A History of Forgetting (15 page)

Weary, Alison leaned her head into the window. ‘Oh, shut up.'

 

 

8

 

In November Denis had finally been placed in care. November, a sodden month, that synonym for grey. Malcolm left him on the ward, Denis oblivious to his parting, and went back home alone. That very day his centre disappeared. The core of him went and he knew himself to be drifting, as if he were made of smoke or vapour. He couldn't act; he had no substance. Anything he touched, surely his hand would go right through. Yet when he arrived back at the apartment, he was somehow able to get in and lock the door. He locked it and fastened the chain, then went around to all the rooms and made sure the windows were shut up tight, the curtains drawn, the blinds lowered. He was sealing the apartment up, with himself inside, and the dog. From now on he would roll the stone away only to go to work or walk Grace or visit Denis. Until the end of the year, when the lease was up and he had to vacate, the apartment, dim and airless, was going to be his tomb.

He went out with Grace, not for the dog's sake, but for the sake of Mrs. Parker, Mrs. Rodeck and Miss Velve, whom he would not let down. Apart from each afternoon's brief hyper-animated walk, and his one unfortunate excursion into society—the Vitae Christmas party—he sank quickly into dormancy. Amazing how easy it was to shut his mind off. Hours he spent sleeping or sitting in the dark. If he had a thought it was this: that maybe he wasn't suffering because of Denis, maybe he was suffering because he was thinking about Denis. In the blank moments, he felt at peace. He felt this was the blissful nothingness that death promised.

One morning just before Christmas the buzzer rang and ruined everything. When he had ascertained what day it was, Sunday, and seen the time, just past ten, he sat up, bewildered. On the second buzz, he got up. Grace was in paroxysms, leaking everywhere, so he put on Albert Parker's dressing gown and headed down the hall. Who was at the door? Yvette? No,
she always rang with her signature three blasts and, besides,
she was no longer in his life. It had to be a client—Mrs. Rodeck, perhaps? She had hinted during walkies yesterday about a spare opera ticket, but surely she would bring it to him that afternoon, at the park, not here.

In a flash it came to him that Denis was at the door. Denis had come back. Somehow he had got out, escaped and found
his way, but how could it have happened? Malcolm was the one entombed here. Malcolm was the ghost, yet Denis, so offensively alive, so maniacal with vigour,
he
had come to
haunt. Now he was buzzing like a trapped wasp, demanding to be let up. Furious. He was furious with Malcolm and there was going to be a scene: objects, priceless in sentiment, hurled, fisticuffs, the shriek of ugly names. The names were the worst. It was as if the cap on his unconscious had been eaten through by its acid contents. Give me sticks and stones, thought Malcolm, pressing the intercom button with trepidation.

‘Âllo?'

‘I've got the croissants. You supply the coffee.'

It was a familiar voice, cocky and nasal, the pause filled with noisy breath, yet Malcolm, stunned, drew a blank.

‘It's me, Christian. The
homunculus
you work with.'

At first he was relieved. Then he was annoyed. ‘I'm not dressed. You got me out of bed.'

‘I'm not dressed either. I'm standing down here
stark
naked.
Quick! Buzz me up!'

Christian was a madman and this only confirmed it.

‘Never mind,' said Christian. ‘Your kind neighbour has just arrived.'

Malcolm heard Christian introduce himself and the startled woman agree to admit him. The door slammed closed behind them. In the time it took Christian to climb the stairs and find the apartment, Malcolm seemed unable to move except to knock his head a few times against the wall. When Christian rapped his arpeggio out on the door, Grace joined in the racket, scratching where she'd already taken off a patch of paint. ‘Stop that,' Malcolm told her, hooking her with his foot. ‘Haven't I lectured you enough about our damage deposit?'

He opened the door. There, grinning in the hall, was Christian, one eye rolling back and to the side, a manikin. He wore an outrageous get-up, as usual, and held out a paper bag. ‘A dog!' he exclaimed as Grace lunged for him. ‘Can I pick her up?'

‘At your peril.'

Instead he squatted. Amazing he could get down that low. His jeans were very tight and very torn and for a belt he wore a length of chain padlocked at his fly, the key hanging on a string at his throat. Grace, rapturous, washed his unfortunate face, hoping to be rescued, but Christian didn't know that. ‘I
knew
you had a secret love,' he said.

Since Christian was there and could not politely be made to go, Malcolm went to the kitchen to make coffee, leaving the dog and the little man alone.

‘Where did you get all these
things?'
Christian exclaimed from the living room.

‘The nineteenth century,' Malcolm called back, adding wryly, ‘Make yourself at home.' Numbly, he knocked yesterday's grounds out of the espresso maker. He was fumbling through the motions.

‘So many
books!'

He took the croissants out of the bag and when the coffee was ready, brought it all to the living room on a tray. Christian was wandering the room examining the
objets d'art
and the paintings, Grace at his heel, her tongue out, smiling, confident she was going to be delivered. Christian stopped at the sideboard and opened the middle cupboard, gasping when the panel on the top slid back.
‘Nifty!'
The open door made a shelf to mix drinks on. He stooped and looked past all the near-empty bottles at his own image in the discoloured mirror at the back of the cupboard, the only undraped mirror in the apartment. He straightened with his tongue out, too, and casually picked up the picture of Denis that was sitting there on the sideboard in an old ecclesiastical frame.

‘Here's your coffee,' Malcolm said.

Christian set the picture down, thankfully without comment, and sashayed over to the sofa. Helping himself to one of the little cups, spooning in sugar from the bowl, he said, ‘It's dark in here. Can we open the curtains?'

