by M G Vassanji
I gave him an eyeful. Deadpan attitude. He could have cancelled his appointment, but he didn’t. He wanted reassurance.
He was born in suburban Wisconsin, he’d told me last time, and he’d had a persistent thought about a lion. It bothered him. Now he was saying that it didn’t. I didn’t believe him. His pulse rate over the past week showed bursts of mild excitement. The fear index had slowly crept upward.
—You’re sure?
—Yes.
It was checkered pants today, and those yellow socks. He liked them. Was the pale skin the later acquisition or the Afro hair? I guessed the former. Perhaps both were new. Where was he actually born? Did that question have an answer, now that that past had been blotted? Perhaps, deep inside that brain in some long-term memory box. But we didn’t want to go there. All we needed was to fix his leak. He had a new life now, it was what he had to live with.
—Does it take a lot of effort to control?
—A little effort. Just a little effort to ignore it, then it’s not there. But I can live with it, Doc, like a wart. That’s my decision, I’ll live with it.
—If it’s a wart, it could be cancerous, Presley. How do you actually manage to ignore it?
—I think of something else—to distract myself—or I turn blank. Counting numbers helps.
—The lion still exists in your mind, Presley, it can appear when it wants to. Unwanted thoughts of that sort don’t disappear so easily. And if they are of the growing sort, as we suspect, we have to burn them out. Completely.
There was a long moment’s silence.
He uncrossed his legs, crossed them back. Then he stared straight at me and replied, in an even voice,
—I think I’ll wait and see, Doc. I don’t want to undergo treatment at this time. No probes into my brain, please.
—And if it worsens? You’ll call me?
—Definitely, Doc. I’ll do that.
It may be too late then, I thought.
—Good. But I’d like to run one simple test first, just for the record. Every case of LMS—that’s leaked memory syndrome—has to be completely described, according to regulation.
—I understand. Will it take long?
—No, it won’t.
I called out to Lamar, who hurried in with the ring scan. Presley wore it around his crown and Lamar fitted it. Then, with a nod from me, Lamar started the scan.
The results would need careful interpretation, of course. But Presley showed only mild responses to lion pictures, and there was a flurry of activity with cat pictures—he owned a cat. He responded positively to the word lion when spoken, mildly when written.
Lamar left with the scan and I returned to my seat. I looked up to Presley’s curious gaze.
—Well, Pres—you don’t mind me calling you that? You respond to the word lion when spoken. It’s there in your brain. But we knew that.
—Does that mean anything, Doc?
—I’m sure it does, but I can’t say what. We’ll wait and see as you said.
He nodded:—Okay.
—But tell me, I continued—what did you mean by, No probes into my brain? You don’t recall any experience in the past with probes, do you?
—No. I assume that’s how they try to fix you, by putting probes into the brain.
—Not always.
—That’s good to know. But for now, I’d like to wait. I’ll try and manage.
—Agreed. But let me finish with the questions. That down feeling you said you had. Any recurrence?
—It’s gone now.
—The smell—the smoke?
—Gone too.
I sat back frustrated and a little annoyed. I knew I should close his file and move on. There were other cases waiting, people ready and excited with new fictions to step into, new lives to wear. I made that happen, I had a reputation. He was just one case of LMS. Like others I’d had, he would return when he was ready to be patched up, or he would go elsewhere. But something made me detain him that afternoon.
—Tell me, how did you choose to come to me in the first place?
He smiled.
—I was struck by the photo in your Profile. I should consult him, I told myself. There’s something sympathetic in that face.
It’s not a face I like to look at. Thin lips, stern smile; broad forehead, hair parted in the middle out of long habit. Is it the wide eyes? One day, tracing a literary quote, I was startled to find myself looking at a picture of a twentieth-century poet on my screen: how did I get a face like that? Joanie says it’s distinguished.
Still reluctant to let him go, wart and all, I asked him, finally—desperately, though I knew I was on treacherous ground—did I want to prompt more unwanted thoughts in him?—
—The images that came to you afterwards—you mentioned the fender of a car—a red antique car, you said?
—Yes. Part of it like, as if you’re seeing it from the front, at an angle.
—How could you tell it was an antique car?
—I just could. I saw a wheel, a fender, a curved housing.
—Did you notice the make of the car?
—No.
—And it was moving—this car?
He thought for a moment, nodded, made a face to show he was not too sure. He was squirming again. I felt sorry for him. Clearly he was not as sure of himself as he made out to seem.
—Anything else unusual happening to you? You realize, I have to satisfy myself before I let you go.
He changed position so that the yellow socks were in my face, a bright flare. And then he surprised me.
—Old movie.
—Sorry?
—Scene from an old movie, the flat type, people waiting at an airport, waiting for their numbers to be called. I recall this scene but I don’t remember seeing the movie or what it was called.
—How old, the movie? How could you tell it was a movie, not a real scene?
—I just knew, I guess. Maybe I’m mistaken.
—Nothing else?
He shook his head. He could have been holding back, seeing that I was getting too anxious. I could barely hold my excitement. Presley had added to the original scene in his mind. It had grown.
