Werner slid the little knife back into the drawer, pulled out a gold lighter, and carefully lit the cigar.
“I’d like to arrange a trade,” he said, watching me take a bite of the pain au chocolat and a sip of coffee. “I can help you remember. But there’s certain information I’ll need in return.”
I looked past him to the menagerie of dead animals, the wild boars with their stomachs so cleanly slit. The pictures made me think of the sisters, and what Heloise had said. I thought they were singing. The pastry suddenly tasted rancid in my mouth, the coffee bitter.
Werner exhaled a thick cloud of cigar smoke. “Of course you don’t recall, but you’ve taken something of mine, something I would very much like to recover.”
“Go to hell,” I told him.
He looked at me with curiosity. “You think I killed your friends, don’t you?”
I didn’t answer.
“I’ll take your silence as a yes,” he said, “but I’m afraid you’re wrong.”
“Who, then?”
Werner shook his head. “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it, Miss Brightman? Or should I call you Eve?”
I shrugged.
“I will tell you what I know,” Werner said. “But you’ll have to help me first.”
“And this thing you claim I took. It would help if I knew just what it was you wanted me to remember.”
He leaned back in his chair and savored the cigar. “That’s the problem, my dear. You see, it’s information you stole, something that can take many forms. I’m afraid you’ll have to remember just which form you’ve given it.”
“It’s not that easy,” I told him.
“Don’t worry,” Werner said. “I’ve arranged for you to have some help.”
He took a long toke on the cigar and rang his intercom again, this time summoning Salim.
SIXTEEN
Though the hormone that is its main component is tied inextricably to the brain’s ability to recall information and events, the use of vasopressin as a memory enhancer is strictly experimental. The approved medical application for the drug and its more potent counterpart, desmopressin, is as an antidiuretic. Normally, the two drugs are given to diabetics or chronic bed wetters, to cut down on the frequency with which they urinate. As a result, an unfortunate side effect of the medication is that it greatly, sometimes dangerously, reduces the outflow of bodily fluids.
In other words, a person who drinks too much while using vasopressin runs the risk of literally drowning from the inside out. I experienced this nasty aftereffect firsthand one night in Lyon, when I’d had one too many gulps of water from the cooler in Dr. Delpay’s office and ended up on my hands and knees in the bathroom, racked by uncontrollable vomiting. I escaped the seizures that would have been the next result of the internal deluge, but the episode left an indelible impression on me and gave me a new respect for the drug’s hidden powers.
So when Salim and his nameless cohort appeared with a syringe and an inhaler, my mind leaped immediately back to each drink I’d had that morning. Three cups of water, the grapefruit juice, at least half a cup of coffee.
I looked at Werner, unable to keep my panic from showing. “You can’t give me that now. It could kill me.”
Werner pushed the chair back from his desk and stood. “I’m afraid your comfort is not the top priority here,” he said, then made his way to the door.
“Don’t worry,” Salim said when Werner was gone. He came forward and grasped my wrists in his hands, pressing my arms against the arms of the chair. “We’ve taken special care.” He nodded to his accomplice. “Hassan here is a doctor.”
Somehow the news was less than reassuring. “What’s in there?” I asked, glancing at the syringe.
Hassan spoke for the first time. “Idebenone, pyritinol, piracetam,” he said proudly, jabbing the needle into my arm. “I call it a memory cocktail.”
Jesus, I thought, watching the plunger depress, I was in for a wild ride. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.
Finished, the good doctor lifted the needle from my arm, set the syringe aside, reached back, and grabbed a handful of my hair. As he lifted the inhaler to my nose, I caught a glimpse of the label. Desmopressin, it said. With his free hand, Hassan primed the pump, then jammed the plastic tip into my right nostril, and I felt the sickening rush of the drug.
Keep us safe, Lord, I prayed, though I wasn’t sure what help, if any, the prayer could bring me now.
The real downside to overdosing on nootropic drugs is that they leave you with an acute and lasting memory of each unpleasant detail of the experience. I will never forget that room at Bruns Werner’s house in Marrakech, the gruesome photographs, the three figures at the café Les Trois Singes. Nor will I forget the trip that followed, the vertiginous ride across the mountains, the color of my bile on the roadside, or the smell of the car we rode in, a mixture of aftershave and body odor, and some unknown sweetness I have yet to put a name to. Nor, try as I might, will I ever forget the constant, shivering, bone-deep ache.
Hassan, Salim, and I left the villa shortly after my meeting with Werner and, with Salim driving, headed out of town and up into the green foothills of the Atlas. Before we crossed the Oued Zat, I had regurgitated the entirety of my breakfast and was retching up mucus. By the time we reached the High Atlas, I was incapacitated enough by convulsions that my two escorts felt safe leaving me in the Mercedes at the Tizi n’Tichka Pass while they rinsed their feet and hands, unrolled their mats, and performed their midday prayers. Then we were on our way again, plunging down into the austere southern mountains, toward Ourzazate and the desert.
In its own spiteful way, the noxious combination of drugs was working, though what I remembered on that trip was doubtless not what Werner had hoped I would. Later, I would be tempted to think my prayer had worked, but at the time I didn’t have the strength to question the source of my luck.
Though it was the beginning of November when the sisters found me, I spent the first six weeks of what I remember as my life in the hospital in Lyon, vainly trying to retrieve myself. It wasn’t till the middle of December that Dr. Delpay suggested I might think about a more permanent home, and the sisters offered to take me in. I arrived at the convent just in time for the last week of Advent.
That week before Christmas is a time for summoning Christ, and each night at vespers, before the Magnificat, the Benedictines sing a series of antiphons that literally call out to Him, each addressing the Savior by a different name. O Wisdom, they sing, O Root of Jesse, O Adonai. It’s a primal kind of call, beautiful and mystical as a Buddhist chant, each yearning O resonating through the barren winter air.
On that trip to the desert it was my first night at the convent I relived, the singing of the antiphon. Heloise had been appointed my unofficial guardian, and it was she who took me to the chapel that evening. It was snowing, the flakes fine as sifted sugar, dusting us on the walk across the yard. We arrived at vespers glistening like candied almonds.
I had come from the hospital in Lyon that afternoon and had yet to meet many of the sisters. When we entered the chapel, each head turned briefly toward us, each pair of eyes falling on my own, then looking quickly away. I would later come to learn the delicate equilibrium it took to maintain such a community, the magnitude of the chance they’d taken by giving me a home. I’m sure they were eager to see what they’d gotten themselves into, eager to get a look at the strange American who would be living among them. Heloise must have known how scared I was. She reached out, took my hand in her own, and gave my fingers a tight squeeze.