The Memory Artists

by Jeffrey Moore

  Noel was not. “Yes, I … I was just thinking.” The idea of fathering Samira’s child was not the only thing that held his thoughts; he had a burning question for Norval, one that he’d been planning to ask since he first sat down. How best to phrase it? He had asked the same question of JJ, who had answered no; he had asked a similar question of Sam, who had also answered no. How would Norval respond? Seconds passed before his lips stopped moving. “Norval, what letter … are you … in love with Samira?” At least this was what he intended to say, more or less. The first part of the question was faint and garbled, the last spoken at quadruple speed. Sweat surged from all pores and red fire burned on his cheeks.

  “Was that English? Are you all right, Noel? In violent fevers, I’m told, people have been known to talk in ancient tongues.”

  “Are you in love with Samira?”

  Norval held a freshly lit cigarette over an ashtray, seemed to examine the bent butts left by his predecessors. He then noticed his friend’s expression and for a second softened. “No, I’m not.”

  Noel heard the words over the thundering of his heart. And yet felt not an ounce of relief! What difference does it make whether he is or not? What difference does it make to me? A pawn in love with a queen. Tin in love with Iridium. She probably has enough suitors to fill an iPod. “But what I don’t … you know, understand is … It’s just that everybody … or almost everybody …”

  “Spit it out, Noel.”

  Noel drew a huge breath into his lungs, unsure of where he was going with this and why. “It’s just that everybody has at least one love in their life … or a memory of one. Samira has one, JJ has one, my mother has one, and I—”

  “Well I don’t.”

  “But … but no one could write Unmotivated Steps without having felt mad, blind love.”

  “I was barely out of my teens when I wrote that drivel. And besides, it was a romantic parody.”

  “The critics didn’t see it that way.”

  “The critics? The critics praised the weakest parts of the weakest chapters, and were obtuse to everything else.”

  Noel scratched at his beer label, recalling something he and Samira had talked about. “We … I have a theory about you—would you like to hear it?”

  “No.”

  “It’s not really a theory. It’s more like a feeling or hunch—it’s not a fully thought-out position—”

  “Get on with it for Christ’s sake.”

  “Your life has been … well, martyred to a single memory. Because of what happened to you as a child—when your mother cheated on your dad, when she left him for that rich old man—”

  “My father was rich too.”

  “You’ve been looking ever since for an antidote in affairs, an antidote to the pain of … well, losing your mother that day. But since you’re unconsciously seeking a mother rather than a mistress, all women disappoint you.”

  Norval nodded. “Noel, something is impairing your reason, and I think I know what it is: sexual deprivation. A semen backlog is blockading your brain.”

  “And because your mother was vulgar and faithless, you fear you’ve got a similar defect. You fear you’ve been genetically stained.”

  “Genetically stained? Give your head a shake.”

  “And so you’re incapable of refusing any woman whose attentions confirm that you’re … attractive and lovable.”

  Norval nodded again, as if in agreement, as if finally seeing the light. “Interesting theory, Noel. Really interesting. It suffers from just one small drawback: it’s complete rubbish.”

  “Hence your blend of snobbery and rebellion and your low opinion of women—which is due, at least in part, to your lifelong, unresolved quarrels with your mother.”

  “Are you finished, Herr Doktor? Are you? Because if you are, I would like to interject here and thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for having clarified my entire life.”

  “Sometimes a little psychiatry—”

  “Psychiatry? Psychiatry is the most spectacular error of twentiethcentury thought. It should be consigned, if it hasn’t been already, to history’s great intellectual shitpile. The twenty-first century will lump psychiatrists in with astrologers and witchdoctors. Do you want to know why? Because brain disorders are chemical. Our brain is just a piece of meat with chemicals and electrical charges and switches. Feeling and thinking and imagining—they’re just forms of information processing. Every aspect of our mental lives depends entirely on physiological events in the tissues of the brain. Personality? It can be defined by the spaces between the brain cells—the synapses, which are distinct for each individual.”

