The Memory Artists Read Online Free PDF Page B

now—the one with the vulturine face. My name’s Norval Blaquière, by the way. You may have heard of me.”

    Hours later, she wasn’t sure how many, Samira was horizontal, high atop a loft in the Old Port, on a miraculously soft and silk-sheeted bed. She looked up through a skylight at a torn web of clouds, sideways at the frost-blue ribbon of the Saint Lawrence, and down at what looked like an art gallery from another century.
    Rows of paintings adorned the walls, late nineteenth-century paintings in a decor that combined Regency and debased Gothic with elements of pure fancy. An archery target was suspended from the ceiling at one end of the immense living room, while an extravagant candle chandelier, the biggest Samira had ever seen, hung from the other. There was a curving staircase with wrought-iron balustrade, a fireplace with a Gothic slate mantel, wainscotted walls of fog-grey, and herringbone floors of Brazilian mahogany. In the corner farthest from her was a moonstone-blue staircase that went nowhere. It just stopped, as in a Surrealist dreamscape, four or five feet from the ceiling.
    “Norval?” Samira called out. “Norval?” Her prince had abandoned her. “Why did I go to lunch with him?” she asked herself, while watching a ceiling fan, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, spin languorously. “Because I was starving. Fine. But why did I come back to his place?”
    She closed her eyes and tried to replay things on the dark screen of her eyelids. Today was no problem. She remembered everything: meeting Norval in the elevator, then Dr. Vorta and … this guy who looked like Norval’s brother. Noel? Who just stood and gawked, without saying a word … She remembered descending in the elevator with this same man, then waiting for Norval in a sushi restaurant across the street; she remembered arriving at his place and asking if she could go to sleep. But why was she so sleepy? Because Dr. Vorta had given her something—a sedative? Yes, today was clear—today she remembered everything. It was last week she had trouble with. She was at a party of some sort, at a shooting-gallery or squat in Mile End that belonged to a friend of a friend’s … No, it wasn’t that party, it was another one, in Villeray, something to do with school. But then things went black and murky and monstrous, like Loch Ness.
    Where’s my knapsack? She opened her eyes and saw it lying beside her on a ledge, under a telescope tripod. She opened it, checked the contents, then pulled out a diary. Looking for a clue, she flipped through its pages. Nothing. No entries since the party. She now wrote:
    Memoirs of an amnesiac . January (or maybe December). I was at a party in Villeray, and then suddenly I wasn’t. Things went dark & turning & I woke up with a hole in my brain & vomit in my boot. Then Dr. Ravenscroft was there, and Dr. Rhéaume, who drove me to the police. And then home. And told me to come to see her on
    Here Samira put her pen down because it had run dry. She rummaged in her bag for another, unsuccessfully, then looked from side to side. Recessed into the wall, just above the bed frame, were three small drawers, painted the same colour as the wall, barely visible. She pried open the first with her fingernails and found what looked like lenses— telescope and camera lenses.
    The second contained thick beige writing paper, a postcard of a church with a sketched portrait on the back, a small jewellery box and … a gold-nibbed fountain pen. She glanced sideward and rearward, lest by some infernal magic Norval could see her, before taking the pen out. And then the postcard. And then the jewellery case.
    Again she looked in all directions before opening the case, whose miniature golden key was in the lock. Inside was a silver ring, a three-part gimbal ring. Closed, the clasped hands formed a traditional friendship ring; opened, the hidden inner ring revealed two hearts, along with an engraved inscription:
    Nor,
    Love