Barney's Version (58 page)

“Open your hand.”

“No.”

“Barney.”

I opened it.

“Now tell me what that is?”

“I know damn well what it is. Why are you asking?”

“Tell me.”

“I think I'd better sit down.”

Next thing I knew, strolling home from Dink's late one afternoon, I opened the door to my apartment and found Solange and Morty Herscovitch lying in wait. Shit. Shit. Shit. “I know times are tough, Morty, but don't tell me you bastards make house calls now.”

“Solange thinks you may be suffering from fatigue.”

“Who isn't at our age?”

“Or maybe it's merely a brain tumour. We're going to have to do a
CAT
scan and an
MRI
.”

“Like fuck we are. And I'm not chewing any of your tranquillizers or antidepressants either. I remember when doctors were doctors and weren't working on commission from drug companies.”

“Why would I prescribe antidepressants?”

“I'm now going to pour myself a drink. You can both join me before you leave.”

“Are you depressed?”

“Chantal took away my car keys and won't give them back.”

“I want you at my office at nine o'clock tomorrow morning.”

“Forget it.”

“We'll be there,” said Solange.

Morty was not alone. There was another guy there. A fat guy, introduced as Dr. Jeffrey Singleton.

“You a shrink?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Let me tell you something, then. I don't hold with shamans, witch doctors, or psychiatrists. Shakespeare, Tolstoy, or even Dickens, understood more about the human condition than ever occurred to any of you. You overrated bunch of charlatans deal with the grammar of human problems, and the writers I've mentioned with the essence. I don't care for the glib manner in which you stereotype people. Or how easily you can be paid to be a professional trial witness. One for the defence, the other for the prosecution — two so-called experts at odds, both pocketing big cheques. You play mind games with people, doing them more harm than good. And from what I've read recently, like my friend Morty here, you've given up the couch for chemicals. Swallow these twice a day for paranoia. Munch this before meals for schizophrenia. Well now, I take single malts and Montecristos for everything, and I recommend that you do the same. That will be two hundred dollars, please.”

“I'd like you to do a little test.”

“I pissed before I got here.”

“It won't take long. Think of it as a game.”

“Don't you dare patronize me.”

“Barney, that's enough.”

“Will this take long?”

“No.”

“All right, then. Let's go.”

“What is the day of the week?”

“I knew this would be ridiculous. Shit. Shit. Shit. It's the day before Tuesday.”

“Which is?”

“You first.”

But he wouldn't bite.

“Let me see. Saturday, Sunday … 
it's Monday
.”

“And the date today?”

“Look, you're barking up the wrong tree. I could never remember my car licence number, or my social security number, and if I'm writing a cheque I always have to ask somebody the date.”

“What month is it?”

“April. Gotcha, didn't I?”

“The season?”

“Boy, I'm going to be first in the class. If it's April, it has to be summer.”

Tears began to slide down Solange's cheeks. “What's wrong with you?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“What's the year?”

“In the calendar of my people or in the Christian area? I mean era.”

“The Christian era.”

“Nineteen ninety-six.”

“Where are we?”

“This is child's play. We're in Morty Herscovitch's office.”

“What floor are we on?”

“My father was the detective in the family, not me. We got into an elevator. Solange pressed a button, and here we are. Next?”

“What city are we in?”

“Montreal.”

“And the province?”

“This is getting to be fun. We are in the blessed province that's squeezed between Alberta
⁹⁰
and the other one, on the continent of North America, the World, the Universe, as I used to write on the brown paper cover of my grade four whatcha-ma-callit book.”

“And the country we're in?”

“Canada, for the time being. Solange is an
indépendentiste
. Sorry, slip of the tongue. She's for here. For Quebec going-it-alone. So we've got to be careful what we say.”

“I want you to repeat the following words for me. Lem——”

“She's a separatist, for Christ's sake. Mornings are not my best time.”

“Lemon, key, balloon.”

“Lemon, key, balloon.”

“Now I want you to begin with the number one hundred and count backwards by seven.”

“Look, I've been very patient until now, but this is just too silly. I'm not going to do it. I could. But I'm not,” I said, lighting up a Monte-cristo. “Hey, I bit off the right end. Do I get any points for that?”

“Would you be good enough to spell the word ‘world' backwards for me?”

“Did you read
Dick Tracy
when you were a kid?”

“Yes.”

“Remember, when he went undercover, he called himself ‘Reppoc.' That's ‘cop' spelled backwards.”

“How about ‘world' backwards?”

“D, r, l, and the rest of it. Okay?”

“Do you remember the three words I asked you to repeat before?”

“May I ask you a question?”

“Yes.”

“Wouldn't you be nervous doing a test like this?”

“Yes.”

“Orange was one of them. The words. I'll give you the other two if you can name the Seven Dwarfs.”

“What is this I'm holding?”

“It's a fucken not-ink-point-pen, for sakes Christ, and you know what you strain spaghetti with? A colander. Ha.”

“What's this on my wrist?”

“It's what you use to tell the time with. A clock.”

“Excuse me,” said Solange, fleeing into the waiting room.

“Now I'd like you to take this paper in your right hand, fold it in half, and put it on the floor.”

“No. I've had enough. Now you tell me something. How did I do in your childish little test?”

“Your mother would be proud.”

“So you're not going to put me in a strait-jacket?”

“No. But I want you to see a neurologist. There are some tests that should be run.”

“Brain tests?”

“We've got to eliminate certain possibilities. You could be suffering from no more than fatigue. Or benign forgetfulness, not uncommon in a man your age.”

“Or a brain tumour?”

“Let's please not jump to unpleasant conclusions. Do you live alone, Mr. Panofsky?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Just asking.”

