Nostalgia

  ALSO BY M.G. VASSANJI

  FICTION

  The Magic of Saida

  The Assassin’s Song

  When She Was Queen

  The In-Between World of Vikram Lall

  Amriika

  The Book of Secrets

  Uhuru Street

  No New Land

  The Gunny Sack

  NON-FICTION

  And Home Was Kariakoo

  A Place Within: Rediscovering India

  Mordecai Richler

  Copyright © 2016 M.G. Vassanji

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Doubleday Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House Canada Limited

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Vassanji, M. G., author

  Nostalgia / M.G. Vassanji.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-0-385-66716-6 (hardback).—ISBN 978-0-385-68690-7 (epub)

  I. Title.

  PS8507.A67N68 2016 C813′.54 C2016-900647-6

  C2016-900648-4

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover image: Baranov E/Shutterstock.​com

  Published in Canada by Doubleday Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited

  www.​penguinrandomhouse.​ca

  v4.1

  a

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by M.G. Vassanji

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Acknowledgments

  They are spirits destined to live a second life

  In the body; they assemble to drink

  From the brimming Lethe, and its water

  Heals their anxieties and obliterates

  All trace of memory.

  Aeneid, Book VI, translated by Seamus Heaney

  IT’S MIDNIGHT, THE LION IS OUT. A stray thought like a foreign body, an impurity in his mind, a banner floating cheekily against the sunny blue of his normalcy. A jingle from some forgotten commercial. Who could have imagined what world, submerged deep inside that brain, this naked phrase had wiggled out from? In our bid to outpace age and defy death, we leap from one life into another, be it imperfectly, and hope fervently—in the manner of acknowledged sinners—that the past does not catch up with us. But sometimes it does, which was why he had come to see me.

  It was an October afternoon. Such a premonition had accompanied the arrival of this new patient into my presence that right from the start I felt strangely unsettled. A tremor in the brain. It seems now, when it’s all over, as though the man had come, or some strange agency had sent him, to unplug me from my safe, guaranteed existence; but at that time it was just that feeling and later on his unrelenting pull as he began to unravel. At some point during our ongoing interaction I knew I must create a record, before his life, my life, whatever scraps were retrievable were vanished into that nothing of electromagnetic noise; and the only way to guarantee its safety was to resort to the old method of handwriting.

  Now I have finished and only wait out my time. My wits will soon desert me, and I will no longer be myself.

  ONE

  HIS NAME WAS PRESLEY SMITH. It was the seventh or eighth time he’d had it, he told me. Each time this phenomenon in his mind began with one persistent thought, a string of words that had no meaning for him. It’s midnight, the lion is out.

  —And the rest of this condition? I asked him.—Any thoughts that follow? Pictures, images in the mind? They do come?

  He waited, before responding,—Yes, they come scattered-like…not always the same. I forget…A few times the red bumper of an antique car, and part of the fender. I don’t understand them—and why this one thought like a prelude…

  —Do you see these words or hear them?

  A longish pause.—I don’t know. Hear them, I think.

  —Any other phrase or words that follow these?

  —No. Just this one.

  —You know what it implies—this kind of recurring thought? You came to me, so you appreciate its significance.

  He nodded, spoke slowly, uncertainly.—Something left over from a previous memory? A life I left behind a long time ago. But I can’t relate to this thought, this image. They are alien.

  —That’s how they often come—you don’t understand them. And the trick then is not to try and understand them, unravel the thoughts—that only feeds the syndrome and revives those dead circuits in the brain—and brings more of them back. And you don’t want that.

  —No.

  I watched him stare away at the window behind me, losing himself; he uncrossed his legs, crossed them back again, returned his gaze to me. The window always had that effect on patients, drawing them out, calming them. On the monitor, hidden from him, Presley’s pulse had already steadied.

  I asked,—Do you see in your mind what might be a lion—out stalking, perhaps? Do you have an image of it?

  —No.

  —Not at all?…And midnight—do you see midnight, darkness?

  He shook his head, repeated drily,—No.

  He was listed as a patient who’d seen two doctors in the city in recent years. Once for a severe attack of Border flu, during the Outbreak three years ago. And then a year ago a consultation with an orthopaedist. I looked up from the monitor.

  —Any physical symptoms—racing heart, sweating—to accompany this, er, phenomenon?

  —No…But I’m not sure, Doctor.

  —What?

  —A couple of times I thought…burning…some smoke, meat. I’m not sure. It could be the new neighbours, they like to barbecue.

  He grinned sheepishly. But now his pulse had gone up, the fear index risen. This was surprising, the first alarm bell.

  —And how exactly did it first appear, this thought about the lion out at midnight? Suddenly, full-fledged, or did it approach gradually, begin with a hint, sort of?

