The Memory Book Read online

  “That was the one about Shangri-La. You’re thinking of Random Harvest. They’re both from books by James Hilton. Are people still reading them?”

  I was impressed, but not enough to let her off the hook. I was looking for the name of what afflicted me.

  “Tell me about my amnesia,” I said. “Is it temporary or permanent? How much of my memory is permanently blasted?”

  “Well, Mr. Cooperman, since you ask, I’ll try to explain. As far as we can tell, your mind, your ability to think, to talk, to figure things out, is intact. Like the way you remembered the James Hilton novel just now. You picked the wrong title, but it was by the same author. That means that your cognitive powers are mostly intact. We have tested your reflexes and your motor abilities. All intact. You won’t remember this, but last week you played chess with another patient. I think you won at least one game. That’s the good news. The bad news is we are almost certain, from tests you won’t remember now—”

  “Tell me, damn it!”

  “This isn’t easy, Mr. Cooperman. We think, we know, that you have lost much of your ability to read.”

  “To read!”

  “That’s right. You may not have noticed it yet, but we are more than pretty sure.”

  I looked around me blankly. I could see everything I could normally see. I saw the nurse, the curtains, the bump of my knees under the covers. Through the window, I could see the hospital across the street. There was nothing wrong with my vision. What’s-Her-Name reached over to the folded newspaper by the window and handed it to me. I picked up the first section and opened it. I looked at it in disbelief. It could have been written in Serbo-Croatian or Portuguese or Greek. I couldn’t make out the words. I squinted hard at the front page, recognizing the logo of The Globe and Mail. It was English, but the words below were foreign. My hands began to shake. Again I squinted hard; I could make out most of the letters—I saw “The” and “and”—but the normal blackand-white words kept their secrets from me. I couldn’t decode the letters. I turned the page to see whether an inside page would yield a different story, a better result. It didn’t. Not only was I an amnesiac, I was illiterate to boot! I must have blinked to stop the tears. That was all my damned eyes were good for.

  I think I started to yell about then.

  TWO

  Somewhere in my mind I suspected a trick, a plot. I remembered an old movie in which the Nazis convince a captured Allied officer that he has just recovered from amnesia and that the war has been over for many years. To make the device work, they bleached his hair white, aged his face and skin, and showed him newspapers that had been specially concocted with a date well in the future that told of the Axis victory. They almost got away with it, until the officer remembered a recent paper cut on his finger that would have healed if so much time had passed. At the last moment, he was saved from giving away the Allied plans for the invasion of Europe. I resolved to look out for newspapers down the hall. The safest thing was to be suspicious of everything. For instance, if this was a real hospital, where were the doctors? I couldn’t remember seeing any. I had them there!

  “What’s a skipper?”

  “Huh?” It was my nurse, my own special nurse, whose name was … I just noticed that she was black. From the Caribbean, maybe. The fact wasn’t important, but it hadn’t registered earlier.

  “You said you’d been working on a case involving a skipper.”

  “Oh, a skipper. A skipper is— Don’t try to change the subject.”

  “We’ll get back to the subject, I promise. Right now, you need a breather.”

  “A skipper’s a deadbeat. This one was a poor guy from Grantham. I’d met him in an amateur theatre group a year before I had to deal with him professionally. Charming as hell. Small-time bunko artist, but a crook with the soul of a poet. He fell in love with the names of the legal firms that were prosecuting him! He loved the sound of their names: Trapnel, Fleming, Harris, Kerwin and Barr; Heatherington, Cavers, Goodwyn and Chown. He used to recite the names as if they were poetry. Not a bad fellow, really, not somebody you’d take to be a crook, but he lived high, never worked, and finally ran out on both the women he was exploiting. He claimed that alimony was bleeding him to death, which meant there had been other women. The one who hired me thought there was good in him that he hadn’t discovered yet. She may be right: he once sent me a postcard from La Jolla, California. But right now I suspect he’s down in New York State on a farm. His family comes from around there.”

