Nostalgia

by M G Vassanji

  I recall clearly the day I left for university in Edmonton. My mother was overwrought, my father silent. Both knew that from here on life would take me to many places, and we would meet only on rare occasions. The evening before my departure, the three of us sat down for a drink. We chatted late into the night, talking of my life, of their lives; it was their way of giving something just a bit more to take with me. What distant planet, eclipsing some star, I sometimes wonder, had Dad left behind on his telescope lens to spend this important evening with his eldest child?

  A very special childhood, very dear to me, and poignant, but it is fake—my fiction. There must be components of real memory in this narrative, themes that were preserved from my previous life, others that were invented exclusively for this one. My previous data of course was destroyed. There’s a thriving industry promising to connect people to their real origins. People end up unhappy with their current lives, and some even desire to go back to what they are told they were. But I loved the happy childhood of my memory. Recalling it was like reading a portion of some classic novel. From that idyllic foundation of my current GN life I have looked ahead, and achieved my successes in my own quiet way. I have served society. I’ve been praised for my observations about human memory and my honest manner with my patients.

  But now this famous equanimity had been shaken, by a patient called Presley Smith.

  —

  A warm breeze ran rippling down the river, carrying with it a lazy shimmer reflecting the waning gold of the sunlight; meanwhile the slanting rays streaming in from the west had coloured the trees near and distant in the effulgent shades of fall. In the winter it would be the mist and the scatter of evening lights from the homes across the river, refracted through the bare branches. That too was beautiful. Who needed other worlds?

  But as I walked back home on the paved pathway, the Sunflower Centre behind me, that trained voice continued to follow and pester. Presley is ours. But he’s mine too, Dauda, because he’s left something in my head.

  The lion out at midnight. The fender of a car. A baby’s face in the rain…The car was red in colour, Presley said; blood-red to be precise, and gleaming, with a silver trim. Why did I want to extrapolate, supply the extra details? Had I done this before? I went even further in my imagining: it was a large-model antique car, high off the ground. The baby was chubby but the features were hard to discern through the rain. Was it day or night? Where was it, in any case, and when? And the lion was invisible, I could not picture it, try as I would.

  How can the thoughts of two very different characters come together? One, an eminent neurophysician of a conservative bent with clothes and coiffure to match, another a part-time security guard with red Afro hair whose hobby ran to combat games and whose taste in fashion ran to loud yellow socks. We made him…The phantasmic Dauda’s words echoed in me with a shudder. How exactly did you make him, Dauda?…and published him. What did you destroy to create this gaudy Everyman you called Presley? Having made him, do you own him in perpetuity? What are you afraid of? And what am I afraid of?

  I wished there was someone to talk to. The problem with longevity is loneliness—no family, no old buddies outside of the fake memory. All past relationships terminated, cast aside like discarded tissue to form a new you. And when you need to talk to Mom or Dad, an old friend or teacher, they are like characters on a screen, real but not quite graspable. So here I was walking by the riverside, brushing shoulders with mostly young people, with these thoughts running in my mind that I could not abandon, worrying about a patient whom I had been warned not to treat or even see anymore. There was no one to turn to. No one to tell me, Don’t worry, Frank, it’s nothing, go about your business, live on the surface and enjoy your privileges. But it was not nothing. This patient was inside me and it was the DIS I was contending with.

  I stopped at a flower vendor on the way and picked up a long-stalk Saigon rose—red; Joanie was going to be home tonight.

  EIGHT

  JOHN COLTRANE RIFFING ON SAX welcomed me home, and Joanie handed me a glass of iced vodka as soon as I walked into the kitchen. Jazz never went out of fashion, though this pristine form by the old master was very obviously for my benefit. I paused a step: it always took the breath away, the sound of applause reaching out from a New York club decades ago. Joanie took the rose from my hand and gave me a smile and a kiss. What could possibly ail me?

  —How was your day? she asked. She had changed from her all-black outfit of the Bay Harrods where she worked into a house gown after a shower. She smelled nice.

  —The usual. Clients seeking new lives.

