards the astrologer for having intervened on his behalf.

  The two of them chatted for a while. The astrologer showed James the book of symbols he had been looking at earlier. James asked what the symbols meant and the astrologer stared at him strangely. ‘Surely you’ve seen this before?’ he said. James confessed that he hadn’t, and the astrologer seemed shocked. He put a hand on James’s shoulder - ‘You poor boy’ - and bought him another drink.

  The astrologer told James the story of his life. In a whisper, he confided: ‘As a matter of fact, I used to share some of your beliefs.’ Then he laughed. ‘Did you hear what I just said? “As a matter of fact”. Ha! You see, even now I haven’t completely forgotten the terminology.’

  James asked how he had come to lose those beliefs. ‘The workings of destiny,’ the astrologer replied, as though this were obvious. ‘When I was a young man, my girlfriend passed over to the next world.’

  ‘She died, you mean?’

  A condescending smile. ‘You may think of it like that if you prefer. I loved her very much. I was twenty years old. She was on a train which crashed.’

  ‘I’m sorry . . . that’s terrible.’

  ‘No, that’s destiny. But at the time I felt as you did. I “grieved” for her; is that the right word? Many times I considered “suicide”. I lived in the attic room of a tall house, and each morning and evening I would open the window and look down at the garden and visualise my body falling to what I imagined would be my “death”. The only thing that held me back was the thought of how my parents would feel. I stayed alive for their sake. Then they passed through to the next world too, within a couple of weeks of each other. My father of testicular cancer, and my mother of heartbreak.’

  ‘People don’t actually die of heartbreak,’ James said.

  The astrologer waved away the objection. ‘Call it what you like. The point is they both passed through. After incinerating my mother’s discarded physical shell I went up to the attic room, opened the window and sat on the sill with my hands holding the windowframe and my legs dangling over the roof. It was a steep roof. All I had to do was stand up, let go of the frame, and I would pass through to the next world, to join my parents and my girlfriend. For a long time I hesitated. Then, just at the moment when I had said my goodbyes to the physical world - it was a beautiful summer’s evening - I heard a voice in the room behind me. I turned around and saw my girlfriend, in a pool of blue light. She told me it was not my time. That was when the first crack appeared in the husk of my physical senses; when the light began to pour through and liberate me from . . . those bizarre beliefs that I held before.’ He looked at James hurriedly. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.’

  ‘I’m not offended,’ James said. ‘Just confused.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the astrologer. ‘You’re confused. Quite right. You see the world as chaos because you do not see the world. You do not find the answer because you cannot remember the question.’

  ‘What is the question?’

  ‘The question is the key.’

  ‘But the key is what I’m looking for.’

  ‘But you’re not, are you? You stopped looking. You must resume your search. As Bill told you: do not be afraid to go back.’

  After that, they played darts and had a few more drinks. James doesn’t remember saying goodbye to the astrologer or leaving the pub or coming home. But he remembers going to bed and seeing the ceiling spin above him.

  He woke very late the next day; the sky was already dark, and James had a hangover. He went downstairs and made toast and black coffee, then took them back to his bedroom. The house was empty. There was no post on the mat. James sat on his bed, eating the toast and drinking the coffee.

  Realising that he smelled of sweat, he took a shower; afterwards he felt slightly better. But when James went back into his room, the smell of sweat was just as strong as before. He sniffed in each corner of the room and realised that the smell was coming from his bedclothes. He hadn’t washed them since he moved here, three weeks before.

  Hastily he stripped the duvet cover, the fitted sheet and the pillowcase. As he shook out the last of these, something fell to the floor. James put the pillowcase down and looked at what was there. It was money. Joyfully, disbelievingly, he counted it. Eight hundred pounds in £20 notes. How it had got inside the pillowcase he didn’t know; he must have misremembered the place where he had hidden it.

  The astrologer’s words came back to him. What you think is lost is only misplaced. If you look for it in the right place, you will find it. James was filled with renewed energy and purpose. If the astrologer had been right about the money not being lost, perhaps he was right about the other thing too. The key. The question. James’s memory. What was it the other man had said? Do not abandon what you have started. You must not be afraid to go back. And if you are afraid, you must overcome your fear.

  Immediately James understood the meaning of these words. He went to the desk, opened the drawer, took out the white notebook and began to write.

  Memoirs of an Amnesiac

  CHAPTER 4

  I remember a room like this one: sterile and rented, with vague wallpaper and a desk by the window, overlooking a nondescript garden. There is no particular weather in the memory - I can see the garden in any season I choose: the trees bare or green, the sky grey or brilliant blue - but let us say it is autumn and it is raining. Perhaps mid-afternoon, the greyness beginning to darken, the hot water pipes clanking into life. A stale and sorrowful odour. The vestiges of a hangover . . . my possessions in boxes . . . and a sense of being in limbo, between chapters. A day much like this one, in other words.

  I know the facts that came from that room; I know the choice I made while sitting at that desk. I can even pin a rough date upon it: October 1994, a time whose records are locked inside the black box. A few months before, I must have graduated from university and turned twenty-one, but this is as far back as I can go. Beyond is fog, and I am afraid to venture there. I do not mean that I am afraid of what I will remember, but of what I will fail to remember. I am afraid of the void that lies in wait where my life should be: the black hole that I glimpsed before, and the sense of shame and horror that engulfed me when I discovered it. So let us turn our backs on the fog, for now, and look forward, into the dazzling chaos. This room is where Chapter 4 begins.

  So it was an ordinary English Sunday: overcast, spitting with rain; hardly begun and already almost wasted. To kill off what remained of it, I was leafing through the different sections of the newspaper and I came across a review of a reissued Hitchcock film, Marnie, which I had, by ch
ance, seen the night before. I disagreed with the review and, an hour later, I had written a counter-review. I sent this to the editor of the newspaper. I did so without hope or ambition; it was just something to do. A whim. Two weeks later, having forgotten about my article, I received a brief rejection slip from the newspaper’s arts editor. It was the usual two lines, printed on a white postcard. In blue biro, above this, were the words, ‘nice tho’. I pinned the note to my bedroom wall.

  Days passed, each as long and complex and intermittently dull as the others. I went to other places, talked to other people, thought of other things. And, somewhere in the midst of all this otherness, I wrote a second review, this time of a Springsteen concert, and sent it to the same arts editor. I don’t know why, exactly; I had no desire to be a journalist. I think it was just curiosity about that ‘nice tho’. I saw it every day, above my desk, and it became a kind of itch. I found myself speculating about what it meant, if anything. The second review was designed to settle the question, that was all. I knew that the editor couldn’t simply write the same thing again. Either he would write something longer and more specific, or he would not reply at all. I regarded the second possibility as by far the more likely.

  In fact he telephoned me. This was early November, I think, and I was living with my parents at the time. The arts editor’s name was Sam Caine. He told me he liked my prose style and asked me what else I would like to write about. I had no idea, and said so. I also told him I would be leaving the country in the new year, to explore the world and write a novel. He asked when I would be back. I said I didn’t know; possibly never. Caine said something sharp and regretful then; he seemed irritated that I had wasted his time.