False Memory

36

“The video,” Susan repeated, in response to Ahriman’s inquiry, and once more she looked away from him, toward the ming tree.

Surprised, the doctor smiled. “You’re still such a modest girl, considering the things you’ve done. Relax, dear. I’ve made only one tape of you — a ninety-minute astonishment, I will admit — and there’ll be just one more, next time we meet. Nobody but me gets to see my little home movies. They will never be broadcast on CNN or NBC, I assure you. Although the Nielson ratings would be through the roof, don’t you think?”

Susan continued to stare at the potted ming tree, but now the doctor understood why she was able to look away from him even though he had commanded her to stand eye to eye. Shame was a powerful force, from which she drew the strength for this one small rebellion. We all commit acts that shame us, and with varying degrees of difficulty, we reach accommodation with ourselves, forming pearls of guilt around each offending bit of moral grit. Guilt, unlike shame, can be nearly as soothing as virtue, because the jagged edges of the thing that it encapsulates can no longer be felt, and the guilt itself becomes the object of our interest. Susan could have made a necklace from all the moments of shame to which Ahriman had subjected her, but because she was aware of the videotape record, she was not able to form her little pearls of guilt and thus smooth the shame away.

The doctor commanded her to look at him, and after a hesitation, she once more shifted her attention from the ming tree to his eyes.

He instructed her to descend the steps of her subconscious, until she returned to the mind chapel, from which he had previously allowed her to ascend a short distance in order to enhance their play session.

When she was once more in that deep redoubt, her eyes jiggled briefly. Her personality had been filtered from her and set aside, as a chef would strain the solids out of beef broth to make bouillon, and now her mind was a pellucid liquid, waiting to be flavored according to Ahriman’s recipe.

He said, “You will forget your father was here tonight. Memories of his face where you should have seen mine, memories of his voice when you should have heard mine, are now dust, and less than dust, all blown away. I am your doctor, not your father. Tell me who I am, Susan.”

Her whispery voice seemed to echo from a subterranean room: “Dr. Ahriman.”

“As always, of course, you will have absolutely no accessible memory of what happened between us, absolutely no accessible memory of my presence here tonight.”

In spite of his best efforts, somewhere memory survived, perhaps in an unknowable realm below the subconscious. Otherwise, she would not suffer shame at all, because no recollection of these depravities or those of other nights would remain. Her lingering shame was, in the doctor’s view, proof of a sub-subconscious — a level even beneath the id — where experience left an indelible mark. This deepest of all memory was, Ahriman believed, virtually inaccessible and of no danger to him; he needed only to wipe clean the slates of her conscious and subconscious to be safe.

Some would have wondered if this sub-subconscious might be the soul. The doctor was not one of them.

“If nevertheless you have any reason to feel that you have been sexually assaulted, any soreness or other clue, you will suspect no one other than your estranged husband, Eric. Tell me now whether or not you fully understand what I’ve just said.”

A spasm of REM accompanied her reply, as if the specified memories were being shaken out of her through her oscillating eyes: “I understand.”

“But you are strictly forbidden from confronting Eric with your suspicions.”

“Forbidden. I understand.”

“Good.”

Ahriman yawned. Regardless of how much fun a play session had been, it was ultimately diminished by the need to clean up at the end, to put away the toys and straighten the room. Although he understood why neatness and order were absolute necessities, he begrudged the time spent on this put-away period as much now as he had when he was a boy.

“Please lead me to the kitchen,” he requested, yawning around his words.

Still graceful in spite of the crude use to which she had been put, Susan moved through the dark apartment with the fluid suppleness of a pale koi swimming in a midnight pond.

In the kitchen, as thirsty as any player would be after a long and demanding game, Ahriman said, “Tell me what beer you have?”

“Tsingtao.”

“Open one for me.”

She got a bottle from the refrigerator, fumbled in a drawer in the dark until she found an opener, and popped the cap off the beer.

While in this apartment, the doctor took care to touch as seldom as possible those surfaces on which fingerprints could be left.

He hadn’t yet decided if eventually Susan would self-destruct when he was finished with her. If he concluded that suicide would be sufficiently entertaining, then her long and depressing struggle to overcome agoraphobia would provide a convincing motive, and her handwritten farewell note would close the case without a rigorous investigation. More likely, she would be used in the bigger game with Martie and Dusty, culminating in mass murder in Malibu.

Other options included arranging to have Susan murdered by her estranged husband or even by her best friend. If Eric snuffed her, a homicide investigation would ensue — even if he phoned the cops from the scene, confessed, blew his own brains out, and fell dead beside his wife, with all the forensic evidence supporting the conclusion that an ugly domestic altercation was to blame. Then the Scientific Investigation Division would move in, with their pocket protectors and bad haircuts, seeking fingerprints with powders, iodines, silver nitrate solutions, ninhydrin solutions, cyanoacrylate fumes, even with methanol solution of rhodamine 6G and an argo ion laser. If Ahriman had inadvertently left a single print where these tedious but meticulous scientific types thought to look for it, his life would be changed, and not for the better.

His well-placed friends could ensure that he was not easily brought to trial. Evidence would disappear or be altered. Police detectives and prosecutors in the district attorney’s office would repeatedly screw up, and those obstructionists who tried to conduct a credible investigation would have their lives complicated and even ruined by all manner of troubles and tragedies that would appear to have nothing whatsoever to do with Dr. Ahriman.