  “Then why do you work with Dr. Vorta, a trained psychiatrist?”

  “Because he feeds me mind-altering drugs. And then pays me to feed him an endless stream of lies on which he bases an endless stream of articles which are endlessly dismissed.”49

  “Come on, Norval, they’re hardly dismissed. He’s quoted all the time. And one of his books was a best-seller.”

  “Which?”

  “Smart Drugs.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. Halcyon bought 75,000 copies of that … fable, and distributed them to doctors and pharmacists around the world. You want to know why? Because Vorta strongly recommended one of their drugs. Which is now one of their blockbuster drugs.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “And he only recommended it because they offered him shares in one of their affiliates. A drug-investment house called Helvetia Capital Management.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Because I’m writing an article, an exposé, on the mad doctor. I’m blowing the proverbial whistle.”

  “Come on, Nor, be fair—”

  “The man’s lost it, his circuitry’s fried. He’ll be checked in any day now, mark my words.”

  “He’s a brilliant researcher, highly regarded around the world! A man who studied under Dr. Penfield, for Christ’s sake! Who’s sacrificed most of his life working on memory disorders, on cures for—”

  “We need a cure for men like him. For doctors who misdiagnose and murder in the name of research and academic advancement. Why do you defend him? Why so loyal? Why can’t you see through the bastard? It doesn’t take X-ray vision.”

  Noel sighed. “Because he was my father’s closest friend and because—”

  “He was a business acquaintance, who bought drugs from him. And didn’t charge for his sessions with you, because he was exploiting you for his experiments. Yes, he got you a job in the lab—so he could use your research and ideas to write articles under his name. You shouldn’t be prostituting your genius to a thieving little midget like him.”

  “He … he guided my research, structured the articles, got them published. And he also got me jobs in two other labs, don’t forget—when no one else would hire me, when I didn’t have any experience or credentials. And he wasn’t exploiting me. He was interested in me. He has a sincere love of science—and of the arts too, just like my father. He’s devoted his entire life to helping mankind.”

  “Any nurse with a bedpan has done more for mankind. Volta’s patients are valuable to him only as subjects for some new fundable experiment, some new scientific paper. He wouldn’t hesitate for a nanosecond to sacrifice human life—animal life goes without saying—for the sake of adding one more particle, one more article, to the great dunghill of fudged research and published irrelevancies.”

  “What are you … I can’t believe you said that. About sacrificing human life. How can you possibly think that? I just … don’t understand what you have against him. Why can’t you leave him alone? He’s an old man, getting frailer and frailer—”

  “So are Nazi war criminals.”

  “Nazi war criminals? Norval, you are a master of hyperbole, of shockart. What has he done that could remotely compare?”

  “At Buchenwald they experimented on living human beings—to study the effects of artificially induced diseases.”


  “I repeat: what has he done that could remotely compare? Where do you get all this … rot?”

  Norval paused before speaking, something he rarely did. Was he about to betray a secret? Surely there was no truth to any of this. Noel’s breathing stopped as he waited for an answer.

  “From his wife and daughter,” said Norval.

  Noel closed his eyes. “His wife and daughter? Be real. His wife has an agenda, and a divorce lawyer. And his daughter despises him because he stopped her from seeing you!”

  “Among other reasons.”

  “So what did they say? What’d they accuse him of?”

  “The first controlled induction of Alzheimer’s disease in laboratory animals.”

  Noel bit his lip, scratched the side of his thumb. “It was done for a reason.”

  “And then in a test group of humans he deliberately induced the disease.”

  Noel jumped. “Look, Norval, I’ve heard that … those stupid rumours before. Do you know who started them? A colleague—a jealous, possibly disturbed archrival—who was fired last month by the university, and not by Vorta. It’s a preposterous accusation, which has never been substantiated in any way.”

