The Memory Man

by Lisa Appignanesi

  That’s because there was no comfort, Irena thought. No comfort for some losses, even in time – that neutral impassive force that healed most things. Probably by destroying. Destroying the cells that contained the experience. Or at least its trace. Destroying the bit that made you care. You might as well call that force God, though she had never heard of people anywhere going to war on behalf of time.

  Amelia turned out to be braver than the rest of them. Maybe because she had to confront prejudice upfront and couldn’t wriggle out of it like they did. Wriggle and wriggle all the time until the earth turned but looked substantially the same.

  So Amelia marched right up to the door of the house and rang a bell. A youngish woman answered. Irena could see that the explanations weren’t going well and that the woman was appalled, shaking her head at whatever it was she understood from Amelia’s dramatic gestures. At which point Amelia seemed to grow a metre taller, stamped her feet and showed some rage.

  Aleksander, wearing a distinct air of embarrassment, went to her side and started to explain, while Amelia took a pad out of her bag and wrote what Irena later learned was an inscription for a tombstone that named the Professor’s dead and added: ‘remembered by Bruno Lind and his daughter, Amelia.’

  She then marched the woman over to the tree. The little girl had run off in the meantime, which was just as well, because Amelia pointed emphatically and made a tombstone shape in the air, around it a circle like a small wall or fence. She pulled dollars from her bag. Irena could now hear her words, though not Aleksander’s quieter translation. She was saying that she or one of her friends would be back to check on progress. If her wishes weren’t carried out she would start proceedings to see how this house had in fact been acquired and on whose land it stood. The woman objected, said they had come by it legally, at which point Amelia smiled sweetly and said she was sure they had, but a little digging in the historical record, let alone in the ground, might none the less prove otherwise and what she was asking was simple enough. So she expected her request to be carried out.

  And then she marched back to her father and said: ‘Good. That’s done. You’ll feel the better for it. As will I.’

  Aleksander had been slightly cowed by this episode, and Irena, when she was gestured by Amelia into the front seat beside him, thought that maybe their first lovers’ misunderstanding was underway. Would they survive a history that had made them so different?

  Strangely, she found herself on Amelia’s side. An admiring ‘well done’ had slipped out of her. If only she had been capable of such decision in her life, such confrontation, everything might have been different. Instead she had the Polish gift of pessimism. The romantic mantra: everything for the worse in the worst of all possible worlds. She wore it like a badge of honour, she thought, scoffing at herself and worrying once more about the poor Professor and the sudden presence of his dead, with them now in this lumbering car, like a great curtain of sadness blotting out the sky.

  No one had spoken since they had left the house. The silence had grown as oppressive as the mounting heat. It was only when they reached the outskirts of the city that it was broken – and, oddly, by the Professor himself.

  ‘Thank you. Thank you, Amelia. Of course, you were right,’ he said.

  Irena wondered whether he meant right for him or for herself. Perhaps for both or for all of them. She imagined the marker going up in the midst of the flat peaceful countryside. People might stop. Might wonder. Reflect. That was no bad thing. It wasn’t like a state memorial or an official ceremony that inevitably always contained an admixture of contemporary politics. It was personal, an intimate record of tragic inhumanity and the grief that attends it.

  ‘My thanks to all of you,’ the Professor went on. ‘You have been exquisitely patient with an old man.’

  Irena turned to smile at him. There was nothing she could think of to say. All the words that came to her felt banal, unequal to that troubled face, the history the man contained.

  ‘It’s nothing, Professor Lind,’ Aleksander murmured. ‘It was an honour. And for me, in some ways, also an education. We live with all these scars in our country, but more recent ones have displaced them, so we don’t pause to think back that far. Until there are dramas, like over the massacre at Jedwabne, and then it becomes a national event and we’re pressed to take sides. But somehow the individual stories touch one more nearly.’

  ‘And we never know quite how or why…’ The Professor was staring at the back of Aleksander’s head. Staring at it in a way that made Irena uncomfortable. She had the distinct impression he didn’t like what he saw.