His friends would not be able to prevent him from falling under suspicion, however, or be able to protect him from sensationalistic speculations in the media. He would become a celebrity of sorts. That was not acceptable. Fame would cramp his style.

When he accepted the bottle of Tsingtao from Susan, he thanked her, and she said, “You’re welcome.”

Regardless of the circumstances, the doctor believed that good manners should be observed. Civilization is the greatest game of all, a wonderfully elaborate communal tournament in which one must play well in order to have the license to pursue secret pleasures; mastering its rules — manners, etiquette — is essential to successful gamesmanship.

Politely, Susan followed him to the door, where he paused to communicate his final instructions for the night. “Assure me that you’re listening, Susan.”

“I’m listening.”

“Be calm.”

“I’m calm.”

“Be obedient.”

“Yes.”

“The winter storm—”

“The storm is you,” she replied.

“—hid in the bamboo grove—”

“The grove is me.”

“—and quieted away.”

“In the quiet, I will learn what is wanted,” Susan said.

“After I leave, you will close the kitchen door, engage all the locks, and wedge the chair under the knob, just as it was. You will return to bed, lie down, switch off the lamp, and close your eyes. Then, in your mind, you will leave the chapel where you are now. When you close the chapel door behind you, all recollection of what has happened from the moment you picked up the telephone and heard my voice until you wake in bed will have been erased — every sound, every image, every detail, every nuance will vanish from your memory, never to be recovered. Then, counting to ten, you will ascend the stairs, and when you reach ten, you will regain full consciousness. When you open your eyes, you will believe you have awakened from a refreshing sleep. If you understand all that I’ve said, please tell me so.”

“I understand.”

“Good night, Susan.”

“Good night,” she said, opening the door for him.

He stepped out onto the landing and whispered, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

She softly closed the door.

Like an invading armada that meant to steal all memory of the world from those sleeping in their cozy homes, galleons of heavy fog sailed in from the sea, plundering all color first, then detail, depth, and shape.

From the other side of the door came the sound of the security chain sliding into the latch-plate slot.

The first dead bolt snapped shut, followed a moment later by the second.

Smiling, nodding with satisfaction, the doctor drank a little beer and stared at the steps in front of him, waiting. Glistening dewdrops, cold on the gray rubber treads: tears on a dead face.

The backrail of the maple chair rapped once against the other side of the door as Susan wedged it under the knob.

Now she would be padding barefoot back to bed.

Without need of the handrail, as nimble as a boy, Dr. Ahriman went down the steep stairs, turning up the collar of his coat as he descended.

The bricks on the front patio were wet and as dark as blood. As far as he could discern in the fog, the boardwalk beyond the patio appeared to be deserted.

The gate in the white picket fence squeaked. In this earthbound cloud bank, the sound was muffled, too slight even to prick the ears of a cat on guard for mice.

Departing, the doctor averted his face from the house. He had been equally discreet upon arrival.

No lights had shone at the windows earlier. None were visible now. The retirees renting the lower two floors were no doubt snug under their blankets, as oblivious as their parakeets dozing in covered cages.

Nevertheless, Ahriman took sensible precautions. He was the lord of memory, but not everyone was susceptible to his mind-clouding power.

Its voice muted by the dense mist, the lazy surf crumbling to shore was less a sound than a vibration, less heard than felt as a tingle in the chilly air.

Palm trees hung limp. Condensation dripped from the points of every blade of every frond, like clear venom from the tongues of serpents.

He paused to look up at the fog-veiled crowns of the palms, suddenly uneasy for reasons he could not identify. After a moment, puzzled, he took another swallow of beer and continued along the boardwalk.

His Mercedes was two blocks away. He encountered no one en route.

Parked under a huge, dripping Indian laurel, the black sedan plinked, tinked, and tatted like an out-of-tune xylo-phone.

In the car, as he was about to start the engine, Ahriman paused again, still uneasy, brought closer to the source of his uneasiness by the tuneless music of water droplets snapping steel. Finishing the beer, he stared out at the massive overhanging canopy of the laurel, as if revelation awaited him in the complex patterns of those branches.

When revelation didn’t come, he started the car and drove west on Balboa Boulevard, toward the head of the peninsula.

At three o’clock in the morning, traffic was light. He saw only three moving vehicles in the first two miles, their headlights ringed by fuzzy aureoles in the fog. One was a police car, heading down the peninsula, in no hurry.

Across the bridge to Pacific Coast Highway, glancing at the westernmost channel of the huge harbor to his right, where yachts loomed like ghost ships at docks and moorings in the mist, and then south along the coast, all the way into Corona Del Mar, he puzzled over the cause of his uneasiness, until he came to a stop at a red traffic light and found his attention drawn to a large California pepper tree, lacy and elegant, rising out of low cascades of red bougainvillea. He thought of the potted ming tree with the sprays of ivy at its base.

The ming tree. The ivy.

The traffic light changed to green.

So green, her eyes riveted on the ming tree.

The doctor’s mind raced, but he kept his foot hard on the brake pedal.

Only when the light turned yellow did he finally drive through the deserted intersection. He pulled to the curb in the next block, stopped, but didn’t switch off the engine.

An expert on the nature of memory, he now applied his knowledge to a meticulous search of his own recollections of events in Susan Jagger’s bedroom.