The Memory Man Read online

  Not that she bought into the cleaner than clean version of Polish patriotic history either, she hastened to tell herself. That was almost as bad. Inside Poland you suffered from the latter, outside from the former. Maybe she was still oversensitive to the former. At least Poles couldn’t be part of the terrorist evil. That was clear. They were the wrong colour of religious. And what would the Pope say?

  In fact, after London, it seemed to her that Polish cities had no colour at all.

  Right on cue, as if perhaps the subliminal sight of them had prompted the thought, Irena saw Professor Lind and that girlfriend of his. She had to be a girlfriend. She was certainly too young to be his wife…or could one permit oneself such flights if one was a famous scientist? Why not? Why ever not? Certainly, he hadn’t bothered with Irena since the woman had appeared on the scene. And she was beautiful, she had to grant him that. Quite delicious, Anthony would have said. So there was no question that the great Professor Lind was going to pay attention to her little note telling him that Aleksander Tarski would be deeply honoured (though he would never dare ask) if the Professor could make a little time to drop in on his session at the conference. It seemed he was a great admirer of the Professor’s work, etc. etc. It also seemed that Irena had been a fool even to suggest she could work such miracles.

  She suddenly felt overwhelmingly tired. There was no point really. No point jollying herself along with her little ploys and silly asides. Even she couldn’t be bothered to muster an interest in herself. No point. Childless women like her might as well be shot when they reached the age of fifty, so as to be put out of their misery. Her only use was in looking after an even more useless mother.

  ‘Ms Davies. I thought it was you.’ Professor Lind was suddenly upon her. ‘Thank you for your note. Yes, of course.’ He gave her one of his penetrating looks so that she began to wonder if he could secretly gauge the level of alcohol in her, or the state of her hormones. ‘Of course, I’d be happy to attend Aleksander Tarski’s session, if he’d like me there. But wait a minute: you haven’t met Amelia yet. Ms Davies, my daughter, Amelia.’

  ‘Daughter?’ Irena stumbled over an uneven cobble and struggled to right herself. How cynical she must have grown over human relations never to have had that thought even cross her consciousness. She had locked herself in with her mother too much. She must make an effort to get out more, air her prejudices.

  Lind helped her steady herself. ‘Yes. I’m a uniquely fortunate man, don’t you think? She flew over to rescue me from the clutches of the hospital I’d already fled.’

  ‘He’ll do anything to get filial attention.’

  Irena didn’t know whether she had heard the sardonic note in this altogether surprising daughter’s words. She stretched out a hand.

  ‘The Professor is wonderfully resilient. If I’d been the object of that rash skater’s board, I think I’d still be stretched on the hospital bed.’

  ‘You were there, of course. I should thank you for coming to his rescue. You weren’t to know that Pops has developed a late allergy to hospitals.’

  ‘I can’t say I blame him. Though the place looked rather more hotel-like than the death pits you get at home.

  ‘Home?’

  ‘Ms Davies, despite her accent is from Poland, Amelia. Look, there’s Andrew Wood with Bob Wells. You remember Bob. From San Diego.’ He waved across the square and started to walk in the direction of the two men, who were visibly arguing.

  Amelia grinned but she didn’t follow Bruno.

  ‘Did my father mention, Ms…’

  ‘Call me Irena, please.’

  ‘Did he mention that his mother was from Poland?’

  ‘No, no he didn’t. I had no idea.’ Irena stared at her. ‘But his mother must have been…must have been Jewish.’

  ‘Does that make a difference?’

  ‘No, no. Only…yes. During the war…you know…’

  ‘Well, I’m not altogether sure I do. Not really.’ Amelia looked down at her shoe, which was flat and delicate and striped. ‘I only learned about it today. He hasn’t exactly been advertising the fact.’

  ‘And your mother?’ For once Irena felt more curious about the present than the past.

  ‘Dead, I’m afraid. Almost three years ago now. We all miss her. Particularly him. She was a force.’

  ‘And she was?’

