A Traitor to Memory

He said nothing.

“You were in love with her. Isn't that right, Raphael? You've always been in love with her. And seeing her once a month, once a week, once a day, or once a year had nothing to do with anything but what you wanted and hoped to get. So you wouldn't tell me. You just let me believe she walked out on us and never looked back, and never cared to look back. When all the time you knew—” I couldn't go on.

“It's the way she wanted it,” he said. “I had to honour her choice.”





“You had to nothing.”





“I'm sorry,” he said. “Gideon, if I'd known … How was I to know?”





“Tell me what happened that night.”





“What night?”





“You know what night. Don't let's play the happy idiot now. What happened the night my sister drowned? And don't try to tell me that Katja Wolff did it, all right? You were with her. You were arguing with her. I got into the bathroom. I held Sonia down. And then what happened?”





“I don't know.”





“I don't believe you.”





“It's the truth. We came upon you in the bathroom. Katja began screaming. Your father came running. I took Katja downstairs. That's all I know. I didn't go back up when the paramedics arrived. I didn't leave the kitchen till the police turned up.”





“Was Sonia moving in the bathtub?”





“I don't know. I don't think so. But that doesn't mean you harmed her. It never meant that.”





“For Christ's sake, Raphael, I held her down!”





“You can't remember that. It's impossible. You were far too young. Gideon, Katja had left her alone for five or six minutes. I'd gone to talk to her and we began to argue. We stepped out of the room and into the nursery because I wanted to know what she intended to do about …” He faltered. He couldn't say it, even now.

I said it for him. “Why the hell did you make her pregnant when you were in love with my mother?”





“Blonde,” was his miserable, pathetic reply. It came after a long fifteen seconds in which he did nothing but breathe erratically. “They both were blonde.”





“God,” I whispered. “And did she let you call her Eugenie?”





“Don't,” he said. “It happened only once.”





“And you couldn't afford to let anyone know, could you? Neither of you could afford that. She couldn't afford to let anyone know she'd left Sonia alone as long as five minutes and you couldn't afford to let anyone know you'd got her pregnant while pretending you were fucking my mother.”





“She could have got rid of it. It would have been easy.”





“Nothing,” I said, “is that easy, Raphael. Except lying. And that was easy for all of us, wasn't it?”





“Not for your mother,” Raphael said. “That's why she left.”





He reached for me again, then. He put his hand on my shoulder, tightly, as he had done before. He said, “She would have told you the truth, Gideon. You must believe your father in this. Your mother would have told you the truth.”





21 November, 1:30 A.M.

So that is what I'm left with, Dr. Rose: an assurance only. Had she lived, had we had the opportunity to meet, she would have told me everything.

She would have taken me back through my own history and corrected where my impressions were false and my memory incomplete.

She would have explained the details I recall. She would have filled in the gaps.

But she is dead, so she can do nothing.

And what I'm left with is only what I can remember.

27





RICHARD SAID TO his son, “Gideon. What are you doing here?”

Gideon said, “What's happened to you?”

“Someone tried to kill him,” Jill said. “He thinks it's Katja Wolff. He's afraid she'll come after you next.”

Gideon looked at her, then he looked at his father. He seemed, if anything, inordinately puzzled. Not shocked, Jill concluded, not horrified that Richard had nearly died that day, but merely puzzled. He said, “Why would Katja want to do that? It would hardly get her what she's after.”

“Gideon …” Richard said heavily.

“Richard thinks she's after you as well,” Jill said. “He thinks she's the one who pushed him into the traffic. He might have been killed.”

“Is that what he's telling you?”

“My God. That's what happened,” Richard countered. “What are you doing here? How long have you been here?”

Gideon didn't answer at first. Instead, he appeared to make a mental catalogue of his father's injuries, his gaze going first to Richard's leg, then to his arm, then coming back to rest on his face.

“Gideon,” Richard said. “I asked you how long—”

“Long enough to find this.” Gideon gestured with the card he held.

Jill looked at Richard. She saw his eyes narrow.

“You lied to me about this as well,” Gideon said.