The Memory Book (16 page)

A dishwasher looked me over. “It’s open,” he said in heavily accented English. I peered through the door, which opened easily. I tried to remember how to say thank you in Greek, but the word wasn’t where I’d left it. The dishwasher seemed to be studying me for a portrait.

“Do you remember an ancient, beat-up Oldsmobile parked out there in early April? It was one the cops were asking questions about.”

He threw his head back and clicked his tongue. “I missed all that stuff, like the time the Stones were out front or the time the boss turned up with Harrison Ford. I missed Liz Taylor too. Spiros told me about the car.”

“Could you get Spiros to call me?” I found a ten-dollar bill in my pocket and handed it to the dishwasher. While I was laboriously writing out my phone number, making sure I hadn’t substituted threes for sixes or other tricks my new mind conjured up, he said that it might take a day or two, because Spiros was off for a couple of days. I told him that it didn’t matter, just so long as the message got through.

“Did the cops talk to Spiros?” I asked, watching him run another crowded tray into the machine.

He preceded his answer with a toss of his head and the click again. “He was off that week too. Cut himself on a broken glass. Twenty-six stitches!”

I added another five dollars for pain and suffering, even though it was going to the wrong person. I nodded my goodbyes and turned to the back door.

The lot was small, with a narrow lane between the restaurant and its neighbour leading to Elm Street. A Rolls-Royce was parked behind, along with several other late-model cars and vintage collectors’ items. I didn’t see my 1986 blue Oldsmobile. I’d have recognized its rusted fenders and skirting anywhere.

I thought of quizzing the help, but my questions would be no better than those the police had asked. And they had asked them when the event was fresh. Remembering
my fib to the bartender out at the front of the restaurant, I decided not to prolong my visit.

I walked back through the dining rooms to the front door.

The bartender, now polishing glasses, grabbed me by the upper arm.

“Hey!” I called without thinking.

“When do the cameras roll?” He released me.

“That won’t be for months. Besides, that’s not my end. I just tell them what I saw. They do all the brain-work. You’ll hear from them with lots of warning.”

“So I shouldn’t hold my breath? Right?”

“You got it.” And I got out of there, leaving the bartender with visions of a dazzling film career dancing before his eyes.

NINETEEN

Without taking time to catch my breath, I walked to Yonge Street, where I flagged down a second taxi.

“Take me to St. Gabriel’s Hall in the University of Toronto. It’s on St. George Street.”

“I know it,” the driver said, adjusting his mirror to see me better. I grinned back at him. The streets went by in a dizzy whirlwind of strange as well as familiar corners.

“Here you are,” the driver announced, just as I had settled down to watching the scenery roll by. I gave him some money from my wallet, a bill of too large a denomination for the driver to change easily. He grumbled under his breath as he stirred himself to find his cache of small bills. “Thanks,” he said with naked sarcasm.

St. Gabriel’s Hall was an old Toronto brownstone, the kind that used to dominate the street on the east side. Nowadays these antiques were getting scarce. I walked along the sidewalk, found the big glass-windowed front door open, and went in.

It was like a stage set. Halls led off in two directions, a fine Victorian staircase rose around and above me, suggesting other destinations. Arrived and ready to quiz somebody, I found the place seemingly deserted. A man
tuning a piano in the hallway looked as new to the building as I felt. I peered into a small pantry alcove. Nobody. Then, facing the street, I saw some bobbing heads through a glass door.

I was peering through the glass when a voice behind me demanded: “Are y’looking for somebody, or are y’simply prospecting for a cup of coffee?” The voice was almost that of Sean Connery, the first and best James Bond. In a more compact edition, he resembled him, too, but in his more recent, mellower years.

“I’m … I’m looking for Professor Bett. My name’s Cooperman.”

“I’m looking for him as well! This is where he’ll be, if he’s on the campus today. Come in. I’m Angus Kelvin. Call me Angus.” He led me into a large, comfortable, old-fashioned sitting room, furnished with leather institutional furniture older than the combined ages of the three men and one woman sitting there. Well, almost. An ancient fern gasped for air by the windows. A mantelpiece clock recorded the presentation of itself to the college but not the time. I was pressed into a seat facing St. George Street and three members of the group. Through the closed door, the single notes of the piano could be heard, as one by one the piano-tuner adjusted their pitch. My Scottish friend brought me a cup of coffee and settled himself in the big comfortable chair next to mine. The others seemed to be ignoring the fact that an outsider had penetrated this
sanctum sanctorum.