  ‘Oh, I see. American. A doctor.’ She paused, cast a sidelong glance at Irena. ‘I’m trying to get my father to make a little trip to Poland. To take me there. Now that we’ve come this far already.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s just this hunch I have. It would be good for him. Perhaps you could invite him to your Institute.’

  Irena giggled. ‘My institute consists of one patient, who happens to be my mother, though it’s true that – as you might say – she’s challenged in the memory department.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s not your fault. But I know someone who would be delighted to extend an invitation to your father. Though I fear the Polish Institutes can’t always afford to pay.’

  ‘That’s not the kind of incentive he needs.’

  ‘What, then?’

  Amelia shrugged. ‘I’m not certain. But anything is worth a try. I just feel that. You know he wouldn’t come with me to the Holocaust Museum in Washington when it opened. A friend of mine worked on it and…but he wouldn’t come.’

  ‘Maybe he’s had enough of all that.’

  Irena felt her uncomprehending stare.

  ‘But never mind. I’m certain an invitation would be no problem.’

  ‘Oh, excuse me.’ Amelia dug into her pocket and brought out her ringing telephone. ‘California’s just waking up. I’ll have to take this.’

  Irena caught up with the men. Andrew Wood was trying to explain to two Japanese tourists that he didn’t really want to snap a photo of them in front of the memorial to the Jewish dead. It wasn’t appropriate.

  Meanwhile, Bob Wells, lean and casual and altogether un-professorial in blue jeans, was reading from his guidebook and pointing at a statue. ‘Gotfried Lessing. A great enlightener. He wrote a book called Nathan the Wise that was tolerant towards the Jews. So when the Nazis came into Vienna, the statue was pulled down. Apparently, a new cast was made just after the War.’

  ‘But it says right there…’ Bruno pointed, laughed, waved over Amelia, ‘the statue wasn’t put back on its plinth until 1982. Thirty-six years later. Guess they forgot.’

  ‘Almost a case of wilful amnesia, I imagine,’ Amelia noted as she tucked her phone away.

  ‘At that rate, my much publicized, if non-existent, case for restitution should take until approximately 2040.’

  ‘We learn our contemporary history through the histories of our monuments,’ Irena heard herself say.

  They all looked at her.

  ‘It’s true. Up they go and down they come, depending on the regime. Up, down, up down. Like a game of musical monuments. Captions graffiti-ed over, changed, rewritten along the way. Just wait till the Lenins start going up again in the Soviet Union.’

  ‘You really think so?’ Wood looked at her intently.

  ‘It’s as possible as anything else.’

  ‘We edit internally too. Don’t we, Andrew?’ Lind intervened. ‘When you pump some 2-Dgal into your chicks or give them an electric shock, they forget what they’ve already learned.’

  ‘They do, indeed. Though only if they’ve learned it superficially. If the memory’s become long-term, it’ll come back with the appropriate triggers.’

  They walked on a little and Irena paused to look at a house that was far older than its neighbours. An intricate relief showed a river baptism scene.

  ‘Strange to have this on the square and so close to the Shoah monument, don’t you think?’

  Amelia shrugged. ‘What does it say?’

  ‘My Latin’s a bit rusty. Something about Baptism in the Jordan ridding one of sin, disease, evil. Ritual cleans
ing.’

  ‘Oh, I read about that.’ Bob Wells joined them. ‘The relief describes a pogrom, another great instance of the state using the Jews as scapegoats for various ills. In 1421. Albrecht V, I think it was. He had Vienna’s poorer Jews stripped of the little they possessed and forced them down the Danube on rafts, while the richer ones were tortured until they revealed where they’d hidden their wealth. Then they were burned alive. Many chose suicide instead of torture. It’s one of the great historical instances of ethnic cleansing. According to my book.’

  ‘I think I’ve had enough history for one day,’ Bruno said quietly.

  So had Irena. Pyres had leaped up around the square while the man talked. She could almost smell the charred flesh, hear the screaming children.

  She excused herself. ‘I’d forgotten. I’d arranged to meet someone. And to buy a present. I’ve got to get back.’ She looked at her watch, made hasty goodbyes.

