“Good thing, yes. But there’s something I don’t understand. Why did you wait for me to die three times before calling to see if it really happened? Why didn’t you call right after the traffic accident?”
“Now that I have enough experience with multiple pasts, I know that one bad incident is still no cause for alarm. But three at short intervals is.”
“Well, with me it was a false alarm.”
“Maybe not quite. Such a frequency of detrimental threads usually indicates that you are currently more exposed to danger than usual. You should be on your guard.”
“Thanks for the warning. I’ll be on my guard. As much as I possibly can, of course.
“Yes. It isn’t easy to be on your guard when you don’t have any idea of what the danger is.”
“You can call me in a few days to see if everything’s all right. I guess the danger will have passed by then.”
The voice on the other end went silent. When he spoke again, it sounded like very distant thunder.
“I’d rather not call anymore.”
“Why?” I asked in bewilderment.
“I only called now with great reluctance.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Not just one thread of the past is real. Any one of them could be. When I call you the next time, you might have a past behind you where you weren’t lucky. I can’t put you at risk.”
It took me a little while to accept this.
“I’m sorry I won’t be hearing from you again.”
“That’s the curse of surplus memory. You lose those you care about. To protect them.
“What kind of life is it without those you care about?”
“It’s hard. Maybe I’ll go back to The Magic Mountain. I’ll be an unusual patient for another reason too. I’ll ask them to speed up and not slow down the senility.”
“Saved by oblivion.”
“Yes. Enjoy what poor memory you have. You can’t imagine what a blessing it is.”
“Farewell, dear friend.”
“I’d like to be able say the same thing, but I’ll run into you in other threads of the past. At least for a while. So for me it’s better to say—until we meet again.”
9. The Book of Laugher and Forgetting
Although I was the only person at the bar, the new customer sat down on the stool next to mine. I glanced at him briefly. He was short, solidly built. Early fifties. Sharp, even coarse features. His disheveled hair was already thin and receding. He didn’t even unbutton his coat with the collar turned up, even though it was warm in the bar.
The barman came up to him.
“What’ll you have?”
“The same as him,” he said, gesturing towards me.
The barman nodded and went off.
The man apparently needed someone to talk to. But I didn’t feel like talking, particularly not to a stranger. I’d come to this place, which I’m not in the habit of doing, because I wasn’t in the mood for company.
The barman placed a round white napkin in front of the new customer and placed a mug on it capped by a frothy dome of white foam. Then he went to the other end of the bar.
The man must have been really thirsty since he drank almost half the mug in one go. When he placed it next to mine, they looked like twins.
“It’s really windy tonight,” he said, smoothing his hair. He stared straight ahead at the wall covered with bottles on the other side of the bar. The muted bar light coming from invisible sources twinkled off the multicolored glass.
“Windy,” I replied dryly, also staring ahead.
“It wasn’t easy to find you,” he added after a short silence.
I turned my head toward the irregular lines of his profile.
“Why would you be looking for me? Have we met before?”
“No. But I know a lot about you.”
My eyes went back to the bottles.
“What do you know about me?”
“I know, for example, why you’re alone here in this bar.”
“Really? Why am I alone?”
“To forget.”
“You don’t have to know me to reach that conclusion. Why else would someone be alone in a bar unless it was to forget?”
“I know what you’re trying to forget.”
“Tell me.”
“Her death.”
“Who are you?”
“We’ll get to that. No death makes any sense. Particularly not this one. If that old lady’s dog hadn’t pulled the leash free and dashed across the street, if the young man had been a more skillful driver, if the girl hadn’t been standing on the curb next to the wet roadway, waiting for you—if none of that had happened, you wouldn’t be in this bar trying to forget. But nonsensical coincidence shapes our lives.”
“It’s no coincidence that you’re here.”
“No, it isn’t. You loved her a lot, didn’t you? She wasn’t one of your many fleeting adventures, but probably your last great love. Forbidden love, all the same, and all the fiercer for it. How many years separated the professor and his student? A quarter of a century?”
I didn’t reply immediately, gazing at his broken reflection in the bottles.
“Twenty-three years,” I said softly, as though exonerating myself.
“You should certainly have been at the funeral instead of hiding in the background. Your presence would have started tongues wagging, but they would soon have stopped. Your absence earned a scorn that will stay with you a long time.”
“Who hired you? The University? What’s the point in hiring a private detective now that it’s all over? What do you want from me? To admit that there was something going on between us? That’s not a secret anymore. If they want to fire me because of it, I’ll turn in my resignation.”
“I know you better than any private detective could. I know things about you that you’d like to block out of your memory.”
“Really? For example?”
“This isn’t the first time that coincidence played harshly with your life. On that November evening long ago, if you’d gone home at your usual time you would have found your wife still alive. Most likely the doctors would have been able to save her, even though she’d taken almost a full bottle of sleeping pills. But you’d been detained.”
