The Memory Artists

  Samira flipped back to her latest entry, Norval, and wrote:

  Muslims believe that 2 angels sit on our shoulders, one tallying our good deeds, the other our bad. The good deeds are called hasanna—the gifts we give others without thinking about the cost or benefit to ourselves. Now, although I’m a lapsed Muslim, it’s time for some hasanna. I will not make love with Norval, even though I’m overpoweringly attracted to him. I’ve got my reasons. First and foremost, because of his ‘Alpha Bet’ hit list, which he was stupid enough to tell me about. It reminds me of the emperor in The 1001 Nights who vows to marry a woman every day and have her executed the next morning. But not only am I going to resist Norval, but somehow I’m going to get him to stop this foul enterprise, an insult to all women …

  On the other hand, maybe if we make love he’ll like it so much that he’ll want to do it again—which will be against the rules and his Alpha Bet will be off. Yes, maybe it’s my duty to make love with him. My good deed.

  One last thing. What is that white powder? I had a dreadful feeling when I saw it, I hope it’s not what I think it is. This whole place is starting to give me the creeps—especially the paintings on the walls—gloomy and depraved and fetishistic. God, now I wonder if he’s going to kill me. What’s in that vial? I can’t get it out of my mind. K … Am I paranoid? Not surprising, after what happened. But what happened? Attempted date-rape? It’s all a thick bloody fog, I can’t remember. Should I try hypnosis? In the métro this morning, I picked up a soiled Maclean’s magazine with footprints and read an article on Wayne Gretzky’s father. Apparently when he woke up in a hospital bed after a stroke ten years ago, he couldn’t remember a thing. Like the names and faces of his wife and five children—or their achievements, including those of Wayne, the greatest hockey player in history. Today, everything from the mid-seventies to the mid-nineties, he admits, “doesn’t exist”. Is this what’s happening to me, on a smaller scale? That the last week of my life doesn’t exist? Or am I just

  A musical sound came from one of the partitioned rooms. The sound of a phone with a melodic phrase, a funeral dirge, then a muffled voice with no discernible words.

  Chapter 4

  Noel & Norval

  “I know you’ve been calling me for the last twenty-four hours,” said Norval into his cell phone, calmly. “I’m perfectly aware of that. You left six messages.”

  “Can we meet?” said Noel. “I have something to tell you. It’s about … well, the woman in the elevator. I mean the woman you introduced me to, in Dr. Vorta’s office …”

  “What about her?” said Norval, distractedly. He was sitting at his desk, a pillar-and-claw library table inlaid with satinwood. After examining his image in a dressing-glass, and straightening the collar of a soft-blue cotton-gauze shirt, he returned his attention to the screen of an azurine laptop.

  “Do you realise who she is? You’ll never guess in a million years.”

  Norval pressed a translucent key. “Astonish me.”

  “I recognised her voice images. The funny thing is I actually saw her once before, I mean in person, in New York. She was coming out of a hotel. We never spoke, but she smiled at me as she got in a taxi. The next time I saw her was on the screen. She’s an actress!”

  “No she’s not.”

  “She was in Zappavigna’s The Bride and Three Bridegrooms. You remember? Her name is …”

  “Samira.”

  “Heliodora Locke. Do you remember in the opening credits, it said ‘And Introducing Heliodora—’”

  “Her name, I repeat, is Samira. She’s an S—otherwise she wouldn’t be here. She’s a woman of the East—and not an actress.”

  “I never expected to see her again, at least not in person, so you can imagine my surprise when I saw her in Dr. Vorta’s office. And … well, in bad shape.”

  “Noel, I want you to focus very hard on what I’m saying. I’ve been speaking to you and you’ve not been listening.”

  “I think we should probably help her … I mean, she’s obviously in some sort of trouble—”

  “Not any more. Come over and meet her.”

  “Meet who?”

  “Samira.”

  “Samira?” Here Noel paused to visualise the colour of her voice. And eyes! How would you describe that mix, that merger as rare as radium?

  “Noel, stop the colour-wheel. I’m talking to you.”

