The Memory Artists (44 page)

Norval, his finger still resting on one of the buttons, looked stunned. JJ slumped in his chair. Samira and my mother exchanged glum looks. I was distracted by the odd colour form, but understood the question when I saw the screen, saw the numbers. Should I say something? I turned and whispered into Samira’s ear.

“Are you sure?” she said. She then whispered into JJ’s ear; he leaned over to look at me and I nodded.

“Congratulations, Sylvie—”

“Hold on!” a voice came from the audience. JJ’s. “There’s been a mistake!”

“Cut!” said the fuzzy-haired boy.

Dr. Vorta, in an agitated state, lifted his beard from a reference book. “Yes, I fear there has been an error. The 1 and 2 should be reversed.”

“You sure, Doc?” said the fuzzy-haired boy. “Positive? OK, Pierre, can you change the graphic? Jack, we’ll start again at ‘The correct order is …’ Ready? 3-2-1 …”

“And the correct order is 4, 1, 2, 3, 5. Let’s see who had the right answer … Two people again. I mean two people. And the one with the fastest time is … Norval Blaquière! Norval, come on up here please!”

This time the ovation was thunderous, mostly because JJ was rabid, out of control. With his patented smirk Norval walked casually onto the stage, and sat down with his arms folded across his chest.

“Well done, sir. So how does it feel, Norval, to be in the hot seat?”

“It’s cold plastic, Jack.”

“Good one! I see we’ve got a livewire tonight! A lit disturber! All right. So, my friend, it says here you’re a writer and a teacher. Where do you teach?”

“I see no reason to embarrass the school, Jack—I’m about to be sacked for unethical conduct.”

“Shall we get started? You know the rules—you’ll be asked a series of questions of increasing difficulty. Let me remind you: you may stop at any point and take the money and run. Otherwise, if you answer incorrectly, you will leave with zero. Take a deep breath. Ready?”

Norval rolled his eyes.

“Let’s play … Tip of Your Tongue! These sealed envelopes I’m holding in my hand are secured each week in a bank vault at the Laurentian Bank headquarters until just before show time. Which reminds me—check out their new mortgage rates! Shall we get started? First question, for a hundred dollars: What is an abecadarius? Is it (a) an acrostic, the initial letters of whose successive lines form the alphabet; (b) a verse arranged in such a way as to spell names or phrases; (c) a notebook which lists the rudiments of a subject; or (d) a lover’s diary in which conquests are listed alphabetically?”

“A.”

“Just won a hundred bucks! A two-parter coming up. Which type of poem is the following, and what is the metre? Check it out on the monitor …”

A lesbian bride and her groom

Asked a gay man up to their room.

They spent the whole night

In a hell of a fight

Over who should do what, and to whom.

“Is this (a) a sonnet; (b) a villanelle, (c) a—”

“Limerick.”

“Uh … right you are. Second part. Is the meter (a) iambic; (b) ionic; (c) trochaic; or (d) anapaestic?”

“Anapaestic.”

“Ultimate, untakebackable answer? You sure? Glad to hear it, because

you’ve just won five hundred bucks! Let’s give it up for Norval Blaquière!” APPLAUSE sign.

“So, Norval, it says on your résumé that you’ve worked as a film actor …”

“That was a fabrication I used to get on the show.”

Jack burst out laughing. “Don’t tell anyone, but that’s how I got on the show too! OK, third hurdle for a thousand dollars. Have I got the right question? Here we go. Another two-parter. A certain lover of Lord Byron’s, who in a fit of jealousy bit through her glass at dinner when she saw the poet leaning towards another woman, later sent him a lock of her hair, asking for his in return. For one thousand dollars, who was this lover and what was the poet’s response?”

“Caroline Lamb. Byron sent her another woman’s hair—the Countess of Oxford’s pubic hair.”

Jack paused before looking up from his card. “Could someone get me a fire extinguisher? Because Norval’s brain is on fire! All right baby! Three in a row! Are you loving this, audience?”

APPLAUSE sign.

“Have you thought about what you’ll do with your money, Norval?”

“Yes Jack, I have. It’ll go towards providing a university education for my twelve foster children in Africa.”

“All right baby! Maybe we’ll see one of them on the show one day! OK, it’s time for the five-question lightning round. You must get at least three of five correct to move on. Are you ready? You’ve got twenty seconds to tell me the author of these lines on the monitor.”

(1)  He is crazed with the spell of far Arabia,

They have stolen his wits away.

(2)  Ah tell me not that memory

Sheds gladness o’er the past;

What is recalled by faded flowers

Save that they did not last?

(3)  Forgetfulness has made its country your red

Mouth, and the flowing of Lethe is in your kiss.

(4)  A dream before the ledger flitted,

A dream before the brain;

Ah, yet the toil is unremitted,

The journeying is vain!

The train the city never quitted,

‘Twas but a phantom train!

5)  The Clock! Sinister, demonic god that makes us tremble,

With threatening finger tells us: “Remember!”

In no apparent hurry, Norval scanned the audience with impervious calm. Was he looking at me? No, at Samira. “One. Walter de la Mare. Two. Letitia Elizabeth Landon. Three. Baudelaire. Four. May Kendall. Five. Baudelaire.”

Jack bit his lip, slowly nodded his head. “Amazing. Absolutely freaking AMAZING! All five correct for five thousand dollars! Let’s hear it for our resident genius, Norval Blaquière—who may be going where no other contestant has gone before!”

