The Memory Man Read online

  No, maybe that didn’t qualify for the amygdala, since she could hear him clearly too. She’d have to ask the Professor. Not that any of it made a blind bit of difference to one’s life. She might as well store the scene in her big toe so that she could tread on it, for all the difference it made. Though if it all went wrong, you’d want to know. Like with her mother. Bits of knowledge to grasp onto for comfort, if nothing else.

  The Professor was sitting in the front with Aleksander Tarski, whereas she was in back with Amelia. She liked the Professor for liking to explain things to her. He was an enthusiast, a wonderful teacher. She’d always loved her teachers. Particularly her English teacher, who could recite great chunks of Shakespeare and Byron. And she was glad to have been asked along. It meant he trusted her, trusted her not to write about him. Maybe the visit to her paper, Tygodnik Powszechny, tucked in as it was by the university, had impressed him. That warren of dusty offices and serious looking people hardly had the markings of a tabloid. He had complimented her on her article on the conference too. Though she wasn’t sure he had really read it all through, because of the Polish, which couldn’t be easy for him anymore. But perhaps he would change his mind about letting her write about him now.

  Meanwhile all this was quite pleasant, really, and something of an adventure; and she was building herself up to asking Aleksander the relevant questions. It should be easy enough, given that they were obviously travelling into the Professor’s past. And one past would lead to another. That was always the way.

  The only difficulty was that no one was certain when they would get back to Krakow. She had taken her mother to her friend Ida’s where between the children and herself and her husband there would be someone around all the time to keep an eye on her. But, even though Ida, who had known her forever, had been altogether willing, Irena was nervous about the arrangement. It was always unclear how her mother would behave, particularly when she left her known quarters. Still, she mustn’t spend the entire journey worrying about her. It occurred to her as the ultimate mother-daughter irony that her mother was now paying her back for all those occasions on which she had murmured: ‘Oh Irena, you make me worry sooo.’

  The countryside was flat here. The flatness of the great central European plain that stretched and stretched eastwards over fields and forests largely unchanged over centuries. Always a flat and open invitation to invading armies. A perfect stamping ground. No wonder the Germans had just blitzed across. Nothing to stop them.

  At least the houses were slightly better than she remembered them when she had last come this way, oh so long ago now, before she had gone to England. They had probably been built by the returning American Diaspora, the Chicago Poles, who seemed now to have a monopoly over Krakow airport. Or maybe the houses were just the fruit of all those moonlighting Polish builders she’d met over the years in London? Whatever. They were an improvement over the rundown wooden shacks that used to be the lot of the peasants. Personally, she preferred the views a little further south, in the foothills of the Bieszczady Mountains. But she knew this journey wasn’t about views, whatever occasional exclamations came from Amelia.

  Amelia was growing more mysterious by the day. Irena, who prided herself on her understanding of people, couldn’t make her out at all. She had this way of curling up into herself as if all the wisdom and patience of the ages were hers – not at all like what one expected of a high-powered LA agent, who was beautiful to boot, all in casual whites today, except for a little throw-away blue in her cardigan. Maybe all this was just an amusing diversion for her, Aleksander included: Poland as the exotic. Though reachable by mobile phone – one which juddered acutely with particular frequency after four in the afternoon. It made Irena want to laugh.

  ‘Here, here,’ Bruno exclaimed. ‘We want to turn here.’

  ‘I don’t think that goes anywhere,’ Aleksander murmured. ‘It certainly won’t take us into Przemysl.’

  ‘Maybe not. But I’m curious. I’m almost certain my grandfather left a car in some person’s house just off this road. Back in ’39, of course.’ He burst out laughing. Amelia joined him.

  ‘You mean you had a car back then?’

  ‘A beautiful old black Citroen. It was a dream of a vehicle. I used to hop onto the running board and hang on for dear life. My grandfather allowed it. He was something of an adventurous sort. Then when we were fleeing east, we had to abandon the car here because the road was so crowded with refugees. Polish soldiers too. We just couldn’t get through.’