  “Sorry, I … It’s because of the actress, her eyes, her voice—”

  “Noel, listen to me. She is not an actress. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Noel took a deep breath, refocused, let his friend’s words sink in. Why do I keep doing this? he asked himself. Getting carried away like this, putting the cart before the horse … The strange thing is that the two are a match, their sound colours match. Perfectly. What are the odds on that? Mind you, I’ve made mistakes before. I’ve made one again. No wonder I’ve got no friends. Well, one. “I know that, Nor, I was just … pulling your leg. Of course she’s not the famous actress. How could she be, here in Montreal? But she … sort of looks like her. I mean, a bit.”

  “She does look like her, now that I think of it. Like her homely sister. An honest mistake.”

  “Thanks, but I wouldn’t say that she—”

  “It’s Tuesday, Noel. Shall we meet outside the theatre?”

  “I thought you … had a guest.”

  Norval folded down the top of his computer. Noel could hear his footsteps as he walked into another room. “I’ll see if she’s conscious. Let’s see … Samira? Sam? No, doesn’t look like it.”

  “But how did she … end up at your place?”

  “Because she’s an S.”

  Noel closed his eyes. “Shit.”

  “She had a power-outage. At a party. Someone drugged her ass.”

  “Oh God … are you serious? When? With what?”

  “She doesn’t remember a thing. Special K, I think.”

  “Shit. So the cops referred her to Vorta?”

  “No, I did. She had an appointment with Rhéaume. But I recommended Vorta.”

  Noel was thinking of Samira, about how terrible she looked. That would certainly explain it. Norval’s commanding voice, like a judo-chop, cut the air before his eyes. He played back the tape in his head. “You recommended Vorta? I thought you couldn’t stand him.”

  “I can’t, but I owe him a favour.”

  Noel nodded. “For all the free drugs?”

  “No, because I cuckolded the poor sod.9 See you at four. Don’t be late.”

  Outside the theatre, Norval was crushing an Arrow cigarette beneath his heel when he saw Noel approaching on a skidding, side-slipping bicycle. A woman’s bicycle, and old, with a shredded wicker carrier. He watched Noel tether it to a No Parking sign, gave an economical nod of recognition, then ignored his friend’s outstretched hand.

  “Noel, are you aware of the season? One does not cycle in snow.”

  “I’m … well, trying to save money.”

  “Ah yes, the scrimping Scot, who lives in posh Outremont, must pinch his pennies.”

  “No, it’s just that—”

  “Let’s go in. I have balls of ice. Two below.”

  Inside the theatre, where the once-plush seats were unupholstered and unsteady and the majority unoccupied, Norval nodded towards two aisle seats.

  “Have you got any sleep in the past week, Noel?” he asked as they sat down. “You look ready for burial. Like you have a disease that should be named after you.”

  “It’s just … you know, a touch of insomnia and—”

  “You have the dark circles and paleness one gets in the terminal stages of haemophilia.”

  “No, I’m fine, really quite … fine.”

  “We’re early,” said Norval, eyeing his pocket watch. “I think I’ll go back out for a smoke.”

  “How is … Samira?”

  Norval tossed his spent match onto the floor and took a long haul. “See for yourself, tomorrow night. Sh
e meets the criteria.”

  “For what? Seduction?”

  “For Vorta’s amnesia study.”

  “So the police did send her …” He stopped speaking because no one was listening; Norval was already halfway up the aisle.

  Noel rummaged in his coat pocket, withdrew his mother’s pager and set it to “vibrate.” He leaned back, gazed at the theatre’s gold-sequined roof and papier-mâché Ionic pillars, letting his mind run every which way.

  A yellowish voice invaded his thoughts. “Are you smoking?” asked a man with a glabrous body and scalp, twice, but Noel saw only pullulating worms the colour of burnt butter. Negative words, judging by his shaking head and disapproving finger. The man continued down the aisle, his great pate flashing as he walked in and out of the theatre’s spotlights. When he sat down Noel’s attention was drawn to the theatre’s crimson curtains, which were slowly beginning to part.

