The Memory Artists Part 7

Noel's eyes opened wide. From then on, his queens became Iridium and Osmium.

One fall day in 1979, on the third Monday of September, Noel sprinted home from school. There was something he was dying to check out: nitrogen iodide crystals, "explosive on concussion," were drying on a blotter. He and his father, with the help of Smith's College Chemistry Smith's College Chemistry, had spent the previous evening trying to make them. Did they get it right? he wondered. His father had warned him not to go near it until he got back from his trip, but Noel couldn't wait.

He pushed his way through the torn screen door, ignored his mother's greeting, leapt down the stairs three at a time. Would it work? Would it actually work work?

Breathless, heart rate rocketing, he took a metal rod and "tickled" the raisin-black precipitate. Nothing. Was it a dud? Not yet dry? He tried again, with a little more force ...

The result was an ear-splitting explosion and thick, reddish-purple clouds that expanded as if in slow motion, filling the room. Mrs. Burun, from upstairs in the kitchen, let out a scream before scrambling down the stairs. Panic-stricken, she pushed open the door and tried to see through the dense purple clouds. "Noel! Noel dear! Where are you? Are you all right?" She heard a faint noise on the other side of the room. Flapping at the air with both hands, she groped her way towards the sound. "Noel?" Her voice quivering, she strained to catch a glimpse of her son, fearing the worst. "Noel? Where are you? Please Please answer me, dear ..." answer me, dear ..."

"I'm over here, Mom. I'm cool, everything's cool."

Noel was sitting on the floor, his clothes and face blackened with smoke as in a Disney cartoon. He put his hand to his forehead and felt a warm patch of blood. When his mother finally reached him, he had a grin on his face. "I just need a styptic drug, Mom, a haemostatic agent. A bit of ammonium aluminium sulphate. Or maybe some tincture of iodine. Top shelf. I made them for situations just like this."

His mother put her arms around him, squeezed him with all her might while faintly sobbing. She then examined his face and saw that his eyebrows had been blown off. "Whatever it is you did, don't don't do it again! No more explosives. If you don't promise, I'm going to make your father get rid of this lab forever. Toss everything into the trash bin. Do you understand? Noel, I'm talking to you!" do it again! No more explosives. If you don't promise, I'm going to make your father get rid of this lab forever. Toss everything into the trash bin. Do you understand? Noel, I'm talking to you!"

Noel promised, but he had his fingers crossed, and his toes crossed for good measure. And he wasn't really sorry; his only regret about the explosion was that he couldn't tell his father what had happened, about their success in making Nitrogen Iodide Nitrogen Iodide. For Henry Burun had left that morning on a two-week business trip: the first week in upstate New York, the second visiting his brother in Long Island. So Noel wrote his father a letter, care of Uncle Phil: Dear Dad,You'll never guess what happened. We did it!! It worked, just like you said it would, Dad, we made the NH3NI3. I tickled the precipitate just like you said, with the bra.s.s rod, and a huge bang went off in my left left right ear. It's still ringing! There were humongous reddish-purple clouds and a funny smell like chalk dust and sulphur and iodine. All three blotters went off! There are holes all over the blotters! The time is now 7:30 and my ears have been ringing since 12:30! It's driving me nuts! My face was all black too and I have no eyebrows! Mom was really mad but she cooled down a bit. I didn't tell her about our surprise for her. I finished painting the lab walls white like you said and it looks pretty cool. I miss you, Dad. right ear. It's still ringing! There were humongous reddish-purple clouds and a funny smell like chalk dust and sulphur and iodine. All three blotters went off! There are holes all over the blotters! The time is now 7:30 and my ears have been ringing since 12:30! It's driving me nuts! My face was all black too and I have no eyebrows! Mom was really mad but she cooled down a bit. I didn't tell her about our surprise for her. I finished painting the lab walls white like you said and it looks pretty cool. I miss you, Dad.Your son, Noel Noel's letter arrived but his father never read it. For around the time Noel was tickling the nitrogen iodide crystals, his father was in a water-filled quarry south of Lake Placid, in his Pontiac, slowly sinking to the bottom.

[image]

After another all-nighter, as the sun rose for the first time in 2002, Noel was sitting at his usual position atop the staircase, head bowed. He had been playing back these and other memories for almost an hour. He opened his eyes and stared down at the door leading to the bas.e.m.e.nt. The wood had been wallpapered over and the doork.n.o.b removed. That door led to another door, which he had avoided opening for years. He stood up. It's time, he said, to open it.

