The Memory Artists

by Jeffrey Moore

  February 9. JJ’s started on Mom’s insomnia and sundowning. I’ve taken her off Halderon and given her something JJ made, a frothy infusion he calls an “Earth Shake,” a hot brew of German camomile, skullcap, hops, vervain and tincture of wild oats that Mom actually liked. To me it tastes like steamed hay. Last night he gave her a biochemic tissue salt (potassium phosphate, triturated until soluble). And tonight, around ten, he gave her a long massage with mandarin oil, spending five minutes on each of the following reflexology points: 3, 4, 9, 17, 20, 52. (I know the numbers but not what they signify.)

  February 10. Mom slept for ten hours! Which she so badly needed. And no wandering, no lamplighting.

  February 11. Tonight JJ drew a bath with aromatic marjoram oil, which Mom loved and wouldn’t come out of until the water got cold. She now says she wants JJ to prepare her bath from now on, and doesn’t want the Bath Lady anymore! But I want to keep Sancha because … she starts with an S. But it’s probably too late. Won’t see Norval this week—he cancelled for Tuesday.

  February 12. Quiet day. Nothing worth mentioning.

  February 14. Inexplicably, Mom is becoming more and more silent so JJ is getting her to talk about her life through her photo albums. He seems to love imagining her past—he peppers her with questions about her childhood and then talks excitedly about his own. Yesterday he found an old tape in her bookcase, a recording my mom and I made of a “play” we’d written together called The Phantasmagorical Phantom of Firenza. We no longer have a reel-to-reel recorder to play it, so JJ went home and got his. And then actually played the damn thing. Speak, Memorex. Mom had written her part—a Florentine princess locked in a moated grange—and I had written mine: an occasionally invisible mediaeval knight-wizard who saves her with anachronistic weapons while using big words like “vagaries” and “vicissitudes.” Mom laughed and laughed, probably because JJ was rolling on the floor.

  February 17. For his first ten days here, JJ spent almost the entire time in the lab, even eating sandwiches down there, which Mom prepares for him in Saran wrap and a lunch bag, like he’s going to school. He even drinks hot chocolate out of my old thermos. But now he spends most of his time upstairs—with Mom. Which is fantastic not only because she likes him a lot—she sometimes cries with laughter at his puns and cornballisms—but it gives me more time in the lab, uninterrupted and unworried.

  February 18. I’ve taken the last two nights off. Tonight the three of us had Chinese take-out, rented Defending Your Life and Withnail and I, ate burnt popcorn and laughed uncontrollably—as we had the night before watching the same movies.

  February 19. Mom got up early today, dressed herself elegantly, put on make-up, and was in a great mood all day. She looked totally refreshed—and energised, as if she were about to tango or belly dance at any second. JJ’s laughter therapy is obviously kicking in.

  Haven’t seen Norval in a while. He’s cancelled two Tuesdays in a row—and today he just didn’t show up. When I phoned him he said he “forgot” we met on Tuesdays. Forgot?

  Haven’t seen Samira in a while either.

  20:02, 20/02, 2002. The palindromic moment has just passed, without fanfare. Everyone, including JJ, seems to have forgotten about it. And about a second meeting.

  February 21. Mom was wandering at night again, with her trusty lamp, so JJ prepared something new for her: a maple sugar base with extracts of pennyroyal and rock mint, combined in a decoction of California poppy, Jamaican dogwood and Madagascan periwinkle.

  What’s strange is that Mom takes whatever medicine JJ and I give her, unquestioningly, like a trusting child. I can only pray her trust is well placed …

  February 24. There are starting to be extraordinary variations in my mother’s memory abilities. I’ll have to share the information with Dr. Vorta, see what he thinks.

  February 26. No matinée today. Couldn’t reach Norval all week. He may be out of town. With Samira?

  March 1. JJ’s memory for jokes seems near-infinite. So much lightness, so much laughter inside his brain—it must be what makes him so … the opposite of world-weary. Must ask Dr. Vorta about this.

  At breakfast, between mouthfuls of Lucky Charms, he reeled off this one: “So I’m talking to this friend of mine and he goes, ‘Yup, I’m colour-blind to one colour.’ So I ask him what colour he’s blind to, and he goes, ‘I don’t know, I haven’t seen it yet.’”

