Diary of Interrupted Days (22 page)

“Can you tell me what you did find out?” the doctor asked. “Maybe it could help with his recovery.”

“Novak entered the Netherlands in February 1993. He came from Germany, where he applied in our embassy for refugee status. He didn’t have his passport at the time. He said he had to enter Germany illegally, because he was a deserter. A temporary visa was issued to him—at that time the expedited procedure was in place for such cases—so he was legit when he came. He went through the usual stuff: learned the language, was given an apartment, and
then he started working at the Film Institute. They gave him a job classifying old reels. His colleagues told us he was always nice to them, was always punctual and efficient, never caused any trouble. He kept to himself, but nothing suspicious.”

The doctor shifted in his chair. “For two days he spoke Italian only. Now he doesn’t understand it. Is there anything related to Italy in your notes?”

“Nothing.”

“Are there any names? Any particular friends or significant others?”

“Novak was good to everyone and close to no one. If you ask me, another immigrant story. Not yet adjusted. I mean, we could give you the names of his colleagues, but I don’t think you will find a name that would help any more than the others.”

“With these things one never knows.”

“I’ll tell my men to fax you the details.”

The inspector closed his notebook and stood up to leave.

“Inspector?”

The policeman raised his eyebrows.

“We have a man here who claims our patient was a rock star in his old country, very well known …” the doctor said.

“We checked with his colleagues here. Nobody ever heard Novak play or sing. He never showed any interest in music.” The inspector flipped a few pages in his notebook. “Ah, yes, this is sweet: he mostly worked on silent movies.”

——

“Nothing.”

“Not a single memory?”

Johnny remained silent for a while, looking at the ceiling. His eyes turned back towards her.

“I can’t find anything. Your name means something, but I can’t relate your face to the name. The name is in a good place, but I don’t know if it belongs to you or to someone else with the same name.”

“I’ve told my mother to send me some photos of us together. She has a few.”

He thought for a while. His face got cloudy. “This must be painful for you. I’m causing pain for the people who knew me. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about others, Johnny, just work on yourself now.”

“Sara?”

“Yes?”

“Is it worth remembering? People tend to think they had an interesting life even when it wasn’t. Pain, love, lust—it happens to everyone. I mean, maybe I’d be better off not remembering. Apparently, I am in some sort of a new life. Should I leave it at that?”

Was it selfish of her to remind him that she used to be his girlfriend?

“I don’t know that anyone ever perceived the loss of memory as a blessing, Johnny. But that’s not the answer to your question. I can only give you my version. Was it an interesting life? Very. Were you creative and respected for it? You were. Were you hurt? Who wasn’t? We came from a country at war. There are no untouched people there.”

He was leaning against the pillows, his long fingers slowly drawing an invisible map on the sheets. Many curves. He was not looking at her.

“I remember my childhood. The movies I watched, the books I read. The friends I had. I remember Caspar Hauser, and the term ‘feral children.’ But there is no you, or that other guy you mentioned—Boris?—and there is nothing about the war, and I don’t know how to play the guitar. I don’t remember the music you say is mine. Tomo played some songs for me. They sound like something I could have written, I suppose, because they obviously talk about my childhood, but they’re a little too light for my taste. And the music sounds odd.”

“That’s not so strange. You would probably write those songs differently today.”

“That’s not the point. Why are you not in that picture? Or that friend of mine?”

“Johnny, there’s a letter you wrote to me, but you never sent. They found it with you when they brought you here, and I got it a few days ago. In that letter, you mentioned that Boris had heard the whole story about the war. From you. We can call him.”

However much she wanted to see Johnny’s apartment, there was fear, too. What if he—among other memories he had lost—had forgotten that there
was
a significant other? He could have been married, maybe there was a child. Maybe
his family was on Mauritius and would be coming back in a month. She took the tram to the Spui square and sat inside the Café Luxembourg, drinking double espressos and mineral water, for an hour and a half. She might have ordered another round had she not become so jumpy from caffeine.