The lab was still there, its flasks and test tubes shadowed in dust, its walls s.h.a.ggy with cobwebs. On the table were rubber gloves, a small pair handshaking a larger pair, and on a door hook were two yellowing lab coats, a child's resting on the back of an adult's. His father's brown leather medical bag, an heirloom from his his father, was sitting on the floor, locked. father, was sitting on the floor, locked.

Noel had ranted and raved whenever his mother tried to throw anything out, so she eventually locked the door and left things more or less as they were. But he himself had never been able to enter the room; the pain went through him like a spear.

He examined the labels on the chemical jars, which he and his father had brushed with hot liquid paraffin. With a pale pink J-cloth he affectionately dusted off each bottle, turning them round in his hand, holding them up to the light. In the laundry room he filled up a yellow plastic pail with steaming hot water, threw in some Clorox and Cheer, put on his father's black rubber gloves. With three different brushes he scrubbed test tubes, beakers and Florence flasks; pipettes, funnels and Erlenmeyer flasks; graduated cylinders and eyedroppers; pinch-c.o.c.ks, crucible tongs and rubber stoppers ... He cleaned his Bunsen burner and retort stands and clamps with acetone, and his laminated Periodic Table with Windex. He put order back into drawers, swept the floor. He removed cobwebs from the walls, and dust from the top of books. He saw three scuttling spiders but, as his father would have wanted, left each in peace.

It's time to do something more, something more serious, he said to himself. Beyond plying his mother with brain nutrients and memory boosters, or blendering up c.o.c.ktails with over-the-counter drugs. The prescription medicines, like rivastigmine and galantamine, weren't doing much-apart from giving her nausea, insomnia and nightmares. Unless a cure is discovered soon, your mother will be dead in five years ... Unless a cure is discovered soon, your mother will be dead in five years ... Yes, it's time to do something more. If he couldn't get the newest drugs because they were unapproved or unaffordable, he would simply make them himself ... Well, maybe not simply. "With my memory, I'll restore hers," he whispered to himself. "I Yes, it's time to do something more. If he couldn't get the newest drugs because they were unapproved or unaffordable, he would simply make them himself ... Well, maybe not simply. "With my memory, I'll restore hers," he whispered to himself. "I will will save her." With his head bent and eyes closed, he clutched the battered wood desk with both hands. save her." With his head bent and eyes closed, he clutched the battered wood desk with both hands.

When he opened his eyes he saw the robin's-egg blue of the cement floor beneath the table. The paint was faded and peeling and poxed by chemical spills. As he was trying, impossibly, to remember which caustic compounds had caused which stains, he was distracted by the sight of his father's leather bag. He reached down for it, ran his finger through a layer of dust. And then tried the lock, which yielded with a minimum of fiddling.

Inside was a tiny red three-ring binder, with My Experiments written on the cover. He opened it to the first page: Exp. # 1Pour a little Citric Acid solution (lemon juice) in a gla.s.s. Stick the point of a toothpick in the juice. Write a secret invisible message with the juice. Heat the message (with an iron). It should appear brown.Exp. # 2Take red cabbage pickled in Acetic Acid (vinegar) and add some ammonium hydroxide (Clorox). The juice will go all through all sorts of colours, from red to all kinds of purple colours, to turquoise and blue and then green.Exp. # 3Hold a red rose over burning Sulphur so that the SO2 bleaches it white. Dip into water and the colour is miraculously restored ! bleaches it white. Dip into water and the colour is miraculously restored !

There were other notebooks as well, in zip-locked bags. His dad's diaries? With his vision blurring, Noel pulled out three identical binders, all black, one with the insignia of the first drug company his father had worked for in Scotland: Meridian. The most recent one, dated two months before he died, had these entries on its last page: [image]

In bed, several hours later, Noel leafed through each of them. The first summarised three years of work on a process that someone had patented a few days before his father had applied for a patent. The second outlined three more years of work on a drug for Parkinson's-a blockbuster, as it turned out-that only his company profited from. And the third dealt with his attempts to create drugs that would both reduce the swelling of certain cerebral cells in dementia patients, and eliminate abnormal inclusions called Pick bodies. Tucked inside were a sheaf of letters to and from the U.S. Submission & Patent Office, along with a page from a spiral notepad, the ink of its scrawled message weeping freely: A. Borodin's work on aldehydes B. Beauty is the lodestar-a cure must be beautiful The following day, after some faxing and photocopying, Noel went to see Dr. Vorta. For some advice, and some under-the-counter drugs.

"Einen Moment, bitte," said the doctor, while pressing b.u.t.tons on a spectrophotometer.

"Did you get my fax? Can you get them for me?"