  “Do you want to know something about the so-called ‘archrival’? This archrival—Charles Ravenscroft—had some astonishing results in clinical trials of an early-onset AD drug he developed. PYY-16. Which became SB-666.”

  “SB-666? Vorta discovered that on his own.”

  “Ravenscroft kept his results secret just before publishing them. But Volta got an early peek, because he was on a panel reviewing his grant application.”

  “Norval, for as long as I’ve known you you’ve had this … this violent prejudice against him. And his name’s not ‘Volta.’ Where do you dig up all this … dirt?”

  “I tripped over it. He’s swept everything under the carpet for years and now there’s a huge bulge.”

  “He’s a world-famous neurologist, for God’s sake! An authority on memory. And dreams. History will lump him in with two other famous doctors from Montreal—Wilder Penfield and William Osler!”

  “William Osler? Isn’t he the one who thought the best method of diagnosis was one finger in the throat and one in the rectum? From what I’ve heard, that’s Volta’s preferred method for his memory tests.”

  Noel closed his eyes. “If that’s supposed to be—”

  “And if he’s such a hot-shot neurologist, why isn’t he working for the Montreal Neurological Institute, as Penfield did, instead of some fourthrate lab for rejects run by the Health Minister’s cross-eyed wife? Who he’s been swording for years.”50

  “I’m not going to discuss these … these inventions from divorce lawyers and jealous colleagues. It has nothing to do with what we were talking about.”

  “Which was …”

  Noel paused, took a deep breath, tried to block out Norval’s wild accusations. His mind began turning, bleeding colours like a washing machine. There was no truth to any of this, surely. “Childhood trauma,” he said finally, in a near-whisper. “And true love.”

  Norval stared at his friend, whose eyes were averted. “Any last words on either subject, so we can bury them forever?”

  “Yes. I predict that one day, in some fabulous future, you’ll find closure for what’s happened in the past—you’ll find the right chemistry with someone and fall madly in love.”

  “I want you to promise never to use that word again in my hearing.”

  “Which word? Chemistry? Love?”

  “Closure.”

  “Closure, closure, closure …”

  “And this would be a reversion to … age five?”

  “I’m simply making a prediction, that’s all.”

  “What is this, a career move? You’re now a soothsayer?”

  Noel remained silent. Norval, he knew, was concealing something. He’d known it from the beginning of their relationship. He had an intuition, a gut feeling, even though he’d never had an accurate one in his life. He paused before trying another tack. “What happened to your father?”

  “My father?”

  “He went mad, right?”

  “He drank himself to death.”

  “Because your mother betrayed him?”

  “He drank to forget.”

  “And so now, in revenge, you’re fucking over as many women as you can, treating them as numbers. Or rather letters. Demeaning and debasing them for the sake of childhood wounds.”

  “Don’t be a stooge. Things will be less foggy when you catch up on your sleep. Or go to a brothel.”

  “You have two half-sisters, right? And you made love to them both?”

  “Correct.”

  “Is that the dark secret you’re hiding?”

  “How many times do I have to tell you there’s no darkness, no secrecy? I don’t give the episodes a backward thought, haven’t a scintilla of remorse. Nor do they.”

  “Does your love for one of them, or for your first true love, prevent you from committing yourself to another?”

  Norval broke into laughter. “Are you auditioning? Is this stand-up?”

  “Then why don’t you commit to anyone?”

  “It’s not something I want on my résumé.”

  “What about that Spanish woman we ran into the other day? From Barcelona. She said she was an old flame of yours.”

  “A spark, a mere cinder.”

  “How about … Kayleigh? The one you lost to that performance artist, Scott Free.”

  “I didn’t lose her so much as wipe her off my shoe.”

  “OK, what about that beautiful French-Canadian? Who left for Belgium. Didn’t that break your heart?”

  “Which beautiful French-Canadian? They grow like weeds in this town.”

  “The one you picked up at Ex–Centris. Chantal.”

