A History of Forgetting (27 page)

‘Here.'

‘Ici?'

Denis was impressed by Malcolm's judgement, Malcolm could tell. Already, Malcolm badly wanted the job. More to the point, he badly wanted Denis, but doubted Denis would deign to consider a moody Canadian with acne on his back, with whom he had to communicate in pantomime.

That odour had to come out. The place had to be cleaned and painted. Malcolm, eager to prove himself, set to work. Over the next three days, on his hands and knees scrubbing or reaching with a paintbrush, he didn't rest. Denis came downstairs occasionally to stand with his small clean hands on his hips, watching Malcolm sweat in the Paris heat. He would point and make graceful gesticulations, which Malcolm interpreted as Denis drawing attention to his faults. Denis was entreating him not to debase himself another minute. It was ridiculous! A
nettoyeuse
was coming on Tuesday!

Malcolm didn't learn that until later.

What Denis did was cook. He made
omelette aux fruits de mer, ris de veau aux pointes d
'
asperges,
a salad of lettuce hearts. Every evening when Malcolm staggered filthy and aching up the stairs, Denis greeted him with his only English sentence:
‘Are you angry?'

On the third day, Malcolm's clothes were ruined. He'd gone through both trouser knees and camouflaged himself in
paint, but the salon was ready to be equipped. To celebrate, Denis ran him a bath and invited two friends to dine with
them. He prepared his speciality:
matelote d
'
anguille.

At the table, Malcolm felt very young and very sorry for himself. The three Frenchmen were all much older and blond, models of sophistication. One smoked his cigarette in an ivory holder. They laughed a lot and Malcolm couldn't understand a word. When the
matelote
was served, the two friends each took a sip, then leaned across the table and kissed Denis on the lips.

Turning to watch Malcolm lift his spoon, they all waited with their perfect eyebrows raised.

‘Bon,'
said Malcolm, an understatement. The men laughed trillingly.

Exhausted and morose, he told them goodnight, then slunk off to the sofa where he'd been sleeping the last two nights. He couldn't sleep now for their voices. The room was hot enough already without his burning jealousy, without his holding a pillow over his head to block out their good time. Suddenly, he kicked back the sheet and sat up panting. He had fallen asleep after all, and dreamed of fire, and now his undershirt and shorts were drenched with sweat.

But it had not been a nightmare: awake, he still smelled smoke.

The guests had gone and the only light now came through the open window, brightening, then strangely fading. He went over and looked down into the courtyard where, tomorrow, Denis would leave for the cats the left-over
matelote
in a newspaper hat. The restaurants were still open, but with only a scattering of diners. Nothing appeared to be on fire.

Then he noticed, next to the tree that was the leafy axis of the courtyard, a ragged figure swigging from a gasoline can. He dashed towards a couple sitting under the restaurant awn
ing, lunged and let gush a flame. Watching, Malcolm could
not help but recognize himself. For the last three days he had
been smouldering. If he had opened his mouth, he would
have had a blowtorch for a tongue.

After accepting a gratuity from the diners he had so scorchingly entertained, the figure retreated to the tree. Still Malcolm smelled smoke. It wasn't coming from below, but was with him there, in the room. Turning, he saw in the corner the bright tip of a cigarette bobbing, a cinder floating in the dark.

‘Point de feu sans fumée.'

Malcolm tried repeating the words. He might have actually learned some French if he hadn't suffered these pyrotechnic moods.

Denis joined him at the window. In silence, they watched the tattered man at his startling craft. It was an act beyond language. The next day Denis would invite him upstairs and give him dinner, then trim the singe off his bangs. Now he dragged on the cigarette and passed it to Malcolm, who did not smoke but took it anyway for the chance it offered him to put his lips where Denis' had been.

