The Memory Man (3 page)

He took a taxi back to the hotel. After a shower, he thought of heading off into the city. No one, but no one, would know for once where he was. The anticipation of that, for a man who lived within a strict schedule of duties and commitments, was delicious.

Instead, with a kind of perversity, he found himself walking towards the mock-Gothic university building on the other side of the Ring, where – all things being equal, which they weren’t – he would at this very moment have been coming to the climax of his address to the audience.

The hall was large and filled to capacity. Before focussing on the speaker, his eyes were drawn to the magnificent ceiling where the seven pillars of wisdom emerged in the high decorative style of Gustav Klimt. Looking beyond the sea of heads, he now
recognized
the burly bearded figure of Andrew Wood behind the large oak podium. An inspired choice to replace him, Bruno thought. In fact, Wood should have been asked in the first place to do the keynote. He was far more adept than Bruno himself at blending the political with the scientific. And with his easy style of address he could draw an accessible picture – even for the lay non-English speaker – of the complexities of research into the hundred billion nerve cells and the hundred trillion interconnections that go to make up a human brain.

A memory man, just as Bruno had been at points in his long career, Wood had evidently been talking about his chicks, the
model-systems his lab preferred, but now he was evoking the ageing brain and the abnormal amyloid protein build-ups found in Alzheimer’s sufferers. Like the unabsorbed waste products of a city or a nation’s history, Wood was saying, these abnormal build-ups were destructive and un-recyclable.

Bruno could see where the analogy was heading. Austria, like its neuroscientists, had to contend with this waste matter of the past, the plaque in the system, and somehow disperse it, or the patient’s and the nation’s ability to function, which was also an ability to remember, would be utterly destroyed. Without an agreed-upon memory, there was no possibility of community. Austria’s full role in Europe, Wood was suggesting, would only come when the country ceased to see itself solely as a victim state of Nazi annexation. For too long Austria had hidden behind its supposed ‘victim’ status. It now had openly to confront its active role, not only in the wartime atrocities committed against Jews and political dissidents but also in the forced takeover of never-returned property.

Wood paused. A message had been passed to him. As he read it, he smiled broadly and gestured towards the back of the large auditorium. Simultaneously, a young man approached Bruno and asked whether he would be good enough to follow him. Moments later, Bruno found himself on the stage shaking hands with Wood, gazing down onto a sea of expectant faces, listening to a far too
fulsome
introduction to his own modest achievements. He glanced at his watch. Five minutes…just enough time to thank Wood and offer his apologies.

It surprised him then, when he heard himself saying: ‘Friends, our science has advanced by leaps and bounds in the last decade. But the links between mind and brain remain deeply mysterious. Today…’ He moved for a moment into German and felt the familiarity of the speech on his tongue, despite the sudden strain on his lips and cheek as long dormant muscles were prodded into action.

‘Today, I suddenly found myself in front of my childhood home. I had no real intention of going there. Nor, if I had set out to find my way, do I believe I would have remembered the direction quite so efficiently… As Shakespeare might have said, if he joined us now and didn’t have a wondrous way with poetry
“There are more things in our synapses and hippocampus than are dreamed of in our science,” dear friends. Yes, we have made great strides, but our understanding of memory, which must be the foundation of mind, is still in its infancy…’

Irene bent towards the mirror and wiped the excess mascara from her lashes, then deftly reapplied maroon-red lipstick. She added a hint of blusher on cheeks that had grown gaunt. She looked tired. The strain of the day was scattered round her face like used ammunition. Shadows, crevices. Pah. There was nothing for it. She shrugged for the benefit of the woman beside her and went back into the fray.

The fray consisted of the select crowd gathered in the hotel banqueting room for after-dinner coffee. It was clear that, sooner or later, one of them would discover that she was here under false pretences. Irene smoothed the skirt of her best suit, adjusted the amber pendant and put on her opaque smile. She reminded herself that not all her pretences were false . She was, after all, someone.

As she wound past little groups engaged in intent conversation, Bruno Lind greeted her from the head table, where he still sat flanked by the mayor and some other notables. She nodded in return.

Funny how she couldn’t make up her mind about the man. Maybe it was simply the difference between him this afternoon – frail, supine, pale, first on the ground then in the hospital bed – and now. Now the vulpine face, with its clear intent eyes and bristling white-grey hair, was full of energy. The kind of energy that burns. Yes. It was a face that might have been painted by some old master, one who specialized in the lines and furrows of truculent character. The fall, which had seemed so serious, had evidently had little effect on this erect, barrel-chested figure, more like an aging pugilist than a man of the mind. And he had thoroughly disproved the sad tale of accident and slow recovery she had told the worried conveners.

What she had forgotten was that all these Westerners worked out, even if their names were preceded by the word ‘Professor’. Or maybe this one had tried some of his own remedies ahead of any clinical trials. Like Picasso with his monkey glands. Or that strange German, Frossman, she had read about, who had stuck a tube up the artery in his wrist to prove his theory that it would reach the heart. And so, at the risk of suicide, had become the founder of angioplasty.