—Let’s make an appointment for next week. If the condition remains the same, and you can live with it, we ignore it, as you suggest. For the time being. Though I suggest, strongly suggest going in and simply zapping these intrusions. That way you don’t have to worry about them, at least for now.
We decided on the appointment a week later. He got up and we shook hands. I watched him leave through the door, in brisk steps but with a straight and heavy gait that I imagined compensated for the slightly bowed legs below the knees that I hadn’t noticed before.
When he had gone, I picked up my pad and slowly typed:
1. Midnight. The lion out stalking.
2. The fender of a red car.
3. An airport from an early twentieth-century movie. Or perhaps a real airport.
And then, somewhat recklessly, I gave myself to free thought. I wrote:
i. Torrential downpour.
ii. A baby’s wide-eyed face peering through the rain.
iii. A man with red Afro hair, white skin, and yellow socks.
I stared hard at the screen before me. Where did (i) and (ii) come from? I could not say. They were just there, in the mind. A tingle ran down my spine.
—
With relief I looked up as my next patient came in, Sheila Walktall. Someone whose needs were mundane. A small woman with curly black hair, fitting jeans. She was a cultural news producer, and this was her second visit. Problems at work, problems in the home. She wanted to escape them all and give herself a new life. I had to deter her.
Are you sure, I’d already told her in our previous consultation, that you wish to terminate all relationships? You won’t remember them, of course, but I want you to—for a moment—think about them. You will leave behind a legacy of pain and loss. Your teenage children. And your next life will have its o
wn travails, and it could well be filled with loneliness. There’s no guarantee of joy ahead simply because you will now have memories of growing up in an English village. What she was asking for was a form of suicide, she must know that, and an abdication of responsibilities in pursuit of a dream. This was her first life and she’d hardly lived it. She was young.
I thought of my own rootless Joanie. It was her parents who walked away, and she had never recovered from that.
Sheila Walktall didn’t completely buy my line then, and I continued my pitch patiently.
—You can’t say, at the slightest discomfiture, I’ve had it, give me a new life, a better fiction. I’ll start all over again. In the first place, it’s never easy to start again—
—But Dr Sina, I am a sociable person. Not unattractive. I’m bright and I make friends easily. I have a bank account I can take with me. I have skills I can take with me. It’s just that sometimes you acquire baggage and…and it’s too late to go back—
She had been leaning forward, earnestly making her pitch, and now she sat back, her statement incomplete. I wondered what baggage she wanted to let go. An unfaithful partner or husband? That was hardly sufficient reason.
—Are you sure you’ll be able to make new friends if you start again? Be as bright? Have as good a job? Meet all the wonderful personalities that you do in your current position—actors, authors, explorers?
—Why not? You tell me, you are the expert. If I am smart and sociable now, why not again?
—We don’t always know for sure.
She stared at me.—What do you mean?
—There are always uncertainties.
We don’t know what qualities in a personality are retained, for one thing. And as Presley Smith would tell her, the past can be present in the weirdest of manners. It can come wiggling back.
—I’ll take my chances, I don’t think I have an alternative. Isn’t it my choice when to depart, anyway?
—If we could all take life so easily, there would be chaos, surely…we have responsibilities.
My responsibility now was to say, No, I cannot help you.
She smiled, bent to pick up her bag.—I’ll wait, then. She got up and left gracefully, and would probably make an appointment with someone else, who would promise her a new life with six more inches of height, soft brown hair, and a Roman nose. Or perhaps she was merely exploring the option. And hopefully her life would improve, baggage and all.
She had to know that the law has a say in the decision. We need some stability in our society. Some ties. Or everyone will dash off into the future in the hope of greener pastures and there will be no one left.
SEVEN
—DR SINA, PRESLEY IS OURS.
The voice on the speaker was female and edged, finished like steel. A controlled imperiousness; one’s first instinct is to obey. The call was from DIS, the Department of Internal Security, and the video screen showed an elaborate moving pattern of coloured curving lines that, intriguingly, never crossed. They could have put up a woman’s face to match the voice, but this was DIS, they didn’t need such lowbrow tricks.
—I don’t understand. You mean—
—You know what I am saying, Doctor. We made him. We wrote him and published him and he’s ours. You have been attempting to access his files. You must desist.
—And I’m speaking to?
—Dauda. The Publications Bureau.
A fictitious name, of course.
Just to needle her, having recovered my composure, I asked:
—And why should I desist, Dauda? He’s my patient and a free man. And I can’t cure his condition if I don’t know his history.
Out poured the steel:
—You have no choice, Doctor. And in case he has not informed you, he will be treated by DIS from now on. Need I remind you of the obvious, I speak from the highest authority. Presley Smith will be informed to report to us immediately. And he will notify you that he no longer needs your services.
As he had, already. Presley Smith was theirs, and I felt I’d been toyed with. His past was not an ordinary and innocent one like yours or mine, but a state secret. He was theirs; the affable working-class fellow who had sat on that chair across from me. They had supplied him his name and history, but first they had processed him and rendered him safe. What was he before? Maybe I was not as shocked as I thought. But then again perhaps I was, if only for not reading my client for what he might be. Presley had been an enigma from the first. His physical presence had all the appearance of a deliberate jest: the Everyman with variegated features. His equally cubistic Profile was not one a normal person would choose for himself.