  —Won’t be long before there are more of these superannuated geriatrics than us BabyGens.

  —You may be right.

  There was no point in getting trapped in that argument. Progress, and so on. There was no winning. She did tend to forget—or did she?—at such moments that I too was one of the superannuated. But I added for her benefit,

  —Actually today it was a young woman—with unwanted baggage, as she put it. Can’t say more. What shall we eat?

  She looked at me with a smile.—Order in, go into the city, or do you fancy the same old, same old?

  —Why not the club? Same old, but consistent and good. It’s been a while since we went.

  I was aware that by my preference for the familiar and the tested I was simply confirming my generation. It didn’t matter. We both got dressed for the evening.

  The Brick Club is a stern-looking granite and glass block, relieved by ivy creeping up the walls and pleasingly set amidst lush greenery sloping down to the river behind it. A refuge for the well-off and influential, its exclusivity is as famous as its bar. Membership is to show off. There are few young members, because the young cannot generally afford it, and they are also in other ways discreetly kept away; they end up at the high-rise Habitat Centre down the road, distinctly more lively though clunky in appearance. At the Brick the pace is slow, and there’s an informality that puts you at ease. The menu is largely immutable.

  The six tennis courts were all busy as we arrived, the white lines on the blue rectangles a glimpse of Euclid under the spotlights, the balls like dancing bubbles waiting to be hit, the rackets pinging softly into the night. Having left our car with the attendants, we chose to avoid the upstairs dining room and headed to the café at ground level, where it’s always noisy with witty rendezvous chatter, people sitting around the low tables with their food and drinks. Here you might see a former cabinet minister or senator, or a retired CEO who prefers the ease and anonymity to unctuous, liveried deference. You will not find actors, sportspeople, or the media. Joanie calls it the geriatric club, but she likes it, it has class, she says.

  We ordered chicken tikka, naan, and beer. Over coffee we were joined by Rubin and Gul, neighbours, he a physicist at the U of T, she an executive at a pharmaceutical corporation that supplied our drugs at the Sunflower. It was she who recommended me for club membership. At a nearby table, a politician held forth on the South Asia Alliance, explaining how a cricket tournament in progress there threatened to alter the local balance of power, which would be good for us. At another table, someone mentioned the reporter Holly Chu, but I missed the substance. Rubin confided in a surreptitious tone to our table that it was possible that another universe might be discovered soon, not in the skies but through an experiment here on earth. I told him that sounded logically impossible, for as soon as you made a connection you were in the same universe. He attempted to explain, but no one understood him.

  —The news is sure to hit the headlines, he declared, glancing around, unwilling to give up the floor.

  —Oh, I doubt it, Gul cut in sharply, immediately segueing into a favourite topic:—What’s this media obsession with Region 6, can anyone tell me? Haven’t we enough problems here? Let them go and report on Walnut Street for once, for heaven’s sake—it’s as bad there!

  Gul, we all knew, was obsessed with the idea of charity beginning at home. I confes
sed to my own obsession with the region that is collectively referred to as Region 6, which includes Maskinia.

  —Oh Frank, come out of your fictions, she said and we laughed, though I didn’t miss her quick glance towards Joanie. We repaired to the bar, the two of us, and emerged an hour later, holding hands, sufficiently glazed, having convinced ourselves that Rubin and Gul couldn’t last long together, they existed in separate universes that did not connect, and she was far too abrasive. Nothing was wrong with us and it had been a good night overall.

  Back home, plumped on the sofa, we found ourselves in the audience section of a talk show in the midst of a joke about a politician who tripped her husband while alighting from a plane. The next thing I knew I’d jolted myself awake; the tube was off and the room was dark. Joanie had gone off to bed.

  Making myself a cup of tea in the kitchen I spiked it with Shango’s hangover helper, sipped it slowly, felt the sweet bitter infusion clear the brain like a breeze does a fog. Minutes later, refreshed, I padded over to my study, sat down at the Tom interface, opened Presley’s Profile. I stared hard at his pictures. The small head, the puffed cheeks, the Afro hair. Presley is ours…Yes he’s yours, Dauda. This mild-mannered unlikely man who plays at hunting barbarians—presumably stand-ins for the terrorists of Maskinia; who claims to love both the African Touré and the German Wagner but not his American namesake; for whom the Indian monkey-god Hanuman is a hero. There’s no mistaking he’s yours.