When Johnny’s doctor told her it might be good to bring something from Johnny’s apartment and show it to him, something that might be significant, she agreed, provided, of course, that he was fine with it. They went together to 1013, and the doctor repeated his idea to the patient. Johnny said okay, but there was a moment of hesitation, a pause long enough for Sara to notice.

She remembered that pause as she tried his keys in the lock of the narrow house off Spuistraat. A dark secret? Something she should not see? There were several keys, very similar to one another, and she tried them one by one.

“What are you doing?” said a man’s voice behind her.

She jumped. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Well, yes,” the man said, “but I don’t see why someone would risk breaking into my apartment in broad daylight.”

She stared at him for a few seconds, opened her mouth, closed it, looked at the number on the wall, and started stuttering apologies. The man laughed. He was blond, with freckles on his face, in jeans and a sweater that hung on his bony shoulders. He held a supermarket bag in his hand.

“I should have kept my mouth shut,” he said. “It would have been nice to come home and find you there.”

His switching to a different mode somehow angered Sara, as if his role was limited to comic relief and he had
overstepped his boundaries. She did not answer, but turned away and walked next door.

“Are you going to Novak’s place?” the man called after her. “I haven’t seen him in a while. Where is he?”

“He’s in the hospital,” she said. “Are you his friend?”

He scratched his head. “I don’t know, ask him,” he said.

“But we had a couple of beers together. Nice guy. Are you his sister?”

“Girlfriend.”

“He found you in a hospital? Which hospital is that?”

She smiled.

“Seriously, what happened to him?” The man came closer.

“He was hit by a car, and was in a coma.”

The man whistled through his teeth.

“But he’s okay now, except that he has memory loss.” She remembered something. “Have you ever been in his apartment?” she asked.

“Once, for a few minutes.”

He wouldn’t know if there was a particularly important object. “Did he live alone?”

“You mean, did he cheat on you? I never saw anyone else going in. He was always very quiet. I’ve never even heard music from there. Do you need help?”

Well, at least that. “No, thanks.” She fumbled with the keys again. Finally, the right one. She turned it twice.

“Nice meeting you. Tell him Kees wishes him well.”

“Thanks, I will.”

She locked the door behind her and climbed a steep, narrow staircase. At the top she entered his living room. Then she realized it was the whole apartment, except for a small
bathroom in the corner. A tall window without a curtain looked out at the house across the street, and underneath it was a large old writing desk. A small monitor sat on the desk and next to it the skeleton of a computer, an open structure full of wires that connected different boxes. Although it was apparently an old machine, probably found on the street, Johnny had it covered with transparent plastic. A small hotel towel lay over something on the desk, very likely the keyboard, and some wires led to a small plastic synthesizer on a stand next to the desk. A narrow foam mattress on the floor in the corner. The walls were densely covered with pieces of paper of different colours and shapes, all containing drawings and words. With strange, sharp lines on them, they resembled parts of a large map of an unknown city. There was no single picture pinned anywhere. The kitchenette was basic. A dirty cup in the sink, the coffee remains in it dry and cracked.

The apartment contained only essential stuff, except for the computer and the instrument next to it, and even they were humble. It felt monastic.

She crossed the room, opened the window, and looked outside. She could see a canal on the right at the end of the narrow street.

She returned to the desk and lifted the cover. Yes, a keyboard. She pressed the switch on the front of the computer and the machine started waking up. That synthesizer meant that he was making music, after all. While the computer was starting, she opened the closet. She recognized only an old jacket. Several shirts on each hanger, layered like onionskins, and underneath them, folded jeans. She
smiled—still the same—and with a jolt she recognized the real reasons behind her fear of coming here: she had a key to Johnny’s apartment again.

The cards on the wall were not what she had hoped they would be—some sort of a scrapbook—and for a moment she felt disappointed. She started reading some of the inscriptions, and they looked like snippets of a movie script. The drawings on some of the cards were a storyboard. Johnny had no talent for drawing, but she could still recognize silhouettes and street scenes.

