A Traitor to Memory

by Elizabeth George

  That's what he's taken to calling Libby. She has no name other than “your American,” although sometimes she becomes “your little American” or “your charming American.” She's particularly my charming American when she commits a social solecism of some kind, as she does with what seems like religious fervour. Libby does not stand on ceremony, and Dad has not forgiven her for referring to him by his Christian name when I first introduced them. Nor has he forgotten her immediate reaction to Jill's pregnancy: “Holy shit. You knocked up a thirty-year-old? Great going, Richard.” Jill's older than thirty, of course, but that was a small matter next to the effrontery of Libby's mentioning the great gap in their ages.

  “She's fine,” I said.

  “Still riding her motorcycle round London, then?”

  “She's still working for the courier service, if that's what you mean.”

  “And how is she liking her Tartini these days? Shaken or stirred?” He removed his glasses, crossed his arms, and studied me in that way he always does, the way that says, “Steady on or I'll sort you out.”

  That look has managed to derail me on more than one occasion, and in combination with his comments about Libby, it probably should have derailed me then. But having a sister pop into my mind where there had been no sister before was enough to bolster me to face whatever attempt at obfuscation he might make. I said, “I'd forgotten Sonia. Not just how she died, but that she'd ever existed in the first place. I'd completely forgotten I ever had a sister. It's like someone took a rubber to my mind and erased her, Dad.”

  “Is that why you've come, then? To ask about pictures?”

  “To ask about her. Why don't you have any pictures of her?”

  “You're looking for something sinister in the omission.”

  “You have pictures of me. You have an entire exhibit of Granddad. You have Jill. You even have Raphael.”

  “Posing with Szeryng. Raphael was secondary.”

  “Yes. All right. But that begs the question. Why is there nothing of Sonia?”

  He observed me for a good five seconds before he moved. And then he merely turned and began cleaning off the potting bench where he'd earlier been working. He picked up a brush and used it to sweep loose leaves and the remains of soil into a bucket, which he took from the floor. This done, he sealed the soil bag, capped a bottle of fertiliser, and returned his gardening tools to their respective cubby holes. He cleaned each tool as he put it away. Finally, he removed the heavy green apron he wore when working with his camellias, and he led the way out of the greenhouse and into the garden.

  There's a bench at one side, and he made his way over to it. It sits beneath a chestnut tree, long the bane of my father's existence. “Too much God damn shade,” he always grouses. “What the hell is supposed to grow in shadow?”

  Today he seemed to welcome the shade, though. He sat and winced a little, as if he had a pain in his back, which he might well have had because of his spine. But I didn't want to ask about that. He'd avoided my question for long enough.

  I said, “Dad, why is there—”

  He said, “This comes of that doctor, doesn't it? That woman … what's her name?”

  “You know it. Dr. Rose.”

  He muttered, “Shite,” and pushed himself off the bench. I thought he was going to return to the house in a temper rather than talk about a subject that he clearly didn't want to address, but he eased himself to his knees and began pulling at weeds in the flower bed that lay before us. He said, “If I had my way, residents who don't take proper care of their plots would have their plots confiscated. Just look at this muck.”

  It was hardly that. True, too much water had produced mould and moss on the border stones, and weeds tangled with an enormous fuchsia that appeared to want trimming. But there was something appealing about the natural look of the plot, with its central birdbath overgrown with ivy and its stepping-stones sunk deeply into greenery. “I rather like it,” I said.

  Dad gave a derisive snort. He continued pulling weeds, tossing them over his shoulder and onto the gravel path. “Have you touched the Guarnerius yet?” he asked. He objectifies the violin that way, always has done. I prefer to call it by its maker's name, but Dad has melded the maker into the instrument, as if Guarneri himself had no other life.

  “No. I haven't.”

  He leaned back on his heels. “That's brilliant, then. That's bloody brilliant. That's the great plan come to nothing, isn't it? Tell me, what's this gaining us? What exact advantage are you being blessed with as you and the good doctor take your shovels to the past? It's the present where our problem is, Gideon. I wouldn't think you'd need reminding of that.”