“Are you Professor Gladstone?” a man with a neat grey beard asked me.

“No, my name’s Cooperman. I’m looking for Professor Bett,” I said in an unnaturally squeaky voice.

“It’s true: Morgan Bett’s often here for coffee.” This from a tall, lean man who was looking me over. “Have a biscuit. They bring us these biscuits every Friday and we are expected to eat them. I wouldn’t care to speculate on what happens from Saturdays on.” He said this with a straight face in a voice that spoke of the southern half of this continent. As a group, they sat on ceremony: there were no introductions, no pack drill. It was like joining a group that had been sitting since the beginning of time. They had no concern for exits and entrances. I reached for a cookie and managed not to spill my coffee.

Plink, plink,
went the piano.

“I was looking most particularly for a man I’ve corresponded with for many years. I think he said he was coming today.”

“Name of Gladstone?” asked the tall American with a half-suppressed twinkle, twisting his legs around one another.

“Why yes! Do you know him?”

The remaining man leaned over to me. “Are you the new writer-in-residence?”

“No, I’m not an academic of any kind.”

“He’s come looking for Morgan Bett.”

“Are you one of Angus’s acolytes? He doesn’t usually bring his fans to coffee.”

Plink, plink,
went the piano, now moving up into the treble clef.

“Bill, you always pounce on people!” This from a retired professor with an old school tie.

“I didn’t pounce! I didn’t jump or take advantage. I put it to him in the time-honoured manner. When I pounce, you’ll know it.”

“It looked like a pounce from here,” muttered the grey-haired professor with the tie.

“Well, these things have to be taken up in the right perspective. One man’s pounce is another man’s spirited sally.”

“Morgan often plays chess with Angus,” the silver-haired woman whispered to me. From that moment, I began to relax. The conversation sailed around the room, quickly and with spirit.

Plink, plink, plink,
went the piano.

“That piano-tuner sounds like he’s deconstructing
Liebestraum.”

“Aye. Why doesn’t he go
away?”

“This never happened in the old tower room.”

“Somebody pinched the clock there.”

Again the piano sounded. This time with some finality. I sat it out, enjoying their banter. After consuming two cups of coffee and two biscuits, my right to sit among them was still unchallenged. Nobody made me feel odd man out, and two of them smiled at me when they left. It was the nature of the gathering, a bit like a theatre’s green room: people were always coming and
going. Even Professor Gladstone arrived, much to the delight of his pen pal.

When I asked Angus, the man with Bond’s voice, about Dr. Bett, he conferred with the man next to him, then reported that my friend was not going to appear this morning.

“Dentist!”
he said with a shudder. “I hope you’ll come along next week. Aye, he’ll be here next Friday. Come see us again.”

TWENTY

“Well!” she began. “You’re back! Next time you go off without leave, you might at least take me along. You’re not the only one who’s tired of these dull walls.” Her attempt to look like an outraged fishwife, even with her hands on her hips, was a flop.

“Sorry.”

“You’ve had visitors and I didn’t know what to tell them. Dr. Collins wanted to see you. I almost told him that you had gone walkabout. But instead I just said that you were getting some exercise.”

“Sorry,” I repeated.

“All very well for you to—” she began, but she didn’t pursue it.

“Who were my other visitors?”

“Oh, those two desperate characters masquerading as police officers in plain clothes. Plain? I ask you. If they thought they could fool anyone in those outfits, they’ve got another think coming. Pals of yours, I imagine?”

“Sometimes. I don’t suppose they said what they wanted?”

“No. They took their secrets with them into the elevator. One of them took a chocolate bar from your box of treats. He seemed to be in charge.”

“Anyone else?”

“You have great expectations for a little fellow! No, the line of visitors ended with the servers and protectors.”

“I don’t know who I was expecting. I have an unquenched desire to see … I don’t know what.”

