Part 21 (1/2)
”He did, but his colleagues didn't. One put me on lithium carbonate, which made things worse, another tried acupuncture, which might've worked if he'd known what he was doing, another gave me nineteen electro-convulsive treatments, which almost left me brain-dead. And then they all got together and wrote articles about me.”38 ”They didn't help you to control it, or channel it ...”
”I more or less found out how to stop it on my own.”
”With cla.s.sical music? And certain tastes?”
”Yeah, and I've learned to put myself into a kind of trance, deliberately emptying my mind.”
”Like Zen Buddhists?”
”Only if they get terrible headaches while doing it.”
”Are your dreams as wild? As colourful?”
”Not at all. They're in black and white most of the time, and usually involve quiz shows or labyrinths ... And I usually wake up with this wish to be transported on my mattress back to my bedroom in Babylon ...” Noel's mind, vibrant and viatic, began to travel but he forced it to stop, pressing his hands against his temples. ”In high school, in Montreal, everybody wanted me to go on this quiz show called Reach for The Top Reach for The Top. But I refused and everybody was furious with me for the rest of the year, the princ.i.p.al most of all. Especially when our school didn't make it past the first round ...”
Samira laughed. ”I remember that show. So you're still dealing with high school trauma. Still trying to find a way out of the maze.”
My mind is a maze, thought Noel. With no exits but only entrances into more mazes. A Gordian knot of coils and loops and convolutions. ”Maybe.”
”What does Dr Vorta have to say about all that?”
”About my dreams? Nothing much. What's your ... take?”
”Well, people are always testing you, testing your memory, so that may explain the quiz shows. As for the maze, it may represent, I don't know, your trying to escape your ... problems.” Samira shrugged. ”I'm no expert. I know that for the Egyptians the labyrinth represented creativity, or creation. A mysterious feminine power that brings life, and then as the queen of night or queen of darkness, the sleep of death ... As you probably know.”
Noel turned these words over. When you find the exit, death is waiting. You're dead on arrival. ”I didn't know that.”
Through a heating duct in the ceiling came a m.u.f.fled sound: a gust of carolling laughter from JJ.
”Why don't you just memorise everything everything? It'd be so much fun to walk around with Shakespeare's entire works in your head, or Jane Austen's or the Encyclopedia Britannica Encyclopedia Britannica or twenty different languages. No?” or twenty different languages. No?”
”There's no room left. My brain's crammed to bursting point. And besides, my problem has always been using using the stuff I remember, making a synthesis, something new.” the stuff I remember, making a synthesis, something new.”
”Do you remember everything everything that happens to you? Everything you read or hear?” that happens to you? Everything you read or hear?”
”No, I usually have to make an effort. Most of the stuff I've stored is from my childhood, when I tried to retain it with memory maps. Poems mostly, children's stories ... Or I else I sort of photograph it-if I concentrate the coloured letters or coloured voices will remain fixed in my mind forever ... or quite a while. A lot of the stuff wasn't hard to memorise- because I'd read certain stories or poems over and over again, or I asked my parents to read me the same stuff over and over again.”
”So it's mostly just poems and children's stories?”
”I've stored lots of data about Byron, because he's an ancestor according to my dad, though not according to my mom, and also on chemistry and pharmacology. And now memory disorders. I don't really try try to memorise anything else, it just happens. Sometimes I feel like my brain is going to burst some day, like a vacuum cleaner bag. Memory dust flying all over the place.” to memorise anything else, it just happens. Sometimes I feel like my brain is going to burst some day, like a vacuum cleaner bag. Memory dust flying all over the place.”
Samira laughed. ”Time for a bag change, I guess. Or a lobotomy?”
Noel smiled bleakly. He'd once considered that. ”As a kid I used to fantasize about finding some magical elixir to help me out, some nepenthean potion. Especially after my dad died.”
”Nepenthean potion?”
”It was used to induce forgetfulness, by the ancients. It's mentioned in The Odyssey The Odyssey. And The Faerie Queene The Faerie Queene.”
”I'll bet you know the lines.”
Noel closed his eyes, perused his portable photo-library. ”No, not in the Odyssey Odyssey. Nothing's coming in.”