‘I'd rather not.' Malcolm tugged the dressing gown over his bare knee. ‘So what brings you on this unexpected visit?' he asked, hoping to speed it along.

Christian sipped the coffee, his little finger jutting, affecting the stereotype. ‘We
kissed.
Don't tell me you've forgotten.'

‘We what?' said a flabbergasted Malcolm.

‘At the Christmas party. Only a week ago.'

Malcolm vaguely recalled Christian ambushing him with a sprig of mistletoe. ‘Oh,
that.
As far as I could tell, you kissed everyone.'

‘
After
we
kissed, I assure you, I
abstained.'
Setting the coffee cup down, he looked at Malcolm with that peculiar gaze of his. ‘Malcolm! I have been trying unsuccessfully to corner you all week. Here we've worked together for over a year, but until now you have steadfastly resisted my charms. That kiss could be the start of a beautiful friendship. What do you say?'

Malcolm didn't know what to say. Was Christian just having him on, or was he in earnest? He couldn't tell, just as he couldn't tell which of Christian's eyes to look back into. Then Christian helped himself to a croissant and, biting into it, showed Malcolm the chocolate filling.

‘Poo!'
High-pitched, his laugh. He expelled a gust of pastry flakes.

Malcolm stared at him, unamused.

‘Tell me about Paris,' Christian said.

Malcolm frowned. ‘I never liked it,' and when Christian looked incredulous, he asked, ‘Have you ever been there?'

‘In my dreams.'

‘I always felt out of place, particularly in the language. They are very fussy. Even after I had learned French, perfect strangers would correct me or snicker at my accent. Certain national pastimes I abhorred—the affairs and the endless talk of them, and how everyone seemed to own a revolting little dog—' They both glanced at Grace licking pastry flakes off the carpet and Christian trilled a laugh again.

‘And speaking of poo,' Malcolm added. ‘It's everywhere on the sidewalks.'

Over the years the streets had come to oppress him more
and more, and it was not just the excrement. In their own neighbourhood heretics had been burned during the Inquisition; Jews had been rounded up during the war and, in the
eighties, bombed in delicatessens. Lately, this last bit of history had begun to weigh on him particularly. Home, meanwhile, became burnished in his memory. Except for the separatist movement, Canada was rarely mentioned in the papers. Nothing ever happened there, and he saw that as idyllic.

‘Affairs
a national pastime? That sounds swell,' said Christian.

‘And the desecrated Jewish cemeteries? The little Muslim girls barred from school for wearing headscarves? The Algerians bound and thrown into the Seine? You are familiar with the increasingly popular Front National of M. Le Pen? How about the government minister, Jewish, whose name Le Pen made to rhyme with
crématoire?
Or how
“sidiques”—
persons with AIDS—strangely echoes
“judaïques'
'
?'

Christian turned his head, seemingly to look at Malcolm with the straying eye. ‘I'm not political.'

‘Neither am I,' said Malcolm sternly.

It was France that had corrupted Denis. Malcolm blamed France. The country was full of anti-Semites and racists of all denominations such as you would never find here. Denis had been an adolescent during the war and seen his country collaborate. No wonder, Malcolm thought. No wonder! Then:
Christ! He was thinking again.
He had opened the apartment door and the next thing he knew he was exonerating Denis.

Christian wiped the corners of his mouth and, to change the subject, pointed to the Egyptian head on the coffee table. ‘Who is
sh
e
?'

Malcolm shrugged, irritable now, sarcastic. ‘Nefertiti.'

‘You have
connections.'
He gestured across the room. ‘Is that a
hi-fi?
Are those
records
?'

‘It's a veritable museum, isn't it?'

‘Is that your
love
r
?'
Christian asked.

In the picture on the sideboard, he meant. Instantly, Malcolm's eyes teared up, but he pressed them quickly and
turned away. ‘Yes,' he answered in what he hoped was a steady voice. It was no lie. That picture had been taken twenty years
before.

When he turned back, he saw that Christian himself had deflated. He had been sprawling on the sofa, legs splayed, fingering the key around his neck that would unlock the padlock at his waist. Now he sat up straighter, knees together, which made him seem all the more diminutive; his feet didn't touch the floor. He stared off vacantly and in two different directions and his face, despite all the chaos on it, registered disappointment.

‘I'm
jealous,'
he said. ‘He's very handsome.'

‘But that is the least of why I loved him,' said Malcolm. ‘You are all unnaturally obsessed with appearances.'

‘But appearance is our occupation,' Christian argued.

‘Not at all,' Malcolm countered. ‘Service is.'

Christian pondered for a moment. ‘Why do you love him then?'

M
alcolm flinched a little to say it: ‘He is kind.' Then it occurred to him that, after ‘madman', ‘kind' was how he would describe Christian, too. His pranks and gossip, his stream-of-consciousness patter aside, the little man had the ethos of a saint. He spoon-fed their in-house anorexic and charged his
clients on a sliding scale. And here he was now, paying this
mercy call to Malcolm. ‘Like you,' Malcolm told him. ‘Like you.'

Immediately Christian brightened. ‘Then there's
hope
for me yet?'

Do not hope for love,
Malcolm advised him in his mind.

Christian, looking vaguely over his shoulder to the hall, asked, ‘Is he here?'

‘No. He's—away.'

‘In Paris?'

Malcolm said, ‘Yes.' And Denis was, in a manner of speaking. Then he stood and Christian, taking the hint, rose as well, though clearly he would have liked to stay.

At the door, he fawned over Grace again. ‘What's your lover's name?' he asked.

‘Denis.'

‘Denis. I like what you said about him.' Misunderstanding Malcolm's wince, he said, ‘No, I'm serious. I meant what I said, too, about being friends. Do you and Denis have plans for Christmas?'