PART TWO
8
Mother’s Silence
A doctor telephoned me this morning. She told me that Mr Rafferty was suffering one of his grey periods. He had fallen into a sort of neurasthenia, a lethargy from which nothing, it seemed, could rouse him. She thought it might help if he could spend some time outside the institution. I agreed; I would travel to Edinburgh and take him swimming. The doctor was waiting for me when I arrived. She wore a blush suit and vivid red bandeau. She shook my hand and brought me into her office.
‘During his grey periods,’ she said, glancing at a report, ‘in between periods of exhausted silence, your grandfather generally becomes confused. It’s a phase he returns to every so often. One knows he is about to enter this cycle when he insists he is hearing voices.’ I knew this already, and I tried to tell the doctor, but she cut me off.
‘The voices announce forceful and important thoughts, at least as far as your grandfather is concerned. They are sometimes reassuring, but more often menacing, commands or insults directed at him. Someone has implanted a broadcasting device in me, he will repeat. It is then he succumbs wholly to the voices. He literally does not know who he is and spends periods as a different person. One can never predict which personality he will choose, far less why he has chosen it. It is not that on certain days he assumes the persona of Thomas Mudge, watchmaker to George III; for him he is Thomas Mudge or Edward Dent or Taqî ad-Dîn or Ulysse Nardin or any number of past clockmakers, with whom he shares significant characteristics.’ The doctor picked up a book entitled Antique Clocks and Their Makers and turned to a fold-marked section. The verso page showed a gold pocket watch with black and gold hands; on the facing page a portrait of a man with a kind, energetic face.
‘For example, one can deduce,’ she said, pointing to the portrait, ‘from the flat brow and protruding lower lip, the cheerful, childlike trusting gaze, that your grandfather has become Mr George Graham, known as “Honest George”, who tramped to London in 1687 and became a leading watchmaker, but who never secured a monopoly on his inventions.’ She closed the book. ‘At other times it is impossible to know who your grandfather is, because he is wholly preoccupied and impenetrable.’
This morning the doctor told me she had been able to discover not only who Mr Rafferty had become, but also a significant event in this person’s life. For the past six hours he’d been Abraham-Louis Breguet, one of his more frequent incarnations, and it was June 1780, the day Breguet’s wife died.
‘Indulge his fantasy,’ she said. ‘He may resent you if you attempt to set him straight.’
‘Will he be all right?’ I asked. We had been standing all this time, but now she invited me to sit. She offered me a cup of tea, which I declined, herself sat down, and told me the following story. – Some time ago she had been called to treat a twelve-year-old boy. He was typical in all aspects but one: since he was seven years old he had not spoken a single word. At first his parents thought he was merely brooding. Soon, however, his teachers expressed concern, and he was brought to a GP, who examined him but found nothing wrong. He was taken to a speech therapist, who decided that she too could be of no help, since the boy had once spoken fluently; the child, she said, simply had no desire to talk. There followed visits to various specialists, of whom she, the lady doctor, a psychiatric therapist, was the last. She told me she had asked the boy to draw and to note down his favourite actors. All of this he carried out willingly, in silence. She performed a Rorschach test, which demonstrated he had a critical side to his character, an unwillingness to cooperate with his peers, inclinations to purity, a sensual side outweighed by his facility for reasoning, a tendency to follow the crowd, to believe in his ambition, and to be both sensitive and untruthful; all of which was perfectly normal. She dismissed the case, recommending his silence be indulged, since she believed he would break it of his own free will. About a year later she received a letter from the boy’s mother, who had decided to call in other specialists: Chinese herbalists, acousticologists, experts on whale song, yogis and clairaudients, none of whom had restored speech to him. Finally she contacted a famous hypnotist. The boy was instructed to lie on a kind of bed on stilts. The hypnotist stood on a wooden footstool from where he conducted the mesmerization. An hour later the parents were invited into the room; the boy looked just the same, but his speech had returned. That evening, over supper, he answered their excited questions. It seemed he wanted to unburden himself by relating certain episodes from his life; with great effort he spoke about his past. His words, however, were incoherent, disrupted by long pauses, and he repeated the same phrases again and again. His mother produced a jotter and invited him to note down the memories he was unable to voice. The boy went upstairs, brushed his teeth and climbed into bed. The next morning they found him hanging by the cord of his dressing-gown. The mother’s letter went on to say that, before he died, her son had filled almost two-thirds of the jotter with tiny handwriting. The doctor had asked to see it; one passage in particular caught her attention. It related how, as a little boy, he had played a torch bearer at the fire festival on Beltane night. His mother, a keen dressmaker, sewed the pagan costume herself: the sable flowing robes, the black circlet, and she had daubed his skin with boot-black. His father made the torch from a broom handle topped with benzine-soaked rags. With solemn pride he carried his torch around the Calton Hill (wrote the boy), proceeding as one with the crowd in an upward spiral, under the fire arch, passing sprites representing the four elements, stopping in the hollow at the summit; where they were ambushed by the Red Man, who unleashed his wild and complex dance, before marrying the May Queen, so that blue aimless summer might begin.
