“Chemistry, biology, poetry, art history, music. A hodgepodge that led nowhere. I worked as assistant editor of a poetry magazine that couldn’t pay me. Then, out of the blue, Dr. Vorta got me a summer job with Pfizer—as a lab technician. He personally recommended me, even though I had no qualifications. Then he helped me get into McGill, and eventually hired me as a research assistant.”
“You studied medicine?”
Noel nodded before swallowing. “For two years. Then I got interested in experimental chemistry, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, that kind of thing. I guess because of my dad.”
“Did you graduate?” She watched Noel shake his head, his mouth full again. Has he eaten in the last week? “It wasn’t up your alley?”
Noel swallowed, broke the yolk on his second egg with his fork. “No, I liked it, I found it quite easy. It’s just memorisation, really. And as for lectures and interacting with my fellow students and stuff, I’d learn to control my … You see, I didn’t start university until I was in my late twenties, and by that time I’d learned to control, more or less, my problems. Inside my head. But I … you know, had other problems.”
“Such as?”
“Well … Mom started having her problems, the ones inside her head, and I couldn’t really do both, deal with both. So I quit school and moved in with her. I have no regrets, mind you—none whatsoever. It was no great sacrifice. I wouldn’t have made much of a doctor anyway. Or pharmacologist or neuropathologist or whatever.”
“I think you would have. It’s never too late.”
Noel took a sip of his Scottish Breakfast Tea. He was feeling better than he had in months. And the words, uncharacteristically, flowed. “My father always wanted me to be one. A writer or doctor or preferably both. He liked to remind me how many great writers were also doctors, or were first drawn to medicine. He had great respect for people like that, and for the Renaissance ideal of excelling at both science and art.”
“Which authors were drawn to medicine?”
“Maugham, Chekhov, Joyce, Keats, Smollett, Goldsmith, Céline, Hoffmann, Duhamel, Campion … I could go on and on.”
Samira laughed. “Do. I’m curious.”
“Oliver Wendell Holmes, A.J. Cronin, Arthur Schnitzler, Aldous Huxley, Ethan Canin,Walter Percy, Robert Bridges, Leonid Tsypkin, Sihan Seyhi, Nérée Beauchemin, Moacyr Scliar, John McCrae, Josephine Bell, James Bridie, Fernando Namora, Alfred Döblin, Georg Büchner, C. Louis Leipoldt, Heinrich Stilling, Lenrie Peters, Guimarães Rosa, Yusuf Idris, Dannie Abse, Hans Carossa, Francesco Redi, F.R. Kreutzwald, Jacques Grevin, Enrique Gonzalez Martinez, Saul Tchernichowsky, Justinus Kerner, Gottfried Benn, T’ao Hung-ching, Firishtah, Nahmanides, Nicander, Empedocles and scores of other Greeks and Romans … The list goes on and on.”
Samira burst out laughing. “You forgot an Iraqi.”
“Mazloom?”
“Very good.”
“My father always regretted not being among them, so I suppose that’s why he encouraged me to try.”
“Norval mentioned that your father … died when you were young?”
“Yeah, he drowned himself when I was nine.” When I was 3,639 days old, Noel nearly specified. “I’ve often thought of doing the same.”
Just like Norval! “You’re not serious, are you?”
“Yes.”
“So what’s stopped you?”
“My mother.”
“Thank God for mothers. So do you know what your father … what prompted him or …”
Noel’s features, until now stoical, revealed pain. “It’s a mystery. A dark curtain that falls from nowhere. I sometimes get it myself. I don’t think I’ll ever understand it, not entirely. All I know is that he used to have these heavy, oppressive dark periods. ‘The black dragon paying me a visit,’ he once said. Sometimes for days on end he’d hole up in his office in the basement. But the curtain would always lift, the dragon would move on …31 Sometimes I think that being a gifted scientist wasn’t enough for him, that he wanted other things, more spiritual things. He wanted to be a gifted artist as much as a gifted scientist. A Leonardo or Raleigh or Primo Levi. He wanted so badly—and failed so badly in his view—to be a Renaissance man.”
“Didn’t Levi commit suicide too?”
“Yes.”
