A Traitor to Memory

“I'm not talking about the migraines, Gid.”





“Then what?”





“Why aren't you playing? You always play. You're like a clock. Three hours every morning, three hours every afternoon. I've seen Rafe's car in the square every day, so I know he's been here, but I haven't heard either of you guys playing.”





Rafe. She has that American tendency to give everyone a nickname. Raphael became Rafe the first time she met him. Nothing could suit him less, if you ask me, but he doesn't appear to mind the sobriquet.

And he has been here every day, as she pointed out. Sometimes for an hour, sometimes for two or three. He mostly paces while I sit in the window seat and write. He sweats, he mops his forehead and his neck with a handkerchief, he casts apprehensive looks in my direction, and he no doubt projects us into a future in which my anxiety state prematurely terminates an otherwise brilliant career and in which his reputation as my musical Rasputin is summarily ruined. He pictures himself as a footnote in history, one written in typescript so infinitesimal as to require a magnifying glass to be read.

I have been his hope for immortality-by-proxy. There he has been for fifty-whatever years, a man incapable of rising even to the level of concertmaster despite his talent and his every best effort, condemned by a reservoir of stage fright that has unloosed its floodgates in a deluge of terror whenever he's had a chance to audition. The man's a brilliant musician in a family of equally brilliant musicians. But unlike the rest of them—all playing in one orchestra or another, right down to his sister, who for twenty-some years has played electric guitar in a hippie band called Plated Starfire—Raphael has excelled only at passing his artistry on to others. Public performance has defeated him.

And I have been his claim to fame and the means by which he's attracted, like a benevolent Pied Piper, a following of hopeful prodigies and their parents for more than two decades. But that's all set to be sacrificed if I don't get a grip on what's gone wrong in my head. Never mind that Raphael has never once bothered to get a grip on what's wrong in his head—it can't be normal for one man to sweat through three shirts and one suit jacket every day of his life, can it?—I am to devote all my waking hours to getting a grip on what's wrong in mine.

Raphael, as I've said, is the person who tracked you down initially, Dr. Rose. Or at least, he tracked your father down once the neurologists decided that there is nothing physically wrong with me. So he has a vested interest in my recovery that's dual: Not only has he been significant in bringing me into your care, which might well put me into his debt in a very large way should you and I overcome my problem, but also my continued career as a violinist will mean his continued career as my muse. So Raphael would very much like to see me get well.

You're thinking of this as cynicism, aren't you, Dr. Rose? A new wrinkle in the blanket of my character. But remember that I have experienced Raphael Robson for years, so I know how he thinks and what he intends, probably better than he knows himself.

For example, I know that he dislikes my father. And I know that Dad would have sacked him a dozen times throughout the years had Raphael's style of instruction—allowing the student to develop his own method rather than imposing a preformed method upon him—not been exactly what I needed to thrive.

Why does Raphael dislike your father? you ask me curiously, unsure if this animosity between them is what's at the root of my present difficulty.

I don't have an answer to that question, Dr. Rose, at least not an answer that's both lucid and complete. But I expect it has to do with my mother.

Raphael Robson and your mother? you clarify, and you look at me so intently that I wonder what nugget I've offered you.

So I dig into my mind. I try to see what is there. And I make a logical connection from examining everything I've been able to dredge out thus far because those words placed all in a row just now—Raphael Robson and my mother—have stirred something within me, Dr. Rose. I can feel an uneasiness creeping outward from my gut. I've chewed and swallowed something rotten, and I feel the consequences roiling round in me.

What have I inadvertently unearthed? Raphael Robson has disliked my father for twenty-plus years because of my mother. Yes. I feel something like truth in this. But why?

You suggest that I take myself back in time to a moment when they are together, perhaps. Raphael and my mother. But the canvas is there, that damned black canvas and if they are on it, the paint has long ago been obscured.

And yet you've placed their names together, Raphael's and your mother's, you point out to me. For their names to be linked, other links must exist, even if only within the subconscious mind. You're thinking of them together, you tell me. Do you see them together as well?