A History of Forgetting (7 page)

And there was Malcolm still—on his hands and knees grovelling. He didn't dare look up. Dizzily, he rose, took the tuxedo jacket with its wide silk lapels and the black pleated cummerbund from the bed. Once Denis was in it and the dangling sleeves tucked up, the black bow tie knotted, he was transformed. He looked Continental again, instead of like a man who had no idea what continent he lived on.

Straightening the tie, Malcolm met Denis' gaze. ‘My, you look dapper,' he said. Denis smiled and it seemed that he was all there.

‘A glass of port?' Malcolm suggested.

‘
Certainement.'

In the living room, Malcolm stepped out of his trousers, left them in a heap before the sideboard as he walked off with the decanter. Already he'd sprung out of the dressing gown, could possibly have carried the tray on his tumid cock. He couldn't recall ever being that magnificent.

They simply had to smoke; in those costumes, it was
obligatory. They used to, Denis straddling Malcolm's thighs, holding his exhausted cock up by the head, making as if to torture it with the lit end of his Gitane. Each time he brought the burning end up close, Malcolm stiffened with an exquisite terror. In minutes, they were back at it again.

He picked through Yvette's butts in the saucers, searching for something not smoked to the filter. Down the hallway with the tray. On the way he slipped into the bathroom for a jar of something once purchased on a whim in Boulevard de Clichy.

In the bedroom, Denis was standing exactly where he had been, looking marvellous, but clearly he'd forgotten what they were up to. He was gazing around blankly, but as soon as he saw Malcolm in the robe, he brightened. ‘Where did you get that?
Mon Dieu, que tu es beau!'

‘Asseyez-vous.'
Malcolm gestured to the unmade bed and Denis sat down.
‘Cigarette?'

‘Oui.'

Malcolm puffed at it first to fill the atmosphere with atmosphere, then handed it to Denis and bowed close with the other unlit between his own lips. The spark transferred,
the port poured, he joined Denis on the bed where, ringingly, they touched their glasses together.

Denis noticed a hair lying on the crumpled sheet between them. By the colour, it belonged to Malcolm. Holding it close to his face, squinting, Denis said,
‘Quel trésor.'
They both laughed, remembering, and Denis abandoned the cigarette in the ashtray and began sucking on the pubic hair.

‘Monsieur?'
Malcolm let his hand graze Denis' lap, but to his crushing disappointment, nothing rose to meet it.

Denis shone upon him nonetheless.
‘Après vous,'
he urged.

‘Êtes-vous certain?'

‘Oui, oui. C'est mon plaisir.'
Invitingly, he lifted his arms and lay back on the bed. Malcolm undid the tuxedo waistband, with difficulty now that his hands were shaking. And the recalcitrant lid of the jar taken from his pocket—at first he couldn't budge it, then it flew off and rolled across the floor never to be recovered. No matter, he would not need it in the future. This would be their last time, Malcolm knew
it.

Enter the bitch. Yapping shrilly, she charged, Denis' whole body tightening when he heard her, and Malcolm, gripped, came. Came to a ruined moment—to little needle teeth in his calf, to Denis calling out a name that wasn't his.

 

 

 

6

 

Each question the doctor asked, Malcolm translated. ‘Where are we now?' ‘Paris,' Denis answered, and the doctor, after muttering that he wished that were the case, asked him the date.

‘I've never known the date without looking at the appointment book.' He turned to Malcolm. ‘Isn't that so?'

‘How old are you?'

‘Fifty,' his smug reply, and Malcolm let loose a laugh.

‘Count with me,' said the doctor. ‘Backward by sevens. One hundred, ninety-three, eighty-six, seventy-nine . . .'

‘Soixante-dix-neuf .
. .' said Malcolm.

‘Quatre-vingts,'
continued Denis,
‘quatre-vingt-un, quatre- vingt-deux, quatre-vingt-trois—'

‘Thank you.'

Denis flashed a triumphant look at Malcolm.

‘Tell me, Mr. Cassel, what does the expression, “Where there's smoke, there's fire”, bring to mind?'

Malcolm translated this as,
‘Point de feu sans fumée.'

‘Well, that's evident,' said Denis. ‘Smoke, yes. Fire.'

They sat waiting for him to elaborate, and by the way his nearly transparent eyebrows came together and his gaze rested in middle space, he seemed to be thinking. But no, he was only looking at something on the desk. Leaning forward in his chair, he picked up the doctor's coffee mug.

‘What is that you've got there?' the doctor asked, and Denis
really began to think. A plain blue mug, luckily it was empty, because Denis began to turn it around and over in his hands, studying it from below, looking down inside it, even touching the unglazed ring on the bottom, feeling for the answer. The handle's purpose eluded him completely. He held it to his eye
and peered through it. Malcolm, watching with shocked fascination, had to bite his tongue to stop himself from blurting, ‘It's a mug, you idiot.' And all at once there rose in him an intense paternal urge to protect Denis—from his own foolishness, and from the doctor, the sadist who had set him up like this. When he turned to confront the doctor though, he had to admit there was nothing mocking in his manner. He was younger than both
Malcolm and Denis and had an intensely sympathetic face.

Shrugging, Denis set the mug back down on the desk. ‘I don't know what it is. It doesn't say.'

Malcolm translated this for the doctor, who didn't react in any way. ‘How about, “Too many cooks spoil the broth”?'

‘
Trop de cuisiniers gâtent la sauce.'

Denis laughed and turned to Malcolm. ‘You know how I like to be alone in the kitchen!'

‘“Love me, love my dog”?'

It took Malcolm a moment before he could remember the equivalent expression.
‘Qui aime Bertrand, aime son
chien.'

That
the doctor thought was funny.