I lifted the mug and drank two fingers of foamless beer. He did the same. Identical twins were back on the counter.
“I’d just gotten my teaching job. I couldn’t refuse the head of the department’s invitation to have a drink after work. It was an honor for me. And why should I have refused him? I didn’t suspect a thing.”
“But you knew your wife was going through a crisis. She was a hypochondriac. She imagined that she was suffering from an incurable disease. She’d told you she was terribly afraid of the suffering she thought was in store for her.”
“Nevertheless, I couldn’t imagine that this unfounded fear would push her to take her own life.”
“It wasn’t fear that pushed her to commit suicide.”
I turned toward him again. He stayed in the same position, without returning my look.
“So what was it?”
“What she said in her suicide note.”
Neither of us talked for several moments.
“There wasn’t any suicide note.”
“Of course there was. You destroyed it physically, but not in your memory. If you make a little effort, you’ll remember every word in it. She was a hypochondriac, but also a jealous woman. And that is a highly volatile combination. She found out you were flirting with the wife of one of your colleagues.”
I reached for the mug again but didn’t pick it up.
“You won’t be able to blackmail me. You don’t have solid proof. No one will believe that story. Too much time has passed since then anyway.”
“I’m not going to blackmail you. But your memory will. It’s the merciless blackmailer of your conscience. You won’t find any bar that can offer the solace of forgetting. And as far as time i
s concerned, there’s no statute of limitations in your memory. Not even for long-ago events. Like the one when you weren’t even five years old.”
I started to drink the rest of my beer slowly, as though this could postpone the inevitable. He waited for me to put the mug back on the counter before continuing. The mugs before us were no longer identical.
“She jumped into the river without a second thought when you got caught in the whirlpool. Although she was a girl and therefore weaker, she managed somehow to push you towards the shore. Then the whirlpool reached her. Petrified, you watched your twin sister disappear into it.”
“What could I have done?” I asked, my voice barely audible. “If I’d tried to save her, both of us would have drowned.”
“Perhaps. But that thought hadn’t stopped her from rushing to your aid.”
“She was braver.”
“Remembering is the price of cowardice.”
“But that’s my memory. How do you know it? Who are you, anyway?”
The barman came up to us and took my mug.
“Another one?”
I stared at him blankly, as though not understanding the question.
“No, thank you,” I finally replied.
After he’d moved away, the customer turned towards me for the first time and looked me in the eye.
“I’m someone who also has problems with his memories.”
“I don’t know what your problems are, but I wish they didn’t include me. It’s quite unpleasant to find that someone else shares your memories.”
“I’ve only been sharing them recently. Since this morning.”
“Since this morning?”
“Yes, since this morning. Yesterday I didn’t know anything about you. Not even that you existed.”
“Then how . . . ?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “No one knows. They don’t even have a name for my disorder. Let alone a cure. Nothing like it has ever been recorded.”
“Disorder?”
“Yes. It appeared without any apparent cause. I simply woke up one morning three months and eleven days ago with a double memory. Mine and someone else’s.”
“Whose?”
“Someone I didn’t know. At first I thought it was just an illusion. But the memories were very vivid and convincing. Real. I followed the trail of the memories and found the man they belonged to. It wasn’t difficult because I knew as much about him as he did himself. Some things I even remembered better.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. At first I kept my distance. I was too confused. And then when I got used to it, I started going up to people whose memories seemed particularly gloomy. Like yours.”
“Why?”
His lips twisted momentarily into a grotesque smile.
“For some sort of balance. If I have to put up with warped memories, then those who burden me with them should at least know about it.”
“But that’s not fair. We aren’t to blame for your double memory. We’re its victims too. That’s not balance, that’s sadistic abuse. You might come to harm because of it. Particularly since you know too many secrets.”
“No, I don’t.”
“What do you mean, you don’t?”
“When I wake up tomorrow morning, I won’t know anything about you anymore. Just like I didn’t yesterday. All that I will remember, and it will be vague, is that I had a superficial conversation with a stranger in a bar. The double memory only lasts from one night’s sleep to the next.”
We looked at each other in silence for several moments.
“If only I could forget that easily,” I said, breaking the silence.
He picked up his mug and finished his beer. He took a bill out of his coat pocket, put it on the bar top, and got up.
“If only I had just one memory to deal with.”
10. Fahrenheit 451
When I opened my eyes, it was like I’d been submerged in milk. An undefined, amorphous whiteness surrounded me on all sides. I stared at it emptily for a while until my eyes focused enough to make out where I was: lying in a bed without a frame, like a sort of catafalque, in the middle of a small square room. There was nothing else in it. The walls and high ceiling were covered with immaculate white padding. A bright light from an invisible source increased the glare of the whiteness. I squinted to protect my eyes from snow blindness.
