Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2014

by Penny Publications

  He nodded, fingers flicking through the papers. "Of course." He looked up. "We wouldn't be able to use the memory evidence for authentication purposes if we couldn't."

  "Provenance," cuts in my wife Lillie, reading it off the brochure's front page. "That's what you're interested in?"

  "Yes, exactly." He stopped, assessed our faces. "Do you know much about the art world?"

  "No," I said, though I knew it would annoy Lillie—she hates to look uncultured. Still, I needed to understand this. The auction house had been a little coy on the phone as to what exactly they were looking for.

  "Provenance is proving a painting is real, isn't that right? Not a forgery. That's what you're interested in." Lillie folded her hands in her lap. I was impressed. Maybe all those senior trips to museums had paid off.

  The rep tilted his head a little, back and forth. "Well, technically authentication is the process of proving a painting is by a given artist. Provenance is only one part of the authentication."

  "How about looking at the signature? Can't you just do that?" I was feeling ornery, I admit it. Then again, I was the one due to have the contents of his brain projected on the wall. Wasn't I owed a little leeway?

  He smiled, conciliatory. "The signature—the attribution—is part of the authentication. Along with brushwork, style, choice of paints—all these things are considered." He leaned forward. "Provenance, though, is needed for a painting to be accepted as an official oeuvre."

  "Luck, you mean?" I ask just to be difficult. "God's will? By the hand of provenance?"

  "That's provi dence," he said, no annoyance visible at all. Professional. I appreciated that. "This is prove nance. It means who owned the picture. An unbroken provenance is best: the artist sold the painting to this person, who hung it in their house for so many years, and then it was sold to this other person—"

  "Whose house are you interested in? What ownership?" my wife asked, but I already knew. There was only one person my mother had known who was famous. Only one they would be interested in.

  "Freud," I said. "You want to know if I saw a particular painting on Freud's wall." The rep smiled. "That," he said, "is exactly right."

  We visited Peter right after that. Rolling hills, green lawns, soft-voiced aides; the Salday Home for Advanced Autism offered a pretty sweet deal from what I could see. I wouldn't talk either, if it meant losing my spot here.

  I hadn't chosen this place, of course. Peter is my sister Elsie's son. Ten years younger than me and Elsie kicks the bucket first. I'm the guardian now. A parent, at my age.

  We strolled down the pathway, Peter dawdling behind to look at god knew what. Had to be a couple of thousand dollars worth of tulips alone out here, I judged. Heck, who wouldn't be serene, surrounded by this much pricy vegetation?

  "Looks like all that money from my memories is going to find a nice home if we keep paying for this place," I said. "Bet it'll be happy. Lots of other greenbacks to play with."

  "I think it's nice here," Lillie said. That was as close to arguing as Lillie would ever come.

  She doesn't understand autism, though. Not like I do.

  I was autistic. Seen by Hans Asperger in his little clinic school in Vienna. Worse than Peter, even: I couldn't talk at all.

  But I learned how. It took a damn bad scare to force the words out of me, I knew. Coddling didn't work and never would. They don't understand that here.

  That's okay. My guardianship, my money, my decision where Peter goes. I'll find a place that can give him that kick in the pants he really needs.

  "Think about Freud," the tech said as he flicked on the projector.

  The Sotheby's office was all low light and nice reproductions up front. Back here the rooms turned clinical: stainless steel shelving, the tang of disinfectant, dentist-type chairs.

  Fine with me. Anything involving my brain ought to be as lint-free as possible, I figured.

  The room they deposited us in had a Monet theme. Water-flowers, bridges, sunsets, that kind of thing. Could have been worse. We'd passed a Frida Kahlo room two doors back. Who could concentrate with those eyebrows looming over you?

  The tech got me in the chair and gooed my head up, for good conduction. Then he stuck a couple hundred electrodes all over my head. Not painful, just a little itchy, and of course you weren't allowed to scratch.