Soon Denis left the window and went to switch on the lamp. He sat on the sofa, on Malcolm's crumpled sheets.
‘Venez,'
he said, patting the place beside him. Malcolm came over and sat at the other end of the sofa, his heart beating audibly, at least to him. Anything might happen, he thought, though inevitably it wouldn't. He glanced sidelong at his bemused host. Just then, something in the space between them caught Denis' eye. He reached over to pluck it off the sheet, leaned away from Malcolm, under the lamp, squinting as he held the wiry hair close to his face.

‘
Quel trésor,'
Denis had whispered. ‘
Quel trésor.'

‘Every day,' Malcolm told Denis now, ‘you asked if I was angry. Yes, I'm angry. I had nearly thirty years of memories I wouldn't have exchanged with anyone. In one year, you've ruined them all. Yes, I'm angry.

‘I remember different things now, little things that make me angry, too. Like the time a client—Mme. Moreau, I think it was—brought in that photo. Do you remember? Her young son in the Vichy-inspired uniform of the Front National de la Jeunesse. You passed it over to me and said,
“Comme il est charmant!”
It made me grim. It made me sick. I realized I could no longer say
Monsieur Le Pen in the Ass.
I had to be careful who I made such jokes to after that. You, you didn't care. You didn't see anything wrong with it.'

He sniffed at his wrist again.

‘We never did get that odour out of the salon.' It had always been there, just faintly under the perm solution and the hairspray. Malcolm looked at Denis, longing both to strike him and to hold him. ‘I'm angry,' he said, then, leaning over, smelled his hair.

‘Come.'

Taking Denis' hand, he helped him to his feet. Together they drifted out of the room, down the corridor to the lounge,
where he left Denis while he went to get a towel. When Malcolm returned, Denis was rocking himself prayer-like among the dieffenbachia. Deep currents pushing and pulling, impulses, formless thoughts. To Malcolm's prodding, he turned, very, very slowly, as underwater, as if the air were a fluid. He lifted
his eyes to Malcolm.

‘Come. I'm going to bathe you.'

Words coming out bubbles, bubbles floating up.

The bath running, Malcolm peeled the singlet over Denis'
head, removed the padded pants, tugged off his socks. He ended on his knees at Denis' feet looking up, where he had
figuratively placed himself through the years.

Underwater, Denis' pubic hairs swayed; his penis floated, a sea cucumber above his thigh. Gradually, the room filled up with steam. It occurred to Malcolm then that Denis had reached the beginning again. Prelingual, asexual, mentally inchoate, he had crawled back into the primordial pool. Now he was innocent again, though maybe he had always been.

And Malcolm got an idea: to bring the tape recorder, plug
it in the shaving socket and toss it in the water. The shock
would jump-start Denis. It would be like the original bolt that opened the story of Life. Denis would rise up from the steaming waters, reborn—his beloved. The tape would be Peggy Lee singing ‘Is That All There Is?'

Back in the room, Denis shampooed and fresh, Malcolm told him, ‘A terrible thing happened to a man I worked with. I was approached by a young woman who knew him as well. She asked for my help, asked that I accompany her on a pilgrimage of sorts.' He shrugged. ‘That I be her Virgil.'

Then he kissed Denis goodbye. He did not think he would see him again. First his sweet-smelling left cheek, then his right, as was their custom, then again the left. This third kiss was impromptu, an apology. It was for what he intended to do with Denis' dog.

 

 

 

3

 

The day came when he had to pack, but what? Deposited all around the apartment, like at a Salvation Army drop-off, were bags and bags of clothes. In the beginning he had been very careful about remembering which client had given him what; he liked always to be wearing something that would be familiar to each one when her appointment came, something that would make her smile and, musing, perhaps share a secret with him. In the end, he gave up trying. With no room to hang things up, no order could be made. He couldn't keep track of it all, couldn't even remember what he had used to wear before he came to work at Faye's. His own clothes were hopelessly mixed with the others, and with Denis' in the drawers.

