The Amnesiac

by Sam Taylor

  ‘Yes,’ James whispered.

  It was the first word to come from his mouth in what felt like a very long time. The waiter, who was passing, looked at James curiously. To cover his embarrassment, James ordered another beer. Then he picked up his biro, opened the white notebook, crossed out the sentence he had written, and changed the ‘1’ to a ‘5’. There was no particular reason why his life story should have five chapters; it just seemed a good number. James began to write.

  Memoirs of an Amnesiac

  CHAPTER 5

  I lived with Ingrid for nearly five years. During that time I loved her, and thought about her, more than anyone else in the world. We slept together every night, side by side and naked. Each day, she was the first and the last person I saw; some days, she was the only person. Now she is gone from my life and I will probably never see her again. How does this make me feel? I don’t know. I’m not sure I feel anything at all.

  The last time I saw her, she was sitting across from me at this very table. That was ten days ago; already the memory is faded. If I try really hard, I can summon the faintest ghost of her on to the metal chair opposite, but she is far less real to me now than the lamplight reflected from the chrome tabletop, the shushing sound that the canal makes, the taste of cold beer in my mouth. She is in the past, and that is a distant land. An unreachable land.

  The last time I saw her, it must have been gone midnight, her face erased by darkness as the waiter extinguished the oil lamp at our table. I don’t remember that. Nor do I remember walking with her to our apartment, or climbing the stairs, or going to bed. I don’t recall her saying goodbye or even goodnight. All these little events, which I know must have happened, are too clouded and vague to be counted as memories. Nine days ago, eight days ago, perhaps even seven days ago, I might have remembered them; now they are fog. Thus goes almost all of life. Into the fog.

  Yet I do remember the first time I saw her. My vision was obscured, but the memory is still vivid. I was on a squash court, about to serve. My opponent looked exhausted; I was on the verge of winning the match. It was the nineteenth of September 1998 and I had been in Amsterdam for four days. My life had more or less collapsed that summer, but I had begun to sense, in the week or two before this, that the collapse had been necessary, and that it might even turn out to be for the best. At that moment, however, I was not thinking about anything other than the small green ball in my left hand, the slender-necked racket in my right, and the dimensions of the court in which I stood.

  As I swung my racket arm behind and above my head, I glanced - involuntarily, momentarily - towards the back wall, which was made of tinted glass. And there she was: standing alone, her hands on her hips, watching me. I would love to say it was her eyes (those windows to the soul) that made me react as I did; but we are talking milliseconds here, and a distance of at least two metres; we are talking dark glass. No, it wasn’t her eyes.

  It was her body. Of course it was. The shape of her body, the shortness of her skirt, the position in which she was standing. It was lust that made me miss my serve. It was self-consciousness that made me lose the game. And it was anger - as I watched a tall man I vaguely recognised bring her a drink and lead her away - that made me go on to win the match. Nine-one, in the final game. ‘Jesus,’ said Leon, my friend and opponent, as I finished wiping the floor with him, ‘what got into you?’

  In the showers, I asked Leon who she was. He told me her name. ‘She’s engaged to Robert Meijer: you know him, don’t you? Works on the Options Exchange. He’s a friend of Jorrit’s.’ The memory came back to me. Robert. Tall. Athletic. Handsome. Rich. Arrogant. He’d beaten me at squash two years ago, I recalled, when I was here on holiday. I had disliked him.

  Dried and dressed, Leon and I went to the bar. There were about a dozen people sitting around three tables, which had been pushed together. Some were friends of mine; the rest were friends of friends. Leon and I shook the hands or kissed the cheeks of everyone there. Ingrid was the last in line.

  Up close, I could see she was pretty, rather than beautiful; a creature of dawn, not dusk. She had dark blonde, shoulder-length hair, pulled back into a ponytail. Small features, like a child’s, and perfect skin, still tanned from the summer. Her skin had a kind of taut ripeness, a nectarine bloom, that made you want to touch her. She was wearing a bright, tight top (red, I think, though it may have been pink or orange) that revealed the muscles in her shoulders and upper arms and also the firm swell of her breasts. My first impression, I realised, had not been wrong. I really did want to have sex with her.