  “She's calling it psychogenic amnesia. She says that—”

  “Bollocks. You had a case of nerves. You still have a case of nerves. It happens. Ask anyone. Good God. How many years did Rubinstein not play? Ten? Twelve? And d'you think he spent that time scribbling in a notebook? I expect not.”

  “He didn't lose the playing,” I explained to my father. “He feared the playing.”

  “You don't know that you've lost it, do you? If you haven't picked up the Guarnerius yet, you don't know what you've lost and what you're just afraid that you've lost. Anyone with an ounce of common sense would tell you that what you're experiencing is cowardice: plain and simple. And the fact that this doctor hasn't brought herself round to mentioning the word …” He went back to his weeding. “Bollocks.”

  “You wanted me to see her,” I reminded him. “When Raphael suggested it, you seconded the idea.”

  “I thought you'd be learning to cope with your fear. I thought that's what she'd be giving you. And if, by the way, I'd known it was going to be a flaming she in that doctor's chair, I would have thought twice about carting you round there to weep on her shoulder in the first place.”

  “I'm not—”

  “This is what comes of that girl, that bloody blasted God damn girl.” And on the last word, he tugged a particularly entangled weed from the plot and uprooted one of the dormant lilies in the process. He swore and began to pound the earth round the plant in an attempt to undo the damage. “This is how Americans think, Gideon, and I hope you see that,” he informed me. “This is what comes of coddling an entire generation of layabouts who've had everything handed to them on a platter. They know nothing but leisure so they use that leisure to blame their anomie on their parents. She's encouraged this fault-finding in you, boy. Next, she'll be promoting chat shows as a venue for airing what ails you.”

  “That's not fair on Libby. She's nothing to do with this.”

  “You were bloody all right till she came along.”

  “Nothing's happened between us to cause this problem.”

  “Sleeping with her, are you?”

  “Dad—”

  “Shagging her properly?” He looked over his shoulder as he asked this last question, and he must have seen what I preferred to keep hidden. Seeing it, he said ironically, “Ah. Yes. But she is not the root of your problem. I see. So tell me, exactly what does Dr. Rose consider the appropriate moment for you to pick up the violin again?”

  “We haven't talked about that.”

  He shoved himself to his feet. “That's bloody rich. You've seen her … what? … three times a week for how many weeks? Three? Four? But you haven't yet got round to talking about the problem? See anything singular in that state of affairs?”

  “The violin—the playing—”

  “You mean the not playing.”

  “All right. Yes. Not playing the violin. It's a symptom, Dad. It's not the disease.”

  “Tell that to Paris, Munich, and Rome.”

  “I'll make the concerts.”

  “Not the way you're going at it now.”

  “I thought you wanted me to see her. You asked Raphael—”

  “I asked Raphael for help. Help to get you back on your feet. Help to put the violin in your hands. Help to get you back in the concert hall. Tell me—just tell me, swear to it,
reassure me, anything —that that's what you're getting from this doctor. Because I'm on your side in this, son. I am on your side.”

  “I can't swear to it,” I said, and I know that my voice reflected all the defeat I felt. “I don't know what I'm getting from her, Dad.”

  He wiped his hands on the sides of his jeans. I heard him curse in a low tone that seemed tinctured with anguish. He said, “Come with me.”

  I followed him. We went back into the building, up the stairs, and into his flat. Jill had made tea and she raised her cup to us, saying, “Some, Gideon? Darling?” as we passed the kitchen. I thanked her and demurred, but Dad made no response. Jill's face clouded in that way I've seen when Dad ignores her: not as if she's hurt but as if she's comparing his behaviour with some unmentioned catalogue of appropriate behaviours she's developed in her head.

