The Memory Painter: A Novel Read online

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t think—”

  “Which you seem to be doing a lot of lately.”

  Linz couldn’t meet his eyes. She had just been scolded like a three-year-old and her father wasn’t finished.

  “I find it disturbing that all this started when you met your new boyfriend, who seems to be doing nothing short of investigating me—”

  “He’s not my boyfriend and he’s not investigating you—”

  “—because the company’s worth a fortune,” he continued, “and so are you.”

  “You think he’s going to try to blackmail you? That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it? Anyone on the Internet can find out who we are and what we’re worth.”

  Linz looked away. Bryan had logged his fair share of hours online. And she had seen the results.

  Conrad took out a file from his briefcase and put it on the table between them. “I had personnel run a background check on him. It was all done confidentially.”

  Linz tried to keep her voice down. “Do you want to know how mad I am at you right now?”

  “You can be as mad as you like, but did you know he grew up in a string of mental institutions?”

  “No, he lived with his parents. His mother is a shrink—”

  “—who admitted him into every psychiatric hospital on the East Coast,” he insisted.

  “That’s not true.” She glanced at the file.

  “Your friend is an unstable man. One doctor diagnosed him schizophrenic. Go on, read it.” He slid the file toward her.

  “I don’t want to read it. You don’t even know him.”

  “Do you?” he countered.

  Linz rubbed her forehead, feeling another headache settling in. The whole situation had gotten out of control. “Can we just forget about Bryan for a minute? I want to know about Michael and Diana. Please.”

  “Why do you want to know about these people?”

  “Just tell me and I will read the file. Okay?”

  Conrad shook his head in resignation. He looked weary. “Michael was like a brother to me. Diana was the sister I never had. We became close friends in med school. Renovo was our dream. Losing them, abandoning the study … I had to start all over again.”

  He fought to keep his composure. Linz felt horrible. Why was she pushing him so hard to talk about something so painful?

  But she had to know if her connection to Michael and Diana was as real as her connection to Origenes and Juliana. Bryan believed it was, and now she had to decide whether or not to believe him. She just wished her father would stop laying on the guilt.

  “Why do I have to bring that pain back to the surface after all this time? Because some painter found a home movie in his father’s attic? Can’t you understand why I’m upset? Now, I am done with this conversation, and you are never to ask me about them again. Read the file, and you’ll understand my concern.”

  Feeling like a traitor, Linz took the file and put it into her own briefcase. She stood up. “I’m not hungry. Have them cancel my order.”

  Conrad reached out for her hand, but she pulled away. “I love you, Stormy. I’m just being a father,” he said.

  “I know.” But for the first time in her life, Linz didn’t say the words back.

  TWENTY-SIX

  DAY 26—MARCH 3, 1982

  We visited Finn. He was too distraught to talk at first and stayed in his bedroom. His apartment was shocking, a complete disaster. Dishes were dirty, things were broken. Diana sent me to the store for groceries while she cleaned. The smell of her homemade chicken soup finally brought Finn out.

  He wasn’t ready to talk about his recalls and said he needed time, which I understand. It doesn’t help that his debilitating migraines won’t stop. After his third bowl of soup and a second beer, he finally opened up. He had made eye contact with Conrad when he had him pinned against the wall, and he had recognized in him people from his previous lives. He refused to go into detail, but Diana pressed until he told her. My stomach clenched with dread as he said the names: Septimus, Tarr, d’Anthès … men who had tried to kill me. I couldn’t speak. My body felt hollow. I know Diana felt the same alarm.

  Finn believes that Conrad is feigning ignorance to hide his true intentions from us and his identities. I am beginning to agree. If Conrad is lying about not remembering, then we are all in danger. I am going to ask him to leave the group.

  To make matters worse, after the visit with Finn, Diana remembered her life as Juliana. It was more traumatic for her than I could have imagined. I have done what I can to comfort her, but she must now learn to live with the unthinkable memory of being burned alive. I can only watch her struggle with the pain, and I can’t help but feel responsible. If I had never set out on this path, no one would have followed. In hindsight, I’ve realized that our minds shield us from memories that are meant to stay buried. The brain is its own galaxy, with more cells than stars in the Milky Way. The most powerful organ in the body, it rivals any supercomputer, processing 90,000 to 150,000 thoughts a day through billions of neurons and trillions of synaptic connections. Now that we have found a pathway to retrieving memories that before were inaccessible, we are perfecting its function too quickly.

  When I awoke to Diana’s screams, I had to hold her to keep her from hurting herself as she remembered Juliana’s death. Every cry was a knife in my heart, and I knew I had to sabotage my own study. I will present Renovo as a failed drug and destroy our research. It is the only course left to take. The world is not ready for this. It would end our sense of time, ourselves, and the linear world as we know it.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The first thing Bryan did when he arrived at St. John’s was rent a boat. He had no trouble handling it. Bjarni’s expertise and passion for the sea now lived inside of him.

