by Tobias Hill
It makes me more human, the not-forgetting. I have complex emotions. I am not sure if I have had a happy life. I have always been alone, except for Mercedes. With Mercedes I was part of something. Since then I have been a witness. My eyes are camcorders. My head is a cenotaph.
*
The room is two floors above the fish bar. The light is a fused gunpowder-blue through the blinds. I put down my suitcase. The bed has metal springs and a thin mattress. I sit on the bed and look around.
There are pictures taped to the ceiling, pages torn from fashion magazines by a previous occupant of the room. Most of them show women in underwear, Sellotape yellowing across their heads and feet. In the half-light, one of the women looks like Mercedes. She is wearing a velvet beret, pinned to her mane of hair. The photograph is turning green with exposure.
I pull the picture down. There is a topaz hat-pin in the beret. The topaz is shaped like a thistle-flower. I smell the photo. The hat-pin carries the odour of encrusted silver-polish.
When I close my eyes to blink, my memory unlids itself: 1982, an auction room, page seven of the catalogue. The hat-pin is made by the Englishman Charles Horner. It is more than a century old, one in a batch of fifteen. The catalogue page is stained with shadow and a sheen of light from high windows. Outside a starling sings like a traffic-light.
All in the blink of an eye. It means nothing to me, this memory. I lie back with my eyes open, unblinking. This way the recollections are less exhausting. After a few minutes my eyes begin to water.
I lie still and wait for the night shift.
‘Like dough.’ I am talking to myself in the bare, empty room. Often I do this, to keep myself company. Few people have the capacity to talk with me as equals.
There is a freezer cabinet against the far wall. The heat of the long afternoon makes it hum, and there is a smell of half-defrosted fish like wet, sweet dough. I close my eyes and breathe in the smell, feel it. After some time I begin to sleep.
Memory interests me. My father worked half his life at the docks in Salvador, loading up oranges, unloading telephones. After a while he couldn’t remember what he had begun to put on the ships or take off. It was Alzheimer’s disease. By the end he could not remember how to eat an orange. I watched him try. His body still went on moving like my father. Fixed in its ruts. I watched him to see what was left, with memory gone. I stayed with him until I was quite certain.
There are only so many ways a foot or head can be deformed. There are limits. Memory is different. Deformity is normal. After my father died I kept case-notes in my head. In Buenos Aires there was a woman who could not remember tastes. In Russia there was a documented case of mnemonism, like my own. Close to Salvador, near where we lived, there was a girl who was born without memory. My mother told me that. I didn’t think it was possible.
The daughter of a respectable whorehouse manager, she said. He treats her like she might shit gold. I didn’t believe her until I met Mercedes in her father’s kitchens, seven years later.
We ran away together, like lovers. Then in Rio we became lovers. It didn’t matter that she was deformed, only that she couldn’t admit it. I tried to help her, but she ran away. I have missed her so much.
‘Mister Tanigawa? You in there? Er. Rafael Tanigawa?’
I open my eyes. The light is lower and cooler, it no longer smells of gunpowder. I have slept for some time. A woman is knocking at the door, light taps. I remember her voice. Her name is Terri and she is head waitress in the Alba Fish Bar. She has a slight northern accent. As I screw my eyes shut to massage the sleep out of them, I remember her from further back. This often happens. The world is smaller for me.
In my head there is a London hospital computer, eighteen months ago. I saw the console screen for several seconds as the GP scrolled through names. Terri registered HIV positive in a confidential test on blood donations. Like me. I wonder if she knows yet.
‘Yes.’ I unlock the door. I look at her in the way I would examine a dog, to see if it is in pain. She doesn’t know.
‘Oh, hello. You all right in there? Not knocked out by the smell or nothing? Better get used to that.’
She’s wearing different earrings today. Green glass fish. When she shakes my hand the fish wobble like water tension.
‘Getting ahead of myself as usual. My name’s Terri, I’ve been waitressing here for donkeys’ years, I was born in Hull and I’m a blinding pool player. Now you know my life story. I just came up to check if you were ready for your first shift. Five minutes, OK?’
‘Of course.’
