The Memory Artists - Jeffrey Moore [45]
“Is that a picture of Astérix over there? With the sword? Why would you—”
“Never mind.” Norval banished the question with a wave of the hand.
“And who’s that guy in the photograph next to it, sitting on your bed? It’s the only picture of a man in the whole place, apart from Astérix. Is that you?”
“No, it’s … Noel.”
“Noel?”
“Yes.”
“Is Noel … never mind.”
“Is he what? A crypto-homo? Am I?”
“Is Noel related to you?”
“Not even distantly.”
“You’re almost like twins.”
Norval sighed. “So we’ve been told. Which may be one of the reasons we clicked. The doppelgänger phenomenon, the search for the invisible twin, the demystification of narcissism …”
Why does he speak like he’s lecturing? Samira wondered. “And the presage of imminent death?” And why am I sounding like the brownnosed student?
“That too. Like matter and its double, anti-matter. You shake hands and you’re annihilated.”
Samira smiled, then thought of a novel she’d been forced to read at school, and a line in an essay that got a checkmark in the margin. “Is your friendship like the one between Max and Emil in Hesse’s Demian? A bond that frees a person from other bonds and leads into a new dimension?”
“No.”
“Right. So is Noel your double, or your opposite? You’re different in so many ways.”
“He’s left-handed, I’m right.”
“Noel seems, well, anal retentive, whereas you seem …”
“Anal explosive.”
“And you two move so differently—”
“Especially when he’s nervous. He gets so spasmodic you start looking for the strings. Remember when he met you?”
“Yes, but … why did that make him nervous?”
“Because he thought you were an actress he’s in love with.”
Samira nodded slowly, lost in a maze of thoughts. “The poor actress, to look like me.”
“Well, it’s true you look like hell, but when healthy I imagine you look almost average.”
“Such flattery.”
“Perhaps I did get carried away.”
“You don’t like women, do you.”
“Generally, I hold them in medium esteem.”
“And men?”
“Much lower.”
“You’re a misanthrope, in other words.”
“How can anyone not be? The human species, the evolution of the human species, was all a colossal mistake. Darwin must have realised that. Humans and chimps evolved from a common ancestor around six million years ago—we share 98.7 per cent of the same genes. But the genes in our brain somehow evolved differently, giving us greater brain power. So what have we done with this brain power? We’ve used it for the pursuit of narcissism, to prove that we’re the only living things that matter in this world.”
“But you’re … never mind.” You’re quite a narcissist yourself, she was about to say.
“And this evolution, this development of the brain, has not gone well. In fact it’s been botched—the glitches, bugs, cross-wirings in the brain have given us things like depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s …”
“And misanthropy?”
“Yes.”
“So what should we do? What can humans do with all this bad wiring? Should we dumb down, go back to living like chimps?”
“That’s already happening.”
“Think of all the great individuals, the geniuses in the world, the great scientific advances—”
“Modern civilisation no longer produces great individuals, geniuses. Instead of forests with giant trees, we get scraggly saplings with roots no deeper than a thimble. If you doubt that, watch any awards show.”
“How about John Lennon or Kurt Cobain or Marie Curie or Krzysztof Kie ´slowski or—”
“We’re on the same path as the dinosaurs. Nature will have its revenge, and the sooner the better. The world is obscenely overpopulated. What we need, what Noel should concoct in his laboratory, is a pathogen that would destroy half the world’s population overnight.”
“Only half? So as to save a race you detest?”
Norval arched an eyebrow. “OK, all. And I shouldn’t say nature will have its revenge. Nothingness will have its revenge—a rogue black