After glancing at his Swiss watch, which rivalled Greenwich in exact.i.tude, Dr. Vorta noted the readout on the display. "Noel, they'll put me in jail if I get you all those drugs on your list. Just be patient, will you? Have you brought your journal? And your mother's? Danke schon Danke schon."

"Bitte sehr."

"Now if you'll excuse me, I have a very interesting patient-"

"Look what I found. Some of my father's notes. On aldehydes. And Pick bodies. He may have been on to something big."

Dr. Vorta froze for two seconds before turning round, his eyes trained on the notebook. He had a cataract in one of them. "You found your father's ... Right, leave it with me." He took the book from Noel's hand, opened it up. "Your father was a brilliant neuropharmacologist, Noel. But remember, near the end, your father was not ... a well man." He perused the bleeding letters. "I'll take a look, but these are probably just mad ravings ..."

After wincing at that last phrase, Noel slumped out of the office, mutely and meekly.

In ten minutes he returned. "I can't wait any longer!" he screamed at Dr. Vorta, barging in on his synaesthesia tests with a young patient. "I can't wait for the approval of new drugs, I can't wait for the clinical trials! My mother is dying! Don't you understand that? I can't be patient, I'm looking at infinity. This is not supposed to happen at her age. Soon she'll forget who I am. Then she'll forget to eat, to swallow, to breathe. She's fifty-six and she's sinking into a black freaking pit! She's no longer the same person-she's not a person at all! You're her doctor and you've done nothing. The only thing you've ever done is write about her and put her in 'promising' drug experiments. But you put her in the placebo placebo group! You wasted a year of her life!" Noel punctuated this last phrase by picking up a laurel-wreathed bust of Wagner and smas.h.i.+ng it on the floor, which caused macaque monkeys in hidden cages to scurry and scream. He then began sweeping things off the doctor's desk, looking for his father's notes. "And don't you group! You wasted a year of her life!" Noel punctuated this last phrase by picking up a laurel-wreathed bust of Wagner and smas.h.i.+ng it on the floor, which caused macaque monkeys in hidden cages to scurry and scream. He then began sweeping things off the doctor's desk, looking for his father's notes. "And don't you ever ever call my father mad, do you hear me?" call my father mad, do you hear me?"

"Noel, do not not touch anything on that desk. I'm warning you, you little ..." He picked up the phone. " touch anything on that desk. I'm warning you, you little ..." He picked up the phone. "Madame Prevert? W W4. Oui, c'est ca Oui, c'est ca ..." ..."

"And if this is a Farnsworth Musell test, what was that girl doing with her top off?"

Dr. Vorta, after hanging up the phone and nervously stroking his chemically whitened beard, closed the curtain and informed his patient the test was over. He then instructed Noel to get out of his office and stay out, that if he ever came back there'd be a straitjacket and van waiting for him.16

Chapter 9.

Norval & Samira Norval Blaquiere lived in a converted millinery factory on rue de la Commune in Old Montreal, which he had turned into a kind of nineteenth-century salon. There were framed reproductions of Thomas Cooper Gotch's Death the Bride Death the Bride, with a woman in a field of poppies; Henry A. Payne's The Enchanted Sea The Enchanted Sea, with drowned and drowning women; Rochegrosse's Les Derniers jours de Babylone Les Derniers jours de Babylone; Felicien Rops' vampish Woman on a Rocking Horse Woman on a Rocking Horse. Others reflected Norval's penchant for long-haired women: Millais' liquid-locked Ophelia Ophelia; Stanhope's orange-haired prost.i.tute in Thoughts of the Past Thoughts of the Past; Henner's La Lectrice La Lectrice, in which a naked Mary Magdalene reads from a book encircled by her flame-red curls; Waterhouse's La Belle Dame sans Merci La Belle Dame sans Merci, the Keats heroine who holds a knight captive in her long tresses.

"Why do you have these morbid pictures of women all over the place?" Samira asked, on her third day at the loft. "And what is it about women's hair? A fetish?"

"Long and loosened tresses are a symbol of a woman reverting to a state of nature. Like an animal's mane ..."

"Oh, please ..."

" ... It was a powerful symbol in the nineteenth century-in a period of hats and chignons. Today, of course, hairdressers butcher and plastify women's hair, which I'll never understand. It should be a wilderness. Worse is shorn underarms and montes pubis. I trust you've not dared ..."

"Is that a picture of Asterix over there? With the sword? Why would you-"

"Never mind." Norval banished the question with a wave of the hand.

"And who's that guy in the photograph next to it, sitting on your bed? It's the only picture of a man in the whole place, apart from Asterix. Is that you?"

"No, it's ... Noel."

"Noel?"

"Yes."

