A Traitor to Memory

He was, she explained, a womaniser without peer, an adherent to the philosophy that groups of females—“the herd, get it?”—should be dominated and serviced by a single male. “But the problem is that the entire female sex is the herd in Rock's mind. And he's got to hump them all just to keep them happy.” Then she clapped her hand over her mouth and said, “Oops. Sorry.” And then she grinned. And then she said, “Anyway. Gosh. Look at me. I'm, like, totally running off at the mouth. Got those papers signed?”





Which I hadn't. Who'd had an opportunity to read them? I said I'd sign them if she wouldn't mind waiting. She took herself to a corner and sat.

I read. I made one phone call to clarify a clause. I signed the contracts and returned them to her. She shoved them into her pouch, said thanks, and then cocked her head at me and asked, “Favour?”





“What?”





She shifted her weight and looked embarrassed. But she plunged ahead and I admired her for it. She said, “Would you … I mean, it's like, I've never actually heard a violin in person before. Would you please play a song?”





A song. She was indeed a philistine. But even a philistine is educable, and she'd asked politely. What would it hurt? I'd been practising anyway, working on Bartók's solo sonata, so I gave her part of the Melodia, playing it as I always play: putting the music before myself, before her, before everything. By the time I'd reached the end of the movement, I'd forgotten she was there. So I went on to the Presto, hearing as usual Raphael's injunction: “Make it an invitation to dance, Gideon. Feel its quickness. Make it flash, like light.”





And when I was finished, I was brought back to an abrupt awareness of her presence. She said, “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow. I mean, you are so totally excellent, aren't you?”





I looked her way to see that sometime during the playing she'd begun to cry, because her cheeks were wet and she was digging round in her leathers, looking—I presume—for something on which to wipe her dribbling nose. I was pleased to have touched her with the Bartók, and even more pleased to see that my assessment of her educability had been on target. And I suppose it was because of that assessment that I asked her to join me in my regular cup of midmorning coffee. The day was fine, so we took it in the garden, where, under the arbour, I'd been creating one of my kites on the previous afternoon.

I haven't mentioned my kites before this, have I, Dr. Rose? Well, there's nothing to them, actually. They're just something I do when I feel the need to take a break from the music. I fly them from Primrose Hill.

Ah yes. I can see that you're searching for meaning there, aren't you? What does creating and flying kites symbolise in the patient's history and in his present life? The unconscious mind speaks in all our actions. The conscious mind merely has to grasp the meaning behind those actions and wrestle it into comprehensible form.

Kites. Air. Freedom. But freedom from what? What need do I have to be free when my life is full and rich and complete?

Let me complicate the skein you've been commissioned to unravel by telling you that I fly gliders as well. No, not the gliders you sail into the air from a hilltop, watching as the currents take them. But gliders that you pilot up in the air, towed by a plane and released to find those same currents yourself.

My father finds this a particularly horrifying hobby. Indeed, it's become a subject so sore that we no longer discuss it. When he finally realised that I'd moved beyond his ability to influence me with regard to what few leisure hours I actually have, he shouted, “I wash my hands of you, Gideon!” and the topic became taboo between us.

It seems dangerous, you tell me.

No more than life, I reply.

And then you ask, What is it you like about gliding? The silence? The technical mastery of something so different to your chosen profession? Or is it the escape that you're seeking, Gideon? Or perhaps the inherent risks?

And I say that there is danger in digging too deeply for meaning when something can be so simply explained: As a child and once my talent became apparent, I was not allowed a single activity that might injure my hands. Designing and creating kites, flying gliders … My hands are quite safe from harm.

But you do see the relevance of activities associated with the sky, don't you, Gideon? you ask me.

I see only that the sky is blue. Blue like the door. That blue blue door.

GIDEON





28 August