Noel became conscious that Samira was staring at him. She was sitting at the foot of the bed, her tilted head against the wall, watching him through half-closed eyes, like a painter looking at a canvas. He wanted to reach out and touch her black hair, blacker than the raven wings of midnight, as Poe would say.
There’s a suggestion of Norval in his face, Samira thought, but it’s like a bronze sculpture copied in wood, or a melody sung slightly out of key … How cruel, she thought, to think like that. It would be so much better, in fact, to be in love with him, not Norval. So much easier. “Does it bother you when people say you look like Norval?”
Noel sighed. “I used to be sensitive about it. It was always that I looked like him, of course, that I was a pale imitation of him—which is only natural, I suppose, since he was the famous one, the more attractive one …”
“What does your mother say about the resemblance? Doesn’t she think he could almost be her son?”
Noel slowly emptied his cup of tea. “She’s never met him.”
“No? Why not?”
Noel paused, examining the faint rings inside his tea-stained mug. “Sometimes I wonder if, subconsciously, I didn’t want her to see a betterlooking version of me. Or if I didn’t want to share her with him. But I don’t think that’s it entirely. I suppose I didn’t want him to make fun of the way my mother and I got along, our intimacy, the fact that we’re each other’s best friend.”
“Why would he make fun of that?”
“Because he despises his mother. Unnaturally, psychotically. He’d never understand our closeness, and besides, I just didn’t want to explain … you know, everything, her illness. I kept putting it off, in any case.”
“Putting off introducing them?”
“Yeah. For some reason I didn’t want him to see all that. He’s come over a few times—but I just couldn’t open the door.”
Samira remained silent as Noel finished his last crumpet, her gaze resting on various objects in the room.
As in Norval’s loft, the walls were covered with peculiar images. There was Kandinsky’s Blauer Ritter, Hockney’s illustrations for Six Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, a sepia image of Solomon Shereshevski,32 a multicoloured drawing of Iris, the rainbow goddess, and a large poster of the Nine Muses, with their names and domains written beneath them: CALLIOPE, Muse of Epic Poetry (holding a writing tablet); CLIO, Muse of History (holding a water clock); ERATO, Muse of Lyric and Love Poetry (playing a lyre); EUTERPE, Muse of Music (playing a flute); MELPOMENE, Muse of Tragedy (wearing a tragic mask); POLYMNIA, Muse of Sacred Poetry (a pensive look on her face); TERPSICHORE, Muse of Dancing and Choral Song (dancing and holding a lyre); THALIA, Muse of Comedy (wearing a comic mask); URANIA, Muse of Astronomy (holding a globe).
Samira sat with her legs ajar, her black skirt draped between them as she examined each figure in wordless absorption. In the frame of an oval mirror, she then spotted a wedding picture, presumably of Noel’s parents, as well as a Polaroid of Norval, with longer hair, standing regally before the red curtain of a theatre. Her heart trampolined. “Norval looks like a decadent prince in that photo,” she said trying to hide a tremor in her voice. “He’s not an aristocrat or something, is he? He certainly acts the part.”
“Yes, a certain majesty is assumed.” Noel set the silver platter on the floor. “But in fact he does have some blue blood in him. The de Blaquières were minor and poverty-stricken Norman nobility who arrived in Quebec in the eighteenth century. A violent, dissolute and pathologically irascible bunch—at least, so he tells me.”
“But he was born in France.”
“His father studied in France in the sixties, where he met his wife, returned to Quebec, then eventually becam
e head of an engineering firm in Paris.”
“And his mother? What’s she like? Have you met her?”
“No. In Norval’s words, she’s a vulgar, nether-class banlieusarde, given to hysteria and lovers. Which he’s never forgiven her for—that and the fact that she spends most of her time at a nudist resort and votes for Le Pen.”
“But that’s not enough to hate her, surely?”
“She cheated on his father when Norval was a little boy. So he feels betrayed, neglected—especially when a parade of men, one after the other, began to fill up the house.”
Samira nodded, bit her lip, began to think of something else. Dissolute, pathologically violent? Is that what he said? Which may explain … She watched the beside clock blink greenly from 8:59 to 9:00. “Do you know what ‘K’ is?”
