The Memory Artists

  “You can stay here,” said Noel, “as long as you want—especially after what you’ve just been through.”

  Norval paused to listen to the cellos and double bass evoke the spirit of Byron’s Tasso. “Got any cigarettes? Where’s JJ and Sam, by the way? Upstairs shagging? Oh, hello Mrs. Burun.”

  Mrs. Burun had returned from the bathroom. “Call me Stella,” she said, while reaching for a cigarette case on the mantel. “Noel, I think this gentleman will be a bad influence on you.”

  “Everyone needs a bad influence from time to time, wouldn’t you agree, Stella?”

  “That’s how I fell in love with my husband.”

  Norval laughed. “Shall I pour you one of these?”

  “Yes, why not? Would you like one of these?” She opened up the silver and cloisonné enamel box, a birthday gift to her husband.

  “You’re too kind. Say when.”

  “Mom, I’m not sure if …” Noel paused, distracted by a coppery head that popped through the doorway then withdrew behind a wall, like a tortoise into its shell. “Salut, Jean-Jacques.”

  JJ gradually materialised, squinting in the direction of Norval. He was wearing shiny pyjamas of interstellar blue, covered with planets and stars and smiling moons. A cell phone protruded from his pocket. “Nor? Is that you?” He rubbed his eyes, like a bad actor seeing a miracle. “A-yo, dude! What brings you here at one in the morning?”

  Norval reached over for a toss cushion on the sofa, examined its running wave border. “It’s two in the morning.”

  “Norval’s place was torched,” said Noel. “He’s going to be staying here for a while. For three days.”

  “Not another arson! Jesus Cockadoodle Christ! This is getting scary. This time we’ve got to report it, I’m sorry.” JJ pulled out his cell and punched in zero. “Hello, operator? Get me the number for 911. I mean the number—”

  “JJ, put your phone away,” said Norval, with an indulgent half-smile. “Everything’s been taken care of.”

  “Everything’s been taken of, operator,” JJ repeated into the line. “Sorry.” He snapped his phone shut, all atwitter, then fumbled it onto the floor. “Do you know who did it, Nor? Is everything OK? Are you OK?”

  “Everything’s fine. We’ll talk about it in the morning, all right?”

  “Any damage? Do you know who could’ve done it? You sure we shouldn’t report it? I really think—”

  Here Norval got up and walked towards him, carrying the toss cushion. To Noel’s surprise, instead of stuffing it in JJ’s mouth, he tossed it back onto the sofa and stooped to pick up the cell phone. He slipped it into JJ’s breast pocket, put his hand on JJ’s shoulder. “I appreciate your concern, JJ. I’m just going to the bathroom now and then to bed. I’m dead. I’ll fill in the blanks tomorrow.”

  “I’ll show you where the bathroom is,” said Mrs. Burun. “Then I’m off to bed myself.”

  “Good night, guys!” said JJ as the two disappeared down the hall. “Oh, Noel, I almost forgot. The sun is square to Saturn. Mars and Jupiter in your fourth house. Buy no new footwear.”

  “Got it,” said Noel.

  Noel fixed his eyes on the multicoloured flames, which fluttered like a school of tropical fish. Orpiment, nacarat, aurora, cinnabar, ultramarine … He sipped his cranberry juice, not tasting a thing, wondering what he had just done. Norval and Sam here, together? My mother and Norval? Not good combinations, not good at all …

  Norval settled back into his chair, reached for the Boingnères Folle Blanche 1994. “Nice bathroom, Noel.” He poured out the biggest glass of brandy Noel had ever seen or heard of. “Just what I always wanted when taking a crap—an instruction manual.”

  “Yeah … it’s … I’m going to take all that stuff down … soon.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “About what?”

  “About your mother.”

  “Because … JJ already told you.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Noel sighed, took another sip of juice. “Because … because you would’ve ridiculed the whole situation, said I was running a ‘mommy daycare’ or something, suggested I put her in a home, that I was wasting my time.”

  “Yes, I would have. And you are.”

  “Some things are private.”

  “So that explains why you look so dug-up lately. And why your house is falling apart, like some decaying mansion out of Poe.”