I record here what I remember of the story, and what I remember of the story I do not remember word for word. It was at least twice as long. I have left out a passage concerning the boy’s left-side right-side cerebral make-up, for instance. As soon as the doctor finished her narration she shook my hand and took me to see my grandfather. Perhaps she wanted to emphasize that she is not a magician, as I have heard her say before, that she cannot perform miracles for her patients. No doubt this is true. But I cannot help feeling that she spoke for my benefit.
I found my grandfather hunched at the low table, his fingers working rapidly and with delicacy on the air. He turned, and immediately I noticed a wild expression on his face, which he was struggling to hide. He got into bed. I saw that his eyes, heavily bagged, entirely filled by their black pupils, were shiny with tears that were still being shed, even after what must have been several hours. I remained in the doorway.
‘I am not sure if you are able to receive visitors, Monsieur. I have … heard.’
Mr Rafferty peered uncertainly at me. Then his face creased in recognition. ‘Thank you, Marat. It is Marat, isn’t it? Yes, I knew it was you. I am inconsolable. But please, do come in. I welcome the distraction.’
I had no idea who Marat was. But, attentive to the doctor’s advice, I decided to indulge his fantasy. I pulled the chair to his bedside and sat down, as if I were visiting an invalid in hospital. Then it occurred to me that this was, in fact, exactly what I was doing.
‘I am … er … I am so sorry to have heard of your misfortune.’ There was an awkward pause. Mr Rafferty placed his hand on top of mine, which was placed on my crossed knee.
‘Dear Marat,’ he said, ‘you of all people will understand the enormity of my loss.’ I lowered my head. I wanted him to release my hand, but he gripped harder. He was waiting for me to say something.
‘Indeed …’ I began. I could think of nothing else to say.
Suddenly Mr Rafferty shook his hand from mine and levered himself to a sitting position. ‘We were married only five years.’ He took a plastic tumbler filled with water and emptied it into his mouth. ‘Tell me,’ he gazed solemnly into my eyes. ‘How will you remember her?’
I reached for the tumbler and filled it with water. Mr Rafferty emptied it again. There was a pause.
‘Don’t be shy, Marat.’ I didn’t say anything. He had a fleck of paper tissue stuck to his cheek. ‘You are reluctant to talk about Cécile.’ His eyes softened. ‘You think I ought to put my mind to other things. Yet for the time being, I must reminisce. Tell me,’ once again he had taken my hand in his, ‘how will you remember her?’ I looked up at the ceiling and cleared my throat.
‘Her … happy gaze.’ Mr Rafferty furrowed his brow. His tongue darted over his lower lip. Then he looked at me, astonished. ‘How right you are! It was her eyes that first attracted me.’ His own eyes were blurred with tears. ‘Let us tell happy stories.’
I searched in my mind, but I could think of nothing to say.
‘I never was much of a storyteller,’ I said.
‘What’s come over you? I may be in mourning, but you mustn’t treat me like a child!’
The Echo Chamber Page 9
