The Memoir

  He smiled back. ‘It’s nothing. Now, we are together,’ he said, wiping the tears. ‘We can handle it together.’

  NEW YORK- ON THE DAY OF PRESS CONFERENCE

  Abel Cleveland had never taken such a long leave in his forty years long career. He had started working hard to build his R&D Constructions and Destructions since he was twenty five and it had paid off. What started with a single Civil Engineer and some money inherited from his father had turned into a billion dollar company within thirty years. However, bad luck had followed him ever since his exploration into different businesses apart from constructions five years ago. None of those businesses had paid off and he failed to recover even the capital he had invested. Within three years, his company’s shares fell to the bottom and the company neared its end. That was when Godwin had approached him with the plan to use the company as a perpetrator behind the blasts. In return, what he received was an offer he could not refuse. Godwin offered him two hundred million in cash and a binami construction company in Kraminko, which he owns, yet runs under an acting CEO. As he made the calculations, he found himself on the profitable side. So, he agreed readily.

  Choosing Seamus Mendes, who was a prominent member of Fremian Democrats Party, as the acting CEO was part of the framing process. Abel had already given up on the reputation of his company when its shares fell. Therefore, he did not mind the bad name that the company was going to garner.

  Despite that, as he watched the press conference on BBC, his eyes watered and he had to remind himself of the fortune he was going to make by killing his company to comfort himself. The call from Godwin exhilarated him.

  ‘Abel, how are you holding up?’ Godwin asked, faking compassion.

  ‘Just about good, Godwin,’ Abel replied, faking sorrow amidst his exhilaration.

  ‘Well, the balance will be transferred into your Swiss bank account within the next three days.’

  ‘Fine,’ Abel replied. I bet it is going to be, you bastard!

  Once he ended the call, he rested his head on the bed and wondered what emotion to savor.

  Life is so tough!

  THE ONE WITH GLIMPSES OF PAST

  OUTSIDE THE RESTAURANT- TWELVE DAYS POST THE JUDGMENT DAY

  DANIEL SENSED THE danger and stepped out of the car. His gaze stayed on the first truck, since he believed that Margaret was in that truck. He stood for a minute outside the car thinking of a way to tackle the situation. He had come to tackle only the RCAF, but he had two groups to tackle. For a moment, he voted in favor of letting the rumble continue before it zeroed in on one or two members, whom he wanted to tackle at the end. However, his anxiety voted against it. His legs began shaking wildly and he held onto the car to keep his knees from buckling. He patted his pockets for the pills Martello had given him and drowned one followed by water from his bottle. After he thought he was OK, he paced forward towards the shoot-out. There were five members from the Chevy against eight trained military personnel. Then there was Daniel, a lone ex-soldier, who was not sure as to whom to tackle. Daniel decided to go in the rescue of the military since they outnumbered the Chevy guys and shot at one of the Chevy guys from the back. The bullet went through the guy’s scapula and he collapsed onto the ground. Believing that the guy wouldn’t get-up to strike back, Daniel shifted his aim to the other Chevy guy beside the first one, who had already half-turned in Daniel’s direction with his carbine aimed at Daniel. Before Daniel could take proper aim, a bullet missed Daniel’s head by a few inches, and Daniel had to duck to his left to evade the bullets that followed. Searching in vain for any nearby cover, Daniel rolled further to his left and ended up in a puddle of water. The guy rained still more bullets in Daniel’s direction as Daniel continued to roll to the left. Finally, Daniel ended up behind a parked Dodge Ram. As he stayed behind the truck, bullets hit the metal body of the truck, and Daniel execrated himself for diverting attention to himself. Daniel tried to recollect any information as to the penetrating power of the carbine bullets, but he could not recollect any.

