A History of Forgetting

by Adderson, Caroline

  When he turned back, he saw that Christian himself had deflated. He had been sprawling on the sofa, legs splayed, fingering the key around his neck that would unlock the padlock at his waist. Now he sat up straighter, knees together, which made him seem all the more diminutive; his feet didn’t touch the floor. He stared off vacantly and in two different directions and his face, despite all the chaos on it, registered disappointment.

  ‘I’m jealous,’ he said. ‘He’s very handsome.’

  ‘But that is the least of why I loved him,’ said Malcolm. ‘You are all unnaturally obsessed with appearances.’

  ‘But appearance is our occupation,’ Christian argued.

  ‘Not at all,’ Malcolm countered. ‘Service is.’

  Christian pondered for a moment. ‘Why do you love him then?’

  Malcolm flinched a little to say it: ‘He is kind.’ Then it occurred to him that, after ‘madman’, ‘kind’ was how he would describe Christian, too. His pranks and gossip, his stream-of-consciousness patter aside, the little man had the ethos of a saint. He spoon-fed their in-house anorexic and charged his clients on a sliding scale. And here he was now, paying this mercy call to Malcolm. ‘Like you,’ Malcolm told him. ‘Like you.’

  Immediately Christian brightened. ‘Then there’s hope for me yet?’

  Do not hope for love, Malcolm advised him in his mind.

  Christian, looking vaguely over his shoulder to the hall, asked, ‘Is he here?’

  ‘No. He’s—away.’

  ‘In Paris?’

  Malcolm said, ‘Yes.’ And Denis was, in a manner of speaking. Then he stood and Christian, taking the hint, rose as well, though clearly he would have liked to stay.

  At the door, he fawned over Grace again. ‘What’s your lover’s name?’ he asked.

  ‘Denis.’

  ‘Denis. I like what you said about him.’ Misunderstanding Malcolm’s wince, he said, ‘No, I’m serious. I meant what I said, too, about being friends. Do you and Denis have plans for Christmas?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Malcolm.

  ‘Then how about Tuesday? Do you want to have dinner or a drink?’

  ‘A drink would be nice.’

  ‘Good,’ said Christian. ‘I’ll be in touch. In the mean­ time, decide where you want to go.’ Stepping away, he cried, ‘Au revoir!’

  Strange how this impromptu visit jump-started Malcolm. The very next day he began to do something about packing, taking several trips to the liquor store for cardboard boxes, even treating himself to a litre of plonk.

  When Christian didn’t call as promised, Malcolm withdrew once again. Of course, there was a chance that Christian would still be in touch—he was notoriously unpunctual—but on Christmas Eve Malcolm gave up. He unscrewed the cap on the bottle, poured himself a glass and, looking on the bright side, comforted himself with the realization that he was still a sentient being: it actually stung to be stood up. Then he set to obliterating his newly recovered senses. The wine was blood-thick and tart.

  In the living room, he went over to his obsolete hi-fi, where he began looking through his obsolete records. Bach, he thought, would soothe his wounded pride. He placed the record on the turntable, lowered the needle and took the album cover over to the armchair. What would Christian tell the others, he wondered. Would he say that he had gone into Malcolm’s apartment and found that time had stopped?

  From the old leather armchair he listened, in the dim room, air stale, uncirculating, hermetic, the glass of sour wine in hand. ‘Die Schätzbarkeit der weiten Erden,’ sang the soprano, the organ a jolly fairground piping under her lilting voice, the violin a joyful line above. ‘Lass meine Seele ruhig sein.’ Jamie at work suddenly came to mind, his forearms through the copper sheen of hair tattooed with song lyrics. Maybe Malcolm, too, could modernize himself to fit in better. He could advertise his motto on his flaccid upper arm. On the inside sheath of the album, he found the title of the cantata in translation, pictured it written under his skin in Gothic script: Let What the Wide World Values Leave My Soul in Peace.

  9

  Malcolm stepped out of the elevator on Christmas Day and was greeted by a nurse, Nurse Hygiene or Nurse Health. He had to look twice; both of them were statuesque and broad-hipped, with mannish faces and pillar thighs, dressed in the inevitable pastel hues. Once again, he couldn’t help wishing that the nursing profession would re-adopt a standard uniform. The caps were smart, the white dresses antiseptic. In running shoes and scrubs, they looked so cheap.

