The Memory Artists (46 page)

(November 22/02)

(January 20/03)

(January 20/03)

(January 21/03)

(February 14/03)

(November 11/03)

(November 13/03)

(December 1/03)

(August 24/04)

Chapter 24

Noel’s Diary (IV)

January 5, 2004. How does it go again? “The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.” I can’t remember who said that—it’ll come to me—but he or she was right. It goes back to what JJ said about intelligence of the brain vs. intelligence of the heart …

And it goes back to what my father said about poets freeing those feelings we keep locked in the heart. I was never really sure, to be honest, what feelings he was referring to. Which ones have to be set free, and why? My mother gave me an answer: what we’re all really seeking is the freedom to give ourselves away. To stop maniacally holding on to ourselves, to escape from the jail of living solely and vainly for our own sake. This is the treasure, I think, buried in the pent heart.

Omar Bradley. (I just asked my mom.)

January 6. Large snowflakes swirl. “They’re plucking geese in heaven,” my mother told me when I was four, outside our bay window in Babylon. She zipped up my woollen coat of double blue, which she herself had knitted, and set me down in the snow with a small shovel. “Your grandmother used to say that,” she added, her hair of rich reddish-gold grazing my cheek as she wound my scarf tight. That memory is solid, but almost all others are delicate and fugitive, like the white flakes that now vanish as they kiss the glass.

This will be my final entry.

My mother has turned back into the person she once was, worth more to me than winning the world’s praise, more than winning a million lotteries. She said I was welcome to stay with her, but I think it’s time to move on. There is someone new in her life, and there is someone new in mine. “Ask her to marry you,” my mother whispered at the airport.

I never wanted wealth or fame, never sought either. Like the ancient Greeks I simply combined, in a novel way, work that others had done before me. I saw previously overlooked patterns, made “irrational” connections, saw beauty, nothing more. And this would never have happened without the compass and charts of my father, the witchery of my grandmother, the flighty optimism of JJ and grounding pessimism of Norval. Without Samira, my muse and mind’s balm, who proved that darts of gold can come of chemistry; without my mother, whose love for me—and need—lifted me to a higher plane of existence, turning me into a knight, a magician, a fool, unblinding me to the miracle.

Chapter 25

Ghostwriter’s Epilogue

T
he documentation and anecdotal information runs out here.
⁶⁰
Regrettably, we have neither Henry Burun’s lab notes from 1978 nor his son’s from 2002, which contain key details regarding the evolution and synthesis of the “memory pill.” These notes were thought to be in the possession of Dr. Vorta, who was attempting to secure drug patents before he died. These documents have never been found.

Dr. Vorta was undeniably a brilliant neuroscientist; he was not, as Norval Blaquière contended, a jealous mentor trying to undercut a brighter protégé. Nor was he a “quack.” With the exception of A-1001, all his discoveries were verifiably his own. All his awards, save those for A-1001, were earned. Over the course of his career, however, Dr. Vorta made several enemies—his wife among them—who were determined to discredit him. The last decade of his life was spent trying to ward off a series of accusations, including medical malpractice, criminal negligence and insider trading.

In the early 1990s, for example, Dr. Vorta developed a promising drug for treating early-onset Alzheimer’s, but Food and Drug Canada (FDC) withheld approval from the company he was working with (Memoria Drugs) because of shortcomings in its clinical trials. It later emerged that he sold his shares in this firm just before the FDC’s decision was published. Dr. Vorta was subpoenaed for insider trading but not charged.

In the mid-1990s, charges that Vorta put pressure on the Chief Scientist at the FDC to greenlight or fast-track drug approval were dropped for lack of evidence.

In the late 1990s, Dr. Vorta was accused in the press of receiving kickbacks from corporations sponsoring psychomnemonic research, as well as excessive fees to refer patients to clinical trials; a money trail allegedly led back to two European drug companies, an instant-coffee manufacturer and an investment firm, Helvetia Capital Management.