  ‘One always forgets things at conferences about memory.’ Andrew Wood threw her a smile that wasn’t altogether reassuring.

  Irena had lied. No one was waiting for her. But she had wanted to get away. Away from these Brits and Americans with their certainties about right and wrong, about Jews and Gentiles, blacks and whites. Had she imagined it or were they all staring directly at her when that Bob Wells was going on about that pogrom almost six hundred years ago?

  The trouble was they didn’t seem to realize every bit of ground here had been the site of some battle or siege or horror. Some plague of rats or locusts. You never walked except to step over bodies. Turks against Poles, against Austrians, Russians against Poles against Turks against Prussians, Hungarians against Romanians against Bulgarians, Lats and Liths and Ruthenians and Moravians and Bohemians and Slovaks and Lemks and Czechs and Croats and Serbs.

  And that wasn’t even to get into the French or Italians or Germans, let alone the Brits and their ships, ships everywhere, unheard of bits of the world. In her school days, they were given names of battles to memorize, whole lists of heroic resistances against invading Turks and Russians and Germans and Austrians and French. And because the Brits had never been occupied, well not since the Normans, they somehow felt superior. As for the Americans, they promptly forgot all those Indians they’d done away with and behaved as if they had a monopoly on virtue. That Amelia must know better.

  She was tired. Overreacting. She shouldn’t have left them. But all this effort of concentration after being cooped up with her mother was too much. Her mind had gone to seed, had lost its resilience, its agility.

  She sometimes really thought her mother’s condition was contagious. That she, too, was growing demented. Several days alone in her mother’s presence and the sharp outlines of the real faded, blurred, metamorphosed under the charge of the old woman’s insistent emotion. For several months her mother had been certain that a neighbour was breaking into the house, that he was climbing up onto the roof and lowering himself down a chimney in order to invade her bedroom and her lounge and steal her most precious possessions. She would grip Irena’s arm with the force of panic and breathlessly recount the experience as if a massed raid had taken place. She insisted that the police be called.

  Indeed, one day when Irena was out, the poor woman had called them and Irena had found a bemused policeman comforting her mother when she returned. Irena had, first patiently, and then with growing impatience explained that it was hardly likely that the neighbour would break in, that there was nothing to steal, that he was too fat and drunk to get down the chimney, that reason dictated otherwise. But her mother’s nocturnal fear spread through the house and gathered in dark corners.

  One sleepless night it leaped out at her, creaked across floorboards, produced ominous shadows that fluttered wildly past curtains and pounced on her, so that she thought she would suffocate. She was certain that a burglary was in progress. Unable to get up or reach the phone, she just managed to burrow under bedclothes. She tried not to breathe. When first light finally came, she tiptoed out of bed to see what had been taken, what mess had been left. Nothing had been touched. She had grown as demented as her mother.

  Yes, contagion.

  On another occasion, her mother had talked of a Jana, who was coming to visit on the weekend. The best china had to be brought out, something special prepared, because she was a dear, dear old friend. Her mother, who rarely anticipated anything but disaster seemed so happy at the prospect that Irena put extra effort into preparations, bought special food, a good bottle of wine. She wanted to make her mother happy. On the appointed evening, no one came. Irena realized that she had been completely taken in by a fantasy, or a memory, or a hallucination, whereas her mother, when it came to the evening in question, had forgotten all about Jana’s supposed visit.

  Yes, Irena told herself, she now inhabited a world of shifting shapes, where the real and the imaginary blended with disquieting effect. It was likely that the story her mother had told her all those years ago when she hadn’t suspected Alzheimer’s or senility or anything at all was as demented as all the rest. Why else, having kept it secret for some forty years, should the woman suddenly decide to orphan her, to tell her that her father wasn’t her father at all, to tell her when all the relevant parties except her mother were probably dead and buried? It was an act of maternal aggression that could be considered certifiable.

