TOM RENYOLDS

He still had a lot of money even though the stock market had crashed, but he didn’t know what to do with it. He’d led an interesting life, certainly, but he felt a gnawing emptiness. So he decided it was time he should write a book. A bestseller.

So he hired her to be his biographer. She arrived every day promptly at 10 and, after they had shared a pot of coffee, she tape-recorded his memories and transcribed the results into spiral notebooks. He paid her in Swiss Francs and he was sure she understood his heroic side, and it came as no surprise when she broke into his house one night to make him fall in love with her. They stayed up all night, racing like sharks around the bed. In the morning the sheets were torn into ribbons and neither of them went to the office at 10.

Eventually, they were married and, for their honeymoon, they decided they would go to Spain, to the grainfields of Andalucia and the beaches of Marbella. They would tan themselves next to Russian mafia kingpins and drink sangria until it seeped from their pores.

***

After travelling for several days towards Spain they came to a large castle called Zoloftinium. The castle was on the top of a hill, ringed by a moat, and looked out over vineyards and an olive grove. It belonged to the Arch-Duke Termen, who greeted them at the foot of the drawbridge. “Welcome. Tonight you will be my guests,” said the Duke.

At dinner that evening the Duchess Pevazz laid out a sumptuous banquet for them. Saffron and thyme and butternut leaves were used. A boar had been slaughtered and lay stuffed in the center of the table with an apple in its mouth. The Duke raised his glass. “The Duchess and I extend our gratitude for your society and allegiance.” They all raised their glasses. “And fortunately it has come to pass that you will be with us for some time.”

The duchess smiled a dour smile, as the words coded into their synapses. Knives and forks clattered on the table and the boar steamed silently. “Because people can only enter and leave this castle once every seventeen years.”

***

As they resigned themselves to staying, they found out there were many peculiarities to the castle. As one travelled from room to room it was like travelling through time. On the first floor the servants churned butter and dipped string into wax to make candles. On the third floor they used computers and had access to the latest satellite hookups. Chronology meant nothing.

As well, there was a pervasive air of waking in the castle, of action and clear-headedness. No one was able to sleep, nor did anyone need to sleep. No one became drunk or was emotional, and no one fell in love, and each day flowed into the next like the bulbous, heavy mercury dripping from a broken thermometer. Each day beaded on the countertop and was counted, but it could as easily be balled up with the other days, shiny and silver and heavy.

Some nights they sat on the same couch and ate marshmallows. He would feed them to her and mould them into small white animals. Other nights they gazed at the stars and dreamed of Andalucia, and the spicy chorizo waiting for them. Oh how the golden spires of the Alahambra would point to the sun!

They tried to kill some time by continuing with his book. She wrote for almost three years as he dictated to her. She soon ran out of tapes for her tape recorder, but they continued longhand until there were many pages. He told her about his mother and his father and his sisters and brothers. He told her about his marriages and his successes and failures. He enjoyed telling her of the women he’d known. She would never judge him, and would usually allow him to fondle her breasts as she wrote the exciting story of his life.

***

But one year there was a fire that killed the Duke and Duchess and everyone else in the castle. He was left alone with her, and begun to feel that gnawing emptiness again. Now the nights were heavy and dark, and the stars were missing from the sky.

One night he took her to the tower of the castle and they listened to their heartbeats. The walls were orange and crumbling and the air smelled like sulfur and blackberries. He pushed his fingers through the roof of her mouth, and into the spongy tissue where he knew she kept her memories of him. They were warm and wet, and he felt safe. He dug around for his favorite ones.

“I have never been so sad in my entire life,” he said.

“Nor have I,” she said, her mouth wide open.

“We must go to Andalucia and bring our eyes upon the sea. We must go to Marbella now,” he said, sounding optimistic.

He retrieved the memories with his forefingers and they laid them out on the tower’s linoleum floor. She had organized them chronologically along her mental timeline, but he rearranged them so that he could see them in cycles, in the way that he thought of time.

“This is it?” he asked her, “Is this my life?”

“We have more written,” she said, “Though many microfibres were burned in the fire. In Marbella you can trade your memories for diamonds and gold. I have heard that the Russian mafia will buy your memories to make them into television shows. It can be worth a lot, so long as you are willing to accept laundered Rubles.”

That night, or sometime soon thereafter the castle crumbled to the ground sponaneously and they left. The drawbridge fell open and they left with their heavy hearts, trying to get to Spain, trying to recapture the enthusiasm they’d once shared, vainly conjuring images of flamenco dancers.

***

They walked through the woods and then through the fields. They had no money but they bartered for food with their memories. She sold the time when she was once a ticket-taker at the trans-Siberian rail station, and her ensuing love affair with the prince from Qatar. He sold his trips to Poland and Prague, the absinthe nights and the mineral baths. And soon they were in Spain, without any memories to speak of except for the love of one another. Theirs was a complete oubliation.

Andalucia crept upon them and into their bones. On the beach in Marbella they stripped naked and ran into the water as the pig-faced mafiosos watched and the waves shuddered around them. She was sure she could hear Miles Davis. He could see only the powerful whitecaps whipping themselves into a frenzy.

The maze of the ocean swept them in circles and carried them out, until they climbed out of the water on a rope ladder which streched to the heavens. Small children on the beach gathered their clothes and played dress-up.

After he disappeared into the clouds with her, money rained down from the sky in all denominations, all over the hills of Andalucia. Euros, Yen, Kroner, Rupees, pennies, Pesetas and Shillings.

The thick-necked men took off their body-hugging t-shirts and tied the sleeves so that they could use them as sacks. They spilled the bottles of vodka that had been resting on the arms of their beach chairs. They called to their wives and mistresses, who also stripped naked to collect the money. Many people gathered fortunes on the beach that day, as one might gather seashells.

And that, children, is why our family is so rich.