Then something broke the monotony. Part of the wall to the left of the bed started moving as though giant scissors had cut three sides of a rectangle that was swinging towards the interior of the room. The man had already stepped inside when I finally realized it was a door, although nothing had indicated it was there.
He was short, stout and balding, with a bushy moustache and ruddy cheeks. He was wearing a white coat and gloves, and the file under his arm was white as well. He closed the door and came up to the head of the bed, smiling.
“How are you?” he asked in a deep voice that was better suited to a taller man.
“Confused,” I replied after hesitating briefly.
“That’s natural. Do you feel nauseous? Do you feel like vomiting?”
I gave it some thought.
“No.”
“Wonderful. With your permission.”
He placed the file on my stomach and slightly raised the white sheet that covered me up to my chin. It was not until he’d unfastened the strap around my right forearm that I realized I was restrained.
“Why am I strapped down?” I asked when he started to unfasten the straps around my ankles.
“For your own good,” he replied tersely, as though this explained everything.
“And this one?” I said, indicating the broad belt that went across my chest.
“We’ll leave that one a little longer. Also for your own good. Don’t try to stand up. You’re still weak. Your head might start to spin.”
“Where am I?”
“In a hospital.”
I looked at his smiling, robust face for several moments in silence.
“Why am I in a hospital?”
“You had trouble with your memory.”
“I don’t recall ever having trouble with my memory.”
“I know. That’s why you’re here, because you don’t remember. We have yet to establish what you do remember.”
He picked up the file and opened it.
“I’d like to ask you a few questions. I hope you don’t mind.”
“I don’t.”
“Wonderful. So, let’s begin. Do you remember committing a crime and being punished for it?”
I thought it over.
“No.”
He looked at me inquisitively over the file.
“Did I commit a crime?” I asked softly.
“You didn’t if you have no memory of it. That’s one of the privileges of forgetting. It relieves even the nastiest conscience.” He lowered his eyes to the file. “Let’s go on. Does the ‘Little Shop of Memories’ antique store mean anything to you?”
I shook my head.
“You didn’t go there once to buy something under the counter? Something you had to have so you could go on painting?”
“I don’t remember that I ever painted.”
“A person can forget that he was a painter, but not how to paint. If you’d been a painter, it would come back as soon as you stood in front of a canvas. Forgetfulness is powerless before art. Let’s continue. Did an unusual traveling salesman ever knock on your door? He had colorful brochures that offered a variety of pasts.”
“How can you sell pasts?”
“You can sell anything if there’s a buyer for it. The past, the future, hope. The more surreal the merchandise, the greater the demand. So, do you remember such a salesman?”
“No.”
“All right. Does a girl in a light blue summer dress mean anything to you?”
“Should it mean something to me?”
“You are the only one who can tell me. Imagine her sitting in a park reading a b
ook, and you walk past her.”
“I can imagine a girl dressed like that reading in a park, but not myself. I can’t remember what I look like at all.”
“That’s to be expected in your state. It’s easiest to forget what is most familiar. Your own face, for example. But don’t worry about that. Usually looking in a mirror is enough to remember yourself. Here’s another question. Did you ever sell rare works of literature? Sole copies of manuscripts?”
“I don’t think I did,” I replied after a moment’s thought. “At least not that I remember.”
“Did you ever search for the mortal remains of great writers?”
“Why would I do that? How utterly morbid.”
“It is utterly morbid. But utterly lucrative too.” He turned over the sheet of paper in the file. “Did you ever try to sell someone your memory?”
“Who would want to buy my memory?”
“It’s the same as with the past. There’s a buyer for everything. The gloomier the memory, the higher the price.”
I smiled. “I doubt that anyone would give a plugged nickel for my current memory. It’s so dark that you can’t see anything inside it.”
“Well, you never know. Be patient, maybe we’ll find some light inside it. Let’s try this. Did you ever meet a man who takes on other people’s bad memories?”
“Does someone like that exist?”
“Yes, he does. The world isn’t as dark as it seems. So you don’t remember meeting such a person?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“All right. Did you ever get a phone call from a friend of yours suffering from surplus memory?”
“Surplus memory?”
“Yes. I realize with your memory loss that might seem like bragging, but it’s no bed of roses when you have more memory than you need. It usually goes hand in hand with losing your friends.” He turned over another sheet of paper in the file. “This is the last question. Did a stranger ever come up to you in a bar and tell you that he was sharing your memory that day?”
“That day?”
“Yes. From the moment he woke up that morning until he went to bed that night.”
“I don’t remember ever going to bars.”
“People usually go there to forget.”
“I’d rather go some place where I could remember.”
Impossible Stories II Page 23