The Memory Artists (27 page)

“Oh. Maybe that’s it. It’s none of my business anyway. Sorry, I … I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions. And, well, mistrusted a friend of yours.”

“I’ve made worse mistakes.”
³³

In the silence that gathered Noel could hear his own heart beating. Chloral hydrate was a nightmare. In severe overdose, death occurs within five to ten hours. He’d have to tell Dr. Vorta about this … theft. He looked at Samira’s face. It’s obvious she’s in love with him. Or is she? Why don’t I simply ask? He cleared his throat and cursed his own cowardice. It was a perfectly easy thing to say. It would be over quickly, like a dentist’s hypodermic. “Are you in love with him, Sam?” he finally asked, in a near-whisper. “With Nor?”

“No!” she replied, with a quickness and force that surprised them both. “Not at all, I mean I’m … I don’t know, physically attracted and … intrigued or something, like being on the edge of the cliff and this voice is telling me to jump off … I’ve done that kind of thing before in my life, but it’s something I’m trying to … put behind me.”

“It’s really none of my business …”

“But it is. I mean, I want it to be. I’m pretty mixed up about him, I can’t figure him out at all, and thought maybe you could help … clarify things.”

“I wish I could, believe me. But he’s a mystery to me too. He just won’t talk about himself, about personal things. His past is full of blanks and gaps. ‘Don’t expect me to tickle your idle curiosity,’ he once told me.”

“Do you think he was ever in love? With someone who dumped him, or died? Do you think he’s capable of love?”

“I don’t know, I really don’t.”

Samira thought of the ring she had discovered. “Does he … could he, well, prefer men? Sexually, I mean?”

“That would surprise me. But you never know. Byron had male lovers—which for Norval may be a seal of approval.”

“Every heard of Terry?”

“No, who’s Terry?”

“He’s just … a name I saw somewhere.”

“Where?”

This was not something Samira wished to divulge. “I’d be surprised if Norval was ever in love, with anyone—male or female. It seems no one’s good enough for him, everyone’s inferior—intellectually, socially. And he’s a misogynist par excellence.”

“He dislikes both sexes.”

“He’s the most prejudiced person I’ve ever met. Like some old fogey.”

Noel paused to think. “Yeah, in some ways Norval
is
fogeyish—old at heart, prematurely conservative. He can’t stand the new generation— their consumer products and diction and garish clothes and brand names. But he hates the older generations too, the Establishment, especially law firms and drug companies.”

“He’s your best friend, right?” said Samira.

Noel opened the door of his bed table, a converted apothecary chest with Hermes’ staff carved in high relief on the sliding door. He pulled out a bottle and stoneware goblet. “He’s my only friend.”

“Why is he such a … sack-artist, a midnight plowboy? You don’t believe that Baudelaire crap, do you?”

“No, that’s all a snow-job, government-grantism. He’s got this theory …” Noel paused, as if confused by the objects in his hands. “Would you like some port? It’s my mom’s, it helps me sleep—or used to.”

“Thanks.”

Noel poured. “Hope you don’t mind, this isn’t the right glass and I only have one. I’ll get another—”

“Don’t bother. We’ll share it.” She took a sip and handed back the cup. “You were saying …?”

Noel hesitated before turning the goblet to where Samira’s lips had touched it. He closed his eyes and drank. Footage of Heliodora Locke began to appear …

“… about Norval’s theory?”

Noel shook his head and his neck crackled. “Right, he …” He felt his face reddening as he groped for the thread. “… he thinks that sensation … that the great object of life, or sole object of life, is sensation, what Byron calls the ‘craving void,’ which drives us to things like gambling and war and travel and sex. Especially sex. That the sex instinct dominates all human thought and activity, that it’s the chief source of energy. Or only source.”

“A sexistentialist.”

Noel smiled. “Exactly. Sometimes I think he’s turned into one of the writers on his syllabus—some Decadent from the 1890s.
³⁴
He’s convinced that civilisation is in a state of terminal decline …”

“Hard to disagree …”

“… and that faith in any kind of progress is futile—there is simply no better world to come. So he’s decided that life itself must become a kind of artwork—an exercise in style—because there is nothing else it can be.”