“There’s something I can give you for that. There’s a pill for everything.”

I was surprised she let me off so lightly. I had assumed that I’d be coming back to a royal fuss. This wasn’t even a slap on the wrist.

As soon as the nurse left the room, I gave myself up to a deep sleep. I wasn’t used to the world out there. It was foreign and dangerous, subject to frivolous changes in temperature and humidity. The people out there moved guardedly, while gusts of hot air blew scraps of newspapers along the sidewalks, out into the street and up into the air, where they rose like ballet dancers taking flight. Inside the hospital, the weather was under strict control, air-conditioned, unexcitable, dependable, unreal. I was going to have to adjust to reality in easy stages. The sound of the wind blowing down University Avenue, remembered from my excursion, carried me off to sleep under the warm covers. Sleep, the old whore, had cornered me again.

There are all kinds of sleep—refreshing all-nighters, fender-bending nightmares, catnaps, and deep oblivion— but for a sleep that gathers you up, seduces you, and turns off your lights there is nothing quite like hospital sleep. Sleep, the seductress of my waking hours, watched me closely, knew my weaknesses, held out lurid promises. When I was in the middle of dinner or talking to a visitor, she began gathering me into her warm embrace. I didn’t usually try to fight it: there’s not much competition in a place like Rose of Sharon. Again, I surrendered to her touch, and again, it was good.

Then there were voices, far away, against an echoing background. I can’t reproduce the words, not the exact words, one never can in a dream, but there were two voices talking about drugs and their cost. One voice, an English-accented voice, was telling the other not to be daft, that she shouldn’t play at knowing what she was doing without measuring the cost. “Ecstasy,” she said. “Have you lost your tiny mind?” The other voice was younger, guarding her ignorance with bluster.

“What’s the harm?” Where had I heard such talk? Were they nurses talking near my bed? Right now, as I slept? Or were they seeds from my memory, dropped like acorns from my resting brain? Was it a fragment of another time and place? I didn’t know, but I awoke with the idea of drugs in my head. And it wouldn’t go away.

When I got up, mid-afternoon had arrived. There was a small crowd in the dining room, sitting in front of the
TV, a collection of wheelchairs, bumper to bumper, watching a quiz show. The hostess of the program wore her hair in two bright blond braids with bows of blue ribbon. She reminded me of somebody. It was one of those vague reminders of my former self that kept elbowing my memory. Maybe I’d get used to it. Of course, now I had my memory in a book. There should be no confusion.

I got a cup of juice and joined the few of us not addicted to TV. I talked to the former diplomat for a quarter of an hour. As usual, I couldn’t remember his name without a covert reference to my Memory Book. With him was a wizened ghost of a man in a wheelchair, wearing an ill-fitting, faded hospital gown. He looked both bright and ill at ease. He was introduced to me, but his name went where all good names went these days. He was a newcomer, wheeling himself out of his room for an early exploration of the corridor, like a kid testing the overnight ice on the pond. The diplomat had been talking about the brisk world trade in Canadian passports. He said that our nationality was now the favoured one for any fugitive in need of a fresh identity. The old man and I listened, enjoying an inside peek at international affairs. He was drinking a cup of cold coffee. I think he preferred it that way. The diplomat had juice. We sat together watching traffic roll down University Avenue. A conversation started. I don’t remember where it began, but like a lot of conversations it drifted from politics to religion, and from religion to education. The man with the grey face told a story about his granddaughter getting an award
at an Eastern university. We offered congratulations and basked in the diluted glory for half a minute.

“What about campus crime? For instance, drugs.” I asked him out of the blue. I didn’t know my question until I heard myself ask it. Didn’t I have a dream about dope of some kind? I retained a vague clot of a memory.

“Drugs?” the diplomat asked, looking at his companion. “Look at the beautiful day out there. Why do you want to talk about drugs?”

“I know some people, a family. Drugs are pulling the family apart.”

“You should be asking my friend, Wilf, about drugs. Wilf Carton, Ben Cooperman. Wilf just got here from Toronto General. Wilf’s a retired law professor, Benny. Wilf, watch out, Ben’s a private eye.”

“Private investigator,” I corrected to keep the record straight.