A Traitor to Memory

Raphael did his daily duty by me today, but instead of sitting in the music room and waiting for a miracle to happen, we walked down to Regent's Park and strolled through the zoo. One of the elephants was being hosed off by a keeper, and we paused by the enclosure and watched as sheets of water cascaded down the side of the enormous creature. Sprouts of hair along the elephant's backbone bristled like wires as the water hit them, and the animal shifted its weight as if trying to gain its footing.

“Odd, aren't they?” Raphael said. “One wonders about the design philosophy behind the elephant. When I see a biological oddity like this, I'm always sorry that I don't know more about evolution. How, for example, did something like an elephant develop out of the primordial muck?”





“He's probably thinking the same of us.” I'd noticed upon Raphael's arrival that he was decidedly good-humoured. And he'd been the one to suggest we get out of the house and into the questionable air of the city and into the even more questionable fragrance of the zoo, where the atmosphere was redolent with the smells of urine and hay. This prompted me to wonder what was going on. I saw my father's hand in it. “Get him out of that house,” he would have commanded.

And when Father commanded, Raphael obeyed.

That was the key to his longevity as my instructor: He held the reins to my musical training; Dad held the reins to the rest of my life. And Raphael had always accepted this division of their responsibilities towards me.

As an adult, of course, I could have chosen to replace Raphael with someone else to accompany me on my concert tours—apart from Dad, naturally—and to be a partner to my daily sessions of practice on the violin. But at this point with more than two decades of instruction, cooperation, and partnership between us, we knew each other's styles of living and working so well that to bring in someone else had never been a consideration. Besides, when I could play, I liked playing with Raphael Robson. He was—and is—a brilliant technician. There's a spark missing in him, an additional passion that would have long ago forced him to overcome his nerves and to play publicly, knowing that playing is forging a link with an audience, which makes the quadrinomial defined by composer-music-listener-performer complete. But aside from that spark, the artistry and the love are there, as is a remarkable ability to distil technique into a series of critiques, commands, adjustments, assignments, and instructions that are understandable to the neophyte artist and invaluable to the established violinist who seeks to improve himself on his instrument. So I never considered replacing Raphael, despite his obedience to—and loathing of—my father.

I must have always sensed the antipathy between them, even if I never saw it openly. They coped despite their dislike of each other, and it was only now, when they'd begun to seem at such pains to hide their mutual loathing, that I felt compelled to question why it had existed in the first place.

The natural answer was my mother: because of how Raphael may have felt about my mother. But that seemed to explain only why Raphael disliked my father so much, Dad being in possession of what Raphael might have wanted for himself. It didn't explain my father's aversion to Raphael. There had to be something more going on.

Perhaps it came from what Raphael could give you? you offer me as potential answer.

And it's true that my father played no instrument, but I think their dislike came from something more basic and atavistic than that.

I said to Raphael as we moved from the elephants to seek out the koalas, “You were told to get me out of the house today.”





He didn't deny it. “He thinks you're dwelling too much on the past and avoiding the present.”





“What do you think?”





“I trust Dr. Rose. At least I trust Dr. Rose the father. As to Dr. Rose the daughter, I assume she's discussing the case with him.” He glanced at me anxiously as he said the word case, which reduced me to a phenomenon that would doubtless appear in a psychiatric journal at a later date, my name scrupulously withheld but everything else forming neon arrows that all pointed to me as the patient. “He's had decades of experience with the sort of thing you're going through, and that's going to count for something with her.”





“What sort of thing do you think I'm going through?”





“I know what she's called it. The amnesia bit.”





“Dad told you?”





“He would do, wouldn't he? I'm as much involved with your career as anyone.”





“But you don't believe in the amnesia, do you?”





“Gideon, it's not my place to believe or disbelieve anything.”