Nostalgia Read Online Free

perfect face tipping at the chin, the golden hair. Breathing softly, evenly, a living work of art. What’s she dreaming of? What does she hide in that mind? We who work with fictional lives, artificial memories that we plant in adult brains, tend to forget what a real, fresh mind—what a BabyGen—thinks like. To our eyes, every life story is one more narrative, to be examined for structure and meaning and coherence; for its utility. And then a life enters your life, your heart. It’s no longer just a narrative, it’s your ache, moment by moment. That’s what had happened to me.
    That evening she called and walked over to my place. We had drinks, and I learned more about her. She worked on the women’s floor of Bay Harrods. She had grown up in Pennsylvania and followed her sister to Toronto. I told her about myself, but at that stage we were both reticent withdetails. She agreed to stay the night and we made love. Or I made love, she gave herself up to sex. And she agreed to move in with me.
    I glanced at her once more beside me and got up and padded off to my refuge, my study.

THREE
    I LOOKED UP PRESLEY SMITH ’ S PUBLIC PROFILE .
    Born in Madison, Wisconsin, son of high school teachers, educated at Woburn High and Ranleigh College. Had a brother and sister, both younger. Trained as an electrician, moved to Toronto, where currently he was out of a job but worked part-time as a security guard in a multinational tower.
    Chief interest: war games, especially the popular Akram 3 and the outdoor adventure Ramayana 9: The Bridge to Lanka.
The battle scenes are terrfc; Hanuman Forever! Superdude rescuing the good guys—annihilate the Barbarians!
    Other interests: soccer. Played occasionally at the local park, followed the North American Soccer League, and supported Nigeria during the World Cup. He worked out at theColumbus Centre and until recently used to run long distance—came in the top 15 three years ago in the Boston Half Marathon, then gave up. No reason given.
    Music: B4U, Fallout, Aboubakar Touré. Beethoven, Wagner. (Wagner? perhaps that went with the war games.) And not, apparently, his namesake, the former pop idol Elvis Presley, now a cult god.
    Best book?
Heart of Darkness.
    Best friend?
My cat, Billy.
    A loner, then.
    Favourite memory?
Playing soccer with my dad and brother and sister—we would go to the school ground behind our house to play, then go out for burgers. My favourite position was forward, getting behind the opposition defence and scoring goals.
    Favourite team?
Madison United
.
    This was a generous Profile, rather more than the minimum demanded by the Public Directory. It did not quite hang together, did it? How did Ludwig Beethoven fit with Aboubakar Touré, Wagner with B4U? I recalled the jumbled features of Presley himself. I pondered over his choice of favourite book—a novel, and a serious one. The warlike rhetoric too seemed entirely unsuited to the benign-mannered agreeable man I’d met earlier that day. It looked as though more than one résumé or personality had been scrambled together. How much of this résumé was true and real, that is, experienced, and how much was fiction? What had he brought with him from his previous life? It did not matter;my job was to preserve the owner of this strange and intriguing Profile.
    In the process of implanting a new personality, parts of a patient’s memory are erased or numbed, and new narratives (fictions) played into the brain. The patient comes to you with his fiction, a custom-made past, and—once it is accepted, usually after revisions—leaves as a new person with fresh memories, benign and archival, free of trauma. Superficial, yes, but it’s more pleasant to have good memories. Only, don’t call on them: the father you played soccer with is entirely imaginal. And perhaps you’ve never really read Joseph Conrad, only think you have. Over time the brain bridges gaps, fudges connections, invents where necessary, and so the actual