‘Any questions you got, you just ask me, all right? About the Alba, I mean. OK?’
You have nothing to tell me, I want to say. Let me tell you about the Alba. It is never full or quite empty, there is just a slow drift of people in corners and people against walls. No one eats with other people at the hard Formica tables. The radio is half tuned in. The pensioners won’t sit near the door. When they eat, they do it with their overcoats and anoraks still on. Nothing gets finished here, not food or talk or newspapers. The tiled walls are dirty-clean and no one touches them. It is a place for people to remember things with their eyes open. It is a place for people to forget when they step out into the street.
I don’t say this. I think of something more appropriate.
‘Is it Alba like Albatross?’
She shrieks with laughter. ‘Buggered if I know, love. I’ll ask Tony for you, all right? See you in five minutes.’
The restaurant is cool and empty. Neville the junior fryer is washing down the pavement outside. The doors and windows are all open and there is a slight breeze. Everton the senior fryer is sitting on a wooden customer’s chair, stirring batter in a large tin bucket.
‘This is Neville,’ says Terri, pointing him out with her hand on my shoulder. ‘Watch him, he’s a right wide boy, aren’t you Neville?’
‘Yemun.’
‘And that’s Everton, he’ll show you what to do. The other waitresses’ll be in when we open at seven. All right, Raff?’ She lets me go.
The work is fast and loud, stainless steel clattering on white tiles. Everton is a large, shy man, uncomfortable in the role of teacher. He guts the great slab of a halibut, scissors off the gristly fins and dips the steaks from batter to vat in a smooth, stroking motion. He sweats only along the line of his lip. He keeps his mouth shut.
When I try to copy him the gutting knife slips, the flat running cold against the heel of my hand, and the fins fold away under the pressure of my scissors. It is important not to bleed here, I do not want to infect anyone. The chips in their three boiling vats are harder work, but easier. When the timing bells ring I haul out the straining nets and shovel fresh chips onto the hotplates, where they soften and hiss. By nine-thirty my forearms are liver-spotted with oil burns.
‘They want trout.’
I look up, sweating and confused. Mercedes is waiting by the counter, order-pad in her hands. There is a symmetry in the way she stands, like the statues of saints in Salvador, which are really effigies of the Voodoo spirits.
Her voice sounds different in English. Her face is very still, mask-like, the leonine irises full around the retracted pupils.
‘Who wants it?’
She looks furtively at her pad, back up. ‘Table six.’
‘Your English is very good,’ I say. ‘How do you remember it?’
Her face hardens, the hundreds of muscles drawing back against the bones. Then a familiar smile creeps back; malicious, charming. I feel love expanding inside me like indrawn breath and I narrow my eyes to hold it in. ‘I remember my name too. Mercedes,’ she whispers.
‘I know. Your hair is like that of the slaves in Ouro Prêto, Mercedes, do you remember that story? From Brazil?’
Her face is rapt. ‘Yes. They had to work in the gold-mines. The women hid gold-dust in their hair. The chapel crosses in Ouro Prêto are dusted thick with their gold. Do you know that story, too?’
I lean across to her. �
�I taught you that story, Mercedes. Do you remember me? Do you remember what I promised you?’
She shrugs and smiles. ‘Memories are sick. A sickness. They make you slow and stupid. Like fever. I make up whatever I want.’
‘Yes. You have Korsakoff’s syndrome, do you remember that? I took you to the doctors, Doctor Berman and Doctor Beller in Rio, to make you better. And you ran away from me. Do you remember this, Mercedes?’
The smile freezes slowly, while the light goes out of her eyes again. She frowns and looks down. The pad is in her hand. She reads it and looks up.
‘They want trout. Table six.’
I reach closer, so we are almost touching. I can smell her breath; sweet and warm, like that of a wild animal. More than anything I feel love for her. And I am outraged that she is still alive. My opposite who sneers at memory, whose mind is in sags and tatters while mine is so close to perfection. I walk through crowds as powerful and invisible as an angel. But Mercedes is living proof that I am not.
‘Do you remember your father, Mercedes?’ I whisper.
