Nostalgia

by M G Vassanji

  —How could you understand? she asked once, in that expressive, pleading way she has with that voice, that long face.

  —I can try, I said tenderly.—I do, I added hastily, because at that moment I was sure I did understand her sadness, and I held her close to me.

  Can the soul (or the heart) be transmitted across generations? I have often asked myself this. Soul not in any religious sense, of course. And heart not the anatomical pump. The transmission of personality traits or sensibilities such as the artistic is a subject of great interest to me. It is of course of importance to our project of extending human life while keeping our minds supple, our culture continuous and exciting. Surely intellectual alertness such as mine justifies living? There are many answers to this question, not all of them affirmative.

  When I released her from my embrace, she looked up and said to me,—When my turn comes, I won’t choose to pass on. I’ll simply die—become part of the earth and the air.

  An old-fashioned idea that my mother would have approved of.

  I told her just that, adding,—And when the time comes, you might think differently.

  —I think not.

  The certainty of the young. But what do I know about being young? Only by hearsay and through memory; but can I trust that fiction?

  —I would like to have a child, she said, eyes lighting up.—Let’s have a child, or two. And I won’t abandon them, I’ll grow old and die for them. I’ll give them security and a home!

  She was nodding her head and her eyes were gleaming with excitement. She grabbed my arm. Was I up to the challenge!

  —Yes, let’s have children, I replied, dizzy with emotion, my voice cracking. She wanted me to be the father of her child!

  Of course there was no question of subjecting her body to pregnancy. We went to a birthing clinic and I was told my body was inadequate. Come back in ten, maybe seven years, by then the technology will have advanced for older (sorry) GNs. And so that hope of a deeper relationship, that continuity that children would have brought, disappeared. I would have stayed with her as long as she needed me, and been ready to call it a day for the sake of her and her children.

  When I got home, she was out. Gone to the club with my friend, said her message. Food in the cooler. Love. Whenever she used that phrase, my friend, I knew better than to ask, or to imagine. And Love, yes, the painful kind. Mine, guaranteed, hers begging indulgence. But I was too tired to be bothered today. I asked Roboserve to bring me a scotch and a cheese sandwich.

  There’s much to be said for the solace of the study. It’s where the mind comes into its own, an entity in itself, an independent creature on its own. Cogito, ergo sum, and no need to be needed.

  TWELVE

  IT WAS NOT SURPRISING—THOUGH OMINOUS nevertheless—to find that Presley’s Profile was frozen. No movement, no response, only a still, flat page staring back. This is what happens to their electronic existence when people die or disappear. They leave a residue for a short time before it blinks out. Had he been found? Would I see him again? What would happen to him? I stared at the photo of the man in army camouflage, taken at the combat park, where he played at hunting barbarians with fellow enthusiasts.

  What personality, what habits, what history of a more credible self lay obscured behind that chimera? DIS knew, it must have that buried personality on file. And it wanted him to remain there.

  But whoever he was, he refused to stay buried, he was beginning to break out.

  —

  Holly’s Profile was a contrast and very much alive. It had transformed. The starving, doleful mother with child, the Profile’s signature image previously, had been replaced by a landscape. The caption underneath said boldly, THIS WAS MASKINIA. The scene was a countryside, green and hilly, with an unpaved straight road of red earth, on which stood a truck. The open back was heaped with bananas or plantains. Three women stood chatting beside it, wearing bright wraparounds; a shirtless man stood on the back of the truck. A cheerful, distant past, when food was plentiful and healthy. What was going on with the Profile, and who could possibly have taken it over? To what end? If anything, it should have been frozen or disappeared.

  The banner Donate! had disappeared. But OWEO, One World for Every One! was still there.

  Holly’s message centre was thick with opinions and suggestions, sympathy and grief, hatred and vilification. Holly, we miss you! Kill the savages!—only then OWEO! Turn them to ashes—remember Hiroshima? Is this the side of us we Earthlings want to expose when we make first contact? A dissenter: If we didn’t confine them behind bars, in a manner of speaking, they would not take it out this way. Abuse.

  I searched for “Pres” among the senders and came up with his previous expression of gratitude to Holly and then my own desperate message to him. There was no reply. It took me a while longer before, hopeless and ready to switch off, I came across this: Come meet me at Lovelys Café Yonge and Eg. 10. Leon.

  How obvious, and crafty of Presley. Surely “Pres” would ring bells, and I could have kicked myself for not having thought of a pseudonym myself.

  I dared not linger on the page. Before Tom could approach me, I went away.