  "Okay," the tech said. "Lean back and get comfortable. You can close your eyes and remember or you can watch what's on the screen. Whatever makes you most comfortable."

  Freud.Beard, glasses, suits, think. I frowned.

  "Don't try to force it. Just relax." Memories flickered in and out. The screen flashed, image after image, jumbled as a rummage sale. A bike. A desk. That first apartment in New York.

  "What if he can't remember Freud's house? He was so young. Could those memories be gone?" Lillie's voice almost had that old lady waver, worried.

  "It's all in there. Try to pull up some sensory details. Where were you living? What did it look like, feel like, smell like? Start there."

  A tiny panic seized me. I was already counting on the money for Peter. Still, I'd been so young then. What if I couldn't remember anything?

  Vienna coffee, Vienna sausages, Vienna Nazis. Everything was overlain with my American self, American associations.

  Gluh-wein. I remembered the smell of that: cinnamon and cloves and steaming heat. Forbidden for little kids, of course, and Mother never drank it either. Still, the town squares were full of the scent of it all winter.

  Finally, the picture settled. I watched as a small yard came into focus, looking down from above. A blond kid—me—lay on his back on the grass, sleeping in the shadow of a tree.

  Lillie cooed. "You're so cute. And so much hair!"

  "That's not you on the grass," the tech said. "It's a memory. We're seeing through your eyes. You must be in the tree."

  Lillie looked at me. She knows when I disagree even if I keep my mouth completely shut. "I've seen pictures. It looks just like him."

  The tech shrugged. "Did you have a brother? Or cousin? Or someone. Memories are just like seeing—you see what's around you, not yourself."

  I didn't bother to argue. The guy was just a tech—what would he know about autism? I was like that before they put me to the test. I always saw myself from the outside. I remember that, clear as day.

  "Where are you?"

  "Home. That's our house in Vienna."

  "That's okay, just keep going. Get settled into this, get your brain working on the right time period."

  While we watched, my mother banged out of the house. So young, hair still brown, face unlined. Half the age I am right now, that's what she was then. Another woman not much different in appearance charged out after her, screaming something in German.

  "What are they saying?"

  I shook my head, listening, letting the feel of the language f low over me. The woman kept yelling, something about a child. About wanting my mother to take her child. About how they'd taken his father away and the kid was next and my mother had to help her.

  I would have crumbled in the face of need like that. It wasn't going to work on my mother, though. I knew that before I even watched my mom shake her head no, no, no. Woman had a heart of stone.

  Decades ago, all of this, but still I felt sorry for the other lady. The poor woman's face was blotched, her nose swollen, her whole face sore-looking, like she'd cried and cleaned up and cried and cleaned up so many times that she might as well have scrubbed her face with salt.

  "What's she saying?" Lillie stared back and forth between the screen and me.

  My mother started talking now. She pointed to me, still lying under the tree, mouth open as if I expected a plum to fall in it.

  I listened a little more. "She says that boy—me—is going to be killed too, unless I start talking. She's saying the other woman's son might have a Jewish dad but at least he's normal."

  Lillie's mouth opened. I held up my hand to stop her. I wanted to hear a little
more. Who knew all of this was in me? All those people, long dead, and here they were, jabbering away in my head like they were still alive.

  "Is that true?" Lillie had reached out a hand and grabbed mine. "They would have killed you?"

  "The memory's true, sure." The tech pointed to the edge of the picture on the screen. "See the black border? That means it's true. False memories don't have that."

  Lillie tipped her head. "A border?"

  "Well, that's just how the program encodes it. It's a marker for where the memory is stored—true memories have an occipital lobe component, among other things. Different neurochemicals as well."

  "Where it's stored. What wall of the brain it's hanging on, where the little memory pictures have been all this time, you mean?" I couldn't help but laugh. "Sounds like provenance to me."

  "I guess." The tech gave a waiter's smile. Humor the old guy: might as well have had that written on his forehead. "Anyway, you've done great for a first session. Didn't really expect to get to Freud today."

