A Traitor to Memory

“You thought I'd do what I've always done.”





“I've had enough of this.” He began to move, but not to the violin case. Instead, he walked to the stereo system, and as he did so he removed a new CD from his pocket.

“You thought I'd go along with anything you told me because that's what I've always done, right? Throw out something that resembles an acceptable tale and he'll swallow it: hook, line, and sinker.”





He swung round. “You don't know what you're talking about. Look at yourself. Look what she's done to you with all this psycho-mumbo-jumbo of hers. You've been reduced to a puling mouse afraid of his shadow.”





“Isn't that what you've done, Dad? Isn't that what you did back then? You lied, you cheated, you betrayed—”





“Enough!” He was battling to free the CD from its wrapping, and he tore at it with his teeth like a dog, spitting the shreds of cellophane onto the floor. “I'm telling you now that there's one way to deal with this, and it's the way you should have dealt with it from the first. A real man faces his fear head-on. He doesn't turn tail and run from it.”





“You're running. Right now.”





“Like bloody God damn hell I am.” He punched the button to open the CD player. He jammed the compact disk inside. He hit play and twisted the volume knob. “You listen,” he hissed. “You bloody well listen. And act like a man.”





He'd turned up the sound so high that when the music started, I didn't know what it was at first. But my confusion lasted only for a second, because he'd chosen it, Dr. Rose. Beethoven. The Archduke. He'd chosen it.

The Allegro Moderato began. And it swelled round the room. And over it I could hear Dad's shout.

“Listen. Listen. Listen to what's unmade you, Gideon. Listen to what you're terrified to play.”





I covered my ears. “I can't.” But still I heard. It. I heard it. And I heard him above it.

“Listen to what you're letting control you. Listen to what you've let a simple bloody piece of music do to your entire career.”





“I don't—”





“Black smudges on a damn piece of paper. That's all it is. That's what you've given your power to.”





“Don't make me—”





“Stop it. Listen. Is it impossible for a musician like you to play this piece? No, it's not. Is it too difficult? It is not. Is it even challenging? No, no, no. Is it mildly, remotely, or vaguely—”





“Dad!” I pressed my hands to my ears. The room was going black. It was shrinking to a pinpoint of light and the light was blue, it was blue, it was blue.

“What it is is weakness made flesh in you, Gideon. You had a bout of nerves and you've transformed yourself into flaming Mr. Robson. That's what you've done.”





The piano introduction was nearly complete. The violin was due to begin. I knew the notes. The music was in me. But in front of my eyes I saw only that door. And Dad—my father—continued to rail.

“I'm surprised you haven't started sweating like him. That's where you'll be next. Sweating and shaking like a freak who—”





“Stop it!”





And the music. The music. The music. Swelling, exploding, demanding. All round me, the music that I dreaded and feared.

And in front of me the door, with her standing there on the steps that lead up to it, with the light shining down on her, a woman I wouldn't have known on the street, a woman whose accent has faded in time, in the twenty years she has spent in prison.

She says, “Do you remember me, Gideon? It is Katja Wolff. I must speak with you.”





I say politely because I do not know who she is but I have been taught through the years to be polite to the public no matter the demands they make upon me because it is the public who attend my concerts who buy my recordings who support the East London Conservatory and what it is trying to do to better the lives of impoverished children children like me in so many ways save for the circumstances of birth … I say, “I'm afraid I have a concert, Madam.”





“This will not take long.”





She descends the steps. She crosses the bit of Welbeck Way that separates us. I've moved to the red double doors of the artists' entrance to Wigmore Hall and I'm about to knock to gain admittance, when she says she says oh God she says, “I've come for payment, Gideon,” and I do not know what she means.

But somehow I understand that danger is about to engulf me. I clutch the case in which the Guarneri is protected by leather and velvet, and I say, “As I said, I do have a concert.”





“Not for more than an hour,” she says. “This I have been told in the front.”