“K?”
“I found a vial of it … somewhere, and I want to know what it is. Could it be potassium? It’s a white powder.”
“Well, potassium is silver-white. But it’s explosively reactive—it oxidises when exposed to air and reacts violently with water, so it’s always stored under a liquid that it doesn’t … you know, react with. What kind of vial was it in?”
“Is there anything else it could be?”
“Well … lots of things. I don’t know. Where’d you find it?”
“Uh, well … in an alleyway.”
“In an alleyway? In that case, it could be ketamine, which is quite popular these days. It’s also known as Special K, Kit Kat …”
“Which is …?”
“An anaesthetic. Veterinary and medical.”
Samira looked puzzled. “Oh, maybe that’s what it is.”
“At lower doses it has dissociative and psychedelic effects—it’s used to produce the ‘near-death experience.’”
“Really?” Oh, I get it now. It’s one of Norval’s hallucinogens.
“It’s usually combined with rohypnol. It’s a date-rape drug.”
Samira’s jaw sagged. So I was right about that man. He’s worse than the populations of Sodom and Gomorrah combined. “Oh shit. You’re not serious. So Norval’s a date rapist.”
“Norval? What’s Norval got to do with—”
“And maybe I was next.”
“Next? Oh no, I think you’ve got the wrong—”
“I found it in a drawer beside his bed! Maybe that’s how he gets through his freaking alphabet! Hold on, I’ll be right back.”
“Look at this,” said Samira, minutes later. She set down the vial on Noel’s
bed table, hard.
“Really, Sam, I don’t think—”
“I knew there was something … satanic about him. The party I went to a few weeks ago ... somehow Norval is behind all that. It wasn’t just a coincidence he stepped into that elevator.”
“But … that doesn’t make any sense. It’s not his style. He doesn’t need drugs to seduce women.”
“And at JJ’s party, that line about ‘excess and the palace of wisdom’— I think I heard it as I was being drugged. Or when I came to. Maybe it was Norval who said it—it’s something he would say, isn’t it?”
“Well … possibly.” He has said it before, Norval recalled. More than once. He picked up the vial, which he recognised as one of Dr. Vorta’s, and held it up to the light. “And that’s all you remember? Was it Norval’s voice?”
“I … I’m not sure.”
Noel unscrewed the vial, inserted his baby finger. He looked closely at the colourless crystals before putting them lightly against his tongue.
“Special K?” Samira asked.
Coloured C’s and H’s and the numbers two and three began to bounce inside Noel’s head like lottery balls. “Chloral hydrate.”
“What does it do? Make women unconscious, comatose?”
“It’s a sedative. And hypnotic.”
“I knew it!”
“It’s being used in one of Dr. Vorta’s studies. He thinks that it may be the future for treating certain types of brain cancer.”
“Brain cancer? I don’t get it. Why would Norval keep a bottle of … He doesn’t have cancer, surely to God?”
“Not that I know of.”
Oh hell. She remembered his words about ending his days in water. After Z, I’m dead … She looked again at the Polaroid of him in the frame of the oval mirror. “But why was it … next to his bed? And why does it say ‘K’ on the label?”
“Klor ortanca. It comes from a lab in Istanbul. I’m pretty sure he just uses it for insomnia.”
Samira nodded slowly, her face strained.
“I wouldn’t worry about him. It’s also sold on the street as an aphrodisiac. It’s big in France.” Maybe his mother told him about it, Noel silently conjectured.
“Oh. Maybe that’s it. It’s none of my business anyway. Sorry, I … I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions. And, well, mistrusted a friend of yours.”
“I’ve made worse mistakes.”33
In the silence that gathered Noel could hear his own heart beating. Chloral hydrate was a nightmare. In severe overdose, death occurs within five to ten hours. He’d have to tell Dr. Vorta about this … theft. He looked at Samira’s face. It’s obvious she’s in love with him. Or is she? Why don’t I simply ask? He cleared his throat and cursed his own cowardice. It was a perfectly easy thing to say. It would be over quickly, like a dentist’s hypodermic. “Are you in love with him, Sam?” he finally asked, in a near-whisper. “With Nor?”
