by Olivia Lara
Why was she calling him Mr Peltz? Was that his name? He still couldn’t remember anything that happened before he’d run out of that hospital. Where was he?
He looked around and to his horror, he realized he was in a hospital.
‘Where am I?’ he asked, his voice low and shaky.
‘You’re in Southampton, Mr Peltz. In the hospital. You have been involved in some kind of accident. But you’re going to be alright,’ she said, and his confidence calmed him.
Southampton? Was that where the first hospital had been as well? No, it couldn’t have been. They had spoken French in that other place. They spoke English here.
‘How – how did I end up here?’
‘I was about to ask you the same thing, but it might be too soon for you to remember. A delivery driver from London found you in the back of his truck after he got off the steamboat here, in Southampton. He called the ambulance and here you are. That’s all we know.’
He remembered the truck. That part was clear. Or at least as clear as anything could’ve been in his mind at that point.
‘How long have I been here?’
‘Almost two weeks,’ said the nurse. ‘You’ve slept quite a lot and it helped, because your injuries have healed just beautifully,’ she said satisfied. ‘Your name is Anthony Peltz, is that correct?’
‘My name?’ What was he to say? Yes? No? Why did they think his name was Peltz?
‘We found your passport in your coat pocket, but everything was soaking wet; you were probably covered in snow and it had melted in the truck. Unfortunately, the ink is all smudged. We thought it said Anthony Peltz but couldn’t be sure.’
In his coat? He didn’t have a coat.
Oh, the coat. The one he’d stolen from the other hospital.
He froze. What about the picture?
‘Can I please get my wallet? There’s something in there I need to check.’
‘Of course,’ she said smiling.
She handed him a transparent plastic bag.
‘I’m sorry your passport is destroyed. You will have to get a new one when you go back to Cambridge.’
He nodded. ‘It’s alright.’
‘I will give you some space,’ she said, ‘and I’ll be back with your lunch.’
‘Thank you,’ he muttered.
With trembling hands, he opened the bag and took out the wallet and the passport.
He slowly flipped the first page. The nurse was right; it was ruined. The black and white photo completely destroyed; the name barely legible. It could’ve been Peltz or Reltz or Deltz. The first name was Anthony though. And the date of birth was gone too. And yes, there was a home address but apart from number 122 and the name of the city, Cambridge, everything else was gone.
It was as good a name as any other. What was he to do? Say he took someone’s wallet? And admit he was most likely a criminal, not just a petty thief? Why else would they have tied him to the bed like that, unless he had done something truly vile?
Everyone needs a name, he thought. It was better if he went along with it.
The man he stole it off was in the contagious ward of the hospital. Tuberculosis, it said on the door. The new Anthony hoped the old Anthony would make it and walk out of there alive, and his only bother would be to replace his documents. He apologized to him in his mind.
The nurse returned with a tray of food.
Before leaving, she stopped in the doorway.
‘Is there anyone you would like us to call to let them know you are alright? Parents? Wife? We looked up Peltz in the phone book but couldn’t find anyone.’
A lump rose in his throat. Did he have someone? A wife perhaps? He looked at his left hand. No wedding band. No trace there had ever been a wedding band there.
‘No. Nobody. I don’t have anyone.’
*
Anthony gulped down the rest of the wine. He got up, stumbling, and grabbing a second bottle from the small refrigerator. It was white wine this time, but he didn’t care. ‘Good hotel,’ he mumbled. ‘Two bottles. They must’ve known I’d need it.’
He opened it and sat back on the carpet, with his back resting on the side of the bed.
His thoughts went back to Anthony. To his life. The last nine years.
He remembered leaving the hospital with only the fifteen pennies he had found in the wallet, no idea where to go, what to do or how he was going to survive. All he knew was that he had to, no matter what it took.
He stopped at the first inn he saw, close to the hospital, and inquired about the price of a room; he couldn’t afford it. He kept walking and checking inns and hostels, motels but they were all too expensive. So he slept under Northam Bridge the first night. And the second. He used his money to buy bread and stay alive.
A week or so later, he was walking the streets of Southampton, when he saw the Southampton City Art Gallery, and immediately his thoughts went to the dreams he’d been having ever since the accident. He dreamed of pictures that looked like drawings or paintings. Random colors almost mashed together. Purple, green, yellow. Had he been an artist?
He hesitantly walked in, expecting to be thrown away by a guard. But he wasn’t. Although people looked at him funny, and most of them avoided him, no doubt because he hadn’t taken a shower in a week and his clothes were dirty, nobody bothered him. He stayed there for hours, just staring at paintings. Had he been an artist? Did he know anything about art at all? Maybe he had worked in a museum, just like that one.
The next day he returned. And the next. And the next.
In the evening, on his way back to the bridge, he’d pass the town library. And on one of those days, he got an idea. He went in, and searched for books about art. If it had been a part of his life, perhaps reading about it would jog his memory. He looked for the colors in his dreams, for patterns, for something familiar.