”And The Faerie Queene The Faerie Queene?”
Am I too tired? Noel wondered while reclosing his eyes. The downloaded letters were misty, like breath-fog writing. ”Nepenthe ... whereby all cares forepast Are washt away quite from their memorie.”
”How lovely. Continue. Do you mind?”
Yes, but I'll do it for you, thought Noel. He squeezed his eyes shut. The coloured letters were now c.o.c.k-eyed, chaotic, an alphabet soup of images: [image]
”I'm a bit rusty, Sam, I ... don't often do this sort of thing. Anymore. And I'm not always a hundred per cent accurate.” He waited for the letters to realign themselves, concentrating until his head hurt. ”Let's see: Nepenthe is a drinck of soverayne grace,Devized by the G.o.ds, for to a.s.swageHarts grief, and bitter gall away to chace,Which stirs up anguish and contentious rage:Instead thereof sweet peace and quiet-ageIt doth establish in the troubled mynd.”
Samira was leaning forward, her gleaming eyes mesmerized. She shook her head in disbelief. ”That's amazing, Noel. An amazing ... gift. So the colours or shapes of the letters, or voices, or the mental maps you draw are there ... always? Indestructible? Like an airplane's black box?”
Noel rubbed his eyes. ”More like a computer with more input than it was designed to process. Slow down, freeze, crash, reboot-my life in a nutsh.e.l.l.”
Silence gathered as Samira digested these last words. Her eyes focused on Noel's, sharply, as if she could see into his skull and was panged by what was there.
”That can't be easy,” she said finally. ”Especially when you store memories you'd rather get rid of. Dark and oppressive memories ...”
”Like the day I learned my father killed himself. When his boss and two cops came to the door. I replay that day, the colours and shapes, over in my brain almost every day. And some traumatic things that happened to me in school as well. But I'm hardly alone in that respect. That's what psychiatrists are for. For people who can't forget.”
”Is that why people are depressed? Because they can't forget? Or have a hard time forgetting?”
”It's hard to say which came first. Are people depressed because they can't forget, can't properly process and digest things? Or is it that they can't properly process and digest because they're depressed?”
”But thinking about bad things all the time, having unwanted memories continually coming to the surface-that leads to depression. Post-traumatic stress disorder. Right? What they used to call sh.e.l.l shock?”
”You know as much as I do.”
”I just learned that last week, in my art-therapy cla.s.s. Have you ever tried to paint, by the way? As an outlet, a way of exorcising the demons of the past? Or write?”
Noel gazed up at the window again, watched the snow falling ... the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling ... See? There I go again, he thought. I'm capable only of remembering other people's descriptions of nature, other people's expressions of emotion. I'm like Christian in ... See? There I go again, he thought. I'm capable only of remembering other people's descriptions of nature, other people's expressions of emotion. I'm like Christian in Cyrano Cyrano, who never learned the language of sentiment, who had to get someone else to express ...
”Uh, Noel?” For a second she was worried; he seemed on the verge of a seizure or something. ”Noel?”
He looked at her in surprise. ”Sorry, it's ... I was just ... it's something you'll have to get used to, I'm afraid. Norval says it looks like I'm noddingoff on heroin. But it's not as bad as it looks. What were you saying?”
”I asked if you've ever tried to write or paint or compose ...”
”All of the above. Lots of times. But when I finally come up with something, I realise it's something dredged from memory, recovered from ... the black box.”
”But why is Norval so convinced that one day you'll-”
”Norval doesn't know what he's talking about. I belong to a certain cla.s.s of people who never accomplish anything, it's as simple as that. Who try to make beautiful things, or beautiful discoveries, but can't. Every line I write conjures up other lines, better lines, from other writers. Every image I paint, or song I write, conjures up better images from better painters, better music from better composers. Every scientific 'discovery' I make has already been discovered. So I decided long ago to stop beating at doors I'll never enter.”
Samira felt another tug-or stab-at the heartstrings as the seconds ticked by. It wasn't so much his words as his look of sadness. She waited until Noel lifted his gaze from the floor, which took a while.
”You can do anything, Noel, if you want it bad enough.”