  Lock her up. Lock her up, a voice in Irena now raged. Yet Irena had accepted it all, at first. She had added a romantic veil and a knight on horseback to her mother’s pedestrian image; had readjusted her sense of herself too, had even made some cursory inquiries about a man called Tarski, and then gone back with a new tale to tell Anthony in England. In the light of her life then, filled with future potential, what did all those stories of long ago matter? She wasn’t really interested in distant, dusty fathers buried in Polish soil.

  And then since her return to Poland, it had all begun to niggle at her. Now that she could no longer trust any of her mother’s words, it was as if the dementia reached backwards and arched over the years. Every bearing she had grew wobbly, uncertain. Why hadn’t she grilled her mother sooner? She had left everything too late. Why hadn’t she paid better attention to all those stories of her mother’s early life? And whose daughter was she, anyway? Her assumed father’s: Witek Kanikow, the only father she had known, a kind enough man, solid, reliable, a railway engineer who shied away from rows or even debates, left those to his fierier wife and daughter and seemed happy enough simply to get by?

  Or was there really someone else?

  She sometimes felt, as she heard her demented mother shuffling along the floorboards of the small house they shared some twenty minutes from the centre of Krakow, that they were two of a kind. While her mother wandered through the cobwebs – or was it plaques and tangles? – of her disintegrating brain, she, Irena, dreamed gossamer dreams, created fantasies of rescue involving rich and interesting fathers and brothers, even sisters, who would whisk her into a new life – or at the very least, help with her mother and provide an anchor against loneliness.

  Now that it was clear there would be no children of her own, in her most secret core she wished herself a new family in which she could feel at home.

  Yes, they had become horribly similar. Behind the folds and furrows the years had brought, she and her mother, with those eerie clear blue eyes turned inward, were just two girls – watchful, fearful, yet somehow innocent – still hoping the world would bring them no harm, perhaps even an occasional kindness.

  A sombre cloud had settled over the city with no warning. Moments later a deluge fell on the streets, thick, warm drops like pellets, leaping up where they hit the cobbles. Irena took refuge inside a church, a pretty church with a small baroque dome aflutter with angels and puffball clouds. There was a lingering smell of incense in the air. She kneeled and crossed herself as she had an intense memory of doing in the small country church of her childhood. She offered an unspoken prayer and then lit a candle for her mother
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  Two days later, without knowing quite how it had happened, Irena found herself sitting on a train bound for Krakow. It was not the sitting that was bizarre, or the train that was as shabby-genteel as the last one with soft, slightly sagging seats, though the windows had been scrubbed, and at least they could see out. The surprise was who was sitting with her in the compartment. For one there was Professor Aleksander Tarski. Next to him sat Amelia, gorgeous in jeans and a casual jacket with bits of glass beads on it that caught the light. And opposite them by the window, looking out gravely, as if he might conjure up bits of landscape and bring them in for microscopic examination, was Professor Bruno Lind.

  For once, Irena thought, coming home held out just a little excitement.

  5

  Bruno Lind leaned into his seat. The even repetitive rhythm of the rails produced a dream-like somnolence. Greens and browns and blues of varying hues rose and fell before him A herd of spotted cows came into focus only to disappear just as quickly, followed by a regal house with a vaulted dome, small hillside vineyards, and in the mysterious distance, the purple folds of mist-covered mountains, their shapes as inconstant as their constancy. The train might be moving forward, ploughing towards some destination, but the sensation was that of being held in a capsule, one that lulled, produced a hole in time.

  It had been an age since he had spent more than a necessary hour on a train. And those weren’t real journeys. The one before him was.

  He still had no idea why he had succumbed to Amelia’s insistence, coupled with Aleksander Tarski’s charming invitation and Irena Davies’s more diffident persuasion. It felt to him a little as if they were all in cahoots. Certainly, the man and his daughter were keeping up some kind of patter now, which he couldn’t quite bother to tune into. But he could see that Amelia was relaxed. That was good. As for this Tarski, if she had any idea of the thoughts he aroused in Bruno, she would probably have dragged her father back to LA in the flash of a credit card. But there was no need for her to know.