  She asked us who won. ‘He killed me,’ said Leon. Ingrid looked at me, her eyebrows raised, as I bent down to kiss her. ‘Really?’ My lips brushed her cheeks; they were soft and warm and smelled of summer fruit. ‘No, it was close,’ I said. ‘Do you play?’

  Robert came over then; he must have been listening. ‘Ingrid’s nationally ranked,’ he said. ‘She’d slaughter you.’ He shook my hand as he said this, and smiled. I smiled too. Ingrid, I noticed, did not. ‘That’s not true,’ she said. ‘You hit the ball really well. You just need a bit more patience.’

  ‘More patience?’

  It was at this point I noticed her eyes: a deep, chocolate brown, naked-looking; their gaze calm and direct. Perhaps I noticed a slight swelling in her pupils as the two of us stared at each other, or perhaps I’m only remembering what I wished to see? ‘Well, I wasn’t able to watch you very long, but it seemed to me that you were trying to win the points too quickly.’ Her voice was low and earnest, slightly husky, with that curiously lilting accent in which the Dutch pronounce English. ‘I think you just need to slow down, relax . . . let your opponent make the faults.’

  I took her advice. For the next hour, I smiled and nodded as Robert dominated the conversation. He kept one hand on Ingrid’s body all the time - her shoulder, her forearm, her knee - as though worried that if he stopped touching her for an instant she would float away, like a fairground balloon.

  My patience was rewarded. As we walked from the bar to a restaurant nearby, Robert said goodbye to us. He had a meeting in the morning and he didn’t want to be tired and hungover. ‘Some of us live in the real world,’ he said to me. Before he left he whispered something in Ingrid’s ear, then kissed her, possessively, on the mouth. She told me that night what he’d said: ‘Don’t get drunk.’ Ingrid wasn’t happy about this; she didn’t like being told what to do. In some way, I have Robert to thank for what happened; those three words opened a door that might otherwise have remained shut.

  We sat next to each other at dinner. This was, I suppose, partly chance and partly choice. Desire makes its own luck. I sat at the end of the table; on the other side of Ingrid was a loud, drunken man whom neither of us liked. As the evening went on, he said more and more stupid things, and the two of us smiled complicitly.

  ‘Who is that guy?’ I asked her, when he went to the toilet.

  ‘I don’t know his name. He’s a friend of Robert’s.’ She seemed to blush slightly.

  I said nothing, only nodded.

  It was a small, dark restaurant, lit mostly by candles. The food and music were Ethiopian. The wine was French. Ingrid drank white and I drank red. After the main course, she turned towards me and crossed her legs. I would have liked to spend more time admiring her thighs, but I couldn’t because her eyes were on mine. She was wearing nylon tights and I was wearing cotton trousers and I could feel the thin forcefield of static electricity each time she leaned forward and our calves touched. In the candlelight our faces smiled and talked, politely flirting . . . but in the unseen depths below, we were already half-merged, already intimate.

  We talked about squash, about friends in common, about Holland and England, about her job (she worked for the personnel department of a large computer firm), and about my current situation. I had, in the previous three months, quit my job, vacated my flat, bought a van, and emptied my bank account. My money was now in travellers’ cheques and my possessions w
ere in a rucksack. I was, I told her, going to explore the world, and I began listingthe cities and countries and continents where I wanted to go.

  She stared at me rapturously as I spoke. ‘God, I’m so jealous.’

  ‘Come with me if you like.’

  I said it lightly - not passionately, not seriously - but Ingrid didn’t laugh. She stared into my eyes for what seemed an age. ‘Don’t tempt me,’ she said quietly, looking away.

  Her face was turned towards the nearest candle; I could see its flame reflected in her eyes. The flickering looked like a hint of tears.

  ‘Why not?’

  I noticed she was fiddling with her engagement ring.

  ‘Because I might say yes.’

  And then she looked at me and smiled, and I knew she would never do anything so madly impulsive.

