The Amnesiac Read online

  Ingrid came back around seven. She asked him about his day. He said it had been fine, a bit dull. He didn’t tell her about his dark thoughts; now that she was home again, he felt ashamed of himself for being so morbid. In any case, she seemed impatient to tell him about her day. She began to explain about a man who had taken her out to lunch. James thought for a moment she was about to tell him she was having an affair, but it turned out the man was a headhunter from a rival company. He wanted Ingrid to manage a new office they were opening. ‘And guess where the office is?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said James.

  ‘Guess,’ Ingrid urged.

  ‘Madrid? Barcelona? Paris?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Better than any of them. Well, I think so anyway. ’

  James shrugged. ‘Where?’

  ‘Waterland.’

  Waterland was a suburb, north of Amsterdam, where Ingrid had grown up. Her parents still lived there now. It was a quiet, pretty, safe place, full of trees and fields, double garages and playgrounds.

  James faked a smile. He could see how thrilled she was and he didn’t want to ruin the moment for her. She told him she had put a bottle of champagne in the freezer. She hadn’t accepted yet, she said, because she wanted to discuss it with him first. She thought they could talk, drink the champagne, then maybe go out to a restaurant.

  In fact, they never left the flat that evening. Ingrid had a shower, lit a few candles, poured the champagne, and told James how she imagined their future together. She saw them in a large, modern house with a garden, not too far from her parents. She would run her office, he would work for her dad’s direct-mail company (her dad was prepared to offer James an executive post, despite his lack of experience). After a year or so, when they felt settled, they would try for their first child. They would both work part-time and share parenting duties. If they wanted to go out to a restaurant, her mother would look after the baby. On weekends they would go for long walks in the countryside, invite friends to barbecues in the garden. It would be wonderful.

  ‘So,’ she said finally, ‘what do you think?’

  James didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t explain why the idea of this life frightened him so much. It was how most people lived, after all. There was nothing specifically wrong with it. He just felt shocked that he had reached this point without even being aware that it was coming: the infinite possibilities of youth suddenly over, the future mapped out in straight grey lines, the end visible. He felt like he must have been sleepwalking through the years, and only now had he woken.

  But he couldn’t say that to Ingrid. So in the end he said simply, ‘Listen, Ingrid, you’re free to do what you want. If you want to accept the job, then you should. I understand why you think it would be a good move for you. But I don’t want to live in Waterland. I don’t want to work for your father’s firm. I’m sorry, but I don’t feel ready for . . . what you’re talking about.’

  Ingrid’s eyes grew wide with surprised pain, and then she began to cry.

  They argued until early morning, getting nowhere. They said bad things. They hurt one another. Around three o’clock, Ingrid went to bed and James sat on the concrete floor of the balcony, his plastercast poking through between two railings, smoking a cigar. The cigars had been a Christmas present from Ingrid’s father. James normally never smoked, but right now he felt like doing something with his hands and mouth; something suggestive of deep thought. He sat on the balcony, blowing smoke into the night sky, and listening to Ingrid sob herself to sleep. As he sat there, James wondered what was going to happen to his life.

  It was nearly ten when James woke the next day. The bedroom was hot and Ingrid had already gone to work. His throat felt dry from the cigars, so he drank a whole bottle of water, then ate some cereal and milk and a few grapes. He used his inhaler and remembered to take an anti-allergy pill; he had missed several doses and felt guilty about it, but at least he didn’t seem to be ill. Afterwards, still tired, slightly nauseous and unsure what to do with himself, he reclined the leather chair, put 16 Lovers Lane on repeat, and lay there listening to it.

  He must have listened to it five or six times that day. He knew all the songs, of course, and they were pretty much as he remembered. The sound was a bit thinner, but that might just have been the difference between vinyl and CD. Yet there was something else . . . something missing. A couple of times - in the verse of one song, the chorus of another - James thought he heard a fragment of what he was searching for. But it couldn’t have been. It must, he realised, have been another song altogether; a song that he’d imagined was on this album, but wasn’t.