  Just as well, I figured. It'd give me time to brush up on my German before the next time. I could have sworn my mother called the woman her sister. Couldn't be right, though. I don't have an aunt.

  The Fieldfind Institute. Okay—it was bleak. I admitted that to myself but at least they wouldn't waste my money on frou-frou bulbs and flowers. Serious—that's all it was. Not evil.

  "That's not the most horrible place I've ever seen." Lillie took my hand as we walked back to the car.

  I knew what that meant—talk about other people living in your brain. After fifty-two years, we probably owned a lobe's worth of each other's brain cells. "You hated it."

  She raised one elegant shoulder. "I wouldn't put you in there."

  That was the point, I didn't say. I didn't need to be there. I didn't need to be shocked into talking.

  Been there, done that.

  It didn't bother me how she felt today. I'd prove I was right, show her exactly how it happened, projected straight out of the past and onto the small screen.

  Peter needed to be challenged. Knocked out of his silence and no apology needed for the one who did the knocking.

  He'd thank me himself. I knew it.

  New room at Sotheby's this time—Jackson Pollock splatters on the walls—but the chair and the goo and the electrodes were the same. Same tech too.

  This time I slipped right into it. Closed my eyes and I was there, four years old, my hand in my mother's. We were walking up to what looked like a manor house, all tan stone and impressive windows. A clock-tower stood in the courtyard, just begging to be climbed on, but she tugged me past it without a word.

  "What's this place?" the tech asked.

  "Hospital." I felt sure of that. In my mind, it smelled like disinfectant.

  The tech clicked his computer, skimmed through the reference pics that popped up on his screen. "You're right. Steinhof Hospital. The children's part—Spielgrund." He clicked a little more, enthusiasm deflating. "Don't see that Freud worked there."

  On the memory screen, other children were being brought in. Spastics and idiots, me included, that's what the Nazis must have seen when they looked at us. No one to play with is all I seemed to see.

  A bunch of corridors and then we went into a place labeled the Psychiatric-Neurologic clinic. I sat next to my mother on a bench, looking scared. She'd told me all about how important it was I talk a lot to the doctor. I remember that.

  That was all that happened for a long time, except for other kids getting called into other rooms. The tech fidgeted worse than any of the kids while this all played out. That gave me a kick.

  Finally, on the screen, they called me in. The doctor was a woman—Dr. Turk—and she chatted with my mother before sending her back outside to wait.

  Butterflies fluttered in my stomach, even though I knew it was necessary, knew it's why I have the life I do today.

  "I've read about this," Lillie said. "If they decided you were autistic, mentally challenged, a mute, they would send you off to be gassed."

  The examination proceeded on the screen. Shirt off, pants off, listen to my heart, everything in silence except for orders—breathe in, breathe out, lean forward, lean back—from the doctor.

  Finally, the doctor stopped and told me to get dressed again. I did. She said I'd done very well and was healthy enough to go to camp at Hartheim Castle. She said there'd be lots of other children there and sunshine and fine activities and asked if I'd like to go.

  "No," I said on the screen. The words pound inside my head even now. "I don't. I want to go home with Mother."

  The doctor reared back at that and we had a long conversation about this and that, stupid childish things but triumph surged through me all the while.

  That's me, talking for the first time, I thought. My mother must have told that story a hundred times. I practically had it memorized but it was nice to see it on the screen. True, too—it had that nice black border.

  Then the doctor and I went out and she talked to my mother about Asperger's clinic school, which I attended. I don't remember him at all to be honest, which is a pity because he's gotten so famous I can't help wondering if he had any important pictures in his place. My mother said yes, Asperger was a miracle worker, look at what he did for her boy. I was speaking so well, had grown out of that old quiet phase, was a lovely normal son now.

  On the way out, my hand back in my mother's, we passed a line of buses with their windows blacked out. I knew what those were for and even now it gave me a sick little jolt to see them.