No, she was speculating wildly. In fact, apart from hearsay, she had no idea at what stage Professor Lind’s work on cognitive enhancers was.

So why did she feel she didn’t trust him? Couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Was it the seductive charm he had turned on her when he hailed her as his saviour as they waited to go into dinner? She was never at ease with that kind of charm, had in fact long schooled herself against it. It was the charm the older man deployed with the young woman, all teasing fondness and subtle persuasion. But she hadn’t been young for a long time, forever it sometimes seemed, and Bruno Lind could hardly be blind to the fact.

‘Ms Davies, Irena, may I call you that?’

She jumped back, surprised at his sudden appearance beside her, his hand on her shoulder.

‘Forgive me. You look a little lost. I thought perhaps I might introduce you to some of the confraternity. I know quite a few of them.’

‘That’s kind,’ she said, her tone too regal for her words. She
bridled
under the hint of patronage. That was it, she thought. This Lind was just a trifle pompous, full of himself. Urging the little Eastern European she was into the bright light of the Western day. They were all like that. When they were kind, that is. They wore that air of bestowing favours. Making lordly assumptions about what was for the best, when they had no idea. No idea about anything, really.

The chip on her shoulder, Irena noted, was in danger of metamorphosing into a millstone. She forced a gracious smile to her lips.

Lind introduced her to some colleagues – a Spaniard with an impossible accent, a handsome woman from Berlin and then to the Englishman who had stood in for him. Wood seemed to be a genial man, and the conversation bubbled and flowed. She envied the easy camaraderie amongst them, the liveliness. They had
ready-made
topics to hand, gossip about people she didn’t know, shared interests. Like members of some wandering community that regrouped whenever it met.

Lind had obviously caught her blank stare and was now trying to explain something about peptides to her and how a particular set of sequences Andrew Wood’s lab was working on could convert weak memories into stronger ones – and thus potentially be of use in preventing the full onslaught of Alzheimer’s disease.

‘Where are you attached to, Ms Davies?’ Wood addressed her directly for the first time.

‘No, no. You’ve misunderstood. I’m not attached to a lab. I’m a journalist.’

The temperature of the group seemed to drop a few notches. A wariness crept in.

‘With a London paper?’

Before she could answer, Aleksander Tarski came over to their group. He was balancing two cups of coffee, and he handed her one with a murmur.

‘I’m a freelance,’ she said softly, using the moment.

Lind took a step backwards as if he were on the verge of leaving them.

Trapped in the growing silence, Irena hastily filled it with introductions, babbled something about how she was writing a piece about the conference and in particular the Polish delegation.

‘Oh yes?’ Wood seemed to breathe easier. He engaged Tarski, whose English was remarkably good, in conversation. It turned out they had a friend in common in Warsaw, and she watched him navigate Tarski out of earshot to query him about his work. What was it she had overheard him say earlier? That he came to these meetings because you learned things in informal ways and without having to wait for what was at least the eight-month delay of
publication, by which time an experiment could already have been disproved. Yes, that was interesting. Camaraderie married to
competition
. Sharing but with a level of secrecy.

She could still feel Lind’s disapproval. It seemed to have extended to the whole group. No, he wasn’t an easy man. He hadn’t taken in that she was a journalist before. Irena excused herself. She wanted another drink. But in a moment he was at her side again.

‘Shall we get a refill? They have decaf too, if you prefer. And
petits fours.
I’m afraid I’m greedy. I can never resist.’

It would have been rude to refuse. But she decided to challenge him and get it all out of the way. She had always preferred directness, though for much of her life it hadn’t been an option open to her.

‘You don’t approve of having journalists here?’

‘No, no. Not at all. It’s just useful to know who they are before… Well, let’s just say before anything gets mistranslated or hyped as miracle. Do you have a background in science?’

She chuckled. ‘So far in the background, you might say it has disappeared. I’m afraid my one distinct memory of a laboratory dates from schooldays and has more to do with the boy’s terrorizing the girls with Bunsen burners and blistering acid than with the subtlety of equations.’

‘I see.’ His tone was noncommittal, and she instantly regretted her frankness.

‘I did prepare myself, however. For this assignment. I did a lot of reading. And memory, you know… Well, it’s a subject that spans a great many disciplines, not all of them scientific – as the mayor so kindly reminded us this evening.’

‘Yes, yes, he did. An elegant cull of the dictionary of quotations, I thought. Including Roosevelt – Franklin D that is – from his address to the booksellers of America in 1942… Did you know it before?’ He put on a low but oracular voice. ‘“No man and no force can abolish memory. No man and no force can put thought in a concentration camp forever. No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody man’s eternal fight against tyranny of every kind.” And so on. Stirring stuff. Even now. Most particularly I imagine for officials in countries where a pretty good attempt was made at abolishing memory.’

‘Alzheimer’s abolishes it even more effectively.’ Irene muttered beneath her breath.

They had reached the long table on which the coffee pots stood at the ready in front of white-gloved waiters.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t quite hear you.’

‘Nothing. Nothing. I didn’t say anything.’

‘Yes, you did.’