Then Everton is beside me. Such a quiet man. I don’t know how long he has been there.
‘Tell them we got no trout tonight, Di,’ he says to her. She purses her lips, squints round at the tables for a moment, then walks away. Everton takes the chip basket from my hands and gives them a slow shake in the boiling oil. He speaks without looking at me. ‘You met her before or something?’
I shake my head, no. ‘But she sounds Brazilian. Like me.’ Everton sighs and massages his temple.
‘Yeah, maybe. Sometimes she says Brazil, sometimes America. We call her Di. Like the princess, but she’s got enough names for herself for all the days of the week. Just make sure she’s got her notepad and she does fine. Are you married, Rafael?’
I shake my head again and he sets the strainer down and wipes his hands on his apron as he talks.
‘She’s got something missing. Not just memories, but other things that go with remembering. Like sympathy. And a conscience.’ He sighs. ‘She’s out of order. Do you know what that means? Like a, a machine or something, but also like she’s wrong, different –’
‘Solving the problems of the world, are we?’ It’s Terri. Her lips are pursed in a thin red line of disapproval. ‘Only we got two trout and chips, two rock salmon and salads and a chicken and chips waiting for you to finish.’
‘No bloody trout,’ mutters Everton. He ducks back into the kitchen. Terri winks at me and eats a chip. Then the timing bells go on two chip-vats at once and I have no more time to spare until closing-time. I try and watch for Mercedes but I miss it when she leaves. I just look up and she’s gone. It feels like homesickness.
‘She remembers me.’
I’m talking to myself again. I’ve slept for three hours. From now until morning I will lie here and remember. The bedroom is half-dark. Outside the window a streetlight has come on. Sharp slats of white light wince through the blinds. They taste like sugar-cane alcohol.
My suitcase is flat on the floor next to the bed. A fillet of cold fried fish and a polystyrene carton of chips with a wooden fork sit on its top. But I don’t want to eat now. I say her name softly until it stops making sense. Mercedes. I close my eyes.
My memory is a bare bulb swinging in a small dark room. It clicks on. I remember.
Kitchens. Air dusted with flour. The thud of dough against a wooden board. Beams of sunlight heavy and flat.
‘In French we call those things shavings.’
I look up. The speaker is dressed in a cook’s apron. She is a head taller than me, but I am not a tall man even at twenty-two. Flour ghosts her dark skin.
‘For the evening light. The way it shaves the earth, eh?’ She looks up, grinning, hands still working at the dough. ‘But we have more words in French.’ She shrugs, slams the dough against the board with finality, slaps her hands clean with satisfaction.
‘So. Can you cook? Make bread? Do you drink, boy?’
Her name is Nestor. She is cook at the Pan-Americano restaurant in the Nazaré-side shanty town of Salvador, Brazil. She was born in 1899 in New Orleans. Her father died in the war between America and Spain. She has a bracelet round her left wrist made of tanned chicken-skin. It keeps ghosts out of her dreams.
She means nothing to me. She is a feature in one picture in the perfect zoetrope of my memory. This is part of what it means to be a mnemonist. I cannot forget Nestor, in the same way I cannot forget the weight of the sunlight, the yard door hanging on one hinge, the rustle of her chicken-bone charm.
It is 1970. I have come to the Pan-Americano to apply for a job. The owner of the restaurant is a Japanese Brazilian, a distant acquaintance of my parents. His name is Noboru Oe. In just under two minutes he will come through the door to the dining room yelling ‘Bloody little shanty thief,’ and haul me out through the yard door.
In less than a day he is dead, electrocuted in the metal-walled toilet cubicle of his own restaurant. I push that memory away: Nestor the cook. Raw red coffee-beans in a cracked white basin.
Noboru is not here yet. I turn away from Nestor, already bored.
There is a girl in the open doorway, watching me. The sunlight catches in the yellow tangles of her hair and silhouettes her nearly-black skin. When she steps in out of the backlight I see her eyes, which are almost the colour of her hair. In her left hand she is holding an old machete with a green plastic handle and a shining wet blade.