  Over the past year or so, these “Tuesday Matinée Classics” had become a ritual, or near-ritual. The two men first met at this very theatre, in fact, and Noel was now sitting in the very same seat. Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point had been playing, he recalled, with Daria Halprin and Mark Frechette and Harrison Ford and … well, he could name the entire cast— he could still see the credits. There were only three people in the audience, one of them asleep. An ice-storm was about to occur outside.

  “Piece of crap, that,” was the first thing Norval had said, in French, after the movie ended. They were riding up an escalator and Norval had turned around, from his higher vantage, to say this.

  The colours in Noel’s head distracted him—but not overwhelmingly, as most new voices did. It was almost a cross between his father’s voice and his grandmother’s. Glimmering, seesawing lattices of emerald green and Tyrian purple. Very pleasant, very familiar.

  “I said that was a piece of crap,” Norval repeated, this time in English.

  Noel concentrated on the stranger’s face. Very familiar as well. He’d seen the man twice before, coming out of Dr. Vorta’s lab. A man of acid and steel. “Uh, yes, I agree. Piece of crap. I … I could hear you snoring.”

  When they reached the top of the moving stairs they paused, unawkwardly staring at each other in silence, neither of them in any hurry to part. It was not a wary, mutual sizing-up; it was more bewilderment at how much they resembled each other. Like standing before a mirror almost. Their hair was exactly the same length and shade of rich auburn, and it curled over their temples in exactly the same way. They had the same straight nose, the same cleft chin, the same full lips, the same blue-grey eyes that stared intently from pale, almost feminine faces. Their expressions, though, were quite different: Norval exuded confidence and cleverness, Noel diffidence and dimness. And Norval, at six foot one, was taller than Noel by three inches, and slimmer, and more athletic-looking—a strong swimmer and archer, he was flat of belly and broad of shoulder. Noel, round of belly and sloping of shoulder, could get portly if he didn’t starve himself, and his athleticism was restricted to moving chessmen and the pages of books. Norval spoke somewhat prosily, with sententious precision; Noel spoke in trailing sentences, in lurching stops-and-starts. And although they were the same age, thirty-three, Norval looked forty-three. His face was marked by the ravages of cigarettes, chemicals and coronary nutrition, which seemed only to increase his attractiveness to women; Noel was a vigilant vitaminiser who abused no substance whatsoever, which seemed to decrease his attractiveness to women. He had made love to a total of two women in his life and loved each monogamously, undyingly; Norval had made love to over two hundred, detachedly, including his two half-sisters.

  It was this reputation as a sexual conquistador that led to the performance-art project he was now two-thirds of the way through: The Alpha Bet. It wasn’t Norval’s idea; it arose from the brain of a colleague at the U of Q, a drunken erotologist named Antoine Blorenge. The terms: Norval had to seduce an alphabet’s worth of women, in A to Z order according to Christian name, within a six-month span. Twenty-six women in twenty-six weeks. The proof: “artistic” photographs of the women at his place or theirs, digitally dated, and Norval’s word of honour that a sex act of some sort had occurred, unpurchased. The stakes: if he succeeded, Norval would receive a $26,000 bursary from the Federal Arts Council. Dr. Blorenge happened to be head of the jury that year. If he failed, Norval would have to teach Sunday School at the university’s interfaith chapel for twenty-six weeks, while refraining from sex of any kind, including the self-assisted variety, for the same duration. Again, word of honour. Many sins had been committed in Norval’s elastic theology, but going back on his word was not one of them. The only hitch so far: Dr. Édith Dallaire, Head of Women’s Studies, had somehow gotten wind of the project.

  Noel’s brain, meanwhile, had been taken over by a mantric inner voice: Samira Samira … How could he not think of her? He’d been in love with her for years, in his fantasy world, and now he’d met her. And now she was endangered, alphabetically endangered! He would have to do something to prevent this … anti-art, this lettricide …

  Breaking in on these thoughts was the anti-artist himself, holding a foot-long Toblerone in one hand and a burning cigarette butt in the other. He took one last Herculean drag, inhaling the fumes of the filter, before ashing it against the chair in front of him.

