But tonight, after I’d pulled your nightgown over your head, when I’d unloosed your dark hair, been surprised again by the loveliness of your breasts, you whispered, “Please, Karl, give her memory.” “You don’t understand,” I said. In an instant you were cold to my touch. “What don’t I understand?” you asked. I promptly switched tactics. “I’ve told you already,” I said, and that’s true, but you didn’t soften to hear it. I reached for your hair, as if you’d jumped off the side of a building and that was all that was left to hang on to. “She isn’t alive,” I tried. “Even if we give her memory, she won’t really remember. What she saves will only be words. And not even that: zeros and ones sequenced together. Would you call that memory?”
I felt I’d made a good point. I tried to pull you back in, but I was mistaken to think I could keep you. “Who are you,” you hissed, “to say who’s alive?” “I made her,” I answered, getting indignant. “As you were made by a mother,” you said. My voice was rising; already I wasn’t thinking quite clearly. “And as you, also, were made by a—”
But finishing the sentence was pointless. You’d reached for your nightgown. You covered yourself before me. I alone was naked in bed. Our silence had crept into the bedroom.
I’d lost you. Try to imagine: me, lying naked, losing you in the last place where you were still mine.
I’ll admit that my reaction was bad. It wasn’t necessary for me to storm out to the living room in a dramatic demonstration of anger. Ineffectively, I tried to slam the sliding door to our bedroom. I see that this was overdramatic, but I hoped you’d come and retrieve me. I honestly believed you’d come and retrieve me, if I could be patient enough. In all the years of our marriage, we’ve always slept in one bed.
Needless to say, you didn’t come get me. I drank two beers, pacing back and forth between the record player and the door to your office. Trying not to give in. And now here I am, back in our bedroom. Sitting in the armchair where once I imagined you nursing our child. We decided against it. Perhaps that was wrong. Childless, there’s less to pin us here in the present.
If I want to win you back, I should be proving my ability to think backward, like the ideal machine you’ve imagined. Fine, Ruth. I lack the integrity to resist you, though I still think there’s something false about abandoning our situation to focus instead on a country we left. Nevertheless, here I go, reciting a story I don’t really believe in. Following the script I’ve been given.
In the years leading up to the war, we lived in a wealthy neighborhood. My family owned a whole floor in our building. My father was a bit overbearing, yes, but I had a comfortable life. I enjoyed the company of my friends. I read books in my bedroom, curtains swishing in my tall windows. On summer evenings I walked beneath leaves. I lived in a pleasant version of the unpleasant country I lived in.
The only chink in that pleasant armor was the result of the shuffling that happened at schools. Without explanation, I was transferred to the new school for Jewish students, on Kaiser Street, near Alexanderplatz. There, I was exposed, for the first time, to the underfed Jewish children who came to school dressed in rags. I was made keenly aware of my good fortune. The degree of my father’s success, the suffering I had avoided.
Something flickered on in me then. I’m telling you, Ruth. You may smirk to hear it — easy, belated sympathy from someone who never actually suffered — but something flickered on. An awareness of the real world I lived in.
Then we procured papers. It all happened quickly. When it was time for my family to leave, I was whisked off somewhere to avoid the departure. I wasn’t present. I never saw a suitcase. The only farewell scene in which I played a genuine part occurred at the school on Kaiser Street. Wearing a little suit, I was taken to say goodbye to the principal, who responded politely, speaking to me as if I had suddenly become older than he, promoted in age by my good fortune. He said he was glad to know I was leaving.
I remember his hands; I realized they trembled. When he walked through the hallways, he clasped them at his back. I saw him once walking to school, wearing a felt hat with a feather, leaning forward a little, squinting as if he’d glimpsed a figure off in the distance. In his youth, we all knew, he’d been a great violinist. Now, principal of a school for doomed children, he stood before me, hands hanging helplessly, wishing me all the best on my journey.
I was ashamed of myself. For lack of anything better to offer, I promised to send a crate of American oranges as soon as I was settled in my new country. What an idea! What good were oranges to that man? And anyway, it wasn’t true. I never sent them. I’d learned my lesson well by that point. Why make a bad situation worse by calling it names to its face?
Maybe it’s that quality in me that makes your words dry up in your mouth. I’ve seen it happen, I’m not unaware. But should I apologize for the fact that I’ve learned to live in the present? I was raised on tidy departures, on the importance of a clean slate. I’m an eternal optimist. Sometimes, I admit, when I see you sink into one of your moods, I want to shake you out of your stupor.
There were times early on in our marriage when you started to say how you felt and I had the impression you were softening, right in front of my eyes. Losing your form, becoming warm wax. I feared for you. I feared I would lose you. I hated the fact that those years still wielded power over you. Sometimes, watching that transformation, I experienced a little revulsion. “Get with the program,” I wanted to snap. “All that’s behind us. We’re here now, get with it.”
That’s how I felt. Why try to conceal it? An unpleasant truth, I can see that, but at least I’m being honest. I was raised to believe that, like wild dogs, it’s best not to look loss in the face. If you don’t want it to tear you to pieces, you just have to putter right past, humming a little song to yourself.
And is that what’s upsetting you, Ruth? That I believe in forging ahead? That I’ve forgotten the soldiers, the papers, the names of my schoolmates? Fine. Lay it all on me. Tell me you think I’ve forgotten too much, with my one-foot-in-front-of-the-other approach. Be honest and say you want me to build a computer that’s the opposite of your husband, a machine with endless memory.
It’s possible, as you know. You’ve done all the research. Before long, computers will have the capacity to store far more information than we can. But I’d remind you: one day that machine will remember your words, but it won’t ever feel them. It won’t understand them. It will only throw them back in your face. Gifts returned, you’ll realize they’ve become empty. They’re nothing more than a string of black shapes, incomprehensible footprints on snowbanks.
I’ve forgotten things, yes. I’ve tried to put my best foot forward. I don’t believe there’s any use in refusing to live. You may hold this against me, but then I’m made of organic matter. We’ve walked beneath the same linden trees. When I say something, I mean it, whether or not it’s the right answer. When I tell you I love you I mean it.
(4)
Alan Turing
c/o Sherborne School
Abbey Rd., Sherborne
Dorset DT9 3AP