A Traitor to Memory

“Dad,” I said, “it's mad to think the tabloid-reading public gives a toss about—”





“I'm not talking about tabloids. Right. A rock star disappears from view and the journalists are digging through his rubbish every morning, looking for something that will tell them why. That's not the case here and that's not what concerns me. What concerns me is the world that we live in with a schedule of concerts set up through the next twenty-five months, Gideon, as you well know, and with phone calls—almost daily, mind you—from musical directors enquiring about the state of your health. Which is, as you also know, a euphemism for your playing. ‘Is he recovering from exhaustion?’ means ‘Do we tear up the contract or keep the programme in place?’” As he said all this, Dad slowly eased my drawing towards him, and although his fingers had begun to smear the lines that sketched out the two bottom spreaders, I didn't point this out to him and I didn't stop him. So he went on. “Now, what I'm asking you to do is simple: Walk inside that house, go up to the music room, and pick up that violin. Don't do it for me because this isn't about me and it never was. Do it for yourself.”





“I can't.”





“I'll be with you. I'll be next to you, holding you upright or whatever you want. But you've got to do it.”





We stared at each other, Dr. Rose. I could feel him willing me out of that shed where I make my kites, out of the garden, and into the house.

He said, “You won't know if you've made progress with her, Gideon, unless you pick up the instrument and try.”





By that he meant you, Dr. Rose. He meant these hours of writing I've been doing. He meant this sifting through the past we've engaged in which, it appeared, he was willing to assist me in … if I only gave him a demonstration that at the very least I could pick up the violin and scrape the bow across the strings.

So I said nothing, but I left the shed and went back to the house. In the music room, I walked not to the window seat, where I've done most of this notebook writing, but to the violin case instead. The Guarneri lay there, its top and its purfling gleaming, the repository of two hundred and fifty years of music-making shimmering from its F holes, its sides, and its pegs.

I can do this. Twenty-five years do not vanish in an instant. Everything I've learned, everything I know, every natural talent I ever possessed, may be obscured, may be buried under a landslide I cannot yet identify, but all of it is there.

Dad stood next to me at the violin case. He put his hand on my elbow as I reached for the Guarneri. He murmured, “I won't leave you, son. It's all right. I'm here.”





And just at that moment, the phone began to ring.

Dad's fingers tightened on my elbow like a reflex. He said, “Leave it,” in reference to the phone. And since that's what I've been doing for weeks, I had no trouble accommodating him.

But it was Jill's voice that spoke into the answer machine. When she said, “Gideon? Is Richard still there? I must speak to Richard. Has he left? Please pick up,” Dad and I reacted identically. We both said, “The baby,” and he strode to the phone.

He said, “I'm still here. Are you all right, darling?” And then he listened.

There was no simple yes or no in her reply. As she made it, Dad turned from me and said, “What sort of phone call?” He listened to another lengthy response and he finally said, “Jill … Jill … Enough. Why on earth did you answer it?”





She responded at length again. At the end of her reply, Dad said, “Wait. Hang on. Don't be silly. You're working yourself into a real state … I can hardly be responsible for an unsolicited and unidentified call when—” His face darkened suddenly as she apparently interrupted him. “God damn it, Jill. Listen to yourself. You're being completely irrational.” And the tone in which he spoke those final words was one I'd heard him use before to dismiss a subject he didn't wish to pursue. Glacial, it was. Dismissive, superior, and in control.

But Jill was not one to release a topic so lightly. She went on again. He listened again. His back was to me, but I could see him stiffening. It was nearly a minute before he spoke.

“I'm coming home,” he told her brusquely. “We're not having this discussion over the phone.”





He rang off then, and it sounded to me as if she were in midsentence when he did so. He turned round and said with a glance at the Guarneri, “You've had a reprieve.”





“Everything all right at home?” I asked him.

“Nothing's right anywhere,” was his curt reply.

26 September, 11:30 P.M.

The fact that I'd failed to play for him was undoubtedly what Dad shared with Raphael in the square when he left me, because when Raphael joined me not three minutes after he and Dad parted, I could see the information incised on his face. His glance went to the Guarneri in its case.