  None of his jokes, I grant, are particularly funny (except in their unfunniness or delivery), and this one is no exception. But for some reason, after laughing politely this morning, I’ve been thinking about it all day. Perhaps because it points to a main difference, or divide, between science and art. Our “rational” side sees the humour of the punchline because it’s self-contradictory, absurd, at variance with common sense. Our “artistic” side, however, sees a vein of truth within it—regarding imaginary fears or invisible barriers—because paradox is the currency of poetry. But science has room for paradox as well, as Einstein will tell you. “Don’t be in thrall of reason,” my father once said, “or you’ll never invent anything, never be a great scientist. The pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness too, don’t forget.”

  More later. Mom’s calling …

  March 3. Something incredible just happened. Still not sure if I dreamt it. Samira Darwish arrived! Here at the house, well after midnight, out of the blue. The incredible part is that she’s now staying here. Heliodora Locke! She said just for one night but I’m hoping for one thousand and one. More later. The sun’s about to rise.

  March 5. Spent this afternoon, in a daze, at the Osler Library, where Dr. Vorta had reserved some “Restricted” books for me, for on-site consultation only.

  Turned out to be a blind alley. Or maybe I was distracted by … other things. Anyway, when I arrived home, a surprise awaited me. Samira and JJ had made some radical changes—improvements—to the house. Which Norval may have paid for (?!). Tried phoning him today, but no answer, not even from the answering machine. Beginning to worry.

  March 6. Didn’t see Samira today or yesterday (except briefly last night as JJ and I let off some fireworks for my mom, which left Sam unimpressed, underwhelmed).

  TV reenthroned in the family room after I found Mom, in tears, searching for it in the garage with her hunter’s lamp.

  March 7. Mom had wild, shrieking nightmares last night, so JJ prepared an antidote, a Schuessler Tissue Salt: Natrum sulphorica, 12X. Thank God for JJ. I just don’t have time to do this sort of thing. I’m putting in twelve hours now, both in the basement and at Ex Pysch, where Dr. Vorta’s been generous with his time and facilities. What would I do without him?

  This morning Mom came down and asked me if I had any extra money, just a little bit because she’d like to go shopping. She said a birthday was coming up and she had to buy a gift. Whose birthday is it, Mom? Your Uncle Phil’s, she replied. And she was right.

  Came up to spend the evening with Mom—JJ went back to his place to work in his hothouse—and she wanted to watch tennis all evening, because her favourite player (despite his headbands) was playing: Roger Federer.41 “Federer is getting better-er and better-er,” she used to say. In any case, after he won, I was about to turn the TV off because the Friday night blue movie was coming on TVQ. Mom asked me if they are going to show naked men or naked women. I said both. Won’t be a tick, she said, I’ll just clean my glasses.

  Didn’t see Samira today.

  March 8. In between quiz shows, a trailer for the movie about Iris Murdoch came on and Mom said, Shh! It’s about AD and I want to hear it! Clearly, Mom’s getting better. But which drug is responsible? Is it the Hyperzine A, the qian ceng ta, that JJ’s been slipping into Mom’s tea?

  March 9. Have hardly seen Samira at all. We had one great evening together, but that’s about it. We pass each other in the house, but nothing more. She’s usually out the entire day. At school, or with Norval?

  March 10. At two in the morning, when I was sure everyone was asleep, I played
my tape of Samira’s movie, all the way through. I wanted to check out something. There are colours in her voice, subtle gradations, that I’ve never heard in real life, only on film. They’re velvety and haloed with trivalent vanadium, and I realise now they occur only in her scenes with Stirling Trevanne. They’re the sounds of love.

  March 11. Watched another quiz show tonight—Mom and I for the first half, then joined for two minutes by … Samira. She said I should try to be a contestant, that I’d be really good, that I could win some money to keep the house going, and that she’d be really proud of me. She then vanished for the rest of the evening.

  March 12. Saw Sam again today—for a few seconds. She looked angry and barely acknowledged me. I’d gone to see Dr. Vorta to give him a copy of my lab notes, which include JJ’s concoctions, and on my way out, he introduced me to a fellow synaesthete, a woman from Chicago named Kelly. (I’d seen her several months before, when I blew up in Dr. Vorta’s office, but she didn’t seem to remember me, or my voice, which goes to show all synaesthetes aren’t alike.) Anyway, we talked for a while, laughed a lot, and that’s when Samira suddenly emerged and walked right by us without saying a word.