  Bruno had a faraway look on his face and a sudden impish quality. ‘I’ve always missed that car. It was beautiful. So elegant. And the smell the leather seats gave off was extraordinary…’

  The road was shaded with tall trees. There was an occasional cherry, brashly in bloom near a dacha-like house, all far too new to have been there before the war. So he would probably have to carry on missing that car, Irena reflected.

  Oh, those lost objects of childhood that one would never recover. Never. She had one too, though it was hardly as spectacular as a car. Hers was a violin, a tiny gleaming child’s violin, with a blue-velvet lining in its case. Her mother had brought it home from school where some child who had left the city had abandoned it. She must have been four or five when the violin arrived, and it was love at first sight and sound. She had cherished that violin more than any doll. She had picked out notes with her fingers and learned to pass the little bow across its strings so that it cried or sang. She had carried it with her everywhere, like some beloved younger sister. It even slept next to her bed, and yes, she tucked it into its blue velvet every night, leaving the case open, of course. The violin watched over her.

  Then the people to whom the violin belonged came back, and it had to be returned. She cried and cried. There was no solace. She’d missed that violin ever since – that perfect shape, the gleaming mahogany, the sound. A borrowed object. Maybe like her borrowed father.

  ‘Yes, a Citroen Rosalie, or something like that. My grandfather told us that André Citroen had acquired a patent for a gear-cutting technique invented right here in Poland. Something to do with producing smooth quiet gears with chevron-shaped teeth. That’s where the car got its double chevron emblem.’ Bruno laughed, evidently pleased with himself. ‘I’ve just remembered that, but I can’t say any of these houses look familiar. Maybe young boys are better at cars than at architecture. They encode their shapes better. Or the thrum of the engine, in any case.’

  ‘I think you’ve got yourself a Nobel-prize winning gender-disapproved theory there, Pops,’ Amelia giggled from the back seat. ‘He sounds a treat, your grandfather. A real character.’

  ‘The road bends here, and then there’s a turn-off away from the river,’ Aleksander announced.

  Bruno shrugged. ‘Let’s try it. Nothing looks the same. I think it’s the trees. Some are new. Some are sixty years taller.’

  ‘I think we may have more luck in town.’

  ‘Probably. But humour me. Just carry on for a few more minutes.’

  Aleksander drove slowly, until Bruno shook his head. ‘No, it’s no use.’

  His tone was so despondent that Irena had a sudden acute sense that what was just a jaunt for the rest of them – interesting but still a pleasure jaunt – was indeed something altogether different for the Professor. Of course. She had been insensitive. The fragments of the past he was trying to piece together must have been terrifying to experience, and the car represented one of the happier moments. Hence, its importance.

  She gave herself an inward shake. It was true. She had grown insensitive over these last years. It was partly to do with steeling herself against this sad life with her mother, not letting the cares get her down, the knowledge that the only future was death. And this steeling of oneself poured over into other domains, silting them over. Denying one set of emotions meant blotting out a whole set of them. So one became unsympathetic. Yes, upright and insensitive. The way that maiden aunts always appeared in books. Nasty an
d narrow and disapproving. That was the fate she had to guard against now. Life had all these unhappy little twists in store for one. She who used to bring home injured birds, gather up strays, weep over Dickens until there were no tears left…

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Bruno took a deep breath.

  Aleksander braked, and Irena caught the sudden eagerness on the Professor’s face.

  ‘We have lots of time, Professor. There’s no rush. Really.’

  They all clambered out into high grass rampant with cow parsley.

  ‘That particular rectangle of a field there. You see, the broken fence, the old struts? It makes the shape of a paddock.’

  ‘And children, of whatever gender, remember anything to do with horses. Right?’

  ‘You’re right, darling. I was mad about horses.’

  ‘But there’s no house to address oneself to.’