  ‘When do you leave?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  The others took cabs, but Ingrid said she was happy to walk home. It was a cool, clear night and her apartment wasn’t far. I was meant to be staying at Leon’s that evening, and his flat was only a few streets from hers. I said I would see her to the door.

  We walked in silence. This bothered me at the time, because I felt I was losing the momentum we had built up in the restaurant. I cast about my mind for things to say, but each time I opened my mouth to speak, I would look at Ingrid and she would smile, and whatever I was about to say would seem suddenly pointless, idiotic, wrong. (Afterwards I learned that she had already made up her mind to sleep with me by this point, that she was simply enjoying the moment: the taste of the night air; the sweet tension that precedes the first touch.)

  When we reached her apartment, I sighed and said, ‘Well . . .’ Either she didn’t hear me or she pretended she hadn’t heard me. She unlocked the front door, entered, and left it open. After staring at it in stupefaction for a few seconds, I followed her upstairs. By the time I got up to her apartment and closed the door behind me, she was already bare-legged (she had removed her tights and - unknown to me - her knickers) and was bending over in the kitchen, pouring a bowl of milk for the cat. For one strange moment, I wasn’t even sure that she knew I was there.

  Nervously, I said her name. She turned around and came towards me, a smile on her slightly parted lips.

  Of course this is all too neat to be true. What I am recounting is not what happened, but a story about what happened; a story I have told (to myself and others) many times before. In reality, for want of a better word, I cannot be sure of the exact sequence of events, never mind the precise words that were used in our dialogues. As for those little details - such as Ingrid playing with her engagement ring - well, they are, if not quite inventions, certainly embellishments. Ingrid did (does?) have a habit of playing with her jewellery, and she was, presumably, wearing the engagement ring that evening. But I have no memory of her playing with that particular ring on that particular evening, and certainly not at that particular moment in that particular conversation, if indeed it ever took place. So why, you may ask, use that detail? Because it’s a symbol, a shorthand for what seems (at this moment, from this viewpoint) a more general truth. And, if I’m honest, because it’s the kind of detail that you always find in written memoirs. Because it’s the kind of thing people expect you to remember.

  Ingrid and I had sex that night. Three times. In the morning she asked me what time I was going. I said I didn’t know. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘if you’re still in Amsterdam this evening, why don’t you give me a call?’ And then she went to work, leaving me to sleep in.

  I was still there when she got back. I had cleaned the apartment and made dinner. She laughed at the sight of me, and we started kissing. I told her I’d been thinking and I didn’t want to go away without her. ‘Oh,’ she said, looking very serious. ‘What are you going to do then?’

  ‘I thought I might kidnap you. Take you away in my rucksack.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound very comfortable.’

  ‘No. Well, maybe I could stay here, then?’

  ‘Uh-huh. And what about my fiancé?’

  ‘Tell him the wedding’s off.’

  She laughed. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Oh.’ A longish pause, while she looked at me curiously. ‘All right then.’

  And that was it.

  My life had changed in a day. I woke up as one person and went to bed as another.

  For a few weeks I was floating, and then slowly, without pain or disappointment, I glided back down to earth.

  What did I do in those first weeks? Not much, I suppose. Ingrid was at work during the days, so I spent a lot of time on my own. Mostly I explored the city, and savoured my happiness. The weather was good, I remember. On a typical day I would wake up early and make love with Ingrid, and then we would have breakfast together before she went to work and I went back to sleep. I adored those lazy mornings: the sweetly fucked-out sore spots on my body; the smell of Ingrid on the pillows and in the sheets; the taste of toast and coffee in my mouth; the stripes of sunlight painted on the walls and ceiling.

  Late in the morning I would get up and have a shower, then pack myself a picnic and go out. I could have used Ingrid’s bicycle, but I preferred to walk. Even with a map, I still got lost. (Amsterdam is a strange city, built in concentric circles. In The Fall, Camus suggests it is modelled on hell, but back then I found it closer to the other place. From the beginning I felt at home here: something in the tallness of the houses, the width of the streets, the gentle, country-like flow of the canals seemed to welcome me. Only now do I wonder if Camus was right . . . or perhaps we both were? Perhaps heaven and hell are the same place, and the name you give it depends upon the way you look at it.)