It had now been a few weeks since he was homeless. At night it was cold and scary and lonely. But during the day, he had things to do that kept his mind busy. He started using public bathrooms to clean himself up. He offered to sweep the sidewalk in front of stores and got some change for it, enough to buy himself bread. He drank water from fountains, and even got a clean change of clothes from a clothing shop after he helped them carry their heavy boxes inside. The rest of his time, he spent it in the museum and the library.
The weather was nicer now and he swapped the bridge for a park bench. A few weeks later, his daily trips to the library proved to be his salvation. Joseph, the librarian, who was also passionate about art, seemed to take a liking to him. He would help him pick out books, explained art concepts, and sometimes he would even sit with him. He was a nice man.
‘I don’t know much about your situation,’ he said to Anthony one day, ‘but I like your determination. And you seem to love books. How would you feel about working here? It’s only a few hours a day and it doesn’t pay much, but it’s something. We also have a room, here, above the library. It’s small and outdated, but if you want it, it’s yours. It comes with the job.’
Anthony teared up.
He found out, months later, there was no job available at the library and no room that came with the job. Joseph paid him out of his own money and gave him the room he was supposed to use to deposit books.
Anthony’s life improved considerably. He had a clean place to live, a job, and he was doing something that seemed to have a link to his old self. Although he didn’t know what that was. But he kept going. Kept reading and learning, hoping it would help bring back his memories.
But then there were the nightmares. It was dark, he was falling from somewhere high, and he was cold. He called out a name over and over and someone grabbed him. In that chaos, amid noises he couldn’t understand, a whisper. ‘Stay with me. Don’t go.’ He stopped panicking. Whatever was happening, he wasn’t alone. He didn’t follow the strange noises and he stayed. He would wake up covered in sweat, crying, screaming and unable to remember the name he was calling desperately.
> Tormented by these dreams, he sometimes found it hard to carry on during the day. It all seemed so hopeless. His mind vacant of any memories, his life like an empty shell. But he had to keep going. He had to do whatever he could to try and remember.
Although he now had less free time, he still went back to the museum. He liked to get lost among paintings for hours – until the museums closed – then the next day, he would scour the library shelves for books about them and read everything he could get his hands on. There was something familiar, comforting about being surrounded by art, by all that beauty, all those colors.
A few months later he was visiting the Southampton City Art Gallery when he saw an ad for an open night guard position, and he immediately applied.
Now he had money to pay for a rented room, but when he told Joseph he wasn’t going to abuse his hospitality any longer and get his own place, the old man stopped him.
‘There’s no bother, Anthony. You can stay here for as long as you need. But if I were you, I’d use my money on something else.’
‘On what?’
‘I think you should try to figure out more of what you’re meant to do.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Art. It’s something that you’re not only interested in but also something you seem to be very good at. It’s like a talent and it would be a shame to waste your talents. Have you thought about doing some classes? Maybe getting a diploma? Then you can aim for a slightly more creative job than that of a night guard. I think you could do so much better for yourself.’
After thinking about it quite a bit, Anthony listened to Joseph and that fall he enrolled in evening school to study art history, while still keeping his library job during the day and the museum job during the night.
It was on a cold winter night, when a transport arrived at the City Art Gallery, that everything turned around for him. Paintings, some by known artists, some by less known. And among them, three deteriorated artworks, almost beyond recognition. The curator decided they couldn’t invest the time, the money or resources into restoring them and asked that they be removed and disposed of. ‘There is no value in them,’ he insisted.
But Anthony, instead of destroying them, took them home.
And from there on, he did everything he could to salvage them using his own money, working extra shifts at the museum, asking local artists for help with colors and materials.
He taught himself how to do it, asked his teachers for advice, read tens of books, looked at hundreds of paintings. Progress was slow, because he was still learning and because the money wasn’t enough and he had to wait for each paycheck to buy materials; besides, he could only work on the paintings at night. Four years later, a few months after graduating school with honors, he finally completed the three restorations.
And when he finished them and notified the museum he had salvaged the artworks – which were now evaluated at two million pounds – his luck finally changed.
Word got around about the up-and-coming art expert. In a few months, he got multiple job offers. One, a very well-paid art dealer position with one of the biggest art groups in England and the other, a barely paid art restorer at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. He took the restoration job without hesitation.
He said goodbye to Joseph and promised to visit; he kept his promise, year after year.
*
Anthony got up and looked out the window. There were lights everywhere. Sparkly, colorful, dizzying lights. Paris was once his home; now it felt foreign. Just like he felt in his own life. His life…
His life in Cambridge felt like a completely different story, not just a different chapter.
It didn’t take long for the Fitzwilliam Museum to become as famous as its new art restorer, but the more attention he got, the more Anthony withdrew. He didn’t need people looking into his background; he didn’t want to be asked questions he couldn’t answer. He was sure he had done something terrible in the past, and he was afraid that someone would recognize him. Museums all over the world wanted to work with him, collectors approached him, journalists started calling about interviews. His apartment in downtown Cambridge was too easy to access by everyone and anyone. So Anthony bought himself a house in an exclusive part of Cambridge, on Latham Road. His new property, on a tree-lined, no-through street, had a beautifully landscaped south-facing garden, bordered by tall pine trees, and over two acres of land. Enough, Anthony thought, to maintain his privacy. He also had to hire someone to handle all these calls and requests he was getting.