Early in the morning he began to sort. He was ruthless;
some things—too much the wrong size, outlandish, stained—
would simply never work. Then he would pull something
interesting out of a bag and lay it on the bed, separate from the discard and the keeping piles, just because it struck his fancy. By the time he had finished, hours later, he turned and saw a museum spread across the bed.

‘Tennis anyone?' he addressed the yellowing pair of flannel trousers pleated from the waist and its matching short-sleeved shirt, cotton-knit and trimmed with piping—all the rage on the courts around
1938
, though in
1938
, they would still have been white. From the same bag he had been astonished to draw the uniform out. Who had given it to him? Had she really thought Malcolm could find a use for army khakis? The insignia torn off the jacket, he couldn't place the regiment or rank, but it was certainly of Second World War vintage. He laid it out next to the tennis outfit: how things change, and not just for Malcolm.

A post-war exuberance of ties, hand-painted with American skyscrapers or pin-up girls in silhouette, so optimistic. Then, from a more sober continent, the black cashmere turtleneck of an existentialist. The Teddy Boy suit made him laugh, it was so like one he had worn himself in London with its narrow lapels and black velvet collar, its stovepipe trousers. He found three ruffled blouses from Mr. Fish and a malodorous goatskin jacket—
très
sixties. Lapels went wide in the seventies, trousers flared, stripes turned clownish: from various bags he pieced a suit together. All his donors were too old to be influenced by any trend in the eighties. By the nineties they were dead.

What he packed was infinitely more sensible. Then he called a taxi and checked that the pills for the flight were in
the pocket next to his heart. A last look around, at the clothes
on the bed, the furniture wedged together, the Persian car
pet rolled. It seemed more a storeroom than an apartment. Except what was essential, he had never really bothered to unpack. The Egyptian head was somewhere in a box.

Negotiating his way over to the door, he noticed that a fine layer of hair had settled over it all, as if he had disposed of the dog by plugging in a firecracker and exploding her in the room. The thought made him shudder. He picked up his suitcase filled with the clothes of dead men he'd never known, and left without a backward glance.

 

When he arrived at the airport, the girl was nowhere to be
seen. He joined a long line switching back through bands and posts. Intermittently he lifted his suitcase, shuffled a few steps forward and set it down again. At last, a briskly cheerful agent with a jaunty red bow under her chin beckoned to him. He gave her the girl's name so that they could sit together, and asked, ‘How long is the flight?'

‘Ten hours to London. You'll have to clear customs at Heathrow and check in again with LOT.'

Hearing this, his bag gave up completely. Handle tagged with a coded adhesive loop, it teetered and, thudding onto its side, was conveyed away.

He found her at the gate, remarkably composed, with a guidebook in her lap. ‘Are you okay?' she asked. ‘You look really pale.'

It was just his shroud of skin contrasting with his hair. ‘I
don't care for flying,' he admitted, which started her rooting
through her voluminous handbag for a piece of gum. She herself had never taken such a long flight, she said, hardly flown at all, but the day before Thi had given her an article about long-distance air travel. From it she had seemed to glean that chewing gum was some kind of cure-all. She held a stick out to him, but he declined and took a pill instead.

They boarded the plane and found their appointed row. A man in a suit was sitting in the middle seat. ‘Are you together? I'll move over. No, no. I insist. Why break up a party?'

He stepped into the aisle and gestured chivalrously. Malcolm slid in first, thinking about the unlikely party they made, he a lachrymose and jaded chaperone, she a wide-eyed
naive
.
Why had he agreed to come? He would have been embarrassed to admit to her that he'd been flattered. His clientele, though they endured, would not last. Despite his best efforts, he could do nothing to hold them back. When the girl approached him, he suddenly saw himself as he was to his aging clients—a guide, a confidant—but this time to the young. There was a future, then, not just a past. Buoyed along for several weeks by this conceit, he had felt the dizzy thrill of peering into bankruptcy's abyss. He had even dared to take the tow
el off the bathroom mirror: she had made him feel needed.