"Yambo," she said.
"Iambo who, Signora?"
"Youre Yambo. Thats what everyone calls you. And Im Paola, your wife. Recognize me?"
"No, Signora-I mean, no, Paola. Im very sorry, the doctor must have explained."
"He explained. You no longer know whats happened to you, but you still know perfectly well whats happened to others. Since Im part of your personal history, you no longer know that weve been married, my dear Yambo, for more than thirty years. And we have two daughters, Carla and Nicoletta, and three wonderful grandchildren. Carla married young and had two children, Alessandro whos five and Luca whos three. Nicolettas son, Giangiacomo, Giangio for short, is also three. Twin cousins, you used to say. And you were you are you will still be a wonderful grandfather. You were a good father, too."
"And am I a good husband?"
Paola rolled her eyes skyward: "Were still here, arent we? Lets say that over the course of thirty years there have been ups and downs. You were always considered a good-looking man"
"This morning, yesterday, ten years ago, I saw a horrible face in the mirror."
"After whats happened to you, thats the least youd expect. But you were, you still are, a good-looking man, you have an irresistible smile, and some women didnt resist. Nor did you-you always said you could resist anything but temptation."
"I ask your forgiveness."
"Well, thats a bit like the guys dropping smart bombs on Baghdad and then apologizing when a few civilians die."
"Bombs on Baghdad? There arent any in A Thousand and One Nights."
"There was a war, the Gulf War. Its over now. Or maybe not. Iraq invaded Kuwait, the Western nations intervened. You dont recall any of it?"
"The doctor said that episodic memory-the kind that seems to have gone tilt-is tied to the emotions. Maybe the bombing of Baghdad was something I felt strongly about."
"Ill say. Youve always been a devout pacifist, and you agonized over this war. Almost two hundred years ago Maine de Biran identified three types of memory: ideas, feelings, and habits. You remember ideas and habits but not feelings, which are of course the most personal."
"How is it you know all this good stuff?"
"Im a psychologist, thats my job. But wait a second: you just said that your episodic memory had gone tilt. Why did you use that phrase?"
"Its an expression."
"Yes, but its a thing that happens in pinball and you are you were fanatical about pinball, like a little kid."
"I know what pinball is. But I dont know who I am, you see? Theres fog in Val Padana. By the way, where are we?"
"In Val Padana. We live in Milan. In the winter months you can see the fog in the park from our house. You live in Milan and youre an antiquarian book dealer. You have a studio full of old books."
"The curse of the pharaoh. If I was a Bodoni and they baptized me Giambattista, things couldnt have turned out any other way."
"They turned out well. Youre considered very good at what you do, and were not billionaires but we live well. Ill help you, and youll recover a little at a time. God, if I think about it, you might have not woken up at all. These doctors have been excellent, they got to you in time. My love, can I welcome you back? You act as if youre meeting me for the first time. Fine, if I were to meet you now, for the first time, Id marry you just the same. Okay?"
"Youre very sweet. I need you. Youre the only one who can tell me about the last thirty years."
"Thirty-five. We met in college, in Turin. You were about to graduate and I was the lost freshman, roaming the halls of Palazzo Campana. I asked you where a certain classroom was, and you hooked me immediately, you seduced a defenseless high-school girl. Then one thing and another-I was too young, you went off to spend three years abroad. Afterward, we got together-as a trial, we said, but I ended up getting pregnant, and you married me because you were a gentleman. No, sorry, also because we loved each other, we really did, and because you liked the idea of becoming a father. Dont worry, Pap, Ill help you remember everything, youll see."
"Unless this is all a conspiracy, and my name is really Jimmy Picklock and Im a burglar, and everything you and Gratarolo are telling me is a pack of lies, maybe, for instance, youre secret agents, and you need to supply me with a false identity in order to send me out to spy on the other side of the Berlin Wall, The Ipcress File, and"
"The Berlin Wall isnt there anymore. They tore it down, and the Soviet empire is falling to pieces"
"Christ, you turn your back for a second and look what they get up to. Okay, Im kidding, I trust you. What are stracchini?"
"Huh? Stracchino is a kind of soft cheese, but thats what its called in Piedmont, here in Milan its called crescenza. What makes you bring up stracchini?"
"It was when I was squeezing the toothpaste tube. Hang on. There was a painter named Broglio, who couldnt make a living off of his paintings, but he didnt want to work because he said he had a nervous condition. It seemed to be an excuse to get his sister to support him. Eventually his friends found him a job with a company that made or sold cheeses. He was walking past a big pile of stracchini, each one wrapped in a packet of semitransparent wax paper, and because of his condition, or so he said, he couldnt resist the temptation: he took them one by one and whack, he smashed them, making the cheese shoot out of the package. He destroyed a hundred or so stracchini before he was fired. All because of his condition. Apparently smacking stracchini, or as he said, sgnach i strachn, was a turn-on. My God, Paola, this must be a childhood memory! Didnt I lose all memory of my past experiences?"
Paola started laughing: "Im sorry, I remember now. Youre right, it is something you heard about as a kid. But you told that story often-it became part of your repertoire, so to speak. You were always making your dinner companions laugh with the story of the painter and his stracchini, and they in turn told others. Youre not remembering your own experience, unfortunately-its just a story youve told on numerous occasions and that for you has, how shall I say?, entered the public domain, like the story of Little Red Riding Hood."
"Youre already proving indispensable to me. Im happy to have you as my wife. I thank you for existing, Paola."
"Good Lord, just a month ago you would have called that expression soap-opera schmaltz"
"Youll have to forgive me. I cant seem to say anything that comes from the heart. I dont have feelings, I only have memorable sayings."
"Poor dear."
"That sounds like a stock phrase, too."
"Bastard."
This Paola really loves me.
I had a peaceful night-who knows what Gratarolo put in my veins. I woke gradually, and my eyes must still have been closed, because I heard Paola whispering, so as not to wake me: "But couldnt it be psychogenic amnesia?"
"We cant rule that out," Gratarolo replied. "There may always be unfathomable tensions at the root of these incidents. But you saw his file, the lesions are real."
I opened my eyes and said good morning. Two young women and three children were also present. I had never seen them before, but I guessed who they were. It was terrible, because a wife is one thing, but daughters, my God, they are blood of your blood, and grandchildren too. The eyes of those two young women were shining with happiness, and the kids wanted to get up on the bed. They took me by the hand and said Hi, Grandpa. And nothing. It was not even fog, it was more like apathy. Or is it ataraxia? Like watching animals at the zoo-they could have been little monkeys or giraffes. Of course I smiled and said kind words, but inside I was empty. I suddenly thought of the word sgurato, but I did not know what it meant. I asked Paola. It is a Piedmontese word that means when you wash a pot thoroughly and then scrub it out with that metal wool stuff, so that it looks new again, as shiny and clean as can be. That was it, I felt thoroughly sgurato. Gratarolo, Paola, and the girls were cramming a thousand details of my life into my head, but they were like dry beans: when you moved the pot, they slid around in there but stayed raw, not soaking up any broth or cream-nothing to titillate the taste buds, nothing you would care to taste again. I was listening to things that happened to me as though they had happened to someone else.