  Malcolm liked Nurse Health better. She was a lesbian, he was almost certain, and naturally more sympathetic, but it was the primmer Nurse Hygiene, all in peach, telling him, ‘I’m glad you came early, Mr. Firth. I’d like to talk to you.’

  He set down the poinsettia and the box of chocolates on the tinselled counter of the nursing station. ‘For you and the rest of the staff.’

  She thanked him and, as he followed her to the cubbyhole that was her office, asked, ‘You didn’t bring the dog?’

  ‘Oh, no. The festivities would overwhelm her.’

  She gestured for him to sit and took her own place behind the too-small desk. ‘We had a little problem this morning.’

  Denis, she meant, and Malcolm felt something he had thought he would never feel in his life: like a father, a chagrined father facing the headmistress of a reformatory, though in the last six years he had been assailed by so many unlikely emotions, he should have been used to it.

  ‘Mr. Firth,’ she began in a solemn tone, ‘Denis had a bowel movement in Mr. Stavros’ dresser drawer.’

  For a moment he only stared, then the images flooded in: Mr. Stavros sleeping gape-mouthed in his recliner while Denis maliciously crept in. Mr. Stavros’ bottom drawer open, his socks inside, neatly balled and clean. Christ, he thought with a shudder and Nurse Hygiene nodded, approving of his mortification. She pursed her mouth, waiting. Did she expect an apology as well? He wasn’t going to give it. He was going to separate himself from Denis’ actions and opinions; he had to. The guilt was killing him.

  Compare this to what had happened with Yvette when he gave her her last cheque. ‘You’ll miss Denis, I suppose,’ he had said, but to his surprise she had replied, ‘No, not really. He got so mean there at the end.’

  They had never spoken about it so he had assumed that Denis had only showed his darker side to him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told her.

  Yvette heaved her shoulders. ‘Why? It has nothing to do with you.’ But he felt it did. He felt anything to do with Denis reflected back on him.

  In Nurse Hygiene’s little office, he stood. ‘I’ll go and see him now.’

  ‘I thought you should know, that’s all.’

  ‘I understand.’ He hesitated. ‘Did he do it on purpose?’

  ‘They get confused. It’s happened before with other patients.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Malcolm, ‘the high jinks around here.’

  ‘With Denis, mind you, you just don’t know!’ She laughed and he was suddenly embarrassed again. He almost asked her to spare him in the future.

  The ward had been decorated for weeks with streamers and Christmas cut-out ornaments. On every door, a more permanent display: photographs behind a plexiglass plate showing at different ages the patient who resided in each room. Walking along the hall, Malcolm liked to stop and look at who these people had been in their childhood and their youth. There were graduation pictures, wedding pictures, pictures of spouses and children and long-dead parents now called upon and talked to by people who were themselves grandparents.

  Next to Denis’ door, three photos: one in colour taken when Denis had been admitted, another in black and white of Denis as a child in short trousers and suspenders, his hair an incandescent blond, head cocked, mouth pouting. He was so clearly that cross little boy again, taking that very pose, putting on that same expression, his hair an incandescent s
ilver, that Malcolm felt a chill every time he saw it. Don’t we change at all, it made him wonder. Are we the same from birth to death, only pretending in the middle years to be someone we’re not?

  The third was taken in Paris in 1963. Also in black and white, it showed a much younger Denis and Malcolm flanking Denis’ saintly namesake in stone. A halo illuminating the stump of his neck, the statue stood with its own crowned head in its hands.

  From behind the closed door came the sound of a trapped bird colliding softly with the furniture and walls. It was only Denis making his rounds. About to walk in on his hallucination, Malcolm looked up and saw Mr. Stavros coming down the hall. Reddening, he waited until Mr. Stavros had passed in case he should glimpse Denis when the door was opened. Mr. Stavros showed no sign of recognition, did not link Malcolm with the outrage that had been perpetrated against him. He did not remember the outrage. He was carrying a pillow in a pink crocheted case, looking utterly blank, mouth open, jaw unhinged. His eyebrows under his wing of salt-and-pepper hair were as black and long as insect parts.