  —The latter…I think…like an approaching something, it began with a feeling, an expectation, I think.

  —A certain mood—that feeling?

  He nodded quic
kly.

  —A low mood?

  —Yes.

  Presley Smith had an Afro-head with red hair and pale skin; striking green eyes, planar nose, large ears. A well-done reconstruction job if somewhat eccentric. The average body frame was, I guessed, as before. He would not be an ethnic purist, or an idealist, I surmised from those eclectic features, not someone hung up on history and origins. And he would not be one of those religious fatalists for whom another, perfect life lies somewhere else, in abstraction, why not let this one fade away. A practical man, an everyman named after a twentieth-century pop icon. Then what ails him, I wondered, what demons from his previous life have come to prey upon him, and why? It’s a question we ask ourselves often enough. The answers rarely satisfy, the soft, slimy mass in the head that we call the brain still eludes us, as enigmatic as ever.

  Leaked memory syndrome—Nostalgia, as commonly known—is a malady of the human condition in its present historic phase. Reminders of our discarded lives can not yet be completely blocked, but we can expect their intrusions into our conscious minds to diminish as our understanding of thought-complexes increases and our ability to control them improves.

  Chemicals do alleviate the condition, but often they are blunt, their effects diffuse, with collateral outcomes to negotiate. Stubborn cases require the more intrusive ministrations and shock tactics of a surgical team. It was too soon to suggest anything yet. Meanwhile a lifetime of experiences was ready to flood into his brain behind this lion-harbinger that was only a minor irritation now. Was he aware of the danger that lurked ahead, I could not help but wonder. But then that’s what we were there for, the nostalgia doctors, to close the gates behind the scouts and let the past remain hidden.

  I noticed that his right knee, crossed over his left, would go off into a steady vibration that he struggled to bring under control, before it set off again. He could easily have had that seen to. On the vibrating leg, in the gap between his black shoes and green pants he revealed a garishly bright yellow sock that periodically flagged my attention. It is these little tics that often are a giveaway, signals from the land of the dead.

  They’re all a puzzle, each stray and escaped thought is only the barest tip of a universe that lies beneath. How far do you reach inside to stem the leak? The deeper you dig, the greater the chance of falling into an endless pit—a hazardous operation. It needs a delicate hand to know when to seal off and withdraw; turn off the lights and go home and hope there’s no repair needed in the foreseeable future.

  —Have you had previous consultations of this sort? Treatments?

  He should not remember them if he had them, and he didn’t.

  I prescribed a tranquilizer, and a monitor patch for the arm. If he had an episode, there was a means to signal it, he should on no account dwell on it. We settled for a meeting the following week. I have preferred personal meetings at the beginning of consultations, because with the actual talking person before me, tics and all, I can begin to form my clues about the intruders lurking behind their minds. It is easy and amusing to picture them as so many worms to be captured and put away.

  —If it worsens before then—this condition—let me know.

  —I will. Thanks, Doc.

  —Don’t be shy, now.

  —I won’t, Doc. Thanks.

  He looked surprised at my concern for him, and I felt a blush of embarrassment. We shook hands, and I watched him leave. He had a sturdy profile, with a swaggering walk that did not fit what I had seen of his personality. I kept staring after him, until the clinic manager Lamar’s ample frame filled the doorway suddenly and broke my trance.

  —What’s up, Doc?

  —Something about this case.

  —Oh? What?

  I shook my head and sat down.—Let’s see where it goes.

  He looked disappointed, reminded me to look at a few reports he’d completed, and left.

  —

  From as long back as we can imagine, we humans have striven for immortality. Now that, in our rough and ready way, we’ve begun to approach it, we face the problem of what to do with the vast amount of information we carry. Even if the brain allowed such storage capacity, who would want to be burdened by quantities of redundant, interfering memories? Painful and messy ones? Therefore as regeneration techniques advanced to allow the body to last longer, mind renewal grew alongside. The term is colloquial and inaccurate, of course—what is a mind, after all? No matter, as someone quipped. In fact, it’s selected portions of long-term memory that we renew. New memories in new bodies. New lives. That’s the ideal, though we are still far from it. The body may creak and wobble; memory develop a crack or hole. In the leaked memory syndrome, or Nostalgia, thoughts burrow from a previous life into the conscious mind, threatening to pull the sufferer into an internal abyss.

  I am myself a GN, a new-generation person—and feel the body-age sometimes, in the nuts and bolts, as it were, the connections and interphases. By law, no record of a person’s past life exists, nor of calendar age, but the body knows. I am old, in the original sense, though the word hardly gets used these days. Surely there’s a little truth to the media hype that we’ve attained the status of ageless gods. A flawed immortality, but we are the fortunate ones, a new species in the making, who’ve defied death. Very nearly.

