A Traitor to Memory

“What're you going to take over to me, Jill?” Gideon asked.

Both whirled round at the sound of his voice. He was standing in the doorway to the sitting room, in the dim passage that led to the bedroom and to Richard's study. He held a square envelope in one hand and a floral card in the other. His face was the colour of sand, and his eyes were ringed by the circles of insomnia.

“What were you going to take over to me?” he repeated.

GIDEON





12 November





You sit in your father's leather armchair, Dr. Rose, watching me as I stumble through the recitation of the dreadful facts. Your face remains as it always is—interested in what I'm saying but without judgement—and your eyes shine with a compassion that makes me feel like a child in desperate need of comfort.

And that is what I have become: phoning you and weeping, begging that you see me at once, claiming that there is no one else whom I can trust.

You say, Meet me at the office in ninety minutes.

Precise, like that. Ninety minutes. I want to know what you are doing that you cannot meet me there in this instant.

You say, Calm yourself, Gideon. Go within. Breathe deeply.

I need to see you now, I cry.

You tell me that you're with your father, but you will be there as soon as you can. You say, Wait on the steps if you get there ahead of me. Ninety minutes, Gideon. Can you remember that?

So now we are here and now I tell you everything that I have remembered on this terrible day. I end it all by saying, How is it possible that I forgot all this? What sort of monster am I that I wasn't able to remember anything of what happened all those years ago?

It's clear to you that I have finished my recitation, and that is when you explain things to me. You say in your calm and dispassionate voice that the memory of harming my sister and believing myself to have killed her was something that was not only horrific but associatively connected to the music playing when I committed the act. The act was the memory I repressed, but because music was connected to it, I ultimately repressed the music as well. Remember, you say, that a repressed memory is like a magnet, Gideon. It attracts to it other things that are associated with the memory and pulls them in, repressing them also. The Archduke was intimately related to your actions that night. You repressed those actions—and it appears that everyone either overtly or subtly encouraged you to repress them—and the music got drawn into the repression.

But I've always been able to play everything else. Only The Archduke defeated me.

Indeed, you say. But when Katja Wolff appeared unexpectedly at Wigmore Hall and introduced herself to you, the complete repression was finally triggered.

Why? Why?

Because Katja Wolff, your violin, The Archduke, and your sister's death were all associatively connected in your mind. That's how it works, Gideon. The main repressed memory was your belief that you had drowned your sister. That repression drew to it the memory of Katja, the person most associated with your sister. What followed Katja into the black hole was The Archduke, the piece that was playing that night. Finally, the rest of the music—symbolised by the violin it-self—followed that single piece you'd always had trouble playing. That's how it works.

I am silent at this. I am afraid to ask the next question—Will I be able to play again?—because I despise what it reveals about me. We are all the centres of our individual worlds, but most of us are capable of seeing others who exist within our singular boundaries. But I have never been capable of that. I have seen only myself from the very first time I became conscious that I had a self to see. To ask about my music now seems monstrous to me. That question would act as a repudiation of my innocent sister's entire existence. And I've done enough repudiating of Sonia to last me the rest of my life.

Do you believe your father? you ask me. What he said about Sonia's death and the part he himself played in her death … Do you believe him, Gideon?

I'll believe nothing till I talk to my mother.

13 November





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