  Abruptly, he shifted his gaze towards her. ‘I was lucky, you know. Unusually lucky for a Jew. And not only because I got through. But in the way I got through. I was young, spoke German, spent part of the war in the countryside. And my grandfather was remarkable in his prescience. In keeping us out of the Ghetto… Yes. And I had a chance to act too. To be active. That helped.’ His gaze moved once more to the back of Aleksander’s head.

  Irena shifted in her seat. ‘Yes, yes. Passivity is terrible. Like depression. It makes one want to die before one is dead. It’s a state suitable only for saints.’

  Bruno turned to her. ‘You understand.’ He paused. ‘You know, I’d like to make up for that awful evening I gave you yesterday. Somehow. Let me take you all out tonight. The best Krakow can offer. You choose. And not one gloomy word will pass my lips.’

  ‘How kind,’ Irena laughed. ‘But I don’t know if I can. I’d have to check on my mother first. It may be difficult.’

  ‘You’ll arrange it,’ the Professor insisted. ‘You know how to arrange things. We’ll help. We’ll take you straight to her, won’t we Aleksander?’

  ‘And I can do my rendition of Josephine Baker for all of you,’ Amelia laughed.

  They had almost reached Ida’s house when the Professor murmured: ‘There used to be a big bakery around here.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, yes. It serviced the Germans.’ He was growing excited.

  ‘Did you get your bread from there too, Pops?’

  ‘No, no. Certainly not that, though I had a taste. Your grandfather worked there, I think. Well, I’m not sure if he was in fact working there.’ He grew quiet abruptly, and then they were pulling up in front of Ida’s and there was no time to ask him more.

  ‘I’ll try not to be long.’

  ‘I’ll come up with you,’ Amelia offered.

  ‘Yes, yes. She’ll be pleased to see you.’

  But Irena doubted that her mother would remember Amelia at all.

  ‘Oh Irenka, I’m so sorry. I don’t know how it happened.’ Ida opened the door and instantly threw her arms around Irena.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ Irena’s goddaughter, Nina, was just behind her. Her heart-shaped face drooped beneath the feathers of bright home-hennaed hair. ‘I only went upstairs to do some homework. I thought she’d be alright…’ She stopped and stared at Amelia, whom she had just taken in.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Irena’s heart sank.

  ‘That’s just it. We don’t know.’ Ida was ushering them into the lounge where a television sat in front of a plump sofa. ‘Nina left her in here watching the TV. And when she came back down from her room, she’d gone. Vanished.’

  ‘Is something the matter?’ Amelia asked.

  ‘My mother’s gone walkabout. We’ll have to call the police.’

  ‘It’s done,’ Ida responded in English. ‘An hour…no…more… almost two hours ago. And Adam’s out looking for her as well.’

  Nina was still staring at Amelia, and Irena introduced them quickly before dropping onto the sofa.

  ‘Does she have any favourite places that she likes to go to?’ Amelia asked. ‘Or friends? Friends she might want to visit? Maybe even a hair stylist? My mother used to go to hers to relax, to have her head fondled.’

  Irena tried to control her panic. ‘You don’t understand. She doesn’t go anywhere on her own.
She can’t find her way.’

  ‘I see.’

  Irena took in that she had been too brusque. ‘Let me think, let me think. The Planty. She likes the Planty, the gardens. But from here…’

  ‘It’s worth a try.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll come with you,’ Nina blurted out in careful English. ‘It’s all because of me.’

  ‘No, no.’ Irena tried to make light of it, but her voice held a sob. ‘Maybe she tried to go home.’

  ‘So she remembers her address?’

