A Traitor to Memory

“What happened to them?” I pressed.

“Her parents lost their jobs, and her siblings in university lost their places. And had Katja shed a single tear about any of her family while she was in Kensington Square? Had she tried to contact them or help them? No. She never even mentioned them. They might not have existed for her.”





“Did she have friends, then?”





“Hmmm. There was that fat girl who always had her mind in the gutter. I remember her last name—Waddington—because it reminded me of waddle, which is how she walked.”





“Was that a girl called Katie?”





“Yes. Yes, that was it. Katie Waddington. Katja knew her from the convent, and when she moved in with your parents, this Waddington—Katie—hung about quite regularly. Usually eating something—well, just consider her size—and always going on about Freud. And sex. She was obsessed with sex. With Freud and sex. With sex and Freud. The significance of orgasm, the resolution of the Oedipal drama, the gratification of childhood's unfulfilled and forbidden wishes, the r?le of sex as a catalyst for change, the sexual enslavement of women by men and men by women …” Sarah-Jane leaned forward and took up the coffee pot, smiling at me and saying, “Another? Oh, but you haven't touched a drop yet, have you? Here, then. Let me pour you a fresh one.”





And before I could reply, she snatched up my coffee cup and disappeared into the kitchen, leaving me with my thoughts: about celebrity and the abrupt loss of it, about the destruction of immediate family, about the possession of dreams and the crucial ability to delay the immediate fulfilment of those dreams, about physical beauty and the lack thereof, about lying out of malice and telling the truth for the very same reason.

When Sarah-Jane came into the room, I had my question ready. “What happened the night my sister died? I remember this: I remember the emergency people arriving, the paramedics or whoever they were. I remember us—you and me—in my bedroom while they were working on Sonia. I remember people crying. I think I remember Katja's voice. But that's all. What actually happened?”





“Surely your father can give you a far better answer to that than I. You've asked him, I take it?”





“It's rough for him to talk about that time.”





“Naturally, it would be … But as for me …” She fingered her pearls. “Sugar? Milk? You must try my coffee.” And when I obliged her by raising the bitter brew to my mouth, she said, “I can't add much, I'm afraid. I was in my room when it happened. I'd been preparing your lessons for the following day and I'd just popped into James's room to ask him to help me devise a scheme that would get you interested in weights and measures. Since he was a man—well, is a man, assuming he's still alive, and there's certainly no reason to assume otherwise, is there?—I thought he'd be able to suggest some activity that would intrigue a little boy who was”—and here she winked at me—“not always cooperative when it came to learning something he thought was unrelated to his music. So James and I were going over some ideas, when we heard the commotion downstairs: shouting and pounding feet and doors slamming. We went running down and saw everyone in the corridor—”





“Everyone?”





“Yes. Everyone. Your mother, your father, Katja, Raphael Robson, your grandmother …”





“What about Granddad?”





“I don't … Well, he must have been there. Unless, of course, he was … well, out in the country for one of his rests? No, no, he must have been there, Gideon. Because there was such shouting going on, and I remember your grandfather as something of a shouter. At any rate, I was told to take you into your bedroom and stay with you there, so that's what I did. When the emergency services arrived, they told everyone else to get out of their way. Only your parents stayed. And we could still hear them from your room, you and I.”





“I don't remember any of it,” I said. “Just the part in my room.”





“That's just as well, Gideon. You were a little boy. Seven? Eight?”





“Eight.”





“Well, how many of us have explicit, full memories even of good times from when we were children? And this was a terrible, shocking time. I dare say, forgetting it was a blessing, dear.”





“You said you wouldn't leave. I remember that.”





“Of course I wouldn't have left you alone in the middle of what was going on!”





“No. I mean, you said that you wouldn't be leaving as my teacher. Dad told me he'd sacked you.”