  The nurse was rapt. I think that’s the word for it. Entranced. I went on, “I once had another case of a deadbeat. This one got behind in his support payments to his wife and kids. Alimony. Accumulated arrears amounting to more than I make in a year.” The nurse was right: talking about the past had a calming influence. I was amazed at myself. I’d just been told that I was cut off from the whole of the Grantham Public Library, to say nothing of the Grantham daily paper with my crossword in it, and I was chatting away as though my whole life hadn’t just been flushed down the toilet. I paused, scanning my recent memory before going on. “I can’t seem to remember my open files. I’ll have to check the office as soon as I can drive down there.”

  “All in good time. What you have, Mr. Cooperman, is called alexia sine agraphia. It’s quite rare.”

  “What are the chances they’ll name it after me?”

  “There are better ways to be remembered.”

  “When you told me about my reading, I sort of blew up. I’m sorry about that. But did I let you finish? Is there more?”

  “Are you ready for it? It’s not as bad as not being able to read, but it’s just as annoying.”

  “Better tell me. I’ll be brave.”

  “You may have noticed this already. You forget things. You mix things up, like apples and pears, oranges and lemons. You remember faces better than you do names. Like mine, for instance.”

  “I’ll get it yet. It sounds like something. Right?”

  “Right. Carol McKay, rhymes with ‘day.’”

  I repeated the name under my breath, trying to anchor it in my brain. I didn’t test it; I just held on to the hope.

  She was looking down at me again with those playful brown eyes. “Have you been able to trace the edge, the time when your memory breaks off?”

  “When I try too hard, everything implodes. I can’t remember your name or even my own when I get rattled. It’s better when it just comes to me. When I go after it, it’s like trying to place a name at a crowded party. You have to winkle out a memory like that. No good galumphing after it. Hey, how is it that I can still talk and remember words like ‘winkle’ and ‘galumphing’?”

  “Has to do with the location of the blow to your head. An inch higher or lower and you might have trouble with other things. There was a case last Friday of a man who had lost the ability to swallow. That required surgery. Whoever hit you, Mr. Cooperman, picked a good spot. With some time doing rehab, you’ll be surprised by what you can do.”

  “Thanks,” I said, without putting much life into it. I didn’t want to make progress, I wanted to get on with my life. Anything less was makeshift and unsatisfactory. I could feel a deep depression beginning to percolate through my legs and into my stomach. A black mood had hove to in the harbour of my mind, awaiting further orders. Rehab, she’d called it. I could tell that I wasn’t going to like rehab. Even before I started on it, it already had the aftertaste of artificial sweeteners.

  “I know it’s not what you want to hear, Mr. Cooperman, but it’s what we have to offer. If you walk down the hall, you’ll see people worse off than you.”

  I didn’t give a damn about the people down the hall. I wanted to roll over and face the curtain. She wasn’t even going to allow me a moment of self-pity. If I couldn’t feel sorry for myself now, when could I?

  THREE

  “You must tell me more about this Alex Graphic, or whatever it’s called. Please, Rhymes With.” We were still in my room. Or, maybe, we were here again
and time had slipped by. The sun was lower, the lighting in the room was different.

  “The term is alexia sine agraphia. It’s Latin. Alexia is the inability to read because of a brain injury. You know that.”

  “What about the rest of it? Sine means without. I remember that much high-school Latin.”

  “Without agraphia: without not being able to write.”

  “Too many negatives. Does that mean I can or I can’t write?”

  “You can still write normally. I did tell you that it was a rare condition.”

  “What the hell use is it to be able to write if I can’t read what I’ve written?”

  “We didn’t make up the rules to afflict you, Mr. Cooperman. The act of reading and that of writing are not identical functions. Often when people lose one, they lose the other. But not in your case.” Rhymes With was speaking just above a whisper. She wasn’t finding this easy and I wasn’t making it any easier for her.

  I suppose it should have felt like she had given me half my life back again, but it didn’t. Reading was Shakespeare and Hawthorne, Whitman and Poe. Not to mention Hammett, Chandler, and Macdonald, or Christie, Rendell, and James. Writing was only me. Not much competition there. I promised Rhymes With that we would have another chat later on. I could see that she was relieved to get away.