The realization hit me like a blow: Presley Smith was a creation of Author X! The mysterious entity at DIS’s Publications Bureau, its resident genius.
The anonymous author of uniquely bizarre creations—human characters blithely walking among you and who in their very existence, and unbeknownst to themselves, seem to be shouting a message to the world; and yet the message itself often eludes. It’s as if you know a joke’s been made but don’t quite get it. But there is one signature this author leaves, where he deliberately, a conceited god, gives himself away—the sophisticated, cunning allusions that don’t sound quite right. How did I not recognize the clues, now so obvious, in Presley’s variegated features and his variegated Profile? Wagner and Touré? Conrad? But Presley had quickly beguiled me onto the track of the lion…and naïvely I had followed. I must be losing my touch, I chided myself. It was a matter of professional pride, after all. I felt—I guess—like a mathematician who’s very obviously blundered, missed the solution which had been staring him right in the face.
DIS publishes—to use the Department’s own terminology—new and harmless versions of formerly high-security personalities. Refugees from beyond the Border, who’ve climbed walls and walked through electromagnetic fields and swum under electrified water to share in the privileges of our civilized world; captured suspected terrorists and prisoners of war, physically mended after lengthy processing. All these are let loose into our streets as healthy, useful citizens from Peoria or Austin or Corner Brook. Five exiled foreign leaders acquired the faces of Mount Rushmore, in one obvious Author X production. Who was Presley Smith previously, and from where? And why the threatening call from that stick of steel called Dauda? My inquiries into Presley Smith, medical record and Profile, had been flagged. I did not need to be told to desist. I was being warned simply to go away.
And how much did DIS know of Presley’s present condition—the worm of memory stealthily burrowing itself out into his consciousness?
DIS knows everything. They even know, surely, who I was previously.
—
Both my parents, like Presley’s, were teachers, having moved to the Yukon from Ontario. My mother’s origins were Irish, my father’s American—exactly where, I cannot tell. There were four of us children in the house—I had a little brother and there were two sisters in between. It was a close, old-fashioned—almost storybook—family, modest in means, but with a thrifty lifestyle there was always enough to live on. My memories are entirely happy or wistful. Every day, dinner was family time, with squabbles and jokes and discussions of important topics, one child having announced the day’s major news headlines for the rest of us. Of all this happy family, it was my mother, Rose, with whom I interacted the most. She had a long pale face, brown eyes, and hair that came down in a single plait; she liked to go about in long skirts. Her specialty was geography, though she was a poet. We often went on walks together, when she taught me to name the plants and recognize bird calls and plumages, and even tell changes in air pressure.
—There is so much the earth can tell us, she would say.—It longs to talk to us. We humans have simply forgotten to listen to it. There is so much wasteland we’ve created, so much abstraction, do you understand me, Frank?
I would nod anxiously. It was that world of steel and concrete, of immoveable geometry that she had escaped from, wit
h my father. As we strolled on some unpaved road or path, surrounded by a wilderness of trees and bushes, sometimes she would recite poetry, in a simply modulated voice. I could tell even then that it was the words and music that were important to her, she did not seek messages. She worshipped William Butler Yeats and T. S. Eliot. Let us go then you and I, she would tell me, taking my arm with a warm smile, and we would head out. Often I couldn’t understand the meaning of what she recited, but the words were magical. She had a clear but soft voice. One evening, it was nearing midnight and still light, we came upon a black bear. Mother believed we should walk past it, there was nothing to fear, but she sensed my terror as I clutched at her arm, and so we waited for the bear to pass. Another one followed. Later she showed me the red bruise on her arm where my fingers had dug in.
Of a similar temperament but far different from her in his passions was my father, John Vanagas, who taught math and whose hobby was astronomy. I recall his face with its full white beard. He was stocky in build. Every night, summer or winter, with rare exceptions, he would go up to the attic where he housed his 20-inch telescope and from a specially constructed window watch the same region of the sky, which he had made his own, following it in precise detail. With time, he said, he would discover evidence for the centre of the universe. Meanwhile he had plotted the trajectories of a number of distant planets, one of which was named after him. He showed it to us. Disappointingly, it was only a point. He was reserved in his affections, but I recall fondly how, from the time I was six or so, we would spar with each other—he setting a mathematical challenge for me, I making one up for him in return. Those were our intimate moments. My problems became more difficult as the years passed, his easier for me to solve; finally, having progressed from simple arithmetic to algebraic equations, when one day at the age of fifteen I solved the Ramanujan problem he’d set for me, and I gave him one on a cubic equation he couldn’t solve, we stopped. There was a sad look in his eyes then. Frank, you’ve finally beaten me, he said.
Two oddballs then, my parents, misfits who had escaped the bustle of Toronto, one to watch the stars and immerse himself in algebra, the other to listen to the earth and write poetry.