  Kelly and I went for a coffee at Café Apollinaire and started talking about American and Canadian accents. She said that Jane Mackay, the British painter, could tell the difference between the two because “the Canadian accent is more yellow.” We then compared our alphabets and Arabic numerals. Like me, she assigns a sex to letters and numbers—although hers are quite different and much more detailed.42 We agreed on the top five most frequent consonant sounds (n, t, d, s, l), but not on their colours. Or on the colours of the days of the week. We disagreed on every one (including her “Ruby Tuesday”) except for Wednesday, blue. And the only letter we agreed on was O (white—nearly 50% of synaesthetes see O as white). Anyway, we had a great time. She has a laugh that shimmers, like a credit-card hologram, with bursts of mango orange and cornflower blue.

  When Kelly began talking about Dr. Vorta and how much she admired him, I asked her about that time in his office, when I barged in on a spectrograph test, when I saw her half undressed. She said it was all very innocent—while waiting for him she simply decided to change out of her work clothes, because she was going blading later on with her boyfriend …

  I walked her to the Champs de Mars métro and was going to ask her if he was still her boyfriend but didn’t because that’s an adolescent question. What is one supposed to say? Are you attached? Are your affections engaged? “Shall we go for a drink?” I almost said, but I almost say things much more often than I say them. The words just wouldn’t come out, stuck to the roof of my mouth like peanut butter. “Bye,” I bleated. I then decided to walk all the way home, perhaps to punish myself, which took a good hour. Five minutes in and freezing rain came down in squally gusts. I was shellacked and sopping when I arrived and Mom, just like old times, was very concerned after hearing me coughing and putting her hand against my forehead (I already had some sort of fever, before the storm). Suddenly her memory was restored as she prepared her standard cures—fizzing vitamin C, aspirin, steam inhalation (with a towel, over boiling eucalyptus leaves), chicken soup—while I, at her command, took a hot bath. “Then watch cartoons,” she said. “I’ll be up in a tick.”

  As I was closing my curtains a frostbow appeared in the sky, only the second I’ve seen. Exactly like a rainbow, except that it’s a lustrous white. A good auspice? Before I could call out to my mother, or anyone else, it was gone.

  March 14. Mom was in great spirits all day; I was quite sick. Not so much from the cold, but from tiredness, numbness. I could barely move. Mom kept asking what she could get me, did I need anything at the drugstore, did I want some chicken soup? In my bedroom, while JJ worked in the basement, we watched Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and Mom shouted out some of the answers (most of them wrong). We then watched a similar show called Tip of Your Tongue, a low-budget satellite channel knock-off. The contestant chose History as his subject, and Mom knew some of the answers, which made her happy. Five minutes before the end, Samira appeared, and watched from the doorway, in a shaft of late afternoon sunlight. She smiled at my mother, and then at me, and the next time I looked she was gone.

  4:20 a.m. Can’t sleep. Sam left coloured residue in my brain, like a comet trail, that’s been burning into my past. Not from her voice colours, but from something she was wearing: a diaphonous off-the-shoulder blouse of the darkest brown. In the light of the sun, mingled with the colour of her flesh, it took on this deep Rembrandtesque brown, with gold leaf and Roman ochre reflections … The colour of Coca-Cola, almost. A shade I first saw in the summer between kindergarten and first grade, when I mixed all my mom’s oil colours together on the stones of our patio. And saw for the second time in the Adirondacks, north of Ticonderoga, when I was with my father on one of his sales trips. He held me on his shoulders under a waterfall as the sun lit up a frothing stream of Coca-Cola...

  He drowned in waters not ten minutes away.