  ‘No, that must have gone,’ Bruno said sadly. ‘There was so much fighting everywhere around here. But this field. I’m almost sure… There was a kind of half-open stable over there, and we pulled the car up into it. And covered it. Camouflaged it. We had this innocent hope that we would be able to come back soon and fetch it. Funny how at all points over those six long years, everyone seemed to think the war was about to end at any moment.’

  ‘The car was probably taken by the first German who came along,’ Aleksander said. ‘They had few compunctions about appropriation. We were nether beings, after all. Didn’t deserve anything except hard labour and death.’

  He was more passionate than Irena had ever heard him. She cleared her throat. ‘Your family had a bad time, then?’

  ‘No, no. Not as far as it went. Not compared to others.’

  ‘Look,’ Amelia was pointing towards the sky. Two large birds soared above them, their broad wings silver-tipped in the sun.

  ‘They’re buzzards.’ There was a look of revulsion on Bruno’s face.

  ‘They’re beautiful.’

  ‘Let’s carry on.’

  Irena intercepted the questioning look Amelia gave him. She didn’t understand his gruffness, his disappointment at the car’s not being here. At its leaving no trace. Irena understood that. There was so little in this scarred world to bring back innocent childhood pleasures, happier golden times.

  Maybe it was just that she was more intent on Aleksander. Her hand slipped along his arm. It was a proprietary gesture. A soothing gesture.

  So it had already happened, Irena thought, stilling an unwanted pang of jealousy. Good for Amelia. Come to think of it, Aleksander looked the better for it too. He was standing straighter. What a tall man he was. A good haircut, a better suit, and he would be distinctly handsome.

  She asked him as soon as they were on the move again. ‘So were your parents both in the Krakow area during the war, Aleksander?’ In the intimacy of the car, she had started to use his first name.

  ‘My father was, in part.’ Aleksander didn’t elaborate. They were rejoining the main road, and the traffic was heavy.

  It wasn’t like an interview, so she didn’t want to press him, but luckily Amelia had her ears tuned now. She too was curious.

  ‘In part… That’s a little mysterious. What about the other parts?’

  Aleksander shot a hasty glance at the Professor, and Irena had a sudden feeling that maybe this line of questioning was going to go all wrong. What if this purported father of hers was some kind of nasty? A criminal? A Nazi collaborator? What if that was why her mother had never mentioned any of it to her earlier? Her biological father, a criminal.

  Professor Lind’s face had turned pasty, or was she imagining it? He suddenly reprimanded Amelia, as if she were a naughty child. ‘You can’t push people on these things, Amelia. It always begins to feel like a criminal trial.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘No, of course, you didn’t.’ Aleksander’s voice was soft.

  ‘None the less, Amelia assumes that all fathers, except hers, have told their children everything about their war years.’

  ‘Oh, Pops.’

  ‘In fact, my parents did tell us some things…if not always wittingly.’ Aleksander turned away from the wheel to look at Amelia and defend her from her father.

  Irena had the feeling she had better stop this conversation right now or they would end up in an outburst of nerves and slammed hard against someone’s bumper. German car or not, bumpers had a way of crumpling.

  ‘Hello… We’re already on the outskirts of Przemysl,’ she said brightly. ‘Why don’t we stop for a coffee and talk then? I’m sure we could all do with one.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Amelia concurred.

  By the time Aleksander could find a convenient place to park, they were already across the river. Perched on its pretty green hill, the town jutted towards them, looking like nothing so much as an Austrian spa complete with Baroque domes and stuccoed cloisters.

  Closer to, when they got out to walk the steep streets, it was clear that the post-Soviet reconstruction had only gone so far. Churches and cloisters and their attendant buildings had been restored to their original Renaissance and Baroque glory, but ordinary houses and shops were still awaiting a long-delayed makeover.