  It was a sunny room. I couldn’t complain about that. The suspended white curtains diffused the light coming from the windows so that both beds in the room got an equal share. The curtains even gave the impression of a breeze, of summer outings and tents pitched above a trout stream. This impression was muted by the panel of electrical outlets and receptacles for jacks and hoses above the beds. There was a bathroom somewhere and cupboards. The door to the hall was always open. The corridor beyond was usually lively with sounds of rubbersoled shoes and the tires of wheelchairs and gurneys.

  Visits from the doctors were rare, and we made much of them. Doctors were the celebrities of the corridor. You could hear them coming. You could hear their voices as they made their way from room to room. The musical chatter of the nursing station was muted when the spoor of physician was in the air. When they were on the floor, theirs was the only buzz. Even the elevators’ pinging seemed to stop. The doctors moved from bed to bed in a tight military formation. Every patient was given a dole of cheer before the phalanx moved on and the normal sounds of the day returned.

  When dinner came on its rattling tray that night, I could still remember the morning’s conversation with my nurse. Her news still had me reeling. I kept checking the accuracy of what she said against every scrap of paper at my command. If this was some kind of plot, it was a devilishly thorough one: not a scrap of printed paper contained printed words I could decipher. From The Globe and Mail to Time magazine. Maybe I should check out the books and papers in some of the other rooms. I’d thought of that in the morning, but had done nothing about it. I seemed to be suffering from a wounded initiative as well as what that scrap of Latin indicated. At the same time, I didn’t feel so physically weak any more.

  Dinner was roast mutton with gravy. The taste was fine, although I wondered whether the meat and the gravy had ever met before coming together on my plate. When I caught a glimpse of Rhymes With as she hurried down the central corridor, I was mildly irritated to see that she had a life quite separate and distinct from looking after me. I thought over what she had told me. I knew that she was a resource person and that I’d be foolish not to listen to her. I was also wondering where my depression had gone. I’d felt it brewing earlier, but it hadn’t grown any bigger than a shy belch that wouldn’t come out. I used to be able to brew a better storm than that over an empty cigarette pack. That was back in my smoking days. Now I could get into a panic about faulty mechanical pencils and conversations about computers.

  I ate my meal with my legs over the side of my bed. Feet on the ground. That’s me: Cooperman with his game well in hand, ready to rediscover the world.

  This wasn’t the full extent of my efforts. First, I discovered the curtain, suspended beside my bed, masked the fact that I wasn’t alone in this room. I had a roommate. True, I had been aware in the distant marches of my consciousness that there were sounds coming from behind the curtain. Snores, mostly, and occasionally the buzz of visitors. He grinned at me once, but didn’t speak. Same thing the next time.

  I got up and went to the bathroom—a two-piece unit of heavy-duty porcelain. At first I thought it included a tub, but that must have been in some earlier room: there was no place to hide one here. There were printed signs attached to the wall to instruct patients in the use of the equipment: the correct form for flushing, I suppose, or the proper way to dispose of used paper towels. Not being able to read the words, I flushed the old-fashioned way without attracting attention.

  Someone had unpacked my toiletries. They stood on display for the approval of my roommate, the cleaners, and nursing staff. I examined what was there. Did I stand here yesterday? Was I just as bewildered the day before? I picked up one bottle after another without recognizing the proper use of any of them. Was this toothpaste or shaving cream? Was this mouthwash, aftershave, or hair tonic? Smelling the contents helped solve the mysteries, but I know that at least once I cleaned my teeth with hair gel. I was bewildered by my bewilderment. I was next door to helpless. I couldn’t read “PUSH” on a revolving door. After feeling braced a few minutes earlier, I now felt beaten, and went back to bed.

  “W-w-w-what did you think of the … the … the stuff that they put on the meat, Benny?” It was my roommate.

  “The gravy?”

  “Yeah, the … gravy.”

  “It seemed innocent enough. Didn’t you like it?” I got out of bed and pulled back the curtain between us.

  “It … it … it was self-elf … effacing. Tried to keep its … its orig … orig … origins a secret. The meat was lamb, I think, but the … the …”

  “Gravy.”

  “The g-g-gravy could have come from anything: old suitcases, discarded wallets, road-k-k-k-kill.”