  March 15. For the past two weeks, after visiting my father’s grave, I’ve been thinking about a skein of “coincidences” that revolve around The Arabian Nights. I’ve tried to block them out—because they’re unscientific, illogical, superstitious—but they’ve been gnawing away at me like an unkept promise. One. It finally dawned on me where my crossword puzzle/exitless maze dreamscape comes from: from the frontispiece of the Sir Richard Burton translation. How could I not have made this connection before? Two. JJ has a copy of the Galland translation, which I’d never read before. Three. Even though it’s a sham, Norval mentions The Arabian Nights as an influence for his Alpha Bet. Four. Samira Darwish comes into my life. Five. At the cemetery, while gazing at my father’s tombstone, I calculated the time between my mom’s first suspicions of memory loss and the first signs of clear improvement: two years, 9 months. Or … 1001 days. This is courting madness, I know. JJ’s numerology and arcana have contaminated my brain. Still, if I push this one step further—and my dad, after all, said that irrational art and rational science should never be separated—perhaps number six will relate to the memory cure itself. That its ingredients, or the treasure map leading to them, will lie within the pages of The 1001 Nights.

  After three tumblers of mulled wine (“plotty” my mom calls it), I recounted all this to JJ—he’s the only one I could think of that wouldn’t laugh—and he said YES, YES, YES!, jumping up and down and practically soiling himself. He then went to consult my Burton and Lane volumes (the ones that weren’t in my room he dragged down from the attic) and began to read them on my bed, scouring them for clues. Why he has to do this in my room, on my bed, I’m not quite sure.

  What I didn’t tell him is that I already have a hunch about the clue, based on the fact that Norval, JJ and I are all—quite likely—in love with Samira. There’s a similar triangle in “Prince Ahmed and Fairy Pari Banou,” in which the Sultan’s three sons—Ali, Houssain and Ahmed—are all in love with their father’s ward, Princess Nouronnihar. To determine who should be the bridegroom, the sultan sends them out to find “the most extraordinary things” they can. Whoever brings back the rarest object will win the hand of the princess. So, Ali finds an ivory tube with a glass that will show any object he wishes to see. Houssain finds a magic carpet that will transport him wherever he wants to go. Ahmed finds an artificial apple, the scent of which will cure any illness. As they display their gifts, Houssain, looking through the tube, sees the princess, apparently on the point of death. They all jump on his magic carpet and are whisked to her bedroom, where Ahmed uses his magic apple to revive her …

  Now, Norval has a telescope, and he wrote about a “magic” telescope in his novel, so he’s Ali. I’m working on a cure, so I’m Ahmed. Which means that JJ has to be Houssain. I’ll have to ask him about a magic carpet …

  March 17. Just read yesterday’s entry. Was I drunk? Of course I didn’t ask JJ about a magic carpet. Am I losing it? No, because today I realised something
: that all this toil and quest is folly, that I will never succeed, that my mother, like all Alzheimer patients before her, will worsen and die.

  March 18. Spent all morning, afternoon and part of the evening downstairs, poring over a quartet of translations of The Arabian Nights, stopping only when I could no longer see the words. What was I doing? An undoable jigsaw, with half the pieces missing, of a fucking polar bear in a snowstorm.

  I stared at the wall and emptied my mind, waiting for … what? For a ghost to come and touch me? For Dad to whisper a clue in my ear from the beyond?

  A knock on the door. Samira delivering me from madness and delusion with potent drink and her even more potent presence.

  March 20. Feverish again, with burning eyes and ears and a tremor in my cheeks. I am in a bad way.

  Haven’t seen JJ and Sam holding hands again, or signs of trysts or anything like that. Not that I’m looking, not that it matters. I wish them well.

  March 23. Spent the last three days, every second, in my basement oubliette. Even slept there, dozing off and on like a sentinel drunk at his post. I don’t want to see anyone. Fever now blazing its way into my brain—at the convict hour between 4 and 5 I stepped outside, into a blizzard, hatless and bootless, in that unreal clarity that comes from a lack of sleep and sustenance, chanting “alkahest, alkahest …”

  7:09 a.m. A ray of light has pierced the gloom. I finally found the clue. It wasn’t in Lane or Burton or Payne but in JJ’s edition, in Galland’s “The Sleeper and the Awakener”:

  She went quickly to a druggist’s shop, and asked of him a drug often administered to men when diseased with forgetfulness. Without a word he ground up blossoms of Aleppine jasmine and Damascene nenuphar, bulbs of poet’s narcissus and rootstalks of curcuma, seeds of club moss and stems of amaranth …