“No!” she replied, with a quickness and force that surprised them both. “Not at all, I mean I’m … I don’t know, physically attracted and … intrigued or something, like being on the edge of the cliff and this voice is telling me to jump off … I’ve done that kind of thing before in my life, but it’s something I’m trying to … put behind me.”
“It’s really none of my business …”
“But it is. I mean, I want it to be. I’m pretty mixed up about him, I can’t figure him out at all, and thought maybe you could help … clarify things.”
“I wish I could, believe me. But he’s a mystery to me too. He just won’t talk about himself, about personal things. His past is full of blanks and gaps. ‘Don’t expect me to tickle your idle curiosity,’ he once told me.”
“Do you think he was ever in love? With someone who dumped him, or died? Do you think he’s capable of love?”
“I don’t know, I really don’t.”
Samira thought of the ring she had discovered. “Does he … could he, well, prefer men? Sexually, I mean?”
“That would surprise me. But you never know. Byron had male lovers—which for Norval may be a seal of approval.”
“Every heard of Terry?”
“No, who’s Terry?”
“He’s just … a name I saw somewhere.”
“Where?”
This was not something Samira wished to divulge. “I’d be surprised if Norval was ever in love, with anyone—male or female. It seems no one’s good enough for him, everyone’s inferior—intellectually, socially. And he’s a misogynist par excellence.”
“He dislikes both sexes.”
“He’s the most prejudiced person I’ve ever met. Like some old fogey.”
Noel paused to think. “Yeah, in some ways Norval is fogeyish—old at heart, prematurely conservative. He can’t stand the new generation— their consumer products and diction and garish clothes and brand names. But he hates the older generations too, the Establishment, especially law firms and drug companies.”
“He’s your best friend, right?” said Samira.
Noel opened the door of his bed table, a converted apothecary chest with Hermes’ staff carved in high relief on the sliding door. He pulled out a bottle and stoneware goblet. “He’s my only friend.”
“Why is he such a … sack-artist, a midnight plowboy? You don’t believe that Baudelaire crap, do you?”
“No, that’s all a snow-job, government-grantism. He’s got this theory …” Noel paused, as if confused by th
e objects in his hands. “Would you like some port? It’s my mom’s, it helps me sleep—or used to.”
“Thanks.”
Noel poured. “Hope you don’t mind, this isn’t the right glass and I only have one. I’ll get another—”
“Don’t bother. We’ll share it.” She took a sip and handed back the cup. “You were saying …?”
Noel hesitated before turning the goblet to where Samira’s lips had touched it. He closed his eyes and drank. Footage of Heliodora Locke began to appear …
“… about Norval’s theory?”
Noel shook his head and his neck crackled. “Right, he …” He felt his face reddening as he groped for the thread. “… he thinks that sensation … that the great object of life, or sole object of life, is sensation, what Byron calls the ‘craving void,’ which drives us to things like gambling and war and travel and sex. Especially sex. That the sex instinct dominates all human thought and activity, that it’s the chief source of energy. Or only source.”
“A sexistentialist.”
Noel smiled. “Exactly. Sometimes I think he’s turned into one of the writers on his syllabus—some Decadent from the 1890s.34 He’s convinced that civilisation is in a state of terminal decline …”
“Hard to disagree …”
“… and that faith in any kind of progress is futile—there is simply no better world to come. So he’s decided that life itself must become a kind of artwork—an exercise in style—because there is nothing else it can be.”
“So instead of rebelling, like the Romantics did, he’s chosen apathy and cynicism.”
“And hedonism. The only way he can re-fire his spirit, or so he says, is through new sensations—more and more dangerous sensations. What Baudelaire calls the artificial paradises of the imagination. Drug-induced hallucination, calculated perversity …”
“Alphabetical perversity?”
Noel’s smile shaded into a grimace as he wondered what letter Norval was on. “‘Harmless perversity,’ he calls it.”
Samira was turning the bottle to read its label: Quinta do Noval 1994. “Harmless? Come on, The Alpha Bet does damage. It’s manipulative, exploitive, deceitful …”
Then why are you in love with him? Noel wondered as the list of adjectives grew.