  ‘I don’t know anymore. She might have it on her, if she took her bag with her. But she doesn’t have the keys.’ The tears gathered in her eyes. Why had she taken her mother’s keys away? Because she kept losing them, of course, losing them anywhere and everywhere, even if they weren’t lost but simply gone, like her mind. But Irena hadn’t thought through all the eventualities, her mother’s erratic stubbornness, if that’s what it was. If that’s what going off for a walk meant. No, she should never have left her. If anything happened…

  ‘She took her bag. I checked. Maybe she hailed a taxi. It’s possible,’ Ida said. ‘Did she have some money on her?’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ Amelia was patting her shoulder. ‘You give me the keys, and Aleksander and I will drive to your place. Drive slowly and keep our eyes open. If we find her, we’ll phone back here. Meanwhile, you head off for the gardens. I’ve got my phone on me.’

  ‘And I’ll stay here and monitor the phone and any calls from the police.’

  ‘Take Pops with you. He’s got his phone on him too. Just make sure he turns it on.’

  Before Irena could protest or think of a better plan, numbers had been exchanged, and the Professor, Nina, and she were walking towards the Planty, while Aleksander and Amelia headed off in the opposite direction in the car.

  ‘I was fooled by the television, Irenka. I’m so sorry. I could hear it. So I just thought she was still there. She must have slipped out very quietly.’

  ‘She’s got soft-soled shoes,’ Irena said, feeling stupid. She was examining all the faces around her, as if she might somehow miss her own mother amidst the strollers who were numerous on this warm evening. At least, her mother wouldn’t get cold. Die of hypothermia.

  ‘Did she say anything to you before you went off to your room?’ The Professor addressed Nina directly for the first time.

  ‘Not really. Not specifically.’

  They walked on. They could see the Castle Hill in front of them, the low sun glistening over the red roofs.

  ‘Well, she was a bit confused.’ She shot a glance of teenage uncertainty at the adults. ‘You know, just rambling a bit. She does ramble, doesn’t she, Irenka?’

  ‘That’s a kind way of putting it,’ Irena reassured her.

  ‘Yes, well… In the middle of all this rambling, she thought she recognized someone on the television.’

  Irena laughed nervously. ‘Yes. She does that sometimes.’

  ‘It was this man. This presenter. She got a bit excited. She told me to phone the television station and invite him over straight away. She said he was her cousin.’

  ‘That’s happened before.’

  ‘Is he always her cousin?’ Bruno asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And have you checked that he might not be?’

  Irena shrugged. ‘I didn’t really think… You see, the man she points at, if it’s the same one that she’s pointed at before, is about half, no a third of her age…. So it doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Maybe she’s gone to the television station?’ Nina offered.

  Irena stared at her. ‘Surely they would have alerted the police if a batty old lady insisted on seeing her cousin. She didn’t by any chance mention a name, did she?’

  Irena waited for her answer with baited breath. The last time her mother had thought she recognized the face on the television it had born a distinct name. It had born the name of the man who was also meant to be Irena’s father. Aleksander Tarski. In her mother’s deranged mind, at least. And the man was far younger than Irena. Did desire persist? she suddenly wondered. Persist through all those other fallings away of body and mind? It was too horrible to contemplate. And she didn’t want to involve her goddaughter, let alone the Professor, in all this madness. It was shaming somehow.

  ‘Maybe. I’m not sure.’ Nina answered her question. She was mumbling a bit, you know how she does, as if she might be talking to herself. I might have heard a name beginning with an “M”. But all this was well before I left her on her own. She could have seen something else on the screen after.’

  ‘It might be worth phoning the television station, in any case. You never know,’ Bruno said. ‘The people we think least able are sometimes very determined.’ He passed Irena his telephone, and they paused on the side of the street.

  By the time they had reached the Planty and breathed in the freshness of the city’s circular green belt, Irena had ascertained that as far as anyone knew, her mother hadn’t turned up at the television station reception desk to look for her cousin. She tried to call Amelia to find out about developments there, but for some reason she couldn’t get through and gave up in frustration.

  Meanwhile, the Professor was deep in conversation with Nina. She wondered that her goddaughter had so much to say to him. Not that she didn’t adore her in all her adolescent impulsiveness or respect her intelligence, but she had rarely seen her display any interest in men of the Professor’s generation.

  ‘Nina is trying to remember for me all the things your mother talked about over the last few days.’