  Daniel did not dare lift his head above the truck’s level and he stayed glued to his spot, reviewing various tactics in his mind. Ideas failed him and turmoil came to his rescue. Turmoil gave way to rage. In his rage, Daniel shot one of the trucks parked a safe distance away from him to distract the men, and then made a quick motion to the front of the truck, where he rose above the hood and put a bullet through the guy’s forearm. He dropped the carbine and ducked down. Before he could appreciate himself and take the next aim, a bullet tore through the lateral part of his left deltoid and the force jolted him backward. Daniel made a quick motion into cover and examined his injury with the gun clutched tight in his right hand. He felt relieved to find that it had just grazed some part of his deltoid and had left him with minimal damage. With some difficulty, he got onto his knees and peeked from above the hood. The Chevy guys were out and the military guys too were all down except for the man from the BMW, who stood behind the first truck with his gun aimed. At the sight of Daniel, he shot in his direction. The bullet missed Daniel by a foot. Immediately after that, he collapsed on the ground beside the truck, holding his abdomen.

  After surveying the area clearly, Daniel paced towards the first truck and opened the slightly opened twin doors. The meager light from the street illuminated the interior, but Daniel failed to find Margaret.

  ‘Don’t kill us!’ the reporter he had seen the previous day said.

  ‘I am not here to kill anyone,’ Daniel said, withdrawing the gun. ‘Where is Margaret?’

  ‘She is in the other truck.’

  Daniel nodded and said, ‘Take one of their mobiles and call for medical support.’

  Daniel did not wait for a reply and walked to the other truck. When he opened the doors, the first thing he found was the dull and sunken face of Margaret as she raised her head to the noise of the doors. Her face was devoid of any expression before it turned into one of surprise. The surprised face came as a weird surprise to Daniel, who had always recollected her blank face whenever she came into his mind.

  ‘Daniel? Thank god, I was afraid I was going to die,’ she said, falling into his hands.

  Daniel hugged her back and he sensed his wet shoulder, which said that she was weeping. He patted her back and told her to calm down. She pulled off after a few seconds and asked, ‘How are the rest of the guys?’

  ‘They are fine.’

  She moved away to the others, who were out of the truck. She spoke with her peers while Daniel moved around the place, inspecting the damage done. The restaurant owner had come into the parking lot sensing the mitigated damage.

  ‘Is everyone alright?’ Daniel asked.

  The owner displayed an annoyed face -the most annoyed face Daniel had ever seen- and said, ‘Fortunately, there weren’t any customers in there. However, my kitchen and the tables were in there. They are mutilated beyond repair. These fuckers had to fight just outside my fucking restaurant.’

  Daniel nodded his head. ‘Have you called emergency?’ he asked.

  The man shook his head and said, ‘Will do right now’ and turned his gaze to Daniel’s shoulder.

  ‘Were you hurt in this?’ he asked.

  Daniel nodded. ‘Just a small injury. Nothing to worry about.’

  Daniel expected the man to offer some medical attention. ‘So, you were involved in this. Hey, fuck you mate. Get the fuck out of here before I bring my shotgun.’

  Daniel raised his hands in the air and receded back towards the others. The man’s mood-swings seemed to have great amplitude, which insisted Daniel to fallback, despite wanting to advise him about visiting a psychiatrist. When he got back to the others, he found them silent.

  ‘Hey, what’s the matter?’ he asked, trying to fit himself in their group.

  ‘We can’t decide where to go,’ the reporter said.

  An idea struck his mind. ‘How about you split-up? You see, if you move together, there is a greater probability to trace you. But, if you spli
t, there are wider options to think about later.’

  They nodded in unison. ‘Margaret will come with me,’ Daniel said, and produced his visiting card, which he had retrieved from his belongings bag, to the reporter. ‘Call that number for Margaret.’

  The reporter eyed Daniel suspiciously for a second and took Margaret to a side. They discussed something for a few moments and then, Margaret came back.

  ‘Guys, take care. Better split-up before they come here,’ she said and turned to Daniel. ‘Daniel, let’s go.’