  James could recall hardly anything about this ‘missing’ song. Not the tune, nor its title, nor who had sung it. All he had was the memory of a feeling - happy-sad - and the warm sound of acoustic guitars, and a low-pitched, male voice. The vaguest echo of a melody.

  It conjured up an image too, though he had no idea why: of a long street of terraced houses, seen from above. In the image it was night-time, everything stained blue. A girl and a boy - or a man and a woman, he couldn’t tell - were walking, hand in hand, along the pavement. She rested her head on his shoulder, tenderly. Under a streetlamp, two policemen stood watching them. James saw the image in a kind of flashback, like the memory of a dream, but that was all; there was nothing before or after. Only this brief scene, and the music that accompanied it.

  Where had he heard this song that he could no longer quite remember? He had been so sure it was on this album; that was why he had asked Ingrid to buy the CD for his birthday. And yet, now he had the album, he discovered the song was not part of it. So what did that mean? From where had the memory of the song come? Why did its absence bother him so much?

  For the rest of the morning, James flicked between Channel X and CNN; between meaningless sex and meaningless violence. He drank iced water and scratched inside his cast with a flyswatter. He ate soft black olives and spat the stones into the bin. He tried not to think about the song. It was there, though, like a trapped fly, buzzing around the back of his mind.

  At least, he thought it was the song that was bothering him. But the longer he listened to its faint remembrance in the silence of the flat, the less sure he became that it was a piece of music at all. It was like listening to a radio station slowly fading out of range. As the hours passed, the song became swallowed up, distorted, by a kind of tuneless static . . . the buzzing sound that James had heard for the first time the day before.

  What was it, that sound? At first he had taken it to be the tinnitus of modernity, or the echo of it in his head: the subterranean clatter of city train wheels . . . the insectoid fizz of neon striplights . . . the sickening moan of power lines . . . the insidious hum of sleeping computers . . . the same white noise that everyone hears, and to which we all grow deaf. But the closer he listened, the more he could discern something familiar, something private, something already known to him, but forgotten. And James began to suspect that it had been there all along, this sound. It was just that, before, he couldn’t hear it. Those other noises must have drowned it out. What was it, that sound?

  James closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. There was, he sensed, some memory or insight just beyond the radar of his mind, some thought that when he discovered it would make him sit up and shout, with horror or euphoria, ‘Oh God oh God oh God’, and his life would be changed for ever. But the thought remained hidden, and in the end he gave up and went over to the fridge to see what he could find to eat.

  In the afternoon he ate a tub of ice-cream and watched the Tour de France. Then he went back to bed and dozed. He dreamt that he went to see the doctor to have his cast removed. But in the dream it wasn’t a hard plastercast: it was soft bandage, and the doctor had to unravel it. Round and round went his hands; longer and longer grew the bandage. It trailed all over the floor of the surgery. Finally it came to an end. ‘There you go!’ cried the doctor, triumphantly. James looked down: the bandage had been peeled away to rev
eal . . . nothing at all. His lower leg had vanished. In the dream this seemed completely normal. He paid the doctor and walked, on crutches, out of his office.

  When James woke up, it was evening. He had a cold shower and opened the blinds; to his relief, the heat of the day had faded and there was even a slight breeze. He sat on the balcony and waited for Ingrid to come home.

  She came back late that evening. She did this occasionally - stopping after work for a few drinks with her colleagues - but usually she rang to let him know. James made cous-cous with fried chicken breasts and roasted vegetables for dinner, then ate his portion alone at nine o’clock. He began to worry about the state of mind Ingrid would be in when she came back, then he began to worry that she would not come back at all.

