The Memory Man by Lisa Appignanesi

Author:Lisa Appignanesi [Lisa Appignanesi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781909807204
Publisher: Arcadia Books Limited
Published: 2013-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

Past Historic

10

They had ended up in Aleksander’s car, which was bigger and more comfortable than hers. That was just as well, Irena thought, since the Fiat wasn’t really up to long journeys anymore. Not that the Professor had told her quite how long this one was going to be. Maybe he didn’t know himself. The turn-off he had pointed to just past Tarnow and then so abruptly changed his mind about required a screech of brakes and a presence of mind neither her car nor she was up to. The Professor’s hippocampus was evidently in decline. Wasn’t that what he had told her about her mother’s inability to find her way anymore – the disappearance of the internal map? Presaging the disappearance of the terrain it charted probably…

She was pretty good on the hippocampus now, and knew a little about the amygdala too, that almond-shaped bit deep in the brain with its lateral nucleus that controlled what they called emotional conditioning – or really whatever it was one remembered best. The bits of memory that came with strong emotion. Not necessarily utterly accurate, mind, and often narrow in focus, the Professor had warned her, but intense and image-based – the source of those images that recur and recur. The scenes that form traumatic memory. She wondered if the break-up scene with Anthony qualified. She could still see him altogether perfectly, like in a snapshot, fixed in time forever with his sorrowful face on, that pretend sorrowful face that was supposed to bring out the pity in her so that she wouldn’t mind, wouldn’t want him to be hurt, whereas in fact he was busy stomping all over her.

No, maybe that didn’t qualify for the amygdala, since she could hear him clearly too. She’d have to ask the Professor. Not that any of it made a blind bit of difference to one’s life. She might as well store the scene in her big toe so that she could tread on it, for all the difference it made. Though if it all went wrong, you’d want to know. Like with her mother. Bits of knowledge to grasp onto for comfort, if nothing else.

The Professor was sitting in the front with Aleksander Tarski, whereas she was in back with Amelia. She liked the Professor for liking to explain things to her. He was an enthusiast, a wonderful teacher. She’d always loved her teachers. Particularly her English teacher, who could recite great chunks of Shakespeare and Byron. And she was glad to have been asked along. It meant he trusted her, trusted her not to write about him. Maybe the visit to her paper, Tygodnik Powszechny, tucked in as it was by the university, had impressed him. That warren of dusty offices and serious looking people hardly had the markings of a tabloid. He had complimented her on her article on the conference too. Though she wasn’t sure he had really read it all through, because of the Polish, which couldn’t be easy for him anymore.

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