"See how well you recognize them? Now let’s try some contemporary figures."
Another series of photographs, and here too, with the exception of one or two faces that meant nothing to me, my answers were on target: Greta Garbo, Einstein, Toto, Kennedy, Moravia, and who they were. Gratarolo asked me what they had in common. They were famous? Not enough, there’s something else. I balked.
"They’re all dead now," Gratarolo said.
"What, even Kennedy and Moravia?"
"Moravia died at the end of last year. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963."
"Oh, those poor guys. I’m sorry."
"That you wouldn’t remember about Moravia is almost normal, he just died recently, and your semantic memory didn’t have much time to absorb the event. Kennedy, on the other hand, baffles me-that’s old news, the stuff of encyclopedias."
"He was deeply affected by the Kennedy affair," Paola said. "Maybe Kennedy got lumped with his personal memories."
Gratarolo pulled out some other photographs. One showed two men: the first was certainly me, except well groomed and well dressed, and with that irresistible smile Paola had mentioned. The other man had a friendly face, too, but I did not know him.
"That’s Gianni Laivelli, your best friend," Paola said. "He was your desk mate from first grade through high school."
"Who are these?" asked Gratarolo, bringing out another image. It was an old photograph. The woman had a thirties-style hairdo, a white, moderately low-cut dress, and a teeny-tiny little button nose. The man had perfectly parted hair, maybe a little brilliantine, a pronounced nose, and a broad, open smile. I did not recognize them. (Artists? No, it was not glamorous or stagy enough. Maybe newlyweds.) But I felt a tug in the pit of my stomach and-I do not know what to call it-a gentle swoon.
Paola noticed it: "Yambo, that’s your parents on their wedding day."
"Are they still alive?" I asked.
"No, they died a while ago. In a car accident."
"You got worked up looking at that photo," Gratarolo said. "Certain images spark something inside you. That’s a start."
"But what kind of start is it, if I can’t even find papà and mamma in that damn hellhole," I shouted. "You tell me that these two were my parents, so now I know, but it’s a memory that you’ve given me. I’ll remember the photo from now on, but not them."
"Who knows how many times over the past thirty years you were reminded of them because you kept seeing this photo? You can’t think of memory as a warehouse where you deposit past events and retrieve them later just as they were when you put them there," Gratarolo said. "I don’t want to get too technical, but when you remember something, you’re constructing a new profile of neuronal excitation. Let’s suppose that in a certain place you had some unpleasant experience. When afterward you remember that place, you reactivate that initial pattern of neuronal excitation with a profile of excitation that’s similar to but not the same as that which was originally stimulated. Remembering will therefore produce a feeling of unease. In short, to remember is to reconstruct, in part on the basis of what we have learned or said since. That’s normal, that’s how we remember. I tell you this to encourage you to reactivate some of these profiles of excitation, instead of simply digging obsessively in an effort to find something that’s already there, as shiny and new as you imagine it was when you first set it aside. The image of your parents in this photo is the one we’ve shown you and the one we see ourselves. You have to start from this image to rebuild something else, and only that will be yours. Remembering is a labor, not a luxury."
"These mournful and enduring memories," I recited, "this trail of death we leave alive…"
"Memory can also be beautiful," Gratarolo said. "Someone said that it acts like a convergent lens in a camera obscura: it focuses everything, and the image that results from it is much more beautiful than the original."
"I want a cigarette."
"That’s a sign that your organism is recovering at a normal pace. But it’s better if you don’t smoke. And when you go back home, alcohol in moderation: not more than a glass per meal. You have blood-pressure problems. Otherwise I won’t allow you to leave tomorrow."
"You’re letting him leave?" Paola said, a little scared.
"Let’s take stock, Signora. From a physical standpoint your husband can get by pretty well on his own. It’s not as though he’ll fall down the stairs if you leave him alone. If we keep him here, we’ll exhaust him with endless tests, all of them artificial experiences, and we already know what they’ll tell us. I think it would do him good to return to his environment. Sometimes the most helpful thing is the taste of familiar food, a smell-who knows? On these matters, literature has taught us more than neurology."
It is not that I wanted to play the pedant, but if all I had left was that damned semantic memory, I might as well use it: "Proust’s madeleine," I said. "The taste of the linden-blossom tea and that little cake give him a jolt. He feels a violent joy. And an image of Sundays at Combray with his Aunt Léonie comes back to him … It seems there must be an involuntary memory of the limbs, our legs and arms are full of torpid memories… And who was that other voice? Nothing compels memories to manifest themselves as much as smells and flame."
"So you know what I mean. Even scientists sometimes believe writers more than their machines. And as for you, Signora, it’s practically your field-you’re not a neurologist, but you are a psychologist. I’ll give you a few books to read, a few famous accounts of clinical cases, and you’ll understand the nature of your husband’s problems immediately. I think that being around you and your daughters and going back to work will help him more than staying here. Just be sure to visit me once a week so we can track your progress. Go home, Signor Bodoni. Look around, touch things, smell them, read newspapers, watch TV, go hunting for images."
"I’ll try, but I don’t remember images, or smells, or flavors. I only remember words."
"That could change. Keep a diary of your reactions. We’ll work on that."
I began to keep a diary.
I packed my bags the next day. I went down with Paola. It was clear that they must have air-conditioning in hospitals: suddenly I understood, for the first time, what the heat of the sun was. The warmth of a still raw spring sun. And the light: I had to squint. You can’t look at the sun: Soleil, soleil, faute éclatante…
When we got to the car (never seen it before) Paola told me to give it a try. "Get in, put it in neutral first, then start it. While it’s still in neutral, press the accelerator." I immediately knew where to put my hands and feet, as if I’d never done anything else. Paola sat next to me and told me to put it in first, then to remove my foot from the clutch while ever so slightly pressing the accelerator, just enough to move a meter or two forward, then to brake and turn the engine off. That way, if I did something wrong, the worst I could do was run into a bush. It went well. I was quite proud. I defiantly backed up a little too. Then I got out, left the driving to Paola, and off we went.
"How does the world look?" she asked me.
"I don’t know. They say that a cat, if it falls from a window and hits its nose, can lose its sense of smell and then, because cats live by their ability to smell, it can no longer recognize things. I’m a cat that hit its nose. I see things, I understand what sort of things they are, of course-those are stores over there, here’s a bicycle going by, there are some trees, but… but they don’t quite fit somehow, as if I were trying to put on someone else’s jacket."
"A cat putting on someone else’s jacket with its nose. Your metaphors must still be loose. We’ll have to tell Gratarolo, but I’m sure it will pass."