The Memory Artists - Jeffrey Moore [5]
“Queen of spades,” said his father, turning over one of the cards. He scanned the sea of pirate ships, with black ensigns and blazing cannon. One of them he overturned. “Shite. I mean shoot. Nine of hearts.”
“Nine of hearts,” Noel repeated, coolly turning over the same card. “And nine of diamonds …”
While observing his son, Mr. Burun pulled hard on a meerschaum pipe with a sultan-head bowl, which he had bought in Turkey when younger and happier. “The mother of the Muses was the goddess of Memory,” he said, pursuing his theme, and he might as well have been speaking in Turkish.
“Four of hearts and … four of clubs. Jack of diamonds, jack of spades …”
“Mnemosyne was her name. The goddess of Memory.”
“Nine of spades, nine of clubs …” Nim-oss-enee, the mother of the muses, the goddess of Memory, Noel repeated to himself, depositing the words in his electron vault, the combination encrypted in colours and shapes. Where’s all this heading? he wondered. “What’s a muse?” he asked, because he knew his father liked questions.
“A muse is something … someone who inspires you, in art, a guiding spirit. In Greek mythology there were nine of them, a band of lovely sisters.” Mr. Burun looked up to the ceiling, closed his eyes. “‘He is happy whom the Muses love,’ says Hesiod. ‘For though a man has sorrow and grief in his soul, yet when the servant of the Muses sings, at once he forgets his dark thoughts and remembers not his troubles.’”
Silence gathered as Noel stared. “Are you on something, Dad?”
His father opened his eyes, set his pipe down in the ashtray. “So why was the goddess of Memory linked with artistic creation, you may well ask.”
No, I wasn’t going to ask that, thought Noel. Let’s play.
“Because for the Greeks creativity wasn’t associated with the idea of producing something new—as it is today. The artist built upon, or reworked, the great intellectual and cultural achievements of the past. So a great memory, you see, was considered a key part of creative activity— it gave the artist more material to draw upon, as well as a richer, more complex intellect. When James Joyce said ‘I invented nothing, but I forgot nothing either,’ I think he was referring to exactly this sort of thing.”
Noel glanced at the bowl of his father’s pipe. Hydrous magnesium silicate, he recalled, H4Mg2Si3O10. “Ace of diamonds,” he said. “King of spades.”
“Ah, a rare lapse from the memory artist. Ace of diamonds … ace of spades. Eight of diamonds … damn it, the king of hearts—the self-killing king, the suicide sovereign. Look, Noel, how he stabs himself in the side of his head.”
“Eight of diamonds, eight of hearts.” The suicide sovereign? “Five of hearts, five of clubs …” There were now only a dozen cards left and Noel matched them all.
“Well done, Noel, I’m proud of you. You’ve got the memory of your late grandmother. Now she would’ve given you a run for your money. You’re very lucky, lad—with a brain like yours, you’ll go far.”
Mrs. Burun entered the room, hugging herself as if she were cold, and Noel launched himself into her arms. “I won, Mother! I’m like Nana when she was late and I’m going to go far!”
“Yes you are, Noel dear.” His mother smiled. “You’re my little genius, aren’t you, you’re my …”
He could listen to his mom’s voice forever, and his dad’s too. They didn’t confuse him like everyone else’s; they didn’t scramble his brainwaves. Years later, he was never able to understand why people complained about their parents. He always assumed everyone had parents like his: perfect and beautiful in every way.
“We were talking about the importance of poetry,” his father explained, while tapping his pipe against a swan-shaped ashtray on which Noel had affixed a New York Islanders decal. “In this secular world, this spiritually dead world, poets are all we have left. Remember that, Noel. And remember you have an illustrious ancestor—a Burun from way back.”
“Do you know what an ancestor is, Noel?