The Memory Artists (31 page)

A smile played about Samira’s lips. “Yeah, although I probably sound like a ten-year-old. Or younger. My parents came to Montreal as children, so we spoke mostly English at home, except when my grandfather was around. He’s the one who sent me to a
madrasa
for two years, where I dutifully memorised my lessons.”

“What nationality are they—your grandparents?”

“Persian—although my grandmother’s people were from Egypt. Alexandrian Jews.”

“
Persian
? How old are they? Or is that a euphemism for Iranian?”

Samira smiled. “They came to Montreal in the thirties—when the country was still called Persia.”

Noel nodded. “And Egyptian Jews. Did you know that
The Arabian Nights
draws extensively on Jewish sources?”

“No, I’m not really up on … either.”

“In ‘The Sultan and His Three Sons,’ for example, and ‘The Angel of Death,’ and ‘Alexander and the Pious Man’ and …” He stopped when he saw tears forming in Samira’s eyes—from a protracted yawn. I’m literally boring her to tears, he thought. “Would you like some more of this?” He held up the bottle. “Will we get to seventeen, do you think?”

“I think I’ve reached my limit. But go ahead.”

“No, I’ve reached mine too.” He replaced the glass stopper in the bottle. “So you … grew up here. You went to university in Montreal?”

“No, the States.”

“Where?”

“Cornell.”

“Really? That’s where Nabokov taught. While writing his autobiography.”
³⁹

“And
Lolita
.”

“We used to live down there—in New York State, I mean. Long Island. I was there until the second grade. I’d love to go back one day …” Letters and numbers began percolating inside Noel’s skull: the chiselled Baskerville capitals of
BABYLON ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
, the pebbled black plastic 22 on his classroom door, the sinistral chalk letters of Miss Schonborn … Noel rubbed his eyes, refocused. “Ever been there?”

“Long Island? Once. I went to see an Islanders game.”

Cards began to fly from the pack, bouncing off Noel’s inner walls: dog-eared cards of Mike Bossy and Denis Potvin, Bryan Trottier and Bobby Nystrom, Clark Gillies and Butch Goring … Their stats, as in a centrifuge, began to spin and scatter. He pressed his thumb and forefinger against his eyeballs, hard. “So … what’d you study? At Cornell.”

“Well, my father had this master plan. He thought I should study marketing, so I could help expand the family business. He owned a restaurant in Lachine.”

“Which one?”

“Le Tapis Magique.”

“You’re kidding! That restaurant by the water, near Saul Bellow’s old neighbourhood? That’s an institution.”

“Maybe I served you.”

“No, I’ve never been there.” Noel ran his fingers up and down the skull-and-crossbones label on the bottle. “So you got your MBA?”

Samira shook her head. “I was
totally
not interested in business, so after a semester of boredom—of pain—I switched over to the arts. Without telling my father, who hated … impractical things.”

“What’d you take?”

“Impractical things. English lit, astronomy, psychology, art history. Oh, and theatre arts.”

“Which is how you got the film part?”

“Not really, no. My roommate happened to see a poster on campus, some film production company looking for an ‘Arabic-American teenager.’”

“So you went for an audition.”

“To this day, I have no idea why. It’s not something I ever wanted to do, at least not professionally. I guess I went because I had almost no money, and was tired of taking orders from the assistant manager of Wendy’s. Next thing I knew I was flying to Venice.”

“Where you met Stirling Trevanne.”

“Yeah. Whose real name is Lionel Lifschitz. An asshole, as it turned out, like all my boyfriends, but breathtakingly handsome—as his teenage fans kept reminding me. Daily. Anyway, after the shooting I moved out of my apartment, took a bus to New York and the red-eye to LA.” The vertical city to the horizontal one, she recalled thinking, a tremor of excitement running through her as she gazed on each from the sky.

“To live with him,” said Noel.

Samira sighed. “Yeah. Then the film comes out—and the shit hits the fan. The film’s a mega-hit, critically at least, wins awards in Venice and Berlin, Stirling loses his mind, my father has a massive coronary.”

“Are you serious? Your father had a heart attack?”

“While watching the film.”

“My God. And he … Is he better now?”