  “Should’ve seen it before Sam and JJ arrived.”

  “And yet your mother seems … fine. I mean, in the few exchanges we’ve had.”

  “She’s getting better.”

  “Was it … is it Alzheimer’s?”

  Noel nodded.

  “At fifty-six? Shit. Wasn’t that the age that Claude—”55

  “Yes.”

  “So you feared … what? You thought that since I couldn’t stand my mother I wouldn’t understand your … your devotion to yours? Your martyrdom, sacrifices?”

  “Martyrdom? Sacrifices? What am I sacrificing? I’ve nothing else. She spent practically her entire life caring for me. She used to drive thirty miles out of her way, daily, so I could go to a special school. And after Dad died it got even harder for her, to say the least. And she didn’t go out with other men—she didn’t have time, she said …” Here Noel flashed to a colleague of hers in the history department who was mad about her, whom he had stupidly objected to one evening, for no valid reason, whom she immediately stopped seeing. “So why wouldn’t I care for her? Helping her, on a small scale, as she helped me?”

  Norval was surprised by this sudden outpouring. He was moved as well, on a small scale, but made sure not to show it. He undid a smokedpearl button on his shirt before covering his face with the brandy snifter. An intoxicating perfume of almonds, vanilla and poached pears.

  Noel watched him, almost enviously. He would never be able to knock back an amount like that, not without retch and spasm.

  Norval savoured the long spicy (clove and pepper?) finish. “I hear you’re working with JJ,” he said evenly, feeling a pleasant internal flush. “Down in the dungeon.”

  “Correct.”

  Norval gave a slight nod. “That sounds promising. To save time, why don’t you just tie a millstone around your neck and jump in the Saint Lawrence?”

  “No, you really don’t know him—”

  “What’s that, that clusterfuck over there?” Norval pointed to a sideboard with a marble top and brass rail at the back, on which mounds of faded papers and airmail envelopes were scattered.

  “Samira and JJ found them. They’re my grandmother’s stuff, her documents. She was a witch. Who cast spells.”

  “Your grandmother cast spells.”

  “Correct. She also had a great memory. Probably a synaesthete too, although I can’t find any references to it. She ended up in an institution.”

  “So you’ll end up in the same place?”

  “Very likely.”

  “So what are you going to do with it? Put it in a recycling bin?”

  “Well, Samira and JJ suggested I throw a bit of mysticism and spirituality and irrationality into my … research.”

  “You’re going to cast spells.”

  “In a nutshell.”

  “Great. Now all you have to do is trade a cow for some magic beans.”

  “We’re already starting to get results. Samira’s already cured her insomnia with an insomnia spell.”

  “I’m afraid to ask what that involves. Eye of newt and toe of frog? Six pinches of powdered orangutan nuts?”

  “Look, it’s right here: ‘Hot milk, turkey, nutmeg and oregano.’ Lactose is a sedative—that’s the scientific part—and milk is ‘sacred to the Mother Goddess, containing the spiritual power to comfort, soothe and nurture.’ Turkey contains tryptophan, an amino acid that causes drowsiness. Nutmeg has medicinal and magical properties similar to those of opiates or peyote. And then you just repeat this chant—”

  “Jesus Christ, N
oel. Has JJ bit you on the leg? Is this what you three Cuisinartists have been up to? Staving off the inevitable with spells?”

  “There’s nothing ‘inevitable’ about my mother’s condition. You’ll see.”

  The television was echoing in the cathedral-ceilinged family room when Norval stumbled down the steps the next day at noon, unkempt, unshaven and underdressed. He made his way into the kitchen as if sleepwalking, a smouldering filter in his mouth. Half-moons under his eyes matched the dark stains on his smoker’s fingers.

  At a table heaped with the wreckage of breakfast, Noel was absentmindedly filling in the squares of a cryptic crossword. “What can I get you, Nor?”

  Norval looked briefly for an ashtray before tossing his cigarette butt into the sink, which sizzled like an electrical short. “I don’t know,” he said with a gravelly voice. “What do you Scots have for breakfast? Haggis? Arbroath smokies with stovies? Soor plooms and chittery bite—”

  “There’s coffee behind you.”