  The Hunter Vision 32 sailboat was perfect for his needs and the owner had rigged it for single-handed use. Bryan had easily maneuvered it through the Narrows and caught a swift wind that would take him north. He was planning on sailing up the coast, into the bay, and then sighting the new land just as Bjarni had done a thousand years ago.

  The last two nights he had slept on deck just like every Viking had before him. This was not the first time that Bryan had roughed it. As he sailed, he remembered previous lifetimes when there had been no electricity, no running water, no modern medicine.… Hardship only existed if one knew differently.

  Modern conveniences had always felt less necessary to him after he’d experienced a recall. It was because Bryan felt no need for modern comforts that he was able to survive those first years after he had left home—or run away, as his mother liked to say. The day after his eighteenth birthday, he had packed his backpack and vanished in the middle of the night, leaving his parents only a letter saying that he had to go find himself and his place in the world, alone.

  For the first year, he had called once a month to let them know he was all right, if only to ease his guilt. After that, he’d limited his contact to an occasional phone call or postcard. A true nomad, he backpacked all over the world, camping for months on end in the wilderness. He spent a lot of time in Europe—so many places there resonated with him. He would camp in a forest and then wander into a nearby city to do street art or play music to earn money.

  He traveled across the continent with the money he made, freely tapping into his language skills and speaking whatever was required. Because he could play unusual instruments like the lute, zither, and pan pipe, he’d often join groups of bohemian musicians. If there was a girl in the group, she would usually offer him a place to stay for however long he wanted it, though those relationships never lasted long. Either he’d have an episode and need to move on, or he would recognize someone from a vision. His recalls inevitably complicated things. He’d found out the hard way that only painting and being on his own could keep him sane.

  His life changed the year he went to Avignon, where he joined a band of sidewalk artists there and painted with chalk on a street
corner. By the end of the week, he could recognize all the regulars who passed by.

  He would leave a hat out and listen to coins clank inside it while he worked. There would often be bills too, and one woman always left a large one, every day. Bryan could tell from her designer suits and purses that she came from money. On the seventh day, she finally stopped and asked if he spoke French, and they had a long conversation about technique. She was a collector and asked if he did canvases. Bryan wasn’t surprised when he recognized her as Philip the Good, Jan Van Eyck’s most powerful patron. It seemed he had found him again.

  Her name was Therese Montague. Her husband was the president of a cosmetics company, and she was wealthy in her own right. She offered him supplies and a space to work in if he agreed to do three paintings for her.

  He slept on the floor of the art studio and worked on the canvases for several months, feeling as if he was back in Jan’s workshop in Bruges. The completed trio exceeded Therese’s expectations. She was highly connected to the French art scene, and before Bryan knew it, he had an offer to show in Paris. That was the moment he decided to make a name for himself as an artist, on the chance that the paintings would be the compass that would guide anyone with similar dreams toward him. But as his fame grew, he began to lose hope that anyone would ever understand his world—until he met Linz.

  The possibility of her rejection now terrified him. He knew she was starting to question his sanity, and yet here he was sailing the northern Atlantic, believing he was a seafaring Viking who had almost discovered America. Bryan shook his head at himself and took out the foot-long wind instrument he had carved yesterday from a seasoned tree branch. It was something Bjarni liked to do—whistle on the water.

  After Anssonno had been born, Bjarni would play his pipe softly to lull him to sleep at night. And when Anssonno had grown old enough to wield a carving knife, Bjarni had taught him how to make his own.

  Bryan played his song, listening to it carry over the waves, and he wondered where Anssonno’s soul was. There were over seven billion people on Earth—did the likelihood of crossing paths with someone again boil down to random statistics? Or did a soul’s path adhere to a pattern, like the connecting lines on a mandala? Bryan seemed to be connecting with certain people again and again. He could only hope Anssonno would one day come back to him. Perhaps it would heal the loss that lived in his heart.

  As the boat skimmed over the sea, Bryan sensed the ocean speaking to him. A whale breached in the distance, puffins dove into the water, and a lone iceberg floated to the west like a silent witness. He closed his eyes and prayed to Odin, Allah, Yahweh, Zeus, Shiva, and every deva and deity he had ever worshipped to bring him peace and understanding. This pilgrimage had to be for a purpose.

  He opened his eyes and the shore loomed in the distance just as Bjarni had seen it. A national historic site now called L’Anse aux Meadows, Leif Erikson’s settlement symbolized the path Bjarni had not taken. If only he had brought Garnissa to the new land, how different their lives would have been.

  Bryan’s head was still filled with these thoughts as he came to shore and wandered through the park, touring the reconstructions. It was a living museum, and the staff reenacted what it must have been like for Viking settlers. But it became too much for Bryan, and he broke away from the other tourists so no one could see his grief.

  The journey had provided no answers, no glimmer of understanding. Before he got back on his boat, he debated calling Linz on a public phone but changed his mind.

  * * *

  Linz went to sleep every night wondering when Bryan would come back home.

  Maybe he would just disappear. But she found that hard to believe. While he was gone, she tried to forget about him and get her life back to normal by immersing herself in her research.