“So instead of rebelling, like the Romantics did, he’s chosen apathy and cynicism.”

“And hedonism. The only way he can re-fire his spirit, or so he says, is through new sensations—more and more dangerous sensations. What Baudelaire calls the artificial paradises of the imagination. Drug-induced hallucination, calculated perversity …”

“Alphabetical perversity?”

Noel’s smile shaded into a grimace as he wondered what letter Norval was on. “‘Harmless perversity,’ he calls it.”

Samira was turning the bottle to read its label: Quinta do Noval 1994. “
Harmless
? Come on,
The Alpha Bet
does damage. It’s manipulative, exploitive, deceitful …”

Then why are you in love with him? Noel wondered as the list of adjectives grew.

“… callous, mercenary, chauvinist … So why does he do it? Why does he
treat
women this way? And why
so many
? Revenge? Because his mother betrayed his father he’s decided to fuck over as many women as possible? Or because he was so shattered by that betrayal—by the loss of his mother, really—that he’s been looking for a substitute in the arms of every woman who crosses his path?”

Noel paused to think this through. “All that’s possible. I really don’t know. I’ve sometimes thought that losing himself in sex is a distraction.”

“A distraction from what?”

“Failure, self-doubt. An inferiority complex.”

“You’ve
got
to be kidding. Norval? You mean a
superiority
complex, don’t you?”

“The two usually go hand in hand.”

Here Samira paused, recalling his remark about the stairs that went nowhere. A
reminder
, he called it. “So that’s why Norval is so prejudiced? Because what he hates in others he sees in himself? But wait, that can’t be it. Can’t be failure and self-doubt. Didn’t he have all kinds of success with his novel? And that film?”

“True, but for him mass appeal is a sign of failure. And besides, that was over a decade ago. He hasn’t done anything since.”

“Is that why he’s so bitter? Why he drinks so much? Because his glory days are behind him?”

“Hardly. He willingly got out of the business.”

“Did he have any other offers, film offers?”

“Lots. Withnail in
Withnail and I
. Jaques in
As You Like It
…”

“And what about his novel? Was Bess modelled on anyone? Someone from his own life? Did he live in Nottinghamshire?”

“He’s always maintained she’s pure invention. But I ‘hae ma doots,’ as my mother would say, I hae ma doots. He actually did live in Nottinghamshire, where I think he met his one true love. I think the answer, the key to Norval, is in that book. Have you read it?”

“Yeah, it was in his bookcase, spine turned back to front. I couldn’t put it down. I think it’s absolutely brilliant. That notion of turning back the clock, trying to recapture something lost—it made me cry my eyes out. And his romantic scenes … they’re so beautiful! And so out of character—I can’t believe he wrote that book.”

Noel refilled, handed the goblet to Samira. “I can.”

“Well, you know him better than I do. So is that where he got his money? I mean, his place is … amazing. And he spends like a sultan.”

“He also wrote two songs, believe it or not. In the early nineties. He had a burst of creative energy, producing one masterpiece, or minor masterpiece, in every genre he tried. And then just stopped creating entirely.”

“He wrote
songs
? Good God. Anything I might know?”

“‘Jardin de supplices’? It got some airplay in France and Spain.”

“Never heard of it. So he made lots of money off that?”

“No, not from his version. But it appeared on a Céline Dion album.”

“Are you serious? Christ! Born under a lucky star or what … What was the other song?”

“‘Dream Door.’”

“
Dream Door
? By The Extinction Bazaar?
Norval
wrote that? You can’t be serious! I was a teenager when I heard that song! I bought the album because of that song! But … that doesn’t make sense. It’s a ballad, it’s romantic. He couldn’t have written that song!”

“Don’t tell him I told you, whatever you do. He can’t stand hearing it. The other day we heard it at the theatre and he almost went into convulsions.”

“But why did he … give it all up? He just topped out, apexed? Lost his muse?”

“I can think of a number of possibilities. Well, three.”

“Which are …?”

Noel rotated the cup, took a long sip. “First, it’s not easy seeing things clearly through a haze of drink and drugs.”

“Others have done it. What’s the second?”

“That his muse was a single memory. His songs and novel really only deal with one thing—loss.”