  In the family room Samira was arranging blue irises in two vases on a side-table made of split-bamboo. Red-gold sunlight lay in bright puddles on the rush-matting beneath her bare feet. Behind her, on an overstuffed sofa, JJ and Stella sat side by side, watching soccer on an arcane sports channel.

  “OK, Brian, it’s time for the second half of our feature match, Holland versus Saudi Arabia, which is shaping—”

  “Saudi Arabia?” Norval said from the doorway, coffee mug in one hand, cigarette in the other. “The Saudis couldn’t score in a brothel.”

  Samira turned. “Well, well, well, a breath of French air.”

  “Nor!” said JJ, looking as bright and alert as a squirrel. “Join the party! Have a seat.” He wiggled closer to Mrs. Burun, patted the seat beside him. “Here.”

  Norval remained standing, took a gulp of coffee.

  “Hey Nor, why did the coach give lighters to his players?”

  “Careful now. You wouldn’t want me to spit out my coffee.”

  “Because they lost all their matches.”

  “You hit the hilarity motherlode with that one, JJ. Let’s all take five minutes to slap our thighs, shall we?”

  A belated burst of laughter came from the sofa. From Mrs. Burun. Looking her way, JJ dissolved in a jelly of giggles, which started Samira up.

  “Hey Mrs. B,” said JJ, “why do golfers wear two pairs of pants? In case they get a hole in one.”

  Another detonation from Mrs. Burun, followed by one from Samira. Norval’s face remained blank as the two women screeched.

  “A guy in a restaurant, Nor.”

  “JJ …”

  “‘Waiter, there’s a giraffe in my omelette—’”

  “JJ …”

  “Yes?”

  “Sod off.”

  “Right.”

  “… Saudi Arabia on the attack. We’re two minutes into the second half and it’s six-nil Holland …”

  “I vote we switch channels,” said Norval.

  “How about Fashion TV?” JJ offered, wiping tears from his face. “Maybe Mrs. B would like that.” He pushed a number on the remote.

  “Fashion TV,” said Norval, “can be watched only one way.”

  “Really? How’s that?”

  “Muted.”

  “Are there any sports you like, Norval?” asked Samira, as JJ muted. “Besides swimming and archery?”

  “Certain moments. My favourite is watching a bullfighter get gored by the bull. Or a horse trampling its rider.”

  With one hand over his mouth, JJ switched channels with the other, to a Quebec show called Ayoye!

  “Must we listen to that language?” said Norval.

  “That language?” said Samira, a crease of irritation appearing between her eyes. “It’s your mother tongue. And JJ’s.”

  “Look, it’s about time everybody stopped being politically correct about this. The so-called French spoken in this province is bilge—mongrelised, pidginised gibberish. The premier knows it, the education minister knows it, and anybody listening to Canada’s Prime Minister knows it. But nobody has the guts to say it. Not only do most people in this province have a vocabulary of less than a hundred, but the accent is the vilest and vulgarest on the planet.”

  “Why you don’t tell us what you really think?” said Samira. “Don’t be shy.”

  “It’s the Emperor’s New French.”

  Samira nodded. “Do you ever actually think, or do you just spit out words like a wired doll? Prejudices, sweeping statements, generalisations—you never seem to get beyond that.”

  “Sweeping statements are the only kind worth listening to. Balanced opinions are for bores and third-rate minds.”

  “Must you always talk in aphorisms and faux profundities? Who are you trying to be? La Rochefoucauld? Every language on earth has people who use it poorly. This province no more than any other. Vile? Vulgar? Those are subjective terms. I happen to think the accent is lovely. And who made you the grand arbiter of taste and beauty? Who gave you that title? Why do you despise people who are different from you?”

  “I despise people who are like me as well.”

  “You hate everything and everybody. You’re nothing but an embittered, middle-aged cynic.”

  “Middle-aged? I was a cynic in kindergarten.”

  “A bellyacher and a bleater.”