  Dad strode on, oblivious of this. He went to what I call the Granddad Room, where he keeps a bizarre but nonetheless revealing collection of memorabilia: everything from silver-encased childhood locks of Granddad's hair to letters from the “great man's” wartime commanding officer commending him upon his comportment while imprisoned in Burma. It sometimes seems to me that Dad has spent the better part of his life trying to pretend his father was either a normal or a supernormal man rather than what he actually was, a broken mind who spent more than forty years balancing on the brink of insanity for reasons no one would ever mention.

  He shut the door behind us, and at first I thought he'd taken me into the room in order to recite some sort of panegyric to Granddad. I felt myself getting irritated at what I saw as yet another attempt on his part to deflect a proper conversation.

  He's done this before? you want to know, don't you? It's the logical question.

  And I would have to say Yes, he's done this before. I hadn't much considered that fact until recently. I hadn't actually had to consider it because my music was central to our relationship and that's always what we talked about. Practice sessions with Raphael, work at the East London Conservatory, recording sessions, personal appearances, concerts, tours … There was always my music to occupy us. And because I was so engaged with my music, any question I asked or subject I wanted to pursue could easily be avoided by directing my thoughts to the violin. How's the Stravinski coming along? What about the Bach? Is The Archduke still giving you trouble? God. The Archduke. It always gave me trouble. It's my Nemesis, that piece. It's my Waterloo. It is, in fact, what I was scheduled to play at Wigmore Hall. First time in public to master the bastard and I couldn't do it.

  Ah. You see how easily I become distracted by the thought of my music, Dr. Rose. Even then I did it to myself, so you can imagine how skilfully Dad could manage to divert our conversations.

  But this afternoon, I couldn't be distracted, and Dad must have realised this, because he didn't attempt either to regale me with a story of Granddad's feats of ostensible bravery during his imprisonment or to move me with a review of his gallant battle against a monstrous mental condition that had its tendrils buried deep in his brain. Instead, he shut the door behind us, and I realised he'd done so to gain us some privacy.

  He said, “You're looking for something nasty, aren't you? Isn't that what psychiatrists are always after?”

  “I'm trying to remember,” I told him. “That's what this is about.”

  “How is remembering Sonia supposed to gain you ground with your instrument? Has your Dr. Rose explained that to you?”

  You haven't, have you, Dr. Rose? All you've said is that we'll begin with what I can remember. I'll write about everything I have in my memory, but you don't explain how doing this exercise will manage to dislodge whatever it is that's blocking my ability to play.

  And what has Sonia to do with my playing? She must have been a baby when she died. Because surely I would remember an older sibling, one who walked and talked, who played in the sitting room, who created mud puddles in the back garden with me. I would remember that.

  I said, “Dr. Rose calls this psychogenic amnesia.”

  “Psycho … what?”

  I explained it to him as you explained it to me. I ended with, “Because there's no physical cause for the memory loss—and you know the neurologists have cleared the screen on that—the cause has to come from somewhere else. From the psyche, Dad, and not from the brain.”

  “That's a load of rubbish,” he said, but I could tell that the words were a form of bravado. He sat in an armchair and stared at nothing.

  “All right.” I sat as well, in front of the old roll top desk that belonged to Gran. I did what I'd never considered doing before because I'd never felt it necessary. I called his bluff. “All right, Dad. Accepted. It's rubbish. What should I do, then? Because if all I'm feeling is nerves and fear, I'd be able to play my music alone, wouldn't I? With no one there? With even Libby out of the house so that I could be certain I had no eavesdroppers anywhere? I could play then, couldn't I? And if I couldn't manage so much as a simple arpeggio, who'd be the wiser? Isn't that the case?”

  He looked at me. “Have you tried, Gideon?”

  “Don't you see? I haven't had to try. I don't need to try when I already know.”

  He moved his head, then, away from me. He seemed to go inward, and while he did so, I was aware of the silence in the flat and the silence outside, no breeze even blowing to susurrate the tree leaves. When he finally spoke, it was to say, “No one knows the pain of having a child before the child is born. It seems as if it'll be so simple, but it never is.”