  Our triumph comes, naturally, with its problems. We’ve not created Utopia, perhaps never will. But the problems are old wine in new bottles, we’ve had them always. The war of the generations, as popularly called, or more plainly, the young versus the old, shows no signs of abating; mostly it’s a cold war, manifest in constant disgruntlement. There’s the occasional street riot that vents frustration. The GN-serial rampage two years ago was a terrible exception—eight elderly GNs murdered over a period of twelve months, their bodies savagely mutilated. The young G0 criminals were apprehended and dealt with. We have assurances from authorities that such acts are very unlikely in the future. We’re not rid of fanatics either—those who will cling to outdated ethnic identities that most of us have forgotten, or for whom longevity is philosophically or morally repugnant. The wide-eyed few who dare to turn off their lights, turn down this gift that we’ve given ourselves. But progress is forward, we cannot go back.

  —

  At day’s end I came out of the Sunflower Centre into a world of cheery autumn brightness, the courtyard flush in the clear light of a low sun. Further up, the Humber ran placidly along its course down to the lake, and two crews rowed their boats one behind the other, in no great hurry. Across the river, the yellow leaves of October had been set coolly ablaze. It’s always a breathtaking sight. On the bank, this side, students sat stretched out, some with their book pads open, others strolling or hurrying along the paved path, making way for the odd bicycle or two.

  I arrived at the riverbank and sat down on a bench.

  There was a message from Joanie; she would be out that night at a hockey game with a friend. The Friend, I had every reason to surmise. I never cared for the sport, and was teased for it: Who was I, really? Meaning, what was I before I became what I was. I am, was always my answer. It was my creed, as a minder of memories. I didn’t care for the befores. But Joanie is a G0, a BabyGen, and Babies have no previous lives, no befores. They have actually been born—to be beautiful: flawless, symmetrical, smooth. She was visiting a neighbour and during a block barbecue joined me with a beer and seduced me with her banter. We dated hesitantly, then more passionately, and cohabited. But my beautiful BabyGen was now seeing someone else on the side. Who else but another Baby this time, it always comes to that, doesn’t it. And I no longer wondered what she saw in me.

  I popped a couple of pills into my mouth, looked around me; eyes lingered a little too long over a couple of youngsters necking.

  The problem with staring at beautiful youngsters is that you are caught between the lust for the pure and supple beauty of youth (I did have Joanie) and a desire for children of your own. I didn’t have children; if I did, in another life t
hat had been erased, I didn’t know. But this man from Yukon, Dr Frank Sina, had none and longed for one. Why the persistent need, like a thirst when you wake up, for a child of your own? There are areas of the brain that conspire to create longings that should have been buried and gone. No amount of erasure and implantation can create musicians or artists at will. Or take away the need for a child.

  But what of Presley Smith? He looked surprisingly youthful and limber—and yet his record showed a GN, like me. Evidently I have been negligent, not paid heed to those keepfit reminders we now find everywhere—and so I complain of malfunctions.

  It’s midnight, the lion is out. A chant carried over from the past? A line from a poem?

  Have I ever had stray thoughts that needed fixing? I cannot know, of course. But judging by my comfort with myself, I can only conclude that whoever my doctors were, they had done a perfect job sealing my previous life off. There was a short period in the past, however, when, very foolishly, though for the sake of research, as I explained to myself, I would lie in bed looking up at the ceiling and fish for a thought; when a likely candidate came I would detain it by repeating it over and over. It never lasted. Soon enough and mercifully I realized my folly and stopped fishing. Now as I sat meditating before the quietly flowing river bathed in the soft afternoon sunlight, I realized that I had a thought that would not go away, and it was precisely this: the image and words of Presley Smith.

  TWO

  I ARRIVED HOME AND, as I often did when Joanie was not around, I headed for the media room to watch XBN News, and the analyses that followed in the program The Daily Goode. In my line of work I needed to keep up with the world where my patients came from, and returned to, transformed. My work demanded knowledge of past and present, culture and science, and even occasionally esoterica like the classics and the trendy and obscure postmodern. But current news was my addiction. I was drawn to it for a fix, despite my fears of numbing by overexposure and my dislike of sensationalism.

  That day the news was truly sensational. Already before I left the Sunflower, Lamar had hinted that something extraordinary had occurred out in the world, though I had not paid heed, preoccupied as I was with Presley. Later, on my way home, walking against a tide of young people, I thought I’d heard some chatter about a possible war. That didn’t impress either, for there is always talk of war. Now I saw that, as it often did, the sensational involved Maskinia.