A Traitor to Memory

“I can't,” I said.

“He says you won't.” Raphael touched the instrument gently. It was a caress that he might have given to a woman had any woman ever found him an object of sexual attraction. But no woman had done, as far as I knew. Indeed, it seemed to me as I watched him that I alone—and my violin—had prevented Raphael from leading a completely solitary life.

As if to confirm my thoughts, Raphael said, “This can't go on forever, Gideon.”





“If it does?” I asked him.

“It won't. It can't.”





“Do you take his side, then? Did he ask you out there”—here I nodded at the window—“to demand that I play for you?”





Raphael looked out at the square, at the trees whose leaves were beginning to change now, dressing themselves in the colours of early autumn. “No,” he said. “He didn't ask that I force you to play. Not today. I dare say his mind was on other things.”





I wasn't sure I believed him, considering the passion I'd witnessed in my father as he'd spoken to Raphael in the square. But I seized on the idea of “other things” and I used that to turn the conversation. “Why did my mother leave us?” I asked. “Was it because of Katja Wolff?”





Raphael said, “This isn't a subject for you and me.”





“I've remembered Sonia,” I told him.

He reached for the latch on the window, and I thought he meant to open it, either to let in the cool air or to climb outside onto the narrow balcony. But he did neither. He merely fumbled with the mechanism uselessly, and it came to me, watching him, how that simple gesture said so much about the lack in every interaction he and I had had that did not involve the violin.

I said, “I've remembered her, Raphael. I've remembered Sonia. And Katja Wolff as well. Why has no one ever spoken of them?”





He looked pained, and I thought he meant to avoid answering me. But just as I was ready to challenge his silence, he said, “Because of what happened to Sonia.”





“What? What happened to Sonia?”





His voice contained wonder when he replied. “You really don't remember, do you? I always thought you never spoke of it because the rest of us didn't. But you don't remember.”





I shook my head, and the shame of that admission swept through me. She was my sister and I could not remember a single thing about her, Dr. Rose. Until you and I began this process, I'd completely forgotten she'd ever existed. Can you begin to imagine how that feels?

Raphael went on, using great kindness to excuse the obsessive self-interest that had erased my younger sister from my mind. He said, “But you weren't even eight years old then, were you? And we never spoke of it once the trial was over. We barely spoke of it during the trial, and we agreed not to speak of it afterwards. Even your mother agreed, although she was broken by everything that happened. Yes. I can see how you might have wiped it all from your mind.”





I said although my mouth was dry, “Dad told me that she drowned, that Sonia drowned. Why was there a trial? Who was tried? For what?”





“Your father didn't tell you more?”





“He didn't say anything other than Sonia drowned. He seemed so … He looked like he was paying a price just to tell me how she died. I didn't want to ask him for more. But now … a trial? That must mean … a trial?”





Raphael nodded, and all the possibilities implied by what I've recalled so far swarmed into my mind at once before he went on: Virginia died young, Granddad had episodes, Mother is weeping and weeping in her room, someone has taken a picture in the garden, Sister Cecilia is in the hall, Dad is shouting, and I'm in the sitting room, kicking at the legs of the sofa, upending my music stand, hotly and defiantly declaring that I will not play those infantile scales.

“Katja Wolff killed your sister, Gideon,” Raphael told me. “She drowned her in her bath.”





28 September





He wouldn't say more. He simply shut off, shut down, or whatever it is that people do when they've reached the limit of what they can force themselves to speak of. When I said, “Drowned? Deliberately? When? Why?” and felt the apprehension that attended those words streak cold fingers down my spine, he said, “I can't say more. Ask your father.”





My father. He sits on the edge of my bed and he watches me and I am afraid.

Of what? you ask me. How old are you, Gideon?

I must be young, because he seems so big, like a giant, when actually he's much the same size as I am now. He puts his hand on my forehead—





Are you comforted by the touch?

No. No, I shrink away.

Does he speak?