Early the next afternoon I bluffed my way into the McGill library and looked it up in a reference book:

When Alzheimer (1907) described the disease which now bears his name, he considered it an atypical form of dementia … Family histories illustrating either dominant or recessive inheritance have been reported … Alzheimer's disease is indistinguishable histiopathologically from senile dementia, and Sjogren et al. (1952) found a higher than expected incidence of senile dementia in Alzheimer families …

Oh, my God. Kate. Saul. Michael. What have I done, Miriam?

Pathology

The brain shows extreme atrophy. Coronal sectioning confirms the uniform gyral atrophy, widening sulci, reduction in white matter and ventricular dilatation …

Yeah yeah yeah.

Clinical features

The first sign is mild memory loss. A housewife mislays her sewing, burns the toast, and forgets one or two items while shopping. A professional man or woman forgets appointments or disconcertingly hesitates in the middle of a lecture, unable to
find the appropriate word. No more serious failure may be observed for a year or longer because of the slow progress of the disease.…

“Morty, it's me. Sorry to call you at home. Have you got a minute?”

“Yeah, sure. Just let me turn down the
TV
.”

“It's Alzheimer's, isn't it?”

“We're not sure.”

“Morty, we've known each other for a hundred years. Don't fuck with me.”

“Okay. It's a possibility. The thing is, your mother died of —”

“Never mind my mother. She had hardly any marbles to begin with. What about my children?”

“The odds are long. Honestly.”

“But shorter than for those with no family history. Shit. Shit. Shit. Saul reads about any disease in the
Times
and he's sure he's got it.”

“We've scheduled the
CAT
scan and
MRI
for tomorrow morning. I'm going to come and pick you up at eight.”

“I've got to arrange my affairs, Morty. How long have I got?”

“If it's Alzheimer's, and that's still a big if, the memory lapses will come and go, but I'd say you've got a year before …”

“I'm totally gaga?”

“Let's not assume anything before we know for sure. Hey, I'm not doing anything tonight. Would you like me to come over?”

“No. But thanks anyway.”

I've already mentioned “Margolis,” but there is an even more chilling story of Boogie's that I read while I was in prison. “Seligman,” written in Paris in the early fifties, wasn't published in
The New American Review
until months after Boogie's disappearance. Like all his stories it went through endless drafts before it was distilled to less than three thousand words. It's a story about a bunch of affluent New York lawyers, Harold Seligman among them, who have taken to relieving
the tedium of their lives by playing practical jokes on one another, constantly upping the ante. But there is a rule to the game. In order for a jest to pass muster, it has to pinpoint and attack a flaw in the dupe's character — in Seligman's case, say his uxorious relationship with his libidinous wife. One morning, Boris Frankel, the criminal lawyer who is a member of the group, entices Seligman, just for a gag, to join a police-station line-up in a case of alleged burglary and attempted rape. To the astonishment of the bunch, watching behind a one-way mirror, the victim, a still traumatized woman, identifies Seligman as the true culprit. The lawyers instantly fear that for once a jape has gone too far, but Seligman is sanguine. He has a sure-fire alibi: the night in question he and his wife had dined with Boris in their apartment. But Boris, consulting his desk diary, denies that was the case, and Seligman's wife confirms there had been no dinner party at their apartment that night. And then Boris and Seligman's wife repair to a motel to tear off each other's clothes and resume their heated affair.

Rereading that story this morning, and recalling the Boogieman's taste for cruel pranks, I could no longer believe, as I once did, that he had been sufficiently angry following our quarrel to betray me out of spite. And yet — and yet — turning to McIver's Paris journal, I consulted the entry for September 22, 1951:

No. Boogie never said that, I decided, setting out for one of my aimless morning strolls. It's a malign invention, typical of the lying McIver. There had been such warmth between Boogie and me. I was not his flunky. Comrades is what we were, brothers kicking against the pricks. I couldn't be wrong about that. I wasn't going to allow that Boogie, even given his drugged-out state on the lake, that once soaring talent addled beyond repair, would take off forever just to get back at me. More likely we were to blame for his self-destruction, having anointed him, when we were young and foolish, as the only
one of our bunch destined for greatness. And those publishers who had courted him in New York, pledging lavish advances against a novel only he knew he couldn't deliver, could only have added to his burden. I had solved the problem at last. Boogie, in flight from unbearable expectations, had gone to ground somewhere, assuming a new identity, just like Margolis. “Rest, rest, perturbed spirit.” I forgive you.

I must have walked for an hour, maybe more, so self-absorbed that I had wandered into unfamiliar territory. I had no idea where I was until I recognized that I was standing outside the Provincial Bus Terminal. And, oh my God, that's where I caught that unnerving glimpse of the lady of my sometime wet dreams, Mrs. Ogilvy of the pubic hairs that used to glisten with pearly drops for me. Eighty years old now, I reckoned. Knobby hands clutching the rails of her walker to which she had defiantly fixed a Union Jack. Humped now. Shrivelled. Eyes bulging. Gathered with others, chanting:

There must have been thirty-five of them there, maybe more, all of them wheelchair-bound. A Hieronymus Bosch sprung to life. Or a scene out of a Fellini film. Amputees and double-amputees. Survivors of strokes or polio, with wasted legs thin as rake handles. Victims of Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis, heads jerking, spittle trickling down their chins. Fleeing the scene, I hailed a taxi.

“Where to, mister?”

“ … um, drive …”

“Yeah, sure. That's what I do. But where to?”

“ … ahead …”

“Do you want a hospital?”

“
No
.”

“What, then?”

“ … downtown …”

“Right.”

“ … it's the street next to, you know, I want …”

“Gotcha.”