  ‘You think that might provide a clue? You have experience of these things?’

  ‘Not as much as you, perhaps. But I’ve read some. Lived too. A dear friend of mine, I think I mentioned him before…’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She cut him off. ‘I don’t know what’s got into me. I think I’d forgotten who you are.’

  He laughed, trying to cheer her. ‘Because I refused the profile. In fact, it’s just common sense. We try and follow your mother’s train of thought. Which is where her feet or a taxi might lead her.’

  ‘The trouble is, there isn’t always a train of what you call thought.’

  ‘No planning perhaps. And no single train. But several. And there might be some kind of associative sense in them. She still has language, you’ve been telling me. And some recognition, from what Amelia said. She paired her with Josephine Baker, after all. She may just not be in the present a lot of the time. But then which of us is?’ This time his chuckle held a note of bitter irony.

  ‘I’ve just realized. We haven’t checked hospitals.’

  ‘Won’t the police do that as a matter of course?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I imagine so,’ he calmed her. ‘You’re a good daughter.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  Nina suddenly intervened. ‘I’ve just thought of something else…’

  Irena didn’t give her a chance to finish. She had spied an old lady with white hair sitting on a bench some thirty metres away and talking to the pigeons. Her heart thumped as she raced towards her.

  She stopped brusquely. It wasn’t her mother. Terrible that she couldn’t recognize her own mother from a short distance. Old ladies didn’t wear uniforms, after all. She was a bad daughter, not a good daughter. Over these last weeks, she had not only scooted off to Vienna but then abandoned the old dear again, probably killing her in the process. The heavens wouldn’t forgive her.

  Irena now felt compelled to wish the strange woman a good day and found herself enmeshed in a conversation about the secret life of birds. It took the Professor to rescue her.

  ‘Not your mother, I take it.’

  ‘Someone completely different. Old age makes one invisible. That’s what de Beauvoir said.’

  ‘But you recognize me?’ he twinkled at her.

  ‘Because you have power. My mother doesn’t. So even I don’t recognize her. So humiliating. For her and for me. No wonder the old
get depressed. The indignity of that, on top of everything else. We treat them as if we were all Nazis and they were all Jews.’ She clamped her hand over her mouth, realizing what she had said.

  ‘You’re very hard on yourself.’

  The phone rang, interrupting him. Irena passed it over, and he talked as they carried on their walk through the gardens.

  ‘She’s not at home, according to Amelia. They’re going back to your friend’s place.’

  Irena felt doubly desolate. It was growing dark. Her mother didn’t like the dark. Had never liked it really. Had even kept a light on during the nights, despite her husband’s grumblings. In Irena’s childhood she had said it was for Irena, though Irena didn’t mind the dark. Still the light stayed on. Irena had never stopped to ask herself whether this was an old girlhood fear of her mother’s. Or perhaps, now that she stopped to consider it, one linked to the war. Hadn’t she read somewhere that domestic electricity consumption had been kept to a minimum. Two nights a week or some such on a rota. And in the country…who knew? There probably wasn’t any at all, and you had to scramble round in the dark over insects and spiders to reach a toilet. Probably an outdoor toilet. Why hadn’t she thought properly about her mother’s early life before?

  She suddenly realized the Professor was talking to her.

  ‘Nina has something to tell you. It might have some significance for you.’

  ‘Yes.’ Her goddaughter wound her arm through Irena’s and looked at her from darkly kohled eyes. It occurred to Irena that the young these days were allowed to look like sluts. No problem. Sluts with attitude. Had her mother thought the same about her?

  ‘Yes,’ Nina repeated. ‘Pani Marta was saying something about how she had to go to Dukla. She had a message to deliver.’

  ‘Dukla,’ Irena echoed. ‘What on earth for? I don’t think she knows anyone there.’ She paused for a moment.

  ‘That might not be for you to say.’ The Professor was gentle with her. ‘She may know someone you don’t. From the past, perhaps. She lived for a while before you were on the scene, I imagine.’