“And an attempt to regain what was lost.”

“Right. But once he had written about that one dominant memory, there was nothing else left, nowhere else to go.”

“What’s the third possibility?”

“Well, when Norval was younger he thought art would fill the vacuum, the void opened up by the … the decay of religion. That the world’s problems could be healed, or alleviated, by art—that ‘great undogmatised church,’ he called it. But now, when he looks around at today’s art, music, film, he’s lost hope of that ever happening. He says today’s art is all about vanity and ego. That celebrity matters more than truth; hype and popularity more than merit.”

“Hard to disagree there. The entertainment industry—it’s a freaking cesspool.”

Noel eyed Samira closely. You would know, he thought. “And he says that egalitarianism is to blame. Or unionism. When you pay plumbers and postmen and athletes that kind of money, you’re going to get films and books and TV shows directed at them, designed to take that money away.”

Samira smiled as she studied the floorboards, as if following the path of some insect.

Noel hesitated. “Didn’t something like that happen to you too?”

Samira raised her head, the smile dying in her eyes. “Something like what? What do you mean? I’m not a musician or writer.”

“True, but you were once an actress.”

“An actress? Me? What’re you talking about?”

“Does the name Heliodora Locke mean anything to you?”

Samira emptied the cup, in large gulps. “Should it?”

Noel regarded her searchingly. “Yes, it should.”

“And why is that?”

“Because you’re her.”

“My name is Samira Darwish.”

Noel tried to look into her eyes, the one place you can’t conceal the truth. “I’m sure it is. But you used to be an actress, right? Your stage name was Heliodora Locke?”

“Listen, I … can we change the subject?”

“It’s none of my business anyway.”

Samira bit her lip. “You wouldn’t have a cigarette, would you?”

“No. But I can get you some.”

“Don’t bother …” That bloody film, she reflected, was made … what? Eight years ago? Nine? At my peak, my high tide. I’ve aged, I’m not wearing make-up, my hair looks like shit. “How did you … you know, recognize …”

“Your voice colours.”

Samira nodded. “Right.”

“So that’s why you cut off all your hair? So as not to be recognised?”

“No. Because hair down to my waist just seemed to attract men, like a red cape before a bull.”

“And you don’t want to attract men.”

“Or bulls. I’ve made a vow of chastity. No,
seriously
.”

Norval and Samira, thought Noel. A natural pair. Each had a moment of fame and was repelled by the stench. Each attracts and is repelled by the opposite sex. “So you have a lot in common with Norval.”

“He’s taken a vow of chastity?”

“No, I meant—”

“He’s accomplished way more than me.”

“Why’d you stop?”

“Acting or sex?”

“Acting.”

“Because … because some people are cut out for it, some aren’t. I don’t like seeing myself on screen, I don’t like being recognised, I don’t like money enough to have to deal with … well, the cesspool, as Norval called it.”

“You called it that.”

“The critics, the creeps, the poseurs, the paparazzi, I just couldn’t stand it. And I never really wanted it. It was just a … fluke. It was a dark period in my life, a big black patch …”

“Why? Because of … getting involved with the director—Federico Zappavigna? When you were eighteen and he was forty-eight?”

“No, that was exciting. Do you read
People
magazine or something? Or
Teen People
?”

“No … I … was just wondering what happened to you, so I … floated your name on the Net.”

“Great. Those stupid interviews, those idiotic illustrated profiles, will haunt me forever. I’ll never do another interview, never let a photographer near me as long as I live.”

“Because of that nude scene on the Adriatic?”

“Which one? The one in the film or the one in the tabloids taken by that … that Venetian snorkeller with the telephoto lens?”

“The one in the film …”

“Well, you know what I’m talking about.”

“ … which was sort of integrated into the plot, I mean the character …”

“Me lying naked in a gondola, rubbing Coppertone on my thighs? It had nothing to do with plot or character. It was more like product placement. Listen, Noel, please don’t tell anyone about this, OK? I’m trying to put it all behind me. I have my reasons. Noel, will you promise?”

“Of course I will, I give you my word.”

Samira looked him straight in the eye. Yes, she thought, I can trust him. “Can we change the subject now? Can I ask
you
some personal questions?”