A Traitor to Memory (56 page)

Was
The Archduke
something you listened to? you enquire.

I don't remember. But there were other pieces that I recall. The Lalo, compositions by Saint-Saëns and Bruch.

And did you master those other pieces? you ask. Once you listened to them, Gideon, were you able to play them?

Of course. Yes. I played them all.

But not
The Archduke
?

That piece has always been my
bête noire
.

Shall we talk about that?

There's nothing to say.
The Archduke
exists. I've never been able to play it well. And now I can't play the instrument itself. I'm not even close to being able to play it. So is my father right? Are we wasting our time? Is what I have just a case of nerves that has
un
nerved me and caused me to look elsewhere for a solution? You know what I mean: Foist the problem onto someone else's shoulders so that I don't have to confront it myself. Hand it over to the shrink and see what she makes of it.

Do you believe that, Gideon?

I don't know what to believe.

We drove home from Bertram Cresswell-White's. I could tell that Libby thought we'd found a solution to my problems because the barrister had given me absolution. Her conversation was light—how she planned to “put it to Rock the next time he withholds my wages, the creep”—and when she wasn't changing gear, she kept her hand on my knee. She'd been the one to suggest that she drive my car, and I was only too happy to let her. Cresswell-White's absolution hadn't obliterated the growing pain in my head. I was definitely better off not behind the wheel.

Once back in Chalcot Square, Libby parked the car and turned my face to hers. “Hey,” she said. “You've got the answers you were looking for, Gideon. Let's plan a celebration.”

She leaned towards me and touched her mouth to mine. I felt her tongue against my lips, and I opened them and allowed her to kiss me.

Why? you ask.

Because I wanted to believe what she said: that I had the answers I'd been looking for.

Is that the only reason?

No. Of course not. I wanted to be normal.

And?

All right. I managed a response of sorts. My skull was cracking open, but I reached for her head, held her, and insinuated my fingers into her hair. We stayed like that, our tongues creating that dance of expectation between us. I tasted in her mouth the coffee she'd drunk in Cresswell-White's rooms and I drank of it deeply, with the hope that the sudden thirst I felt would lead to the hunger I'd not experienced in years. I wanted that hunger, Dr. Rose. Suddenly, I had to have it in order to know that I was alive.

One hand still in her hair, holding her to me, I kissed her face. I reached for her breast, and I felt her nipple hardening hardening erect and hardening through the material of her jersey and I squeezed that nipple to bring her both to pain and to pleasure and she moaned. She climbed from her seat onto mine, straddling me, kissing me. She called me baby and honey and Gid, and she unbuttoned my shirt as I squeezed and released and squeezed and released and her mouth was on my chest and her lips were tracing a trail from my neck and I wanted to feel, I wanted to feel, and so I groaned and put my face in her hair.

And there was the scent: fresh mint. From her shampoo, I suppose. But suddenly I was not in the car at all. I was in the back garden of our house in Kensington: in summer and at night. I've picked some mint leaves and I'm rolling them in my palms to release the smell and I hear the sounds before I see the people. They sound like diners smacking their lips over a meal, which is what I think the noise is at first until I pick them out of the darkness at the bottom of the garden, where a flash of colour that is her blonde hair attracts my attention.

They are standing against the brick shed where the gardening tools are kept. His back is to me. Her hands cover his head. One of her legs crosses behind him above his arse, holding him to her and they grind together, they grind and grind. Her head is thrown back and he kisses her neck and I can't
see
who he is but I can see her. It's Katja, my little sister's nanny. It's one of the men from the house.

Not someone else Katja knows? you ask. Not someone from the outside?

Who? Katja knows no one, Dr. Rose. She sees no one but the nun from the convent and a girl who comes to call now and then, a girl called Katie. And this isn't Katie out here in the darkness because I remember Katie, Good God I
remember
Katie now because she's fat and she's funny and she dresses with flair and she talks in the kitchen when Katja feeds Sonia and she says that Katja's escape from East Berlin was a metaphor for an organism only it wasn't
organism
that she said at all, it was
orgasm
, wasn't it, which is all she ever talks about.

Gideon, you say to me, who was the man? Look at the shape of him, look at his hair.

Her hands cover his head. He's bent to her anyway. I can't see his hair.

Can't or won't? Which is it, Gideon? Is it can't or won't?

I can't. I
can't.

Have you seen the lodger? Your father? Your grandfather? Raphael Robson? Who is it, Gideon?

I DON'T KNOW.

And Libby reached for me then, reached her hands down, did what a normal woman does when she's aroused and wants to share her arousal. She laughed a breathless sort of laugh, said, “I can't even
believe
we're doing this in your car,” and eased my belt out of its buckle, unfastened it, unbuttoned my trousers, put her fingers on the zipper, brought her mouth back to mine.

And there was nothing within me, Dr. Rose. No hunger, no thirst, no heat, no longing. No pulse of blood to awaken my lust, no throbbing in the veins to harden my cock.

I grabbed Libby's hands. I didn't need to make an excuse or say anything else to her. She may be American—a little loud at times, a little vulgar, a little too casual, too friendly, and too forthright—but she isn't a fool.

She pushed herself off me and got back in her seat. “It's me, isn't it?” she said. “I'm too fat for you.”

“Don't be an idiot.”

“Don't
call
me an idiot.”

“Don't act like one.”

She turned to the window. It was steaming up. Light from the square diffracted through the steam and cast a muted glow against her cheek. Round, the cheek looked, and I could see the colour in it, the flush of a peach as it grows and ripens. The despair I felt—for myself, for her, for the two of us together—was what made me continue. “You're fine, Libby. You're one hundred percent. You're perfect. It isn't you.”

“Then what? Rock? It's Rock. It's that we're still married. It's that you know what he does to me, don't you? You've figured it out.”

I didn't know what she was talking about, and I didn't want to know. I said, “Libby, if you haven't realised by now that there's something wrong with me—something seriously wrong—”

And at that, she got out of the car. She shoved the door open and slammed it shut, and she did what she never does. She shouted. “Nothing is wrong with you, Gideon! Do you hear me? Nothing is fucking
wrong
with you!”

I got out as well, and we faced each other over the bonnet of the car. I said, “You know that you're lying to yourself.”

“I know what's before my eyes. And what's before my eyes is you.”

“You've heard me try to play. You've sat in your flat and heard me. You know.”

“The violin? Is
that
what this is all about, Gid? The God damn cock-sucking violin?” She smashed her fist against the car's bonnet so hard that I started. She cried, “You are
not
the violin. Playing music is what you do. It is not—and has never been—who you are.”

“And if I can't play? What happens then?”

“Then you live, all right? You God damn start
living
. How about that for a profound idea?”

“You don't understand.”

“I understand plenty. I understand that you've got yourself, like, all hooked into being Mr. Violin. You've spent so many years scratching at the strings that you don't have any other identity. Why are you doing it? What's it s'posed to prove? Will your dad, maybe,
love
you enough if you play till your fingers bleed or something?” She swung away from the car and away from me. “Like, why am I even
bothering
, Gideon?”

She began striding towards the house and I followed her, which was when I saw that the front door was open and that someone was standing on the front steps and probably had been standing there since Libby had parked the car in the square. She saw him at that same moment that I did and for the first time I caught on her face an expression telling me she held an aversion to him that was as strong as—if not stronger than—the one my father held for her.

“Then perhaps it's time you stopped bothering,” Dad said. His voice was quite pleasant, but his eyes were steel.

GIDEON

20 October, 10:00 P.M.

Dad said, “Charming girl. Does she always shriek like a fishwife in the square, or was that something special this evening?”