  —

  The Notebook

  #47

  The Journalist

  When they’d stripped her naked she was left in a dark and dank corner of the room, shivering from the chill, crying, terrified. Utterly humiliated. Discards of all manner all around her. The floor broken. Lizards, spiders, flying cockroaches. The heat and the smell. All her confidence, her cheerful composure, her good intentions in the dust. What would happen to her? They would hand her over to the men, who would rape her and keep her as a sex slave and a breeder. They’d kill her. To end your life like that—so abruptly, so shamefully. She’d never see Toronto again, she sobbed, all that familiarity she had taken for granted, her comfortable home base to which she could always return and feel unthreatened. She knew many people there, but her intimacy was with the city itself, not anyone she knew. How safe and civilized it was. She was in hell now, and what crime had she committed? Naïveté…that was her crime, she whispered to herself, sheer naïveté…and arrogance…Stupidity. Grinding her teeth, she reminded herself of her dentist’s admonition not to, she could lose them. She must preserve herself. She dozed off, and was woken roughly with a shove and made to stand up. The two women, one of them holding an oil lamp, examined her, touched her front to back, her hair, her breasts, her backside. Everything. She was then given soap and water to wash in the backyard, and afterwards, still outside, they helped her into an oversize tan-coloured robe of a rough cotton. There was a pale blue vertical stripe running along it, and she thought to herself, what a lovely detail. It was late afternoon. As she stood there in the yard, looking at herself in the robe and feeling some relief and hope, the younger of the two women stroked her hair, pulled her closer, and kissed her on the mouth. Holly recoiled, then unconsciously yielded to the wet tenderness, the sweet taste, the thick Oriental perfume. The woman was tall and slender, with deep brown eyes in an oval face and braided hair. She also wore a loose robe. The older woman was large and big-hipped, in a long dress. The three women ate together, coarse rice, spinach, and kidney beans from a large round tray. Outside the compound, fenced in by a long thatch, came the sounds of men shouting, and an automobile grinding and groaning its angry way over the potholed road. A brief quick thumping of boots on the ground, from a few armed men marching past. An assorted gang of children shouting in a chorus, running along together and perhaps following the men. When the three women had eaten and washed their hands and mouths, they sat back and relaxed and chewed a weed. The two local women chatted, their voices guttural and animated, and as Holly watched them, amused by their frank expressions, she did not feel threatened by them. At length the older woman said something to Holly, and the younger woman translated,—Come, the chief wants to meet you. They gave her army-style fatigues to put on but no underwear. She put on her boots, which mercifully the wom
en had preserved. They all laughed.

  THIRTEEN

  THE SUN WAS COOL BUT BLINDING, a blustery wind blew eddies of dust on the street, the odd leaf trailing along listlessly as I emerged from the transit station. Yonge and Eglinton Square was jammed with people, throngs holding up car traffic at the crossroads. A sign high over the square flashed an ad for exclusive adventure trips to Mars and our Moon, followed immediately by another one enticing the passerby with virgin beaches inside the Long Border, with the caption, The Great Long Beach. A tower wall-screen showed news from around the world, as it happened, while a moving strip across it listed the various important indices of our collective well-being. The stock markets had taken a turn up, happiness was pink. Back on earth, in one smoky corner of the farmer’s market sausages sizzled on the grill, and in the open-air restaurant next to it customers sat in a heated outdoors oblivious of the blistering cold surrounding them. I reminded myself to take some Quebec cheese home as I protected my face from the blowing dust and began to cross the square towards Lovelys Café. The pavement outside was a scene of commotion and for a moment I hesitated. A sign held up over the crowd shouted, Die, your time is past! Yonge and Eglinton always draws the protesters.

  It’s not only the young, the BabyGens, who want us oldies out of the picture so they can finally inherit the earth. It’s also, for completely different reasons, the religious groups who oppose life rejuvenation. Fortunately these pro-deathers, as they call themselves, are fewer in number, though they tend to be dramatic and colourful.

  Rejuve, to the monotheists, goes against the wishes of the Almighty God who planned and created the universe just so, arranging a fixed span of life for each soul therein, at the end of which He shall sit in judgment over it. God gives life and takes it away. There is an afterlife, with a heaven and a hell. You have no right dodging His archangel of death to avoid your reckoning. He’ll get you anyway. The contradictions in this position are obvious to us nonbelievers. Whether they believe that judgment comes to each soul individually and immediately after death, or there is a collective Judgment Day at the end of all life, the unspoken fear of the God-believers is that with rejuvenation the reckoning gets postponed—in principle, forever. And that won’t do for the Almighty. Meanwhile some of His believers show no qualms in doing the archangel’s work for him.

  For the Hindus and Buddhists, rejuvenation interferes with karma and the cycle of rebirths. Imitating rebirth, constructing new lives at a whim, makes a mockery of karma and the universal law of Vishnu, Brahma, and Shiva. Why prolong life artificially when you will be reborn anyway, continuously, until by your own karma that cycle is finally broken and the self finds bliss? The purpose of life is to terminate the cycle, not prolong it.

