A Traitor to Memory

I realised that she thought I'd come to solicit her skills, and I hastened to disabuse her of the notion. Nothing in her area of speciality was required, I told her heartily. I'd really come for some information about Katja Wolff, if she didn't mind. I would recompense her for her time, since I'd be using up what would otherwise be someone's appointment. But as to having … shall we say, difficulties of the sort she was used to dealing with …? Har, har. Chuckle. Well, at the moment there was no need for that sort of intervention.

Katie said, “Brilliant. So glad to hear it,” and she settled more comfortably into her armchair. This was high-backed and upholstered in autumn colours similar to those which decorated the waiting room and the corridor. It was also extremely sturdy, a quality that would be necessary considering Katie's size. For if she'd been given to fat as a twentysomething university student sitting in the kitchen in Kensington Square, now she was downright obese, of a size that would no longer fit into a seat at the cinema or on a plane. But she was still dressed in hues that flattered her colouring, and the jewellery she wore was tasteful and looked expensive. Nonetheless, it was difficult for me to imagine how she managed to get round town. And, admittedly, I couldn't picture anyone telling their innermost libidinous secrets to her. It was obvious others hadn't shared my aversion, however. The clinic looked like a thriving enterprise, and I'd managed to get in to see Katie only because a regular client had canceled minutes before I phoned.

I told her that I was trying to refresh some memories of my childhood, and I'd remembered her. I'd recalled that she'd often been in the kitchen when Katja Wolff was feeding Sonia, and as I had no idea of Katja's whereabouts, it seemed to me that she—Katie—might be able to fill in the gaps where my memories were dim.

Thankfully, she didn't ask why I'd developed this sudden interest in the past. Nor did she, from her place of professional wisdom, comment upon what it might mean that I had gaps in my recollections in the first place. Instead, she said, “People at Immaculate Conception used to call us the two KWs. ‘Where are the KWs?’ they'd ask. ‘Someone fetch the KWs to have a look at this.’”





“So you were close friends.”





“I wasn't the only one who sought her out when she first accepted a room at the convent. But our friendship … I suppose it took. So yes, we were close at the time.”





There was a low table next to her chair, and on it stood an elaborate bird cage with two budgerigars inside, one a brilliant blue and the other green. As Katie spoke, she unfastened the door of the cage, and took the blue bird out, grasping him in her large fat fist. He squawked in protest and took a nip at her fingers. She said, “Naughty, naughty, Joey,” and picked up a tongue depressor that lay on the table next to the cage. For a grim moment I thought she meant to use it to swat the little bird. But instead she used it to massage his head and neck in a way that calmed him. Indeed, it appeared to hypnotise him, and it did much the same for me, since I watched in fascination as the bird's eyes eased shut. Katie opened her palm, and he sank into it contentedly.

“Therapeutic,” Katie told me as she went on with the massage, using the tips of her fingers once the bird was gentled. “Lowers the blood pressure.”





“I didn't know that birds had high blood pressure.”





She laughed quietly. “Not Joey's. Mine. I've morbid obesity, to state the obvious. Doctor says I'll die before I'm fifty if I don't shed sixteen stone. ‘You weren't born fat,’ he tells me. ‘No, but I've lived it,’ I tell him. It's hell on one's heart, and what it does to one's blood pressure doesn't bear mentioning. But we all have to go some way. I'm just choosing mine.” She ran her fingers along Joey's folded right wing. In response—eyes still closed—he stretched it out. “That's what attracted me to Katja. She was someone who made choices, and I loved that about her. Probably because in my own family, everyone just went into the restaurant business without thinking there might be something else out there to do with their lives. But Katja was someone who grabbed at life. She didn't just accept what was thrust upon her.”





“East Germany,” I acknowledged. “The balloon escape.”





“Yes. That's an excellent example. The balloon escape and how she engineered it.”





“Except she wasn't the one who built the balloon, was she? Not from what I've been told.”





“No, she didn't build it. That's not what I meant by engineered. I meant how she convinced Hannes Hertel to take her with him. How she blackmailed him, actually, if what she told me was true, and I expect it was because why would someone lie about something so unflattering? But nasty as her plan might have been, she had real nerve to go to him and to make the threat. He was a big man—six foot three or four to hear her tell it—and he could have done her serious harm had he a mind to do so. He could have killed her, I expect, and gone on his way over the wall and disappeared from there. It was a calculated risk on her part, and she took it. That's how much she wanted life.”





“What sort of risk?”