One day, perhaps because he had split up with his wife and had quit seeing his friends, and because the words were multiplying, he decided to write them down. At first a single page was sufficient, then both sides of a sheet of paper. Then another, and another . . . Then he got himself a notebook. He called it A Brief Dictionary of the Forgotten. There was also a section for people’s names. Gradually the number of sections increased—one for scents that reminded him of various things was added. Then one for sounds, he was going deaf on top of everything. (A doctor had told him that hearing loss and memory loss were related, they shared the same room in the brain.)
Finally yet another section appeared in the notebook, perhaps the most important of all—for that which had actually happened to him, so he could differentiate it from what he had read and from what he had invented.
Sooner or later everything would get mixed up—what had happened, what he had read, and what he had invented would jump up and switch places, until they gradually quieted down and faded away, but for now he was trying to hold the borders in place. Years later his ex-wife would line up for an autograph and he wouldn’t be able to find her name in his head . . .
24.
It was the worst with names. And when he had to switch languages, it was a nightmare. He would forget even the right phrase to use to apologize and ask:
Sorry, your name escapes me . . . Sorry, your name . . .
Every morning he would take a blank sheet of paper and write these five words out by hand. It reminded him of punishment from back in school, when he was forced to write out words he had gotten wrong or some minor infraction like “I forgot my homework” a hundred times. From here arose his early discovery that repetition changes meaning, it removes the bones and the sense of what is written. Repeated one hundred times, everything (including guilt) disintegrates into meaningless syllables.
But no matter, he now enjoyed these memories. They were some of the few that had remained, and he cared for them as for a beloved pet; he called them over, stroked their ears, and spoke to them.
He knew that one day he would end up having to use this phrase as welclass="underline"
Sorry, my name escapes me.
25.
He wondered how soon the moment would come when he forgot letters as well. They were the only thing he could not live without. He had learned to write quite young, at age four or five, which should mean that they would be the last thing to leave him. He could clearly imagine them filing out like little critters, ants or beetles, leaving this notebook, leaving the books in his library, crawling around, crossing the room and leaving en masse. The great migration of the letters. Now there’s Щ, creeping out like a centipede, Б only waves and disappears with its stomach jutting out before it, O rolls around like a well-fed dung beetle, Й doffs its funny little hat in farewell, Ж leaps like a frog and vanishes through the door. I open a book at random, it’s blank, only a little e drops out onto the ground and rolls behind the radiator.
A library with empty, abandoned books—with no titles, no authors, no texts. White pages, tabula rasa. A child’s mind is a tabula rasa and we must write everything upon it. His teacher had said this at the ceremony to mark the start of first grade. He had remembered this strange phrase precisely because he didn’t understand it. His mind was again a tabula rasa, except that now nothing more could be printed upon it. The film had been exposed.
26.
The neuron (from ancient Greek: νεῦρον—fiber, nerve) is an electrically excitable cell that processes and passes on information. Dendrites accept signals from other nerve cells, while the axon via thousands of branches transmits these signals to other neurons, which in turn . . . (Anatomy for Seventh Grade)
That joyful (or alarming) communion of neurons, that constant buzzing. Flashes, the movement of ions, the vibration of membranes, axons, neurotransmitters, exchanges in the synapses, signals, impulses, the happy buzz of work* . . . And suddenly, or not so suddenly but rather gradually, they stop speaking to one another, they stop paying visits, stop making those neighborly exchanges of flour, salt, gossip, the buzz dies down, everything in the workshop grinds to a halt, it corrodes, the lights go out . . .
27.
A friend of mine used to tell this story about his mother and his mother-in-law, women of around eighty, who almost simultaneously began losing their memories. There was no other choice, they had to take both of them into the family apartment in Sofia. And every morning, the following conversation would take place:
Who is this lady, where might she be from, exactly? one would ask.
Well, I’m from that place there, what’s it called, on the seaside. (They no longer remembered their own names, let alone the names of their hometowns.)
Oh, is that so, I’m from the seaside as well, what a coincidence. And what are you doing here?
I’ve come to visit my son. He lives here with his wife. And to see my grandchild. What about yourself, madam?
Well, I’ve come to see my daughter. She lives here with her husband. I’m also here to see my granddaughter.
Ooh, well, what a coincidence! How old is your granddaughter, madam?
She must be seven or eight, and yours?
Good Lord, what a coincidence, mine is the same age. Here is her picture.
Are you serious, madam? the other would cry. That’s my granddaughter.
Sometimes they got into arguments, sometimes they made peace, realizing that they were in the very same home visiting the very same family, and that one woman’s daughter had married the other woman’s son.
The next morning, my friend would say, everything would start over from the beginning.
Where might the lady be from, exactly . . .
28.
Salt
The old myths (and new ideologies) don’t like looking back . . . Looking back, Orpheus loses Eurydice forever; looking back toward Sodom, Lot’s wife turns into a pillar of salt; later those who look back are simply locked up. Everything must start out with a clean slate, with no memory. (New, so new is the star of communism, and there is nothing before it, the local party secretary used to recite back in the day.)
Remember Lot’s wife. Remember Sodom and Gomorrah, the fire that rained from the sky. And don’t you dare look back, that’s what Luke reminds us. Everyone should remain where they are. No one on the rooftop should come down. Nor should anyone in the field leave when the apocalypse arrives. It sounds like orders from the police.
But what terrible crime has the past committed? Why not look back? Why is the past so dangerous, and why is looking back at it such a sin that you will be turned into a pillar of salt? The apocalypse comes precisely to destroy the past. It’s not enough to leave Sodom and Gomorrah, that’s the easy part, everyone flees from disaster. The real test is to forget it, to wipe it from your memory, to not miss it. Lot’s wife left the city, but couldn’t manage to forget it.
Time is not the last second that has just passed, but a whole series of failures going back (and up ahead), heaps of rubble, as Walter Benjamin puts it, before which the angel of history will stand aghast, his face turned away. Could the Angel of History (drawn by Klee as Angelus Novus) actually be Lot’s wife?