A Traitor to Memory

Not someone else Katja knows? you ask. Not someone from the outside?

Who? Katja knows no one, Dr. Rose. She sees no one but the nun from the convent and a girl who comes to call now and then, a girl called Katie. And this isn't Katie out here in the darkness because I remember Katie, Good God I remember Katie now because she's fat and she's funny and she dresses with flair and she talks in the kitchen when Katja feeds Sonia and she says that Katja's escape from East Berlin was a metaphor for an organism only it wasn't organism that she said at all, it was orgasm, wasn't it, which is all she ever talks about.

Gideon, you say to me, who was the man? Look at the shape of him, look at his hair.

Her hands cover his head. He's bent to her anyway. I can't see his hair.

Can't or won't? Which is it, Gideon? Is it can't or won't?

I can't. I can't.

Have you seen the lodger? Your father? Your grandfather? Raphael Robson? Who is it, Gideon?

I DON'T KNOW.

And Libby reached for me then, reached her hands down, did what a normal woman does when she's aroused and wants to share her arousal. She laughed a breathless sort of laugh, said, “I can't even believe we're doing this in your car,” and eased my belt out of its buckle, unfastened it, unbuttoned my trousers, put her fingers on the zipper, brought her mouth back to mine.

And there was nothing within me, Dr. Rose. No hunger, no thirst, no heat, no longing. No pulse of blood to awaken my lust, no throbbing in the veins to harden my cock.

I grabbed Libby's hands. I didn't need to make an excuse or say anything else to her. She may be American—a little loud at times, a little vulgar, a little too casual, too friendly, and too forthright—but she isn't a fool.

She pushed herself off me and got back in her seat. “It's me, isn't it?” she said. “I'm too fat for you.”





“Don't be an idiot.”





“Don't call me an idiot.”





“Don't act like one.”





She turned to the window. It was steaming up. Light from the square diffracted through the steam and cast a muted glow against her cheek. Round, the cheek looked, and I could see the colour in it, the flush of a peach as it grows and ripens. The despair I felt—for myself, for her, for the two of us together—was what made me continue. “You're fine, Libby. You're one hundred percent. You're perfect. It isn't you.”





“Then what? Rock? It's Rock. It's that we're still married. It's that you know what he does to me, don't you? You've figured it out.”





I didn't know what she was talking about, and I didn't want to know. I said, “Libby, if you haven't realised by now that there's something wrong with me—something seriously wrong—”





And at that, she got out of the car. She shoved the door open and slammed it shut, and she did what she never does. She shouted. “Nothing is wrong with you, Gideon! Do you hear me? Nothing is fucking wrong with you!”





I got out as well, and we faced each other over the bonnet of the car. I said, “You know that you're lying to yourself.”





“I know what's before my eyes. And what's before my eyes is you.”





“You've heard me try to play. You've sat in your flat and heard me. You know.”





“The violin? Is that what this is all about, Gid? The God damn cock-sucking violin?” She smashed her fist against the car's bonnet so hard that I started. She cried, “You are not the violin. Playing music is what you do. It is not—and has never been—who you are.”





“And if I can't play? What happens then?”





“Then you live, all right? You God damn start living. How about that for a profound idea?”





“You don't understand.”





“I understand plenty. I understand that you've got yourself, like, all hooked into being Mr. Violin. You've spent so many years scratching at the strings that you don't have any other identity. Why are you doing it? What's it s'posed to prove? Will your dad, maybe, love you enough if you play till your fingers bleed or something?” She swung away from the car and away from me. “Like, why am I even bothering, Gideon?”





She began striding towards the house and I followed her, which was when I saw that the front door was open and that someone was standing on the front steps and probably had been standing there since Libby had parked the car in the square. She saw him at that same moment that I did and for the first time I caught on her face an expression telling me she held an aversion to him that was as strong as—if not stronger than—the one my father held for her.

“Then perhaps it's time you stopped bothering,” Dad said. His voice was quite pleasant, but his eyes were steel.

GIDEON





20 October, 10:00 P.M.

Dad said, “Charming girl. Does she always shriek like a fishwife in the square, or was that something special this evening?”





“She was upset.”