  Seated in the driving seat with Margaret in the passenger seat of the rented Chevy, Daniel experienced the peaks of euphoria. He wondered if he had felt the same when she proposed to him. But at that moment, he was in no mood to dwell into the past. It was five minutes since they had begun their aimless journey and Daniel thought of a way to strike a conversation, as if it was the first he was speaking to her. He manipulated the driving mirror so that he could see her, inspected her in the mirror, and found a thinking face, which surprisingly seemed strange for him. He wondered what had happened to his limbic system, which seemed to perceive every expression of her strange, except her blank face. He felt the same strange feeling he had on the day he had seen her on the TV. Dismissing his concerns as tricks of his tired-out mind, he concentrated on striking a conversation.

  ‘So, where shall we go?’ he asked.

  She thought for a moment. ‘Daniel, can I trust you?’

  Daniel reflexively turned his gaze to her. If not for her smile, he would have taken her seriously. He smiled and kept quiet. He gazed at her smiling face for a few seconds, wishing for the strange feeling to evaporate. Yet, her smiling face evoked a response which felt familiar and yet, strange at the same time. Since he had to concentrate on the road, he turned back to the road. As he continued watching her reflection in the mirror, the feeling escalated. She had stopped smiling and had a blank face. The more the time he spent gazing at her reflection, the stronger the unusual feeling grew. To relieve himself of the budding doubts, he repeated the question to expect the same reply.

  ‘Daniel, you are going the right way. I will tell you after a few seconds,’ she said, without smiling.

  Failing to elicit the same response annoyed Daniel. The feeling grew stronger and he no longer felt the euphoria he had felt initially. In its place, he sensed a sprouting annoyance. As he drove on, trying to decipher the feeling, it made sense. The feeling was that of a stranger, as if he was speaking to a stranger. The feeling seemed familiar, as if it was not the first time he had experienced it. Suddenly, it returned to him. The feeling had persisted meagerly whenever he recollected a memory of her, but he had remained oblivious to it given its paltry. As he observed her face in the mirror again, he felt the unmistakable feeling of a stranger. He wondered if it was because of the amnesia or something that must have happened between them during his blank era, which subconsciously could be the source of the strangeness.

  Despite the burning sense of discomfort, Daniel drove on until she called for him.

  ‘Yeah?’ he replied, not taking his eyes off the road.

  ‘You remember Guilin’s Restaurant, right?’ she asked.

  Daniel’s discomfort prevented him from thinking deeply. He said, ‘Margaret, I have got to notify you I am suffering with retrograde amnesia-’ he said, before she interrupted him, and before he collected her assault on him.

  ‘Hey,’ she interrupted. ‘Just because we are friends doesn’t mean that you can call me by my name. I will complain this to Dylan. Remember, you were afraid of him during your freshman year. He’s my boyfriend now.’

  The new revelation was too tough for him to handle so suddenly and he pushed the assault aside from his priorities list for the moment. He slammed hard on the brakes and turned to her. ‘Your boyfriend?’ he bellowed. ‘When did this happen, after you shot me and thought I was dead, or when I was serving in the fucking army?’ He thought he was too rude. Yet, the rudeness seemed to sprout from the revelation that it was most probably Vanessa on the cliff, whom he must have loved after some tension between him and Margaret, and whom he must have left to join the army.

  She had a frown on her face, which surged his annoyance. ‘Daniel, just because I am a jovial senior doesn’t make us so close to joke about murder and speak unparliamentarily!’

  ‘Enough with your fucking seniority!’ he yelled. ‘When did you turn from a classmate to senior?’

  ‘A classmate? What is wrong with your stupid mind? Have you gone mad?’ she bellowed. ‘I should have believed Dylan when he told me that you did not perceive me just as a friend.’

  ‘Here you go, calling your boyfriend mad.’

  Margaret banged her fist on the dashboard. ‘When did you turn from a junior to a boyfriend?’ she bellowed, not making eye contact.

  Daniel felt the increasing urge to grab her hair and turn her to face him. He resisted and fisted the steering wheel. ‘I turned into your official boyfriend since the day you proposed to me in the parking lot and you were my crush since I performed with you on the stage on Fresher’s Party!’

  She thought for a moment and tapped her index finger against his temples. Her face was blank again. ‘Screen your memory,’ she said, tapping his temple. ‘I just choreographed your performance. You performed with Vanessa Romero.’