  When he had passed, Malcolm opened the door on the room, small and monkishly spare without anything to decorate or personalize it. There stood Denis, berating the air. ‘Who are you talking to?’ Malcolm asked.

  Denis swung around. ‘Qui-êtes vous?’

  Malcolm still used the cheap black rinse every time he washed his hair, even through this, their long Absurdist period. He knew he should give it up, but somehow he couldn’t. ‘The love of your life,’ he answered.

  Denis scoffed. ‘You’re not my type,’ and Malcolm tried to act bemused. He had long ago learned never, never to contradict.

  ‘What’s your type, dear?’

  ‘Plus jeune.’ He looked Malcolm critically up and down. ‘Beaucoup plus jeune!’ Suddenly agitated again, he began to wander the room making his tactile inventory, touching everything with tentative patting gestures. He picked something up and put it in his already bulging pocket. Malcolm, following along behind, pulled a catheter tube out of the pocket, hand over hand.

  ‘Did you have a good day?’ A spoon clattered to the floor.

  ‘Good day to you, too,’ Denis replied, hotly.

  ‘How was it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know!’

  Malcolm sighed. ‘Aren’t we especially Pinteresque today?’ Balls and balls of tissue, a broken cookie. From the other pocket he pulled an enormous pair of cotton incontinence pants and, in a flash, saw his future as a series of slapstick attempts to return stolen undergarments and prevent Denis from moving his bowels where he shouldn’t.

  ‘Bad boy! Bad! Where did you get them?’

  ‘Quoi?’

  ‘These!’ He waved the panties like a toreador.

  ‘Je ne les ai jamais vus!’ All at once, he let loose a childish wail. It was the accusation that offended him. He had to be led over to the bed where Malcolm wiped his face with the panties. Malcolm worried that the staff passing in the hall might overhear and perceive an unkind edge in his voice. If Denis had spoken English, they would have heard for themselves just who was unkind and who was coping with unkindness. Malcolm had even thought to translate some of the remarks Denis made, but decided he would only look childish himself. ‘Madam? Denis considers your perm a scandal. In his opinion the standard of grooming in this establishment leaves much to be desired.’

  The panties were forgotten before Denis’ eyes were dried. ‘I want some pudding.’

  Malcolm looked at his watch. ‘It’s nearly five. We’ll be having Christmas dinner in half an hour.’

  ‘Pudding!’ Denis demanded.

  Through the half-open door, Malcolm glimpsed a shuffling migration to the dining area, everyone waking, even the seemingly catatonic in the row of armchairs he had passed in the corridor. ‘Let’s go and see if there’s any in the fridge.’

  Outside the door, Mrs. Mikaluk stood clutching the handrail and bobbing. Stout, she seemed to be constructed entirely out of spheres—head, belly, breast, the left one missing due to a long-ago mastectomy. She brightened when she saw Malcolm, yet continued her low, incoherent murmur.

  ‘You look lovely,’ Malcolm told her. ‘These are very pretty.’ He pointed to the heavy gold rings in her ears. One warm ball of a hand clutched his. The other, in slow motion, reached up to where she thought he was pointing, but instead of an earring, her fingers landed on her cheek. Feeling around, she found two warts and began fiddling with them.

  Denis walked on, brisker than ever; the apartment could never have contained him now. He needed these broad corridors to stalk his fury through. Malcolm and Mrs. Mikaluk moved along much more slowly. Halfway to the dining area, they came upon a woman transfixed before what appeared to be a blank wall, very solemnly running a finger down it. She was tracing a faint hairline crack, Malcolm observed, as they drew near. She was feeling the fault where the eggshell world was bound to split apart.

  ‘Hello,’ said Malcolm.

  She swung around and, as if she had been caught at something naughty, giggled. ‘It’s a jumbled roth!’

  ‘Is it? I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Malcolm.’

  ‘It doesn’t cart!’

  ‘What’s your name, dear?’

  Blank and pained, her expression. A skin condition had ruined her face; it was raw and tagged with scales, and her hair, overpermed, had taken on a slightly greenish tint. Just then an East Indian nursing aide passed by. The woman reached out and gripped her braceleted arm. ‘Congratula­tions, dear!’

  ‘This woman has only got one shoe,’ Malcolm said, noticing just now.

  ‘Where’s your other shoe, Midge?’ asked the aide. ‘Where’s your shoe?’