‘Who is Bertrand?' Denis asked.

‘It's uncanny,' Malcolm told the doctor. ‘You've picked proverbs that seem to resonate for us.'

‘Really? I just take them from a book. Do you notice how he's unable to interpret them? His thinking has become quite literal.'

Strange that he would need this pointed out to him, but he
did. Malcolm stared at the doctor for a second. So his life companion was now a literal thinker. Was literal thinking any worse than, say, wandering the apartment half the night or hurling things at mirrors? Yes, it was. He knew it was. On Denis' behalf,
he felt bereft. He could not imagine a life without metaphor.

Disregarding the presence of the doctor, he reached over and took Denis' hand. Although he didn't know it yet, it would be the last time he felt for him an unadulterated pity.

 

Denis had always been an elegant dresser. He would spend half of what he made on wine and food, the other half on clothes; what was left they lived on—Malcolm's share. But now he needed to be told what to do. Getting dressed an abstruse procedure, an enigma of arm and leg holes, of baffling fasteners; he needed Malcolm to pass him each article in the right order with clear instructions on how to get into it and a hand on his shoulder for support. Some mornings he would proudly send Malcolm away, then make his appearance in an ingenious per
mutation of dress.

The morning when everything really began to come apart, Malcolm heard Denis moving up and down the hall, opening
and closing all the doors. This went on for many minutes, so by the time Denis stumbled upon the kitchen, he was simmering with frustration. Instead of his usual lost, endearing look, he wore a glare—and his undershorts over the top of his trousers, his sweater backwards and inside out, seams showing, the label under his chin, as if he'd been sewn into it and tagged.

Malcolm laughed. He couldn't help it. It was his sense of humour, after all, that kept him sane. ‘You look dapper,' he told Denis.

‘
Qui-êtes vous?'
Denis replied.

Malcolm started, though he'd known about this moment years before. You see the pin, you see the balloon and know there will be an explosion, and yet you jump. He opened his mouth to answer; if Denis didn't recognize him, at least he would know his voice. But his mouth was suddenly too dry, his tongue a desiccated leather tongue out of an old shoe. No words issued forth. Numerous times he swallowed before he was able to whisper his own name.

‘Malcolm. The love of your life.' His voice was quavering with dread.

‘Menteur,'
said Denis, backing away. ‘Malcolm!' he shouted.
‘Malcolm!'

‘It's me! I'm right here!' But Denis did not believe him. ‘Smell me,' said Malcolm, coming over.

Denis retreated to the corner, looking wildly around for a place to run. Malcolm thought they would come to blows again, the way Denis was holding his hands out to protect himself, but Grace heard him and came to his call, yammering hysterically at his feet, distracting him, her sole purpose in their lives. Denis stared down at her a second, which allowed Malcolm to get his wrist under Denis' nose.

Denis pushed his hand away. So? said his eyes. ‘You use the same cologne. Malcolm isn't old.
Malcolm n'est pas
vieux.
'

 

He got to the salon and, after hanging up Albert Parker's camel-hair overcoat, went directly to the mirror. It had been
years since he'd really seen himself. Certainly he had looked in the mirror—to shave, to dress; he'd even stood on this very spot and laughed at himself wearing Faye's glasses, but he had been looking at the glasses. The years he'd been caring for Denis, he'd tried very hard to understand how Denis perceived things, to live the nightmare with him and make it less frightening for them both. But in doing so he'd forgotten about himself, and now it did seem as if a stranger was standing there on the silver side of the glass.

It must have been going on for years. Half the brown hair had converted. And what the hell had happened to his face? With his fingertips, he propped up the loosened flesh, leaned close to the mirror, fogging it with his breath. On Sunday nights he had used to lie with his head in Denis' lap, a steaming cloth over his face. Denis would bend and extract with a deft clean-fingered tenderness the dark plugs from Malcolm's pores. Now Malcolm looked a wreck.

He went to the back room and found Faye there sorting a heap of clothes into two cardboard boxes. ‘Oh. Hello, Malcolm,' she said. ‘You're early.'

‘I need you to do a favour for me, Faye.'

‘Certainly,' she said, quietly, without hesitation. Malcolm scanned the cluttered shelves. He handed Faye a box.

‘What? You think brunette would suit me better?' she asked.

‘Me. I'm suddenly feeling my age.'

When she realized what he was asking, she shook her head. ‘I'm used to working on the ladies, but all right.'

He got himself into a smock, sat at the sink, a plastic daisy field across his front. Faye looked down on him long and hard, elderly from that vantage. Faye, she was old.

‘Are you sure you want to do this?' she asked.

‘I have no choice really.'

‘Malcolm,' she tsked, ‘you say the strangest things.'

She turned on the tap, touching his head at the same time as the warm water, so it seemed as if a tremendous warmth was emanating from her hands. He closed his eyes, feeling her stroking fingers wet down his scalp. How could they change
her
for
him,
he wondered of his clients. How could they accept a touch less good than this?

The dye, squeezed out of a bottle, by contrast felt icy cold. ‘All right,' she said, and he sat up. She blotted his temples with a tissue to stop the staining. That, too, felt comforting. ‘There you go.' She passed him a hand mirror.

‘I can't say I like it. It's harsh.'

‘Yes,' Malcolm agreed. ‘It is.'

A quarter of an hour later, when Mrs. Parker came in for her weekly wash and set, he'd had time to dry his hair. ‘You seem different today,' she said.

All morning Faye stayed in the back room. Malcolm did wonder briefly what she was doing, but was too preoccupied worrying whether the dye would appease Denis' doubts to take a minute to go and ask. He ducked back only to say goodbye before he left for the day.

‘Can you stay a minute?' she asked. ‘I need to talk to you.'

He sat.