  “Chantal? The journalist? You’d need a fork-lift to pick her up.”

  “Not that Chantal. The other one, the dancer.”

  “She was a C. Nothing more. Taken on the sperm of the moment.”

  “But she was … beautiful.”

  “Show me a beautiful woman, says the Hindu proverb, and I’ll show you a man who’s tired of fucking her.”

  “What about Lise, the acrobat with Cirque du Soleil?”

  “She’s not an acrobat, as it turns out. At least not for the circus. She’s a professional fluffer.”

  “A fluffer? What the hell’s that?”

  “Her job is to keep porn stars aroused between scenes.”

  “Right … But didn’t you say she was an ex?”

  “More like a why. She was a fling, an amourette. She was three months gone at our first passade.”

  Noel shook his head. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have women like this in his gravitational field. To be in Norval’s position, just for one day. Sometimes he thought he’d do almost anything to trade places: light a fire in an orphanage, push the Pope off a cliff … But the feeling would pass. Because he was looking for something more romantic, longer-lived, something found in fairy and technicolor tales. Does this sort of thing exist in the real world? It would certainly never exist for him. With the curse of his memory, and now his mother’s memory, it was pointless to pursue love or marriage. These things were about as possible as making a wedding ring out of mercury, or honeymooning in Atlantis. He stared at Norval, in simmering silence. “How exactly did we become friends, Nor? It seems that in every single way we—”

  “As soon as you told me your name. You had Byron’s adopted first name, and Bonaparte’s initials. And mine.”

  The flip answer, despite Noel’s resistance, pulled him headlong into the past, into his childhood lab with its laminated Periodic Table. Memory particles fell on him like snow.

  Norval recognised his friend’s dead-eyed stare. “What are you seeing, Noel? Noel?”

  “Just … memory flakes, nothing important.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Not this time, Norval, I don’t
want to play, I’m not in the mood.”

  “Come on, lighten up for Christ’s sake.”

  “No. I don’t feel like it.”

  “One more time. Play the bloody game.”

  Noel sighed. All right, for the last time. “I was thinking of Nb. Niobium. Group Vb of the Periodic Table.”

  “Physical appearance?”

  Noel closed his eyes. “Like steel, except it’s soft and ductile. When polished, it looks like platinum.”

  “Rare?”

  The servant entered, carrying a large mahogany chest of chemicals, with a coil of platinum and two lead clamps … Noel opened his eyes, bleaching lurid images from Dorian Gray. “No, it’s more plentiful than lead.”

  “Principal uses?”

  Noel reclosed his eyes, waited for the right map to sharpen, like a print under emulsion. “Tools and dies, superconductive magnets. Claddings for nuclear reactor cores—either alone or alloyed with zirconium—since it’s compatible with uranium and resistant to corrosion by molten alkali-metal coolants …”

  Norval erupted into laughter.

  “… and has a low thermal-neutron cross section.”

  “Of course, mustn’t forget the thermal-neutron cross section. Atomic number and weight?”

  “Forty-one and 92.906.”

  “Proceed.”

  “Melting point 2,468 degrees C, boiling point 4,927.”

  “In Fahrenheit?”

  “4,474 and 8,901.”

  “In Kelvin?”

  “I don’t know, you idiot.”

  “Go on.”

  “Specific gravity 8.57, electronic configuration (Kr)4d45s1.”

  “Derivation of name?”

  “After Niobe, the daughter of Tantalus.”

  “The mythical king? Who was condemned to stand in water that receded when he tried to drink? Or was it with fruit that receded when he tried to grab it?”

  “Both.”

  “But what’s that got to do with Niobium?”

  “Because the two elements, Tantalum and Niobium, are always found together.”51

  “Noel, do you see now why I hang with you? Because you’re a fucking marvel—with possibly the largest cranial junkyard in the world. But maybe I should write this all down, make sure you’re not making it up.”