He paused for a moment, assessing her from those wolf’s eyes. A Siberian wolf, she thought. He had a way with listening, did it with so much expression, that you would be forgiven for thinking he had spoken reams.

‘And which paper is it that you write for?’

‘Oh, I doubt that you’d know it.’

‘Try me.’

‘The
Tygodnik Powszechny.’

‘Polish?’ He flashed an odd look at her.

‘Very good. Most wouldn’t even know that. It’s quite a famous weekly. It even played a role in bringing down the Communist regime.’

He didn’t reply. He was still staring at her.

‘So you’re really Polish? You write in Polish?’

‘I do. Is it a crime?’

‘No. But a surprise.’

She laughed. ‘What did you think?’

‘Well, to tell the truth, I thought you were English.’

‘Which means you’re not.’

‘Evidently.’

‘I did live there for many years.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. Almost twenty to be more or less exact.’

‘You can’t be more or less exact.’

‘About life, I imagine you can.’

He didn’t answer. He was sipping his coffee as if he had forgotten she was there. He was staring in the direction of Wood and Tarski. That suited her just fine, Irena decided. She chose the moment to offer some lame excuse and slip away.

But he was right. It had been a stupid thing to say. What had made her say it? As if she were about to engage on a confession.
Was she flirting? Heaven forbid. No more men for her. A nun, that’s what she was. It’s what she had always wanted to be in a way. Even before she had left England. And Anthony had left her. Suddenly. With no warning. Not verbal in any event. All those years ago. Twelve to be exact. This time she could be. Could probably be even more exact than that if she concentrated for two seconds.

November 9, 1989. The day the Berlin Wall came down. It was nice to have world historic events coincide with the merely personal dramas in one’s life. It gave a certain heft to things. Helped one to remember the date – which she would certainly have forgotten if it was simply a question of Anthony, his face a sullen mask above the wine-red scarf, walking out the yellow door of the Maida Vale flat and never again bothering to return. Except to collect two cases and three boxes containing the things she had packed for him as distinctly his.

Irena blinked to chase the rising tears from her eyes. Stupid woman. Still weeping. She chastised herself. He had called her that too. She had begun to lose her magic, it sometimes seemed to her, as Poland ceased to be a site of alien difficulty, of daily struggle against Communist odds. With its freedom she got hers. From Anthony in any case. She no longer needed saving.

Or maybe he just preferred younger skin.

She didn’t really know which version of events she favoured. Or indeed, which was closer to the truth. Or whether any of it mattered anymore. She had held on in London for quite a while without him, though the friends who had largely been his had begun to drop off or manifest too overtly how sorry they felt for her. Some urged her to hideous divorce proceedings and made her suspect they had all along been envious of Anthony and now wanted revenge through her. She had been too miserable for any of it and Anthony, in any event, had been generous enough. Financially, if not humanly. He may have lifted her out of her little Polish gutter, but he had no intention of dropping her back into it. He had too much pride for that – or maybe he just feared she would take the advice of his friendly enemies. Whatever the case, she was in no state to do anything, except perhaps fling herself out of the
window into the common gardens at the rear. But she forced herself to carry on. And everyday she felt more bereft and more foreign.

Utterly alone, a bit of flotsam on the turbulent sea of London. Yet too proud to return to Poland divorced and beaten.

The work at the BBC Polish Service kept her busy, a semblance of life to keep the empty husk moving. There were articles for the Warsaw papers, too. More and more of them with the opening out to the West. But then her mother had needed her and she had decided to come home, though home was changing so rapidly, it wasn’t always easy to define it as familiar. Certainly, everything had changed in her own life.

Irena accepted a glass of brandy from a passing waiter. She downed it in a single gulp, revelling in the burn, and wove her way through small groups to hunt the man down for a second.

Yes, she had done a lot of burning in these last years. It filled her with a welcome aridity. But there always seemed to be more things to clear away. More and more to burn. This last quest of hers was a signal of nothing more than that.

Another few glasses and it too would probably disappear from the horizon, and she could fall into bed with a welcome emptiness all around her.

The breakfast room wore starched pink tablecloths, matched with napkins moulded into rigid cones. Its buffet gleamed with laden silver casseroles, interspersed with platters of fruit, cold meats, cheeses – more food than a bed-crumpled woman could bear to contemplate of a morning. Irena walked toward the far corner, nodding at any of the conference participants she had met, and found an empty table, a chair facing away from people. She ordered a pot of coffee, took out her pad and started to scribble some questions in preparation for the day. She was mad, she told herself. She should eat, be self-indulgent, enjoy her respite. For once, she was free of cares.

‘May I?’ Bruno Lind laid a hand on the chair opposite her.

Despite herself, she nodded politely. ‘Of course, Professor. How are you feeling today?’ He was balancing a bowl of muesli and a newspaper. The arrangement looked precarious.

‘Fine.’ He examined her. ‘You should drink two cups of warm water and then eat something sustaining before putting that
caffeine
into your system.’

She didn’t hide her surprise.

‘I know about these things. I’m a lot older than you. Go on. Go and get something for yourself.’