  I visited tourist sites as and when I found them, but usually I just wandered randomly, stopping off at cafés and bars, reading the Herald Tribune, daydreaming of Ingrid, and making notes in my diary. Most afternoons I wound up in the Vondelpark, among the nude sunbathers and potsmokers. I watched them with sympathy and amusement. Personally, I didn’t need to take anything to get high; every breath of air left me quietly euphoric. I could-n’t believe how beautiful the world was, and how few people seemed to notice this. I couldn’t believe I would ever not be happy again.

  At the same time, I became increasingly aware, as the days passed, that I could not continue like this indefinitely. I felt no personal need to work, and Ingrid never complained about paying for me, but deep down I felt the situation was unsustainable. Just one more day, I told myself, and then I’ll start looking for a job. And then, the next day, I said the same thing. While the good weather held and Ingrid continued to seem happy, I simply prevaricated. I rode my luck. Thus it was the third week of October before I finally turned my attention to the matter of earning money.

  I discussed it with Ingrid and we made a list of the different kinds of jobs I might look for. Like everything else, we turned this into a game. Journalism was out because all the local newspapers were in Dutch, and anyway I had no desire to re-enter that door, with all the half-forgotten horrors that lay behind it. I considered being a postman or a tram driver or a park attendant, but such work was sought-after and unlikely to go to a foreigner. I also thought of shop and pub and factory jobs, but these I had done before and hated. What I wanted was something simple and undemanding, but not so dumbly repetitive that I would be bored out of my brains and paid a pittance. Finally Ingrid mentioned her uncle Johann, who co-owned a small building company. I met up with him the next evening. After a couple of beers and a lengthy discussion about football, he agreed to take me on for a three-month trial.

  After that, the days passed more quickly and less strangely. I picked up some Dutch, mostly swear words and names of tools. I wrote to my parents and a few friends, giving them my new address. I joined a local five-a-side football team and played every Friday in a nearby leisure centre. I began to enj
oy the subtle differences between life in London and in Amsterdam: breakfasts of chocolate and cheese; pubs that didn’t close until dawn; the way strangers sometimes smiled at you in the street.

  The job was not much more than company dogsbody - I made the coffee in the morning and afternoon; did some heavy lifting; held things in place while others measured and sawed and drilled - until one day, halfway through my trial period, I was given a roller, a brush and several tins of white emulsion, and told to paint a wall. It was a leaning wall, with exposed beams; the inside of a large attic flat. Though this was not the most difficult of jobs, my colleagues were impressed with how well I did it. It turned out I had a talent for painting walls. Not only that, but I enjoyed it. Indeed, this is one of my clearest and happiest memories: the first attic that I painted white. I was on my own; the rest of the crew were working on the lower floors. It was a dry, blue-skied November, and the attic had two huge velux windows, facing south. I remember the dazzling light in there; the heat of the sun through glass on the back of my neck; the faintly intoxicating smell of emulsion; the sound of an Amsterdam pop station coming from the little paint-flecked transistor radio. (Certain songs, on heavy rotation at the time, take me back in an instant to that attic: ‘Right Here Right Now’ by Fat-boy Slim and ‘Believe’ by Cher are the ones that come to mind.) I remember how physically tired I felt at the end of each working day; how wonderful a cold beer tasted at six o’clock; how much I loved kissing Ingrid and stripping off her work clothes; how well we slept, the two of us, after sex, as if we’d been drugged.

  This was a time of absolute optimism for me. I thought about the present and felt happy. I thought about the future and my mind was as blank and light as the walls that I painted. I never, ever thought about the past. As far as I was concerned, the past was done and dusted. It didn’t exist.

  At Christmas I went back to England, filled the van with my belongings, and took the ferry to Amsterdam. I celebrated New Year with Ingrid, and after that an impossible whim turned slowly into normal life.