The Memory Painter

She scrolled through his works and stopped at a painting titled Portrait of a Man in a Turban with a notation in italics that said, “possibly a self-portrait.” She was shocked. Bryan had shown her the exact same painting tonight. They were identical, right down to the subject’s enigmatic gaze.

She studied the picture on the screen, unable to comprehend the fact that Bryan had dreamed about this man, painted his self-portrait, and acquired his artistic mastery—at the age of thirteen.

Linz clicked on every one of Van Eyck’s paintings … his style felt quite similar to Bryan’s, though the subject matter varied dramatically. She would love to compare Bryan’s portrait to the original up close. She had a feeling they would be hard to tell apart.

Glancing at the clock, she saw that it was well after midnight. She knew she should go to sleep, but she felt restless and reached for the book by her nightstand: Aristotle’s First Philosophy, later translated into Latin and coined Metaphysics. She had been reading the original version in ancient Greek every night instead of raking in her sand garden.

She also had been reading the treatises and dialogues of Aristotle’s mentor Plato, who had written much about his own mentor Socrates. In college she had taken a philosophy class and honestly had been a bit bored by their interpretations of consciousness and the purpose of life. But now that she could understand their native language, the trinity of philosophers who had created the foundation of Western thought had never felt more accessible.

According to Plato, Socrates believed all knowledge came from a divine state, but humans had forgotten it. Most lived in a cave of ignorance, but one could become enlightened by climbing out of the darkness and understanding the divide between the spiritual and material planes.

Had Linz tapped into some divine state, or was she still in a cave, preferring its dark solace to whatever waited for her outside?

Her eyelids drooped and the Greek symbols started to swim as sleep enveloped her. Her last thought before she sank into a wave of oblivion was that she would go to Harvard Square tomorrow. She had to see Bryan again.



EIGHTEEN

DAY 23—FEBRUARY 28, 1982

Diana has remembered a lifetime from the early fourteen hundreds—a Flemish woman, Margaret Van Eyck, who was married to the painter Jan Van Eyck. She insists that Van Eyck was me, though I have no memory of him. She also woke fluent in Dutch.

Finn has had several recalls, the first an aboriginal boy from Australia. The boy died young from drowning, and Finn has had a difficult time assimilating the memory. He is also complaining of migraines and sensitivity to light and has started wearing sunglasses. Yesterday Diana teased him, telling him he looked like a hungover rock star, and he bit her head off. Even their friendship is feeling the strain of what’s been happening. Conrad is the only one who has not been affected by the drug, and he doesn’t understand the challenges of trying to assimilate someone else’s life while living your own. I don’t think he would even be taking Renovo if it weren’t for the fact that I know so many languages.

Both Finn and Diana think we should include our experiences in the clinical trial, but Conrad remains adamantly against it. He thinks our careers will be destroyed if we divulge what we are doing. I understand both sides. I just need more time to decide the best course of action.

In the meantime, I’ve become obsessed with reading about the history of ancient Egypt and its rulers, hoping to learn something about the Egyptian woman. She has the bearing of a leader, and I can’t help but think she had been of noble birth. Perhaps she was some sort of a princess, if she even existed at all.

I do not know if the memories I am reliving are real, so the legitimacy of these people’s dreams is even more doubtful. But whatever the answer, this woman is becoming a constant in the equation. She visited both Lord Asano and Alexander Pushkin near the end of their lives. Were their minds more receptive to her at the time of their deaths?

I admit that I’ve been waiting for her to materialize in my own dreams. Lately, I have begun to wonder if my death is near.



NINETEEN

The chess pieces moved themselves. Linz had given up focusing on the game and was trying to let her hand make spontaneous plays. It was the only way she could beat him.

They had been playing for hours now, and she was mentally exhausted. Each game was more like several, with multiple paths that a player could choose from, and she had yet to penetrate Bryan’s “brainbox” and grasp his strategy.

“How are you so good?” she asked him, resigned to the fact that he would continue to win.

He gave her a sheepish look and shrugged.

She suddenly stopped playing. Her mouth became an O. “Because of a dream?” she asked, and then quickly added, “Don’t answer that.”

They played in silence for a bit until he spoke. “You know, I want to apologize for last night … making you sit and stare at that painting.”

“That’s nice of you,” she said, a bit sardonically. “So no more forcing me to stare at paintings and imagine that they’re me?”