  But I didn't have to get on them. I could go home and have a life. I talked because I had to.

  They showed me pictures of Freud's place in Vienna, to jog my memory and get me moving in the right direction. Berggasse 19 was the address. I couldn't help snorting when I saw the big curved entryway at his place—talk about phallic images.

  It came back to me though after that. A few minutes later the memory screen showed what the tech enthusiastically agreed was the inside of Freud's apartment, on the second floor.

  The tech tried to zoom in on the wall pictures. I looked at the woman. It wasn't my mother. It was the other woman, the one my mother argued with in the yard.

  The thing was, this other woman kept calling me her son. She asked Freud to take me—her son—with him to London.

  He can't, he's sorry. The English had papers for him but not for anyone else. He admired her husband, he's very sorry they took him away, dangerous time to be politically active, but he wouldn't worry too much. He's sure the Nazis won't kill her son—me?—just because his father was Jewish.

  All that time, the tech was panning around the memory room. A mirror here, a photo there, but nothing that looked like a painting by Hitler, apparently.

  My heart raced, though. The woman's face—it reminded me of my mother's face in that old false death memory.

  Hard to tell for sure. Dead faces look different from living ones.

  On the screen, the woman who called herself my mother talked about her sister. Said she fled here to Vienna to hide with her sister. Said her sister's child was afflicted and mute and they were going to kill him too. Said she has a plan.

  A plan and a can, basically. Something about how everyone warned you about eating badly canned food. She knew just what a bad jar looked like. Knew it could kill you in an instant.

  She also said if she were dead, her sister would have to take me. Hoped there'd be transference, just like Freud himself always talked about. Her sister would love me like a son in the end.

  All this time Freud took notes. Probably thought it was hysteric nonsense. Probably wondered where the penises came in.

  "The right picture's not there," the tech said finally.

  I begged to disagree. My heart was seizing up, but I could see the whole picture now.

  We were back in the Vienna house, inside this time.

  "You have to be quiet." The woman I always thought was my mother was in the bedroom ta
lking to the boy who wasn't me. We look very alike but it wasn't me.

  That was my aunt, I thought. Not my mother. My mother was the one with Freud. The one with the plan to save her son. It went well, I guess. At least, she made her sister take me.

  I was in the front room. It was spare and clean and somewhat empty.

  "There's a nurse coming," my aunt said from the bedroom. "You have to be very, very quiet and stay where I put you."

  I got up to see what was going on. I peered around the corner. The boy who wasn't me was sitting on the bed. She must have let him out of the closet—that occurred to me, remembering this—and he'd finally stopped screaming. He was sitting on the bed. On the bedside table there was a jar of mushrooms. My aunt forked one out and gave it to the boy.

  After a while, she covered him with a blanket, face and all. She sat back down and stared for a while and then she saw me and stood up. She came over and took me back to the front room.

  "What else could I do?" She said this after we'd been sitting on the sofa for a while. Her face was white and stark and her eyes looked terrible.

  She talked to me for a while. I was eating bread, stuffing my face with it, not listening. Her words still made it into my brain, obviously. All these years later and I can hear it now.

  "I couldn't hide him," she said. "How can you hide a boy like that? He screams and screams if I leave him alone. He couldn't stand to be anywhere small and dark, wouldn't understand that was the only way to keep him safe."

  She was justifying herself to a four-year-old. On screen, long ago and far away, I kicked my feet.

  "I only have papers for one boy. I'll clean things up here after the nurse visits and then we'll go to Munich. We'll be safe with Karl's relatives. This is the way it had to be." She went on like that, outlining a plan to a kid. A good plan. It worked, after all.

  "Nothing else?" The tech's disappointment was palpable. No shock or horror though—I don't think he caught what happened.

  On the memory screen, there was a knock on the door. My not-mother—my aunt, admit it—stopped talking to me, opened the door, invited the nurse in. The nurse gave me a toy. I babbled on about it, thrilled.