  ‘I left it in Chicago.’

  ‘I’ll go get it for her,’ the aide told Malcolm as Midge slipped an arm around Malcolm’s waist and began a tender exploration of his face. The aide chimed a laugh. ‘She thinks you’re her husband! Everybody is Midge’s husband!’

  Her fingers against Malcolm’s cheek felt like sandpaper.

  Two women hanging off him now, he felt more popular than ever. Would any of his old dears from the salon end up here, he wondered. Mrs. Mikaluk burbled in tongues. Midge whispered, ‘Will you phone the campfire girls?’

  Denis was standing in the wide doorway to the dining area, hands on his hips. ‘Who are these people?’ he demanded when Malcolm and the women caught up.

  ‘Friends.’

  ‘Yours, I’m sure.’

  A long banquet table draped in plastic, wheelchairs wheeled up, everyone in his or her best bib. In the corner, the artificial tree kept on winking at the joke while carols played in a loop on a stretched and warbling tape. Most of the more cogent patients had been taken home for Christmas. They were outnumbered by the unloved.

  Mr. Stavros was already at the table, staring from under his feeler-like eyebrows at the crochet-covered pillow in front of him. At the other end was a tiny man in a wheelchair, doubly afflicted with Parkinsonian tremors. Next to him was an old lady, Buddha-like in her tranquillity and obesity, the likely owner of the incontinence pants.

  An aide came over with a bib. ‘Qu’est-ce que vous voulez? Denis hissed.’

  ‘You are so beau, Denis,’ she cooed. ‘Beau.’ She pinched his beautiful cheek to distract him. He knocked her hand away, but by then she had skilfully pressed closed the Velcro tab and got the bib on without his noticing.

  Malcolm led his lady admirers over to the table and seated Mrs. Mikaluk next to Mr. Stavros. He unpried himself from Midge’s scaly grip.

  Mrs. Paxton and Mrs. Ross were talking nearby. ‘I don’t give a fig,’ said Mrs. Ross, who was heavily wattled. ‘I’m leaving anyway.’

  ‘But what about the boys?’ asked the much slighter Mrs. Paxton, Laurel to Mrs. Ross’ Hardy. ‘Aren’t you going to see them off?’

  ‘Sit down,’ Malcolm told Denis.
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  ‘Pourquoi? Let’s get out of here. Allons-y. Take me home.’

  ‘You’re home,’ said Malcolm.

  ‘I’m not. I only stopped here for the night.’

  ‘Where’s here?’ asked Malcolm, curious.

  ‘L’enfer, bien sûr!’

  As if on cue, Nurse Hygiene came silently into the room on crepe soles, a sheaf of sheet music under her arm, booming hello. ‘Who’s the fat cow?’ Denis asked as she sat down at the piano. Malcolm felt grateful that this was a ward in Babel.

  ‘Silent Night.’ At once everyone began to sing. In whatever language they remembered, they sang—even Denis. The slow and the stuporous, the tremoring and inert, their lips began to move, their voices stirred. Midge raised her sore face heavenward and sang gorgeously. ‘All is calm, all is bright . . .’ One by one, the staff trickled in, the orderlies and the aides, the other nurse on duty, adding to the choir.

  In the middle of ‘Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem’ they heard the elevator bell, then the tinkling of the dinner carts as they were wheeled down the hall. This was the moment Malcolm had been dreading since the Christmas decorations went up: when they would have to sit down together in a spirit of peace and love. But listening to their soaring voices, voices that seemed independent of the lost souls who were singing, he thought that maybe it would be all right. He sat down with Denis on his left and Mrs. Paxton on his right. Nurse Hygiene stood at the head of the table and, once the trays were distributed, raised her glass of apple juice. ‘Merry Christmas, everyone.’

  It was the traditional Christmas dinner, cranberry sauce spooned out thick over their plates like a fresh kill. Denis demanded his pudding right away. ‘That’s dessert,’ Malcolm told him and Denis slammed a fist on the table.

  ‘What does he want?’ asked Nurse Hygiene.

  ‘His pudding.’

  ‘Oh, let him have it,’ she laughed. ‘It’s Christmas.’ Malcolm cut up the rubbery turkey; when the orderly had passed him the pudding, he doused the turkey with it.