  I made no reply. Was he speaking of me? Of Sonia? Or the other, that longer-ago child of a distant marriage, the one called Virginia, who had never been spoken of?

  He went on. “You give them life and you know you'd do anything to protect them, Gideon. That's how it is.”

  I nodded, but he still wasn't looking at me so I said, “Yes.” Affirmation of what, I couldn't tell you. But I had to say something, and that was what I said.

  It seemed enough. Dad said, “Sometimes you fail. You don't intend to. You don't even contemplate failure. But it happens. It comes out of nowhere and it takes you by surprise and before you have a chance to stop—even to react in some useless way—it's on you. Failure.” He met my eyes then, and the look he gave me was so filled with suffering that I wanted to retreat and to spare him whatever was causing him such pain. Hadn't it been bad enough that his childhood, adolescence, and adulthood had been filled with the sorrow of having a father whose infirmities tried his patience and depleted his reserves of devotion? Was he now supposed to be saddled with a son who appeared to be heading in the same direction? I wanted to retreat. I wanted to spare him. But I wanted my music more. I am a void without my music. So I said nothing. I let the silence lie like a gauntlet between us. And when my father could bear the unseen sight of that gauntlet no longer, he picked it up.

  He stood and came towards me and for a moment I thought he intended to touch me. But instead he rolled back the top of my grandmother's desk. From his key ring, he inserted a small key in the central interior drawer. From the drawer, he took a neat stack of papers. These he carried back to his chair.

  We'd arrived somewhere, and I was aware of the drama and significance of the moment, as if we'd crossed a boundary that neither of us had recognised as even existing before. I felt a churning in my gut as he fingered through the papers. I saw the sparkling crescent in the field of my vision that always heralds the pounding in my head.

  He said, “I have no pictures of Sonia for the simplest of reasons. Had you thought it through—and had you been less distressed you probably would have—I'm certain you would have worked it out for yourself. Your mother took the pictures when she left us, Gideon. She took every one of them. Except for this.”

  He took a single snapshot from a soiled envelope. He passed it to me. And for a moment, I found that I didn't want to take it from him, so fraught with meaning had Sonia suddenly become.

  He read my hesitation. He said, “Take it, Gideon. It's all I have
left of her.”

  So I took it, hardly daring to wonder what I might see, but somehow fearing what I would see all the same. I swallowed and steeled myself. I looked.

  What was in the picture was this: a baby cradled in the arms of a woman I did not recognise. They were seated in the back garden of the Kensington Square house, on a striped deck chair in the sun. The woman's shadow fell across Sonia's face, but her own was fully exposed to the light. She was young and blonde. She was aquiline featured. She was very pretty.

  “I don't … Who is this?” I asked my father.

  “That's Katja,” he said. “Gideon, that's Katja Wolff.”

  GIDEON

  20 September

  This is what I've been wondering ever since Dad showed me that photograph: If Mother took with her every picture of Sonia that was in the house, why did she leave that one picture behind? Was it because Sonia's face was so much in shadow that she might have been any baby and consequently not memorable to my mother, not something she could cling to in her grief … if grief was indeed what took her from us? Or was it because Katja Wolff was in it? Or was it because Mother didn't know about the photo in the first place? Because, you see, the one thing I cannot tell from the picture—which I have now with me and which I will show you when next we meet—is who took it of them?

  And why did Dad have this particular picture, this picture in which the focal figure is not his daughter his very own daughter who died, but a young and smiling and golden woman who is not his wife was never his wife never became his wife and was certainly not the mother of that child.

  I asked Dad about Katja Wolff because asking was the natural thing to do. He told me that she was Sonia's nanny. She was a German girl, he said, with very limited English. She'd made a dramatic and foolhardy escape from East to West Berlin in a hot air balloon that she and her boyfriend had manufactured in secret, and she'd gained some notoriety from that.

  Do you already know this story, Dr. Rose? Perhaps not. You would have been less than ten years old at that time, I expect, and living … where? In America at that point?