‘Mercedes!’ Nestor puts her hands akimbo. ‘What have you done now? Oh my sweet Christ
Mercedes looks down. In her right hand is a headless chicken, blood drooling into its matted plumage. She holds it up, astonished. She talks in a child’s gabble.
‘I found it swimming in the river. I caught it like a river trout in my hands, tickling its belly. Do you want it, Nestor?’ The cook is already walking towards her.
Sixty seconds have passed. For a moment I think, Time is running out. But of course it can’t, not any more.
‘What are you thinking of, girl?’ She’s bellowing into Mercedes’ face, bullying, scared of the younger woman and jealous of her beauty. ‘Did I tell you kill a chicken, eh? Well did I? No. I’ll tell your father, and this time he’ll punish you. One of these days he’ll give you a hiding. Jesus, the thing isn’t even plucked. Give it to me.’
‘I killed it for you.’ She’s looking at me again. Her face opens out into a lopsided smile. A beautiful expression of malice. It hurts me in a way I don’t quite understand.
‘I won’t remember you. Do you believe me? Remembering is for fools.’ I believe her. I feel an inkling of fear, instinctive.
‘I remember everything. I can remember for you if you like. I promise. Only if you like.’
The smile fades, then comes back. Now it is an expression of happiness, not just a showing of teeth. Nestor swears in English at both of us. She pushes past Mercedes to the yard, throwing the first fistful of feathers out into the warm evening air.
‘I can do anything,’ says Mercedes Dolores Delaura Oe, ‘because I am like a mad dog. People say so.’ She growls in her throat and grins. ‘Mad dogs don’t remember. They do what they like.’
She is young, fifteen, but in the shanties this is older than in some places. As she comes into the kitchen she takes small quick steps like a capoeira dancer, the machete still in one hand. The other hand is smeared with chicken-blood.
‘If you forgot like me, you could do anything you wanted, too.’
She kisses me. The shock of what she has said holds me still, but her hands are spreading out like wings. She doesn’t close her eyes. I can taste her skin and the rhythm of her breath. Then she pulls back and licks her lips clean, rubs them together. She smiles.
‘Remember for me?’ and as I nod yes she backs away, dropping the machete, blinking the memory out of her eyes like sleep. By the time Noboru Oe opens the door behind me, she is looking away, down, entranced by the drift of chicken feathers that move in across the cracked and tiled
floor.
I wake coughing. There is no blood, but my head hurts at the back, near the spine, and my arms are sore. I pull off my shirt. There are dark sarcoma bruises under my arms. I go out to the bathroom for a drink of water and then sit by my window, staring out so as not to blink, thinking.
Until I saw Mercedes I thought forgetfulness must be a kind of dying. When I saw her, how strong she was, I realised I could be wrong. To Mercedes, forgetting is a gift, sweet and kind. A freedom to act.
I don’t believe this. I am the mnemonist. Humanity is nothing without memory. I am nothing if not superior.
And when I go down into the hot kitchens tonight, Mercedes will be there again, Mercedes who can dream anything, who has no nightmares. Who is like mad dogs, which grin and sweat with freedom.
I refuse to die believing this. She is one of the broken and the botched, one of the many. A danger even to those she thinks she loves. A cripple. And I will prove it to her. I have come here to do a simple thing; to remember for her what she has done and forgotten. Just as I promised.
‘How could I forget?’
I sit up against the wall and eat the cold fish from the carton on my suitcase. It is light by the time I have finished eating. Fifteen hours until Mercedes arrives. I wash my face and shave and read Amado and Márquez and Neruda in the pages of my head.
It gets dark before evening, flat grey cloud building up over the brick walls and rooftops. Mercedes arrives late, just as the rain starts. The pavements outside hiss with it. Thunder falls like rubble.
There is only one customer in the restaurant, a plump female skinhead who sits with her back to the window, steadily eating four orders of chips. Everton restacks fish in the freezer-room. Terri and Neville argue about nothing until the rain begins. Mercedes stands by the end table for an hour, watching me as I wipe down the counters and cooking surfaces.
I wait for her to come to me.
She drifts over. ‘I remember you. Rafael. Is that your name?’