  “It didn’t seem so bad.”

  “Ah! Spoken like a … a … newcomer! You’ll change your t-t-tune when you’re closer to graduation.”

  My roommate was tall and skinny lying down. I didn’t recall seeing him standing. A wheelchair was parked next to his bed. Maybe that was the reason. His greying hair was short-cropped, which gave him a military bearing. He managed to look dapper in his hospital gown, a trick I never learned.

  “How long have you been here?” I asked.

  “About s-s-s-sixt-t-teen weeks. Valentine’s Day. I’m n-n-near the end. I’ll be back f-f-f-for out-patient help l-l-later. They’ve got a separate s-section for that.” He took a bite from a cookie and offered me one. “You’ve got a nice … nice … family. They come a-a-almost every … every … d-d-day.”

  “I don’t remember.” I took a cookie and nibbled on it.

  “Y-y-your father, M-M-Manny, p-p-p-plays cards w-w-with me. Sophie brought me candy. Nice p-p-p-people.”

  “Yeah. I guess I’ll have to learn to appreciate them better.” I didn’t understand the cynical tone in my voice. Maybe I thought that they should have stood between me and the accident. What did they have to do with it? Cooperman, get real!

  “Did you f-f-f-finish your cookies at lunch?”

  “Which ones were they?”

  “Woolly. Th-th-that’s the coconut. Blast it, how is it I can say ‘coconut’ b-b-but not simple words?”

  “Don’t sweat it. I can understand you fine. We’re both in the same boat. I can’t read but I can write. I’m going to mix up oranges and apples too. That’s what they tell me. Not that I’ve seen much fresh fruit in here. The thing I can’t understand is that both of us are taking it all so calmly. Why aren’t we banging on the walls and sending out an SOS?”

  “I th-th-think we’ve blown the p-p-p-p-protest valve too. M-m-m-makes for peace and qui-qui-qui-quiet.”

  “Is it something put in the food?”
>
  “No, it’s … j-j-just our wire-wire-wiring, Benny.”

  My neighbour had a laptop computer cradled in his lap, the first I’d ever seen in a real lap. I tried to remember my earlier conversations with him, but couldn’t. He knew my name and seemed to be on a first-name basis with both my parents. I asked him, but he didn’t remember what day I’d been put into this room or if I had said anything odd in my sleep.

  “Y-y-you s-s-sleep most of the d-d-day,” he said with a trace of envy. “Like a m-mole.”

  His eyes had a baleful look, which I cured, turning the frown to a grin, by carrying the rest of my dessert cookies across the space between us. He thanked me and set to the business of serious munching.

  Walking back to my bed, I tried telling my brain to find any scrap of what had happened to me since I was admitted. There was nothing there. At the same time, this room and the people in the corridors all seemed familiar enough. I could accept that I had been here for some time. I didn’t feel like a newcomer. I vaguely knew what lay beyond the turn in the corridors at both ends of the floor.

  When I’d climbed back into bed, I wondered why I bothered. I wasn’t sick. I didn’t have a fever. I wasn’t out of my mind. Then I got it: bed is a handy place to file people until you know what you want to do with them. In my pyjamas I was unlikely to get into the elevator, head out the front door and into traffic.

  From my window, I could see the busy street, divided down the middle by a running island of flowerbeds and monuments to public figures. University Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Still, every time I looked out the window, I expected to see Grantham’s Queenston Street. My body was in Toronto, but half of my mind was at home in Grantham.

  Across the street and up a bit, I could see the brickand-cement shell of a hospital wing that was being demolished. Was it my imagination that informed me that the ruin had been taller earlier in the week, or was it just a safe inference? There wasn’t a lot I knew for sure. The old wing—bricks, mortar, and the steel frame still partly covered in cement—was solid while it lasted. Until both of us dissolved into a new stage of falling apart, we appeared stable enough. The feet I used to walk my cookies across to my roommate were recognizably my own feet. Maybe a little greyer or bluer than I remembered them—I blame that on my poor circulation after being flat on my back for all this time—but they were indisputably my own feet. The thoughts in my head also sounded like my own familiar voice. If the mind was my own, then all wasn’t lost.