“No, he died. I went back for the funeral, and my mother guilted me out the whole time, saying that I’d killed him, that the nude scene in the movie killed him. She’d walk around the house holding his shirts to her breast, weeping for hours. Especially when I was there to see it. Must be her Jewish blood. Anyway, it was a terrible time for me, I just had to get out of there. So I went back to Santa Monica.”

“To Stirling.”

“Yes, who was beginning to act strange.”

“I … I read about that, about him giving names to his furniture and kitchen appliances. After the accident. What happened exactly?”

“Well, he was a vegetarian, right? Which is fine. So was I, more or less. Except he became more and more radical, obsessive, evangelical. He’d take forever in the health-food stores, pestering the staff, peppering them with questions about the labels, the packaging materials, how and when the fruit was delivered to the store, carping about this and that, you name it. If the salesperson didn’t have an answer, there’d be hell to pay. Insults, threats to have him fired … The veins on his neck would just bulge. If the food was touching paper or Saran wrap, he wouldn’t buy it. He’d comb the racks with crystals that checked the ‘life force’ of foods, or with Geiger counters or ray-guns that buzzed and beeped. I’m not kidding. The man was insane. He was a raw-foodist. The only thing he’d eat was fruit and vegetables—but only if they’d been picked less than fifteen minutes before he ate them. Which cut down on his choices,
n’est-ce pas
? And he wouldn’t chop a vegetable, because it would destroy its ‘etheric field.’ Or eat out of pots and pans, because they were contaminated by ‘fleshy vibrations.’ So he nibbled on alfalfa sprouts, umeboshi plums, quinoa seeds ... He ended up looking like Gandhi after a fast. His big aspiration was to become a Breatharian.”

“Which is …?”

“People who fast and live on pure air. Anyway, if you ever confronted him about not eating he’d just say he was going through a ‘purge, a cleansing process.’ He’d faint from time to time—from protein deficiency, I guess. And then he had the big accident, crashing his Ferrari into a hairdressing salon, which I guess you read about.”

“Is that how it happened? He passed out while driving? And how is he now?”

“No idea. When he got out of the hospital I left him for good.”

“Probably wise.”

“Yeah, except I’ve not been lucky in my choice of men since then either. Norval included.”

Noel jumped, at least on the inside, but strained not to show it. “So you … never went back to acting?”

Samira shook her head. “No, I went back to Ithaca, to school, which my film money paid for more or less, without having to go back to Wendy’s.”

“And did your mother ever … you know, chill? Did she realise your father’s death had nothing to do with you? Am I asking too many questions?”

“No. It’s nice to get some. Especially after being with Norval. No, my mom’s still blaming me, tormenting me, living in the past. The house is like a museum, a shrine—with a stopped clock marking the time my father died. An Arabic tradition, she says. And she sold the restaurant.”

Noel looked down, dolefully, at the floor. “That’s a shame, that’s so …” He let the sentence trail, the right word not coming. “So now you’re studying psychology? I mean, art therapy?”

“Just started this year.”

“Is that why you went to see Dr. Rhéaume after you were … drugged? She’s one of your teachers, right?”

“Yeah. In fact, she and her husband—Dr. Ravens croft—were there that night. It was an Art Therapy party, a get-acquainted kind of thing.”

Noel nodded. He’d been to one of those. “Charles Ravenscroft? He’s her husband? I didn’t know that. So what happened exactly? That’s a stupid question, you can’t remember.”

“I really can’t, I just … blacked out. One minute I was drinking cranberry cocktails and the next I was feeling dizzy and disoriented, seeing everything in multiple images. And losing control of my movements.”

“Was Dr. Rhéaume there when it happened? Did she know who could’ve done it, who could’ve spiked your drink?”

“Yeah, she and her husband were both there, just about to leave. In fact, they’re the ones who drove me home. But she hasn’t a clue who could’ve done it. She insisted I report it to the police. In fact, she took me there herself. She and Charles.”

“So the police … Dr. Vorta also did some tests, right?”

“Yeah, but only because he paid me. It was Norval’s idea. Vorta took blood and urine samples and then turned on a tape recorder for some article he’s writing. Then enlisted me in an amnesia study.”

“It was GHB, right?”

Samira nodded.

“And were you … never mind.”

“Raped? No, thank God. Or rather thanks to Dr. Rhéaume. I was in a back bedroom, don’t ask me how, and she came in—either to get her coat or say good night, I’m not sure which—and saw the guy scrambling out the window, onto a fire escape.”