  In fact she arrived just after ten and seemed quite happy. He could tell she was a little drunk from the way her voice wavered and her eyes shone. She inquired about his day. Reluctantly he told her about the song that he couldn’t remember, and she asked him to sing it. But the hint of melody he had remembered earlier was gone now. Or rather, he could hear it, faintly, inside his head, but he couldn’t bring it past the threshold of his mouth. It got lost, or blocked, somewhere on the journey from mind to tongue.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said finally, ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Ingrid. ‘I’m sure it’ll come back to you.’

  She was quiet for a few minutes while she ate. He asked her where she’d gone after work. She mentioned the name of a bar, and the name of a friend. ‘It was good,’ she smiled. ‘We talked things over. I realised that I probably came on a bit heavy last night, so I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘I do understand. It’s just that -’

  ‘Relax, no more arguments, OK? Listen James, I want to say something . . .’ She came and knelt on the floor next to the leather chair, her hand resting on the cast. Her tone was calm and businesslike. James felt a wave of apprehension move over him. ‘I’ve accepted the job in Waterland. I think it’s a good move for me. You’re free to do what you want. If you want to come with me, that’s great. If you want to go somewhere else, that’s fine too. I’ve handed in my resignation, and they said I can work out two weeks’ notice. After that, I’ll move my stuff out of the flat. I’m going to Waterland to stay with my parents and find a house. I start my new job the week after.’

  ‘Wow,’ James said. ‘That was quick.’

  Ingrid smiled and stood up. ‘The rent on the flat is paid until the end of August. I’ve given notice that I won’t be renewing after that. You’re welcome to stay here till then. It’ll give you time to think over what you want to do with your life. I hope that’s all OK with you.’

  He nodded, speechless.

  ‘Good. Then, whatever happens, let’s try and be friends for the time we’ve got left.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Do you fancy going for a walk? It’s lovely and cool outside now. We could have a drink at Harry’s afterwards.’

  Thus began the simple routine which sustained him for the next six weeks. Down the stairs, evening walk, Harry’s Bar, back up the stairs.

  Ingrid, true to her word, never again mentioned her imminent departure. When they talked, they talked of small things; things belonging entirely to the present. Quite often, they did-n’t talk at all. This didn’t feel awkward or tense. Ingrid and James were comfortable in each other’s company. They were physically affectionate. They still kissed. To any passing observer, they must have looked like a long-married couple: calm, content, perhaps slightly complacent.

  It was only a façade. For most of that time James was away with his thoughts. He sat in the chair next to hers, drinking beer and watching the colours in the canal, but his mind was elsewhere: another place, another time. It was as though his body was existing on autopilot while his mind retreated ever further into its own slowly gathering darkness.

  James had a lot of strange dreams that summer. The plastercast dream was unusual, in that he remembered it clearly. Most of them faded as soon as he woke. There was another dream, though, that he half-remembered. It was a recurring dream.

  In this dream he was walking through a dark tunnel, following a thread. Behind him, when he turned around, he could see a point of light. He knew he ought to go back to the light, but he didn’t. The tunnel sloped gently downwards. It was easy to keep walking down the slope; much harder to turn around and climb it. And he wanted to see where the thread would take him.

  There were little holes in the wall of the tunnel, and occasionally James would pause and look through them. What he saw through those holes attracted and disturbed him. They were images from his past; dark flashes of memory. He saw the faces of people he hadn’t seen or thought about in years. He saw alleys and houses and pubs he had forgotten even existed.

  When he woke in the mornings, he could never remember the details of the dream. The faces, the places . . . they were lost the moment he opened his eyes. All he remembered was the fact of having remembered, and a complicated, lingering emotion.

  James isn’t sure if he ever mentioned his dreams to Ingrid. A couple of times, she told him he’d been talking in his sleep, and she looked almost sorrowful when she said it. He asked her what he’d talked about. Ingrid said it was nothing she could understand.