  Her latest round of candidate plasticity genes had begun to show promise. Using a multiphoton microscope, she had been imaging the same neurons in a group of mice and had finally identified a gene that showed a special ability to absorb synaptic proteins. Identifying a gene’s function was always a huge breakthrough, and it usually took years. In the lab, Linz’s photographic memory and obsessive tendencies worked to her advantage.

  Normally she would have brought a bottle of champagne over to her father’s house so they could toast her success, but she limited the celebration to a formal e-mail to him and addressed it to the other directors as well. She did not reply to his congratulations, or his offer to take her out for dinner. He would only want to talk to her about Bryan’s file, which she had yet to open.

  Her estrangement from her father did not sit well with her, and now that Bryan was consuming her thoughts, work didn’t fulfill her as much as it had before. Several times, she found herself cutting short her usual long evenings at the lab to stop by the gallery to visit Derek and Penelope—but really it was an excuse to see Bryan’s paintings. Looking at his work, knowing what it meant to him, made her feel closer to him somehow. Afterward, she would go home and work on puzzles, blasting Vivaldi’s Four Seasons until she couldn’t stay awake anymore. She had even wandered over to Harvard Square to play chess with the irrational hope that she might see him, even though she knew he was thousands of miles away. When she went to the symphony, for the first time, she felt the emptiness of the seat beside her. And every night when she fell asleep, she imagined that she was in Newfoundland with him.

  * * *

  Bryan knew it was time to return to Boston. He needed to get back and call this trip an honorable failure. He needed to repair things with Linz—and he needed to find Finn. Finn would have at least some of the answers he was looking for. Together they could confront Conrad.

  His flight wasn’t until tomorrow, so after he returned the boat, he rented a car for a day to tour the area. He drove to Conception Bay and headed inland. Caught up in his thoughts, he didn’t notice the tire blow out until the whole car started to shake. Swearing, he pulled over and got out.

  He was relieved to find a spare in the trunk, but there were no tools to change it. He was stranded in the countryside, and it was at least a half-hour walk back to town. Maybe there would be a house on the way, and someone would have a jack he could borrow.

  He was about to set off on foot when a white truck slowed down and pulled over. A young woman jumped out from the passenger side and hurried toward him. She had a pixie haircut and was dressed in a colorfully woven skirt, a tunic-like blouse, and was wearing dramatic stone jewelry. The first thing Bryan noticed was her smile.

  She saw the rental sticker on the car and gave him a sharp appraisal. “You have a flat tire? We are happy to help.” She spoke in English but with a French accent. “I am Claudette. That is my husband, Martin,” she said, waving to the driver. “Martin! Vite!”

  A man—towering well over six feet, with a powerful build and a shaved head—got out of the car. Bryan gaped at him. He looked like Zidane, the retired pro soccer player.

  Martin joined them and gave Bryan a nod. Claudette turned to him, “Chéri, this poor man has a pneu problem.”

  Martin headed to the truck bed and got out his tools. Within minutes, he had jacked up the little Mazda and was busy unscrewing bolts. Claudette had a hundred and one questions for Bryan and was thrilled that he spoke perfect French. What was he doing in St. John’s? What did he do for a living? Was this his first visit? Bryan tried to keep it simple and as close to the truth as possible, explaining that he was a painter and here for inspiration. Claudette became even more animated and wanted to know everything about his art. For some reason, Bryan didn’t mind. He found her charming.

  In the time it took Martin to fix the tire, Claudette also informed Bryan that they were from France and had been invited to teach at Memorial University in the graduate Archaeology Department. It seemed they were specialists in ethnographic fieldwork techniques. They had only just settled into their new house, which happened to be just a few kilometers away, “and it was very lucky for him because this road got very
little traffic,” Claudette bounced on. Bryan found himself nodding quite a bit as he tried to keep up.

  After the tire was fixed, Claudette surprised him by inviting him to their house for dinner. Without waiting for an answer, Martin threw the tools into the truck and the two of them tore off. Bryan fumbled to start his car and zoomed down the road to catch up.

  Martin’s car turned onto a long winding drive, which ended next to an old farmhouse. Up close, the building looked to be in serious neglect with its stripped paint, shuttered windows, and tattered roof. Bryan got out of the car and joined them at the porch.

  Claudette seemed to sense what he was thinking. “We spent all our energy fixing up the inside.”

  “No, it looks nice,” Bryan replied, bending the truth

  Claudette said, “Martin, the porch lights, vite, s’il te plaît!”

  Martin vanished inside, and within seconds the porch sprung to life as decorative lights transformed the exterior into something more like an enchanted cottage at twilight.

  The minute Bryan walked into the house, he understood Claudette’s comment about the outside being misleading. The floors shone with rich mahogany wood, and two sofas were angled around a mammoth stone fireplace. Beautiful artifacts—framed papyrus, a gold scarab collection, Egyptian bowls, glasswork, and a statue of a sphinx—hung on the walls and were displayed on futuristic chrome-and-glass bookcases. Bryan took it all in. What were the chances that his car would break down, and he would be rescued by a couple who had an ancient Egyptian sphinx in their house? “Amazing,” he said, speaking his thought aloud.