  Maybe it was this that allowed the Professor to find his way around as if he had left the place yesterday. He walked quickly, almost ran ahead of them. The Furies were biting at his heels. He was reliving it all, a boy again, pursued by Nazis or Soviets or Ukrainians. There had been some trouble here with Ukrainians too, she thought vaguely, or maybe that was now. Yes, they kept stealing across the border, claiming refugee status, or just selling their wares. Whatever the case, Professor Lind had a particularly intent look as he guided them through a courtyard and stopped at its penultimate doorway.

  ‘Up here,’ he said to Amelia. ‘This is where my grandfather and I moved after my grandmother had died.’

  ‘Died?’ Amelia asked. ‘Died how?’

  He shrugged. ‘It might have just been of despondency or fear or old age…’ He laughed ruefully. ‘Though nowhere near as old as I am now… People aged more quickly then. Or perhaps it’s the child’s eye view. Anyhow, we lived up on the second floor.’

  ‘Looks lovely, Somehow, I think I’d imagined everything in black and white. Grim. Drab. Like all those wartime films. But in fact it’s in colour.’

  ‘It didn’t have quite so much colour then, as I remember.’

  ‘It seems to belong to the church now. Church administration.’ Aleksander was reading a sign.

  ‘It might even have done so before. Or maybe not, because this was the Russian sector. On the other hand, I do think my grandfather might have got the lodgings through a priest.’

  ‘Befriending priests, was he?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he winked at her. ‘If you try me now I might still get through the first bits of the Catechism. In Polish only, of course.’

  Irena began to recite: ‘I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth. And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, Our Lord. Who was conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary. Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into Hell; the third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven, sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost. The Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints. The forgiveness of sins. The resurrection of the body. And life everlasting. Amen.’

  They were all staring at her. She laughed. ‘Of course, we all learned it. My generation, I mean. In protest. Against the Russians. The Virgin has a more amenable face than Stalin, you have to agree.’

  ‘I wasn’t questioning. Just surprised,’ Amelia murmured. ‘Perhaps surprised at both of you.’

  ‘This country is full of surprises.’

  Irena couldn’t quite tell if bitterness or wryness prevailed in the Professor’s tone.

  They followed the curve of the road uphill and ended up in the café in the
old castle grounds at the very top of the city. They sat out on the terrace under a large white parasol that sheltered them from the noonday heat. In the distance the river curled beneath graceful trees and when the heat mist cleared, the blue bulk of the Carpathian hills appeared.

  ‘It’s so hard to yoke moments of time together.’ The Professor was sipping a cold beer. ‘I have this old grid over which everything fits almost perfectly and yet nothing, but nothing, is the same.’

  ‘But I’m pleased you’ve brought me here, Pops.’

  ‘You were asking about my parents,’ Aleksander began hesitantly. ‘My father once took my sister and me out to the countryside to point out this estate he had worked on. He was just a kid during the war. And as soon as we got there, he started crying. He couldn’t stop. Maybe it was the cherry trees in bloom. But he wouldn’t tell us anything. Not even about how the old mill functioned. Maybe there wasn’t all that much to tell. Or that could be told.’

  Irena was listening intently. Her mother had been in the countryside too. She wanted to ask him exactly where all this had taken place. His father had been too young. Maybe that was it. Why her mother had kept it hidden. A child-father. Aleksander as a child-father … But he was already hurrying on.

  ‘I don’t really understand the inner logic of all this, because he did tell me about a later part of the war. He was taken in a łapanka, you know one of those raids the Nazis carried out. Mass kidnappings, really.’

  Irena was sitting opposite Bruno, and she could see his fingers balling into a fist. His shoulders had gone rigid. Maybe it would be better to stop Aleksander now. Too much emotion at his age couldn’t be a good thing. Yet he was the one questioning Aleksander.

  ‘And where was that exactly?’

  ‘Krakow, I imagine.’

  ‘Yes, of course, and what happened to him?’

  ‘Well, he ended up in Germany. Working in a munitions factory. Slave labour effectively.’

  He stumbled and stammered as the word ‘slave’ tumbled from his lips. He had the air of a man who had somehow condemned himself.