  Their last evening together was like all the others. They sat by the canal, eating chips and mayonnaise, and drinking beer. There were German and American tourists at the tables nearby. Ingrid was reading a magazine with a beautiful, half-naked woman on the cover; the woman looked unbelievably happy. Nothing was said. Occasionally Ingrid would stroke James’s hand and he would look up at the familiar whirl of people and colours without really seeing them. James was miles away. He was in a world of his own.

  All that distinguishes the night in his memory is that Ingrid asked him a strange question. ‘James,’ she said, in a casual voice, ‘why were you running up the stairs that day?’

  He blinked at her. ‘What day?’

  ‘The day you broke your ankle. What made you run?’

  He thought about her question. ‘The phone was ringing.’

  ‘Yes, but . . . why did that matter? The answer machine was on.’

  ‘I know it was.’

  ‘So why did you run?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Who did you think it was?’

  ‘Who did I think what was?’

  ‘The person who was calling.’

  ‘Oh. I don’t know. It could have been anyone.’

  ‘So what made you run?’

  He drank his beer, frowning at the canal, trying to remember. He saw again the door to Ingrid’s apartment, heard again the muffled, shrill call of the telephone, felt the pain in his ankle as he missed the step. What had made him run?

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said finally. ‘I can’t think of a reason. I just ran. I wanted to get there before the answer machine picked it up, I suppose.’ There was a pause. ‘Why do you ask?’

  She shrugged, and looked away. ‘I was just wondering.’

  Then she went back to her magazine, and he went back to his beer, and his thoughts.

  He woke around noon the next day. It was a Thursday; the first cloudy day in weeks. There was a note from Ingrid on the pillow. It said that she didn’t want to wake him, and she didn’t want to cry, so it was better that she leave like this. Mostly, the note was just information - lots of phone numbers and the arrangements for the removal of her things (her brother would come the next day with a hire truck) - but it ended with the words: ‘Whatever you decide, I hope you will be happy. I wish you a good life. Get better soon, James. I miss you very much.’

  James read the note three times. He wondered what she meant by ‘get better’: was she referring to his ankle or to something else? He even wondered if there was any significance in her use of the present tense in the last sentence - how could she already be missing him when she wrote the letter? - but in the end he decided it wa
s probably just her foreigner’s English.

  After that, he didn’t know what to do. He limped restlessly around the apartment. He went to the fridge but there was nothing he wanted to eat. He skimmed through the rack of CDs but there was nothing he wanted to hear. He switched on the television but there was nothing he wanted to watch. Finally he had a bath, then fell asleep in bed. He kept the note under his pillow.

  Ingrid’s brother was called Frank. He was the same age as James, and the two had always got on well. Frank called on Friday morning to say he’d be coming round at six that afternoon.But James had no desire to watch the apartment being stripped of Ingrid’s presence, so at half-past five he went downstairs and set off on a long walk.

  Despite the overcast sky, it was still hot; after two blocks he gave up and sat in a cool, empty bar called De Stijl. He had a few drinks and talked to the barmaid, who was wearing a T-SHIRT that revealed her pierced navel. She was friendly and they chatted for half an hour or so, but then the bar started filling up, so James said goodbye and swung his way towards the city centre. He found a Thai restaurant in a backstreet and ate a green curry with a bottle of white wine. When he came out it was turning dark. He was sure Frank would have finished by now, but he didn’t feel like returning to an empty flat so he found another bar, where he talked to a middle-aged Frenchman about fate and free will. He went to lots of bars after that; he doesn’t know how many. It must have been around midnight when he heard the song.

  He was walking through one of the narrow shopping streets which lead on to the Melkplaan. The bars were still open, the street busy, the sky a weird purple; he could smell fast food, aftershave, urine. He was drunk, but his senses were sharp. The music was coming from a ghetto-blaster that someone was carrying, though James didn’t realise that until after they’d passed him, when he saw the silver speakers disappear into the crowd. He tried to follow, but it was difficult executing a sharp turn on crutches with so many people around, and by the time he was facing the right way he could no longer hear the music.