“Are you serious? Did she get a good look at him? Did she give the cops a description?”

“It was pitch black in the room, and it all happened so fast. And she didn’t know what was going on. She may have thought I was making out with the guy.”

“And you … don’t remember a thing.”

“Just that one detail, about hearing that bit about ‘excess and the palace of wisdom.’”

“Right.” Noel saw the line from Blake. “I wonder if we should try that same blend of herbs again, see if it triggers anything more.”

“No, it’s probably nothing, I’m probably imagining things …”

“I’ll talk to JJ about it. Because it did some strange things to me too.”

“Nothing to lose.” Samira emptied her glass and stood up. “OK, time for my bath. Wow, my legs feel like rubber. Listen, Noel, are you sure it’s all right if I stay here? I mean, just for a couple more days?”

“Stay as long as you want. There’s lots of room. And I think the world … I mean my mother thinks the world of you.”

“Thanks, Noel. You’re a sweetheart. I wish I could fall in love with a sweetheart like you, I really …” She stopped, realising she’d said something stupid, something insulting, and not knowing how to take it back.

Noel winced. The words stung. His lips began to move: a mumble rose to a gabble, the words tripping one another, his brain out of step with his tongue.

“I’m sorry?” said Samira. “I didn’t quite catch—”

An orangey orb distracted them both. JJ was peering round the door with a brattish boy’s grin, as if holding a water pistol behind his back. “Hope I’m not being a budinsky … Hey, are you guys into the shine, the giggle-water?” He held two large books under his arm, which he plunked down on the desk. After low-fiving Noel he gave Samira a long bear-hug. Overly long, it seemed to Noel.

“Have I got news for you, my friend,” he said to Noel, with a wink and a wag of the head. “I found the clue—for the cure! In
The Arabian Nights
! Open sesame!” He feverishly opened the two volumes at various bookmarked pages, to which there clung the faint tang of peanut butter. Each had some underlining in pencil:

Then he followed the highway leading to the neighbouring city and entering it, went to the perfumers’ bazaar, where he bought of one some rarely potent
bhang
…

Nay, more, doth she not drug every night the cup she giveth him to drink before sleeptime, and put
bhang
into it?

Now she had been drugged with
bhang
, but when she awoke she
remembered
…

And for the rest of the remedy she made a China dish of the daintiest sweetmeats that can be made, wherein she had put
bhang
…

Then the Caliph crowned a cup, and put therein a piece of
Cretan bhang
… So he took it and drank it off, but hardly had it settled in his stomach when his head forewent his heels and he fell to the ground like one slain …

“Cretan bhang!” said JJ, running his finger along the words, as if taking an impression from braille. “That’s got to be it!”

Noel eyed JJ’s pudgy forefinger, then his popeyed face. “But bhang is … hashish.”

“Exactly.”

Noel nodded. “Thanks, JJ, but I … I’ve already ruled that out as a clue.”

“Right. I’ll keep on looking. Oh, I almost forgot—your mom wants to see you. Sorry for barging in like this, eh?”

“No problem.” Noel glanced at Samira, first at her beaming face, then downwards, at the fingers of her left hand. They were entwined with JJ’s. He closed his eyes.
No, this cannot be happening …
He heard voices and knew they were for him, but he heard them as a drowning man hears people on the shore. With a rigid grin and red face he stood there half blind, half deaf, watching their mouths move, filled with a desire to run fast and far.

Chapter 15

Noel’s Diary (II)

January 2, 2002. On a Sunday in winter when I was not yet 5, during a game of Remembrance, I told my father about the colliding colours I had in my brain and how hard it was to escape them. He called it a “collideorscape.” I liked the sound of this, and we used the code name for years. (It was from Finnegans Wake, I learned later.) I think of this now because I have begun to see my mother’s mind as a kind of kaleidoscope as well: the slanted mirrors inside her are reflecting pieces of her past and present—names, faces, events, dreams—which are rotated by some mysterious hand to make new patterns, new connections: her husband’s face appears with my name; our neighbour’s breast cancer becomes hers; her father returns to life; a dream is confused with reality … And then the kaleidoscope turns again, and the mirrors create yet another warped view of reality, yet another helter-skelter mosaic.