  Norval exhaled a long jet of smoke while squinting at Samira. “Let’s switch to the weather channel, JJ. I heard the forecast last night, but no one said anything about a shitstorm.”

  “Hey!” said JJ. “Where’s the love? Friends are us.”

  Norval glared at JJ and was about to say something but decided instead to butt his cigarette in the earth of a potted geranium.

  “Friends and relatives are supposed to have a calming influence,” JJ continued. “They reduce stress and heart attacks and increase longevity. Even make you less susceptible to the common cold!”

  “Really,” said Norval. “What about the friends and relatives who lie and betray? Who drive you to depression and suicide?”

  “Married men live longer than single men. That’s a fact.”

  Norval took a gulp of his café au lait. “They don’t actually live longer. It just seems longer.”

  JJ let out a high-pitched tweet of a laugh. “How did you ever get to be such a pessimist?”

  “By listening to you optimists.”

  Identical laugh. “Good one. So how do you like my café au lait?”

  Norval felt something fiery and amphetamine racing through his blood. “Has a bit of a bite, I have to admit. What’s in it?”

  “It’s triple-caffeinated with roasted guarana and the soymilk contains a natural homologue of Benzedrine.”

  Norval emptied his mug. “Got any more?”

  “No, but I also made some tea. An old Algonquin recipe. Young twigs of mountain-ash with old twigs of white spruce, leaves of wintergreen and flowers of Canada elderberry. A real pick-me-up.”

  “Great. Then I’ll paint my face, put on a war bonnet.”

  JJ pursed his lips, as if about to whistle a song.

  “Why don’t you make your announcements now, JJ,” said Samira, as Noel entered from the kitchen with a hesitant and unbelonging manner.

  “Right you are. Hey, it’s the Noelmeister! Join the party, dawg. I’m about to make some announcements. Four in total. All good. Let me just turn this off. Right. Number one: we’re forming a club, with us five as members, with our headquarters here at Mrs. B’s. This will qualify us for some very sweet municipal grants. The Alzheimer Alchemists is the name I propose for our club. All those in favour, say—”

  “JJ,” said Norval.

  “Yes?”

  “Get on with it.”

  “Number two: federal and provincial grants all lined up—for mortgage payments for our new clubhouse, lab equipment, medications, and for generally easing any … financial embarrassment. On one of the grant applications, by the way, I had to say we’re making a feature-l
ength documentary. Which will bring the private sector on board to fill our coffers—because with my film experience I’m going to handle the PR and funding! And you know what? I’m going to sue the companies that stole my film tagline—for general, punitive and aggravated damages—with all proceeds going to the club. We’re going to reach an amount that only astronomers can make sense of!” Here JJ stood up and raised his arms, as if trying to start a wave.

  A few seconds of puzzled silence followed, which Samira filled with an “All right! Good for you, JJ!”

  “And the good news,” said JJ, “keeps coming! Number three: CBC4, the satellite channel, is auditioning contestants for a quiz show. In May. I’m sure you’ve all seen it: Tip of Your Tongue!” He looked directly at Noel. “But it gets even better. Guess what the subject is for the month of May.”

  “The subject doesn’t matter,” said Norval. “Noel will memorise everything ever written on whatever it is. Right, Noel?”

  “No, that’s not right,” said Noel. “I’m not going on television. That would … not be possible.”

  “What’s the subject, JJ?” Samira asked.

  “Are you ready for this? The subject is … poetry. Poetry, can you believe it? It’s destiny! Opportunity rocks!”

  “What’s the top prize worth?”

  “If you go all the way, fifty g’s! And Norval has a plan, a real humdinger. Totally foolproof.”

  “Foolproof depends on the size of the fool,” said Norval.

  “Veux-tu continuer, boss?”

  “A few years ago a British army major won the million-pound jackpot on the British version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. It turns out he was helped by an audience member, who used a system of coughs to help him answer correctly. You must have heard about it. Well, if Noel refuses and I have to go on—assuming I qualify—then we’re going to do something along the same lines. Not with coughs, that’s hare-brained, but with a supersonic hearing device. Any questions I can’t answer will be answered by Noel, who will give me signals with a dog whistle.”