Without mentioning his name, he placed an ad in the newspaper for an assistant. He had an ulterior motive for this too. He was lonely. Successful and busy, but lonely. He missed having someone around. In Southampton he had Joseph, but here it was just him.
Qualified men and women of all ages came to interview. And one unqualified woman. She had been a nanny, a cook, and a live-in maid for years; a woman who had no family, just like him.
‘Would you consider a live-in job?’ he asked after meeting her the first time.
She smiled. ‘Will I get to cook?’
‘If you want to.’
‘And who will do the shopping?’
‘Who would you like to do the shopping?’ he asked.
‘Me, of course,’ she said. ‘How about cleaning the house? Who will do that?’
He shrugged. ‘Both of us, I don’t know.’
‘Fine. I’ll take the job,’ she said.
*
Hiring Mary proved to be the best decision Anthony had made.
Time passed. He had a good life now. Stable, albeit predictable, but that wasn’t a bad thing and he thought less and less about his old life. The one he couldn’t remember.
He was right to let go back then. For almost a decade, he didn’t remember anything, and it would’ve driven him mad to think about it all the time. He didn’t remember who he had been before, where he was from. Nothing. Until that day. Nine years later.
Nine years. He’d had no idea who he was, and now everything had come back to him like in a dream. Like watching a movie. All at once. What his real name was, what he had left behind, what he had lost.
The sun was almost up, and he had no more wine.
He didn’t want to cry. He tried not to.
ANTHONY
23 DECEMBER 1973
PARIS
Anthony finished at the Louvre late in the evening. They had given him 250 candidates for the fifteen open positions. He had his work cut out for him.
The night before, he’d made a big decision; he just didn’t know if he was strong enough to follow through. When he checked out of the hotel, got into his car and drove towards the seventh arrondissement, in the proximity of the Eiffel Tower, he still didn’t know.
He was scared and doubted himself, but he couldn’t leave. Not without seeing her.
But it had been so long. How would she react? Would she recognize him? He looked in the car’s mirror. The man staring back at him didn’t look at all like the Alexander who had boarded the plane nine years before. He had a scar across his face, a long bushy beard to cover it and long hair in a ponytail. Would she care? Did she still love him?
Of course, she did, just as he still loved her. So much more. Impossible to measure or quantify. He had loved her even when he couldn’t remember her. His soul hadn’t forgotten.
Anthony tried to come up with a plan – what to do, what to say. He stopped a couple of streets away, went into a brasserie and stayed there until it got dark, but he still couldn’t make up his mind. One thing was certain: he couldn’t wait anymore; he was already nine years late.
Anthony left the brasserie. What if Constance had sold the place? What if Dominique had moved? No, she loved Paris. Where would she go? He kept asking himself questions and answering. His stomach felt like a huge pit, his mouth dry, and despite the cold weather his hands sweated. Walking slowly to the café, out of instinct almost, he stopped across the street. The small coffee shop was still t
here, still open, and the colored Christmas lights made it look nice and happy. The place was crowded, and he had to take a few more steps until he could see perfectly inside. The people in the café couldn’t see him because the street was pitch black. Good. That made him feel less nervous.
He didn’t know what he would do. His head was telling him it had been too long. People changed. Her life might be completely different now. With someone else in it. But his heart… his heart told him never to give up. That he was too close now to turn around. If he could at least see Dominique for a minute. If he could tell her how sorry he was, how he’d never meant to hurt her, how much he loved her. That he’d never forgotten her. Somehow, it would all work out.
One more step and at the table where they usually sat, the face of an angel looked in his direction. ‘Dominique, Dominique!’ he shouted, but she didn’t hear him. She was so beautiful, just as he remembered her. It was like time had stopped for her, thought Anthony and touched the window with his hand. Ever so gently. Almost as if he was afraid.
‘I will remember this forever as the moment when I was brought back to life,’ he said, in a whisper. As he went to the door, a little girl jumped into Dominique’s arms. A step behind her, Vincent leaned down and kissed Dominique. Vincent kissed Dominique. Anthony stopped breathing, looking at them. They wore matching wedding bands and they looked happy together. ‘She is married. Dominique is married,’ he said in disbelief.
And they had a daughter together. She was about eight or nine and she looked like Vincent. So Dominique hadn’t waited for him. Not at all. JJ must’ve been wrong about her not getting engaged to Vincent. She obviously had, and they’d soon had a child.
With every moment spent looking at them, his heart ripped into pieces. Tiny pieces that couldn’t be glued back together. Dominique got up, startling Anthony. She turned to speak with Constance and that’s when he saw it. She was pregnant. He felt like crying and screaming at the same time, breaking everything around him, running from it all. He felt like going back in time and forgetting it all again, forgetting her. He had lost Dominique for such a long time and in the last few days he thought he’d found her, only to lose her again, this time forever.