  “No smoking in the theatre!” the same hairless man shouted, from several rows down.

  “Shut up, you fat fuck!” was Norval’s arch reply. He then sat down, slouching in his seat, knees up. He reached into his pocket for a small tin of aspirin, which Noel suspected contained something else.

  For at least a quarter minute, his temperature rising, Noel glared at his friend. Norval slowly turned his head. “And you would be gaping at … what, exactly?”

  “Have you ever thought about …” The siege of The Alpha Bet was the subject Noel wanted to broach, but he’d already expressed his views on it, quite plainly. He’d also tried to explain that he had a terrible feeling about it—a premonition of danger, of disaster—but Norval wouldn’t listen. Norval scorned presentiment and superstition. Now, however, there was a new element in the equation: Samira Darwish. Was she part of the premonition? “Have you ever thought about …” Ending this mad enterprise is what Noel wanted to say, but still the words wouldn’t come out. All he could express was childish anger, bravado. “What is there, Nor, except for mindless whoring, that I can’t do better than you?”

  Unfazed by its tone, Norval pondered the question to the count of two. “First, with this bar, I can hit that bald shitwagon sitting six rows down; second, I can swim across the Saint Lawrence River at its broadest point; and third, I can give you one hell of a good thrashing.”

  Noel nodded. He couldn’t deny any of this, or summon a return thrust of any kind.

  “Right,” said Norval. “So tell me what’s going on in this dungeon laboratory you’ve been going on about. Transforming lead into gold? Uranium into plutonium?”

  Noel was upset. And when he got upset words confused him, bled into other letters from other times. So it wasn’t surprising when the symbols for lead and gold, both the chemical and alchemical (Pb, Au; , leeched into his brain, followed by the opening line from Miss Julie (“Miss Julie’s mad again tonight—absolutely mad!”) since Strindberg, he’d read the night before, was interested in alchemy. With a concentration that hurt, he attempted first to decode Norval’s words, and then to formulate a clever retort. “No, I … I’m not transforming lead into gold.”

  “But you are up to something. The black arts? Frankenscience?”

  I had an obscure feeling that all was not over, that Frankenstein would still commit some signal crime, which by its enormity should almost efface the recollection of the past … To freeze the scrolling lines, Noel reached into his pocket for some Hot Rock candies, tipped his head back and emptied the bag into his mouth. “No, I … I’m working on something for you,” he said as the friable pebbles foamed and frothed on his tongue. “A cur
e for your sex addiction.”

  Norval raised an eyebrow, at both the candy and the remark. “A cure? Shouldn’t you be trying to self-infect? When was the last time you made love to a woman? Or boy or goat or whatever titillates you Scots.”

  Noel didn’t have to think. He knew the exact date, exact hour. He waited for his saliva to calm. “Norval, for the seventeenth time, my parents are Scottish, not me, OK? Can you remember that? It’s not that difficult.”

  “You rotten wee scunner, what are you girnin at noo? No need to raise a stushie.”

  Noel closed his eyes, determined not to encourage this with even the faintest of smiles. The accent, he had to admit, was pitch-perfect.

  “So answer my question,” said Norval.

  “Which question?”

  “When was the last time you made love?”

  “I … am not going to answer that.”

  “Quick, what’s the name of that colour?” Norval pointed to the screen, on which the theatre’s giant logo had just appeared. “The perimeter.”

  “Amaranth.”

  “Amaranth?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought that was an imaginary flower, an undying flower.”

  “Formula?”

  Noel sighed. “Na3C20H11N2O10.”

  “Principal commercial use?”

  “A dye for pharmaceuticals. Banned in North America, but not in Europe.”

  Norval nodded, rubbed his chin. He couldn’t decide whether Noel was a genius or someone who’d soon be jumping off Champlain Bridge. “Amaranth. Doesn’t Keats or Shelley use that somewhere?”