"Is Noel ... never mind."

"Is he what? A crypto-h.o.m.o? Am I?"

"Is Noel related to you?"

"Not even distantly."

"You're almost like twins."

Norval sighed. "So we've been told. Which may be one of the reasons we clicked. The doppelganger phenomenon, the search for the invisible twin, the demystification of narcissism ..."

Why does he speak like he's lecturing? Samira wondered. "And the presage of imminent death?" And why am I sounding like the brownnosed student?

"That too. Like matter and its double, anti-matter. You shake hands and you're annihilated."

Samira smiled, then thought of a novel she'd been forced to read at school, and a line in an essay that got a checkmark in the margin. "Is your friends.h.i.+p like the one between Max and Emil in Hesse's Demian Demian? A bond that frees a person from other bonds and leads into a new dimension?"

"No."

"Right. So is Noel your double, or your opposite? You're different in so many ways."

"He's left-handed, I'm right."

"Noel seems, well, a.n.a.l retentive, whereas you seem ..."

"a.n.a.l explosive."

"And you two move so differently-"

"Especially when he's nervous. He gets so spasmodic you start looking for the strings. Remember when he met you?"

"Yes, but ... why did that make him nervous?"

"Because he thought you were an actress he's in love with."

Samira nodded slowly, lost in a maze of thoughts. "The poor actress, to look like me."

"Well, it's true you look like h.e.l.l, but when healthy I imagine you look almost average."

"Such flattery."

"Perhaps I did get carried away."

"You don't like women, do you."

"Generally, I hold them in medium esteem."

"And men?"

"Much lower."

"You're a misanthrope, in other words."

"How can anyone not be? The human species, the evolution of the human species, was all a colossal mistake. Darwin must have realised that. Humans and chimps evolved from a common ancestor around six million years ago-we share 98.7 per cent of the same genes. But the genes in our our brain somehow evolved differently, giving us greater brain power. So what have we done with this brain power? We've used it for the pursuit of narcissism, to prove that we're the only living things that matter in this world." brain somehow evolved differently, giving us greater brain power. So what have we done with this brain power? We've used it for the pursuit of narcissism, to prove that we're the only living things that matter in this world."

"But you're ... never mind." You're quite a narcissist yourself, she was about to say.

"And this evolution, this development of the brain, has not gone well. In fact it's been botched-the glitches, bugs, cross-wirings in the brain have given us things like depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's ..."

"And misanthropy?"

"Yes."

"So what should we do? What can humans do with all this bad wiring? Should we dumb down, go back to living like chimps?"

"That's already happening."

"Think of all the great individuals, the geniuses in the world, the great scientific advances-"

"Modern civilisation no longer produces great individuals, geniuses. Instead of forests with giant trees, we get scraggly saplings with roots no deeper than a thimble. If you doubt that, watch any awards show."

"How about John Lennon or Kurt Cobain or Marie Curie or Krzysztof Kie 'slowski or-"

"We're on the same path as the dinosaurs. Nature will have its revenge, and the sooner the better. The world is obscenely overpopulated. What we need, what Noel should concoct in his laboratory, is a pathogen that would destroy half the world's population overnight."

"Only half? So as to save a race you detest?"

Norval arched an eyebrow. "OK, all. And I shouldn't say nature nature will have its revenge. Nothingness will have its revenge-a rogue black hole with the weight of ten million suns will take things back to that ... that not-anything state that preceded the big bang." will have its revenge. Nothingness will have its revenge-a rogue black hole with the weight of ten million suns will take things back to that ... that not-anything state that preceded the big bang."

"You don't say. And have there ever been ... exceptions to your general dislike of humanity? Noel, presumably?"

Norval took a drag from his Arrow. "Correct."

"Does he teach Symbolist lit as well? Is that where you met him? At school?"

"No. But I pulled strings to get him in. He lasted one course."

What is my role in this conversation? Samira asked herself. Prompter? "Why did he last only one course?"

"He had trouble understanding the students' questions."

"Does he have ... qualifications, a degree?"

"No, but he was accepted at MIT as a teenager by getting unheard-of marks in the entrance exams. And he was asked asked to attend McGill by the Dean of Sciences." to attend McGill by the Dean of Sciences."

"But he didn't graduate."

"No."

"So what do you two ... share?"

"The relief of being wordlessly understood. A companion mind."

"I mean, he seems so taciturn and unsure of himself and, I don't know, unhappy, whereas you seem-"

"He's a Scot. Ipso facto, not of a sanguine nature. Like his father he's got the black choler, the humour of despair. When he's down he thinks the period will never end, when he's up he thinks it will shortly end."