  I was desperate to send Presley a message: What’s going on, do you need me? I dared not, and turned him off. And I knew I dared not call him. Presley was forbidden territory to me.

  The familiar green glow in the room.

  TOM: Hello, Frank. Another sleepless night, I see. How can I help you?

  FRANK: Hi, Tom. Actually I’m not sure you can help me. Just going over some patient files.

  TOM: Stuck, are we, on this same character Presley Smith?

  FRANK: He’s just one of them. I try to know my patients thoroughly. But here’s something—What do you make of these sentence fragments—

  A little warily I recited Presley’s three thought fragments, then mine, without telling him that they belonged to two different people.

  TOM: Can you tell me more about these fragments, Frank? Where are they from?

  Had Tom’s voice softened? Was he getting nosy?

  FRANK: No, for now just tell me, what do you make of them? What do they say to you? Give me some narratives that connect them, Tom.

  Tom came up with an endless list of scenarios using those fragments, and I gave up.

  FRANK: Okay. Thanks. Bye, Tom.

  TOM: If you tell me a little more about where they come from, Frank, I could narrow the number of narratives by a factor of ten or even a hundred.

  FRANK: Bye, Tom.

  At this stage, I had begun to suspect, I could have narrowed down the number of possible narratives even further than Tom could. Intuition is one thing a human has that an electronic mind doesn’t. A feeling in the gut. Or does the Cyliton have even that capacity nowadays?

  NINE

  OVER THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED, chaotic Maskinia continued to grab the headlines. Holly Chu’s abduction was shown constantly on the tube, the background roll to any discussion of Over There and Over Here. The now standard depiction of the gruesome scene had been cut in such a way that the dark space into which the girl was pulled while walking on that slum street was projected starkly in front of you, a pitch-blackness in your room inside which gleaming eyeballs and grinning white teeth flitted and floated about. It could have been comical, but for that short, chilling scream, the meaning of which you were only too aware. You were warned, of course, of the scene’s disturbing content, which was why many of us returned to watch it in the first place. To be shocked and to wonder, yet once again: Can this truly happen? And there she is, our Holly, snatched away before our own eyes, what are we going to do about it? Who are those people who do this kind of thing? Who are these cannibals?

  Of course Holly Chu was also now entertainment, tonic for media ratings, bait for pundits to come and dissimulate. Consider this:

  As I sit watching, the scene before me fades out and the brightly lit set of The Daily Goode appears. And there stands the mauveine-haired Bill Goode with doughy white face and trademark strip of a grin. He’s wearing a green blazer over a red golf shirt; on his lapel is pinned a small yellow ribbon under a white flower. The background music is as always cheerfully suspenseful, following the rise and fall of the applause. As the sound subsides, the host announces,

  —Folks. Today’s subject is simple: Why? Now don’t ask me—

  He turns on his mischievous grin, and the audience—those shown in the mock studio, at least—cracks up. We’re all encouraged to join in.

  —Consider this—he begins,—and don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating…

  As we know he has a way with his hands—he holds them down at the sides, palms out; he points a finger at you; he joins both palms together in front of him; he pulls them back over his shoulders in a mock gesture of something and then turns and performs a golf swing.

  —I’m dead serious. We want to understand why this kind of incident—the one you just saw to remind you—has to happen—how it can happen in this day and age—and we have a guest today to help us understand. Folks, let’s welcome Peter Crawford, psychologist!

  The audience applauds as Bill steps forward, extending a handshake, then with a warm gesture guides the guest to the chair next to the host table.

  Peter Crawford is the author of the recent book Between Here and There: Are We Still on the Road? Short and thickset, sporting tinted retro glasses, he too wears a yellow ribbon on his lapel and there’s a twinkling smile on his smooth, flushed face.