  ‘What?’ It made no sense at all. She was the one who performed with him. The choreographer was… He always had problem with recalling certain faces spontaneously, but he had never felt so anxious about it. Daniel felt the escalating sense of turmoil. He clutched the steering wheel tightly to relieve his mind of the turmoil. However, it did not seem in the mood to clear off. His mind was faulty from the trauma, yet he believed he remembered the woman who had choreographed their performance. However, he was unable to recollect her name or face.

  ‘Margaret, I might have suffered a concussion and coma. But I have not gone mad. Don’t try to fool me,’ he said in his defense, not sure if he truly meant it.

  For the first time since the beginning of the feud, she spoke sensibly. ‘Daniel, are you OK?’ she asked, touching his hand.

  Her touch did not evoke any emotion, except a tactile sense. He held his head between his hands and rested his head on the steering wheel. He ran the different memories through his mind and examined them. All of a sudden, they felt strange. The more he ran the memories, the more the feeling grew.

  Am I going sodding mad?

  The recollection of the word “sodding” reminded him of the restaurant “Sodding Love”, where he and she had shot a video to upload on Facebook to publicize their relationship of three years. He remembered running into that senior at that place, who had choreographed their performance. But she was secondary.

  ‘OK, I will show you proof of our relationship,’ he said, he himself not confident of his remarks. He retrieved his phone from his pocket and opened the Facebook app on it. He calculated the year and scrolled down in his “Home” page. In 2010, he found a couple of videos uploaded by him, both of which held no tag. He played the video and turned the screen towards her.

  ‘Hello guys,’ he said to the screen. ‘It’s me, your Daniel Shelby. You must be wondering what a social-media stranger like me has to say in a video. Well, this video holds a purpose.’

  He gave a momentary pause as he gazed at something over the camera and laughed. ‘Hey, let me complete my part. You will get your chance.’

  He turned back to the screen and said, ‘Well, the evil princess in front of me is the one responsible for making this video. But I am happy to announce that it has been three years since my love with this evil princess,’ he said, moving to a side and allowing a woman to sit on his lap. It was Vanessa.

  ‘Hey, it’s me, Vanessa Romero. As my evil prince has explained, I am here to inform you about our three yearlong successful relationship, which we trust would go on to live forever.’

  The both of them made half a heart with their fingers and united it. ‘Being doctors, we sh
ouldn’t symbolize heart like this,’ Daniel said. ‘Ignore our misaddress.’

  They laughed and said, ‘Here is to Daniel and Vanessa, always together.’

  The video ended with the closing remarks, thus raising new doubts in Daniel’s mind. The phone slipped from Daniel’s hands and landed in Margaret’s lap. He massaged his temples and banged the back of his head against the backrest repeatedly.

  ‘Daniel, calm down. I can understand your situation. I am a Neuropsychologist. You have probably sustained a “source misattribution”.’

  Daniel felt so weak that he asked her what it meant, despite knowing something about it.

  ‘Well, it’s a phenomenon where a person attributes his memory to the wrong person. For example, you recollect going to a movie. However, you recollect that you went to it with me, while you actually went with Vanessa. It is not so simple. It is to give you a basic idea about it. It is one of the sins of our memory.

  ‘Since you said something about a concussion, coma and retrograde amnesia, what I believe is that you must have misattributed me in Vanessa’s place when you recollected those memories after your coma. Something must have triggered that. Let me give you an example. In one case, a woman was raped by a stranger. Prior to the attack, she had seen a psychologist on a live TV show, whom she later accused as the culprit. It is just a physiological phenomenon. Everyone experiences it at least once in their life. It is just mass-misattribution in your case; I mean on a larger scale.’

  Daniel tried to relax his mind and think. Slowly, he felt a sense of relief hearing her words.

  ‘I have seen you with Vanessa outside in a number of places. Do you remember your dates with her?’ she asked.

  He remembered some incidences of dates, where they went to movies and restaurants in their long relationship. ‘Yeah, we were frequent visitors of Sodding Love and Gremlin’s Talkies on weekends.’