APPLAUSE sign.

Following JJ’s lead, Samira jumped to her feet, clapping wildly. Would she ever do that for me? I wondered, as I clapped along. Of course not. Why would she?

“All right, let’s pause here to catch our breath. When we return, Norval will be going for … ten thousand dollars!”

APPLAUSE sign.

“Back in the early seventies the image of Ella Fitzgerald’s recorded voice shattering a wine glass was seen and remembered by millions. And the accompanying theme line, ‘Is it live or is it Memorex?’ was quickly adopted around the world. To continue this tradition of excellence, we are now introducing our Pocket Memory CD-R. At three inches, Pocket Memory goes where no recorder has ever gone before …”

“All right, we’ve got Norval Blaquière on the hot seat. Or should I say, cold seat? So far Norval has won … five thousand dollars! Do you have any kids, my pal?”

“No.”

“For ten thousand dollars, another two-parter. First part: what does Liebestod signify? L-i-e-b-e-s-t-o-d. A German word, isn’t that right, Dr. Vorta? Is it (a) death as a result of unhappy love; (b) mutual love in which both lovers prefer union in death to separation in life; (c) a utopian state in which marriage does not exist; (d) a poem by Dorothy Parker?”

“B. And D.”

“Right you are! But you’re not out of the woods yet. Second part: in which of the following Elizabethan poems—”

“Hero and Leander. Christopher Marlowe.”

“Uh … sure you don’t want me to finish? No? Glad to hear it, my man, because you’ve just won ten thousand clams!”

APPLAUSE sign.

“I’m jazzed, and I know our audience is too! Are you jazzed, audience? Are you amped? I can’t hear you! All right, we’re now approaching the game’s final stage. It’s time to narrow your field. Which language is it going to be: (a) French, (b) German, (c) Spanish, (d) Italian or (e) Arabic?”

“E.”

“Really? Are you serious? Excellent stuff. Now, you know things are going to get trickier—no more multiple choice! Are you ready to rumble?”

“No, I’d like to use one of my lifelines at this point. I’d like my friend Noel Burun to trade places with me. Because my memory has suddenly gone blank.”

The studio went silent. “But … we don’t have lifelines on this show,” Jack said, with a puzzled expression. “What’s that, Dr. Vorta? We can bend the rules? We put it to the audience? OK, what do you say, audience? It’s in your hands. Should we go with the flow?”

APPLAUSE sign.

Jack shielded his eyes with his hand, surveyed the crowd, counted raised hands. “No question about it—the audience has spoken. Is Noel Burun in the audience? OK, when we come back, we’ll meet Norval’s tag-team partner for the final round! We’re what? We’re out of time? All right, ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid you’ll have to tune in next week to see what happens on … Tip of Your Tongue!”

APPLAUSE sign.

“Fifteen-minute break,” said the fuzzy-haired boy. “Then we’ll wrap this up.”

The fuzzy-haired boy stood in front of me, smiling, waiting for an answer. He reeked of stale sweat and his voice had almost no colour, no inflection.

My mouth was dry, a sandbox. “I can’t do it,” I croaked, petrified at the thought of going on TV. “I have … problems. Stage fright.”

“Can’t you try, Noel?” Samira asked. Her voice was velvety, haloed. “For your mom? And me?”

I could feel my teeth grinding, my bottom lip being bitten, the side of my thumb being scratched till it bled. I looked at my mother, who smiled at me. She’d never forced me to do anything before, and wouldn’t now. “That’s all right, Noel,” she said softly, reassuringly. “I understand …”

A jolt, like an electrical surge, made the house lights flicker and I was suddenly backstage, in claustrophobic corridors, all of them colourless, all of them blind.

“Welcome to Tip of Your Tongue! Brought to you by Memorex and a brandnew co-sponsor … Maxwell House coffee! One hundred per cent pure Arabica. Now in resealable canisters. Take it away, Dr. Volta.”

“Vorta.”

“Take it away, Dr. Vorta!”

“Maxwell House coffee, according to our researchers, was named after the Maxwell House Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee, where Joel Cheek’s blend became the house coffee in 1892. Legend has it that on a visit to Nashville in 1907, President Teddy Roosevelt declared that Maxwell House coffee was ‘good to the last drop.’ One hundred years later, that familiar slogan remains the brand’s promise to its customers. Good to the last drop!”

“Thank you, Dr. Volta. Let’s hope our viewers could cut through that thick Swiss accent! All right, at the end of last week’s show, Norval Blaquière, a thirty-three-year-old bachelor from Montreal, earned a total of ten thousand dollars before narrowing his subject to … Arabic literature! And then decided to pass the torch on to his best friend. So now it’s time to meet Norval’s torchbearer. How about a warm hand for Noel Burun!”

APPLAUSE sign.

“Welcome to the show, Noel. How do you feel about coming into pinchhit for your best buddy? A little nervous with all that money on the line? Noel?”

My insides were twisted, my bones molten. I cupped my hand to my ear, as if I couldn’t hear.

“I asked how the old nerves were. Noel? Should we cut here, Pierre?”

“We’ll edit. Keep it rolling ...”

“As you know, you can either try for the top prize of fifty thousand dollars, or with one wrong answer fall to zero—an Arabic word, isn’t that right, Dr. Volta? Yes? What would you like to do, Noel?”