  —Thank you, Bill, he says in a somewhat high-pitched voice and looks around.—It’s really nice to be here. Thank you for having me.

  Bill replies graciously,—It’s nice to have you here to share your insights with us, Pete. Thank you for coming. Now, shall I begin by asking—

  —Please do.

  —You’ve seen that tableau we just showed, I dare say.

  —Yes, I have—half a dozen times at least!

  —Yes—lest we forget! Consider this, Peter Crawford. Over There, in Barbaria, if I may so call that foul region, they eat people. Here we fear proximity—no, wait a minute, don’t we go about shielded by clouds of protective vapour, and creams and sheaths and gloves…we don’t actually even touch each other. Is this the price or gain of civilization? We shoot from far, clinically, they hack at each other until the blood spurts out and hits them in the eye…ugh.

  Peter Crawford, smiling knowledgeably, replies,—There’s something to be said for civilization and order, and a sense of privacy and decorum. Surely we are happy not to be going around leaving foul fumes in our wake.

  There is laughter, and Bill Goode takes a comical sniff at both his jacket sleeves before holding up his hand to silence the audience.—Okay, right—no foul fumes in our wake, but is there a danger we lose our perspective—our moral bearing if we don’t—

  —See the blood squirting out.

  Laughter. It appears that Peter, a veteran of such shows, has stolen the thunder from Bill, who waits with a smile before continuing.

  —Yes. Very droll, Pete—and I thought I was the comedian! But my point is this, Peter: we have moved away, as we agree, yet we are still so intimately connected to that savage disorder that rules over a good portion of the habitable earth. Explain that connection.

  Bill Goode stands back and waits in the manner of having thrown out a challenge. Peter Crawford takes it on.

  —Well, simply put, it is the yang to our yin. The id to our ego. The dark side of the same moon.

  —It is the source of our raw materials, you mean; and even though we can replicate climatic conditions at will almost, we still feel the need to visit there for the real experience, though at considerable risk. And we let a few of the
Barbarians leak in through the Border every year, because we have to replenish our populations and gene balances and immune systems. And we need their organs. Is that what you mean by yin and yang, Peter?

  Peter smiles broadly.—That’s a mouthful, Bill. But yes, that’s what I mean if you allow for the fact that we also give. We send assistance there, tons of; and to those who come here we give a better life, longevity—immortality, or the possibility of. They need us as much as we need them.

  —And so we are stuck with this uneasy relationship.

  —I’m afraid so. Some of us may wish to emigrate into exclusive space suburbs. But those of us who stay on this earth, and that’s most of us, can’t live in isolation from other populations. We can look away and smile in the sunshine, but they are there, Maskinia exists and festers, and once in a while an incident like this one happens.

  And so one more discussion recedes into the white noise of background chatter. The anchors and their experts must be aware that by going on so much about an issue, squeezing every novelty out of it, they leave it dead to the public’s sympathies. It’s just another horror, far away, about which most of us can do nothing, though governments will try. But Holly Chu’s fate somehow had done the trick on me; that scene playing out was not just another horror. It was the horror.

  —

  Long ago as a college student I did make my little visit there, behind the Border—to a corner of that region that’s not even a continuous stretch. (Why do we even call it the Long Border? Someone from Homeland with a topological mind thought it up, perhaps, seeing connections that escape the rest of us.) It was trendy to visit there, to complete your education, become aware of the less fortunate places of the world and at the same time be with friends on a holiday. It was spring break, and we had opted to miss March Madness that year and gone instead for fun at a tropical beach resort. The scenery was idyllic—the sea blue and the beach unspoilt, the flora unbelievably wild and proliferant, the sun wondrously harsh. We were of course inside a protected tourist colony, our food and drinks were flown in, and as precaution we had to wear radiation counters on our wrists, though they always indicated that we were “safe.” There were guided walking tours of the area and cultural programs in the evening in which we gamely participated with the locals, notwithstanding that our wits were often dulled by alcohol and drugs and our sensitivities by the immaturity of the young and privileged.