The desktop on the computer finally came on. She sat down and looked at the screen. There were several program icons, and several video links. She clicked on one of them, named “immigrant bird.”

It must have been a very early reel, as the picture was slightly jerky, with noticeable scratches, and all the movements on the screen were a bit faster than normal. The silent movie opened with a wide shot of a promenade, somewhere on the French Riviera, it seemed. The men were mostly in light-coloured jackets, almost all of them wearing straw boaters. The women, strolling with light parasols, wore elaborate hats and long white dresses. People were friendly to one another, frequently stopping to exchange pleasantries. An automobile would pass from time to time. Seagulls were scattered here and there, frightened of people, landing hurriedly to pick up a chunk of something looking like food and immediately flying back to one of the boats or towards the sea. Oddly, there were no pigeons in sight. Except for one, close to the camera, that was doing the senseless things that pigeons do: walking
around, taking a shit, picking in the dust. Suddenly, the voice of a narrator came on, as if it were the inner voice of the bird.

“Look how tiny I am, sir. I am but a grain of sand on your shores, never to travel farther. I am the sudden raindrop that fell into your quiet lake. I am the dust in your eye, sir. I am collectible. Do you know any other pigeons from my war-torn country?”

Another voice, booming, official, belonging to a moustachioed man in a top hat who had just appeared before the camera:

“PLEASE FILL IN THE NAME OF YOUR COUNTRY OF ORIGIN ON THE DOTTED LINE. USE CAPITAL LETTERS AND WRITE IN BLACK INK.”

Sara looked underneath the desk to see where the sound was coming from, and realized that the sides of the desk were actually two large speakers.

The pigeon continued:

“I am the embarrassing sound that your intestines make during the monologue in a theatre. Bear with me, and I shall pass. Pretend that my feathers have no colour, that my brain is flat, that my beak utters no sound. I will stand in front of your cathedral, with my lesser god at my wing, waiting for your mercy. Your border is a rainbow, and I’m starting again, anew, alive. Tears and mucus have the same salinity.”

The pigeon flew several yards away and landed on a bench by the water. Mechanical sounds started filling the space, giant machines at work, marching bands, boots hitting asphalt—all mixed together—and the pigeon’s voice
suddenly became a hiss, full of scorn, whipping from the speakers:

“I am the giant penis on your morning horizon. The sun rises behind my glans. There will be thousands like me. I am that horde that will topple your temple. My voice is before your Jericho.” Boom, boom, boom, boom. The sound stopped. Blank screen.

Sara stared at the monitor for a while. Is that what Johnny was doing here—making soundtracks for silent movies?

She stood up, her hands shaking, probably from too much espresso, and looked around. She was here with a task. The task was to find something that might unlock Johnny’s memories. But what? She went to the group of cards that she was reading earlier and started taking them down one by one. There was nothing else she thought was significant.

She had the key, but it unlocked a new door.

Tomo spent much of his time around Johnny, far more than what was expected of him. He brought him fruit, old music magazines, some rock recordings from Yugoslavia on his old Walkman. She should have been grateful, she knew that, but she wasn’t. The problem was that he was not the type one could comfortably argue with. Tomo never raised his voice, and at every sign of conflict, or even nervousness, he quickly withdrew. Yelling at him would have been like shooing a sad puppy.

Except that he wasn’t helpless. On Thursday, Sara brought some fast food with her, burgers and fries she wanted to share with Johnny. Tomo saw her in the corridor,
recognized the paper bag, caught up with her and told her that high-fat food aggravates the symptoms of brain injury. Before she could even answer he held his hand out, took the bag, and threw it into a trash bin in the hall.

On Sunday, she rearranged things in Johnny’s room. She thought it would be nice to make some changes, no matter how limited, and moved the chairs around, repositioned the vase and pushed his nightstand a little forward. On Monday, everything was back in its original place.

On Thursday, Sara brought with her two posters she had bought in a small bookstore down the street from where she was staying. They were good reproductions of some peaceful Flemish landscapes. Johnny liked them and she taped them to the wall. On Friday, the posters were gone.