  I reached the famous display window on Yonge Street occupied by four assorted dissenters in their ongoing protest against, as they saw it, the crude scientism and life-engineering of our terrible modern Age of Kali. For more than two years these self-exhibitionists had threatened to end their lives by publicly going up in flames in this window. Did they expect the world to change then? Technology to take a step back? Human knowledge to obliterate a portion of itself? But graciously they had declared that they would not interfere with the eternal cycle—the dance of Shiva and the repose of Brahma. They would kindle themselves only at their predestined, allotted times, which—here was the catch—would be revealed to each of them privately during their meditations. Meanwhile the suspense had been mounting, the days were counted, and they were a public attraction. Three of them were of Indian origin—two bald men in saffron robes and a woman with long, loose hair in a white sari, seated silently on the floor in elegant yoga postures, beatific smiles on their smooth faces and broad white marks twitching like worms on their foreheads; the fourth one was a tall Japanese-featured man with short cropped hair wearing a white cotton kurta-shirt and pants, and he was standing, head lifted up and staring far away. His hands were joined in front of him in a pranam. Sanskrit chanting and a sonorous droning made up the soundtrack to this scene. The four had already been arrested once, then released, for obviously they had committed no crime. On the sidewalk outside the window were gathered their noisy supporters, wearing saffron or white, handing out flyers, chanting and beating on tambourines. It all looked jolly but was not a place for me to linger.

  At Lovelys a few stores up, as I stepped inside the doorway, in the corner to the right I spied Presley Smith, seated back on a brown armchair, reading, his rust-red Afro prominent as a beacon in the crowded room. The armchair across from him was empty and apparently reserved for me, and having brought my order from the counter, I sank into it.

  —Hello, Presley.

  He looked up.—So you came, Doc.

  —Of course.

  We sipped our drinks in silence awhile, my own coffee appropriately fortified for my generation, his, I don’t know. I wondered what he was thinking as he looked away from me. The place was fairly full and noisy, customers wandered around searching for seats. Did he know the Department wanted him back—had recalled him? That would explain his elusive behaviour—the coded reply to my message, this anonymous, crowded meeting place in the city. He was afraid.

  —Where have you been, Pres? We tried reaching you from the clinic. Did you get our message?

  He turned towards me and smiled dimly.—Well, here I am, Doc. What can I do for you?

  No longer the patient speaking to his doctor. No warmth or show of appreciation at my concern. Yet he had responded to my message, asked me to meet him. He needed me.

  —Yes. How are you?

  That sounded lame, and I began again:—I mean, how have you coped, Pres, with your condition?

  —I’m coping.

  —Good. I received a call from DIS.

  He raised his eyebrows, then said drily,—The Department of Internal Security.

  —Yes. The Department. Have they been in touch?

  —Why would they…

  In the ensuing silence while his glance shifted around the room, I imagined his mind working, debating how much to trust me. Finally he turned back to me.

  —And what did they want?

  We’d been speaking in lowered voices so as not to be overheard. Now I leaned forward and asked,—Listen, Pres, have you known that you are a DIS client? That—

  —I didn’t before, but now I’m not surprised…

  He became thoughtful, then repeated,—What did they want?

  —They say they are responsible for you, and they insist that they are the ones to cure your problem, which can get serious. It’s nobody else’s business, definitely not mine. It’s they who gave you your fiction. I am to tell you that, if I see you.

  —Do you believe it can get serious?

  —Very much so. But I’ve advised you of that before.

  A thought leads to others, begins a chain reaction until the mind cannot control that other life surging in from the past. The result is an angry storm of mental activity, a total breakdown. I had once seen such a sufferer in a professional demonstration. The patient was raving, shouting all kinds of nonsense. The condition has been called possession, and has been likened to the superstition of possession by a malicious bodyless entity, a spirit.

  —And how did DIS know about my problem?

  —We registered your data, updated your medical file, and so on. That must have raised a flag. You are their man. But it’s also possible…

  —Yes?

  —I suspect that they always have an eye on their clients.

  What a word, clients.

  He nodded slowly.—I carry a dark secret, then, do I? What am I then really—some schoolyard shooter? A sexual predator? A terrorist?

  I said nothing, and he too turned silent, drawing a deep breath as he sat up and looked around him. When at length he began to speak, his hardness had melted a little.

  —I’ll be honest with you. When I left your clinic, I had a feeling I was being watched…I felt nervous, actually…and later that morning
when I reached my work I received a message from something called Abdo Clinic asking me to go see them urgently. I checked—Abdo is run by DIS. I knew I had to hide—don’t ask me why. Call it instinct. I decided to move in with a friend…I’m sure the neighbours will look after Oscar. My cat.

  We watched as two female supporters of the pro-death group took their teas and cakes and sat down a few tables away. Both had fresh, healthy faces, hair tightly pulled back into thick ponytails. They both wore saris.

  Presley asked,—You think I should go to them?

  —I think you should.

  —Why?

  —They know you, they are better able to cure you. And besides, they won’t let anyone else touch you.

  —They could turn me into someone else—again.

  There was nothing to say to that. He was right, of course. If he returned to them they would no doubt toy with his memory. He would be back in the hands of the diabolical X, and there was no saying what that mind would dream up to revise Presley Smith. A new edition. But did it matter if he didn’t remember his old self? No, but some people remain attached to who they are, they don’t want to leave voluntarily.

  I imagined that Presley would choose to remain unavailable.

  —Tell me, Doc—he said and smiled, finally.—Why did you get in touch with me the way you did? Rather secretive, wasn’t it? Do you usually care about your patients this much?

  —I like to think so. I called you, no answer. Naturally I was concerned, knowing your condition. I felt responsible— you had come to see me first…The manner in which I contacted you? Pure luck…