The Memorist

Chapter 33

Monday, April 28^th-1:16 p.m.

Jeremy took Meer to his doctor, whose office was only a short car ride from the auction house. While they sat in the waiting room, she perused a magazine, unaware of what she looked at. Her mind was filled with too many kaleidoscopic images for any new ones to make an impression. The last forty-eight hours had been filled with shocks and memories that couldn’t be her own, but felt just like her own. She knew that was why false memories were so insidious; they masqueraded as authentic recollections.

Once the doctor saw her, the examination was brief. He assured her-and then afterward in the waiting room assured Jeremy-that the bruises blossoming on her left arm and thigh weren’t serious.

“Now, why don’t you let me give you a quick exam, Jeremy,” Dr. Kreishold suggested.

“You’re far too conscientious. I’m fine.”

“Jeremy, let me just look you over-” the doctor insisted.

“If anything starts to hurt, I’ll be back for a bandage, I promise,” Jeremy interrupted.

“Come on, Dad, you should be examined too,” Meer said.

Jeremy kissed her on the forehead. “I’m fine-don’t worry about me, sweetheart. They examined me in the hospital in Switzerland after the attack. I’m all right.”

As they walked out of the office and into the dark hallway, Jeremy told Meer that while she’d been in with the doctor, Malachai’s secretary had called. “She booked him into your hotel. If you’re not too tired, he’ll meet you in the lobby at six and the two of you can come to my house for a quiet dinner. So you should get some rest now,” he added.

“Aren’t we going to Ruth’s funeral now?” She ignored the fatherly concern.

“I told you-it’s not necessary for you to come.”

“I want to, for your sake.” She paused. “Ruth died because of me, didn’t she?”

Jeremy stabbed the elevator button again, once, then twice. “No, of course not, why would you-”

“If I didn’t have a connection to that gaming box, would you have been so interested in it? You find old Torahs, menorahs, Haggadahs and Kiddush wine cups. What kind of Jewish artifact is a gaming box from 1814?”

The elevator arrived with a groan and the door opened slowly.

“This is much bigger than you know, sweetheart.”

“And I can’t know if you don’t tell me.”

Her father nodded and looked away. “You’re right.”

While they walked toward his car, Jeremy started at the beginning and told her about the call from Helen Hoffman. Despite Meer’s irritation, her father’s raconteur style, full of details and curious asides, was as compelling as ever and she had a sudden memory of him sitting by the side of her bed at night and telling her about his most recent adventure. His voice filled the silence when she was a child-the silence she feared and hated because it was in those quiet spaces between words that memories and music she couldn’t quite catch hold of or make sense of scared her with their insistence.

Meer knew how emotional these finds were for her father. People who did what her father did weren’t just on a treasure hunt to find and preserve objects, they were reclaiming their heritage. “We owe it to the memory of those who came before us to discover what they left for us to find,” he’d once told her, and she’d heard the pride in his voice. She always loved her father, but she liked him the best when he talked about his work.

Jeremy eased the car out of the parking spot and at the next corner turned into the traffic. As they crept ahead Meer watched yet another section of the city reveal itself while she listened to her father describe seeing the gaming box for the first time.

“It was a shock. I’m sure you can imagine just how bizarre it would be to walk into a stranger’s house to examine a holy relic and see something that had so much significance to me and to you. There are no accidents of fate,” he said. “Every act has a reaction through lives, through time. Déjà vu and coincidence are God tapping you on the shoulder, telling you to pay attention, showing you that you are walking in the footprint of your own reincarnation.”

“You’ve always been so sure…”

He nodded.

“Why?”

“Faith.”

She shook her head; for her it wasn’t a sufficient answer.

“And now, just like Malachai, you’re convinced the music-my music-has some connection to the flute that Beethoven wrote about in the letter?”

Jeremy looked surprised. “How do you know what was mentioned in the letter?” Then, realizing, he shook his head. “Malachai told you, didn’t he? I’m sorry. When I told him, I should have asked him not to tell you about it. I wanted to show it to you myself when you got here.”

Meer let that explanation stand. “What, exactly, does the letter say?”

“That the box holds the clues to where the flute was hidden.” His voice sounded resigned as if this was a conversation he wished he could avoid.

Meer shuddered. The image of Beethoven holding the flute was impossibly clear and the burden of finding it weighed on her shoulders. Except it wasn’t her burden. Her husband wasn’t lost and sick. Her rising panic and urgency to find him was a manufactured emotion. And then Meer realized something tangible that really was urgent. “Do you believe the person who stole the letter from you and Dr. Smettering also stole the box and now is looking for the instrument?”

“Yes. A story broke here in the newspaper on Friday about a Beethoven letter being found in the gaming box, which is reason enough for someone to steal both of those objects. But I think they’re after the flute.”

“Did the article go into those details?”

“No. And I didn’t discuss them with anyone other than my fellow board members and Malachai.”

“But then how…?”

“There are hundreds of reincarnation scholars, musicologists and archaeologists around the world, not to mention members of the Society here who know about the memory tools and the history of Beethoven’s connection to an alleged memory flute.” Jeremy’s fingers clenched around the steering wheel. “Either whoever was responsible for stealing the letter also stole the gaming box, or the contents of the letter reached someone else who organized this morning’s theft.”

They’d stopped at a light. To the right was a stone church with spires reaching high into a cloudless blue sky. As they waited the bells began to chime, the ringing reverberating inside Meer’s body. “Why did you send the catalog and the drawing to me through Malachai? Why didn’t you call me and tell me what you were involved in and warn me?”

He didn’t answer.

“Did you call Malachai after I left his office to find out how I’d reacted?”

“Of course, because I wanted to make sure that you were all right. I knew it was going to be a shock.”

“I don’t want to be your guinea pig.”

“You’re my daughter. All I’ve ever wanted to do was help you and protect you. That’s all Malachai wants too.”

“And in the process use me to prove your theories.”

“Reincarnation is not my theory or his.”

“You act as if it is.”

“It’s part of my belief system.”

“A part of your belief system that you want to prove.”

This was as blunt a conversation as Meer had ever had with her father on this or any subject. The last forty-eight hours had provoked it.

“Meer, sweetheart, you’ve always had it backward. Before you started hearing the music, I was never very religious. Yes, I searched out lost pieces of Judaica but I was an antique dealer. I went to temple on the high holy days but out of routine and respect to my heritage. I’d never studied Kabbalah. I didn’t even know how important the concept of reincarnation was to the Jewish faith. I learned about all of this after you started to have problems.”

“So you did it all for me?” she said more sarcastically than she’d intended.

“To understand, so I could help.”

“I’m sure you think that.”

“Did you ever see a movie called Total Recall with Arnold Schwarzenegger?”

Meer looked at her father with surprise. “No.”

“The character Arnold plays can’t trust his memories-can’t tell what’s real or false. When he’s asked what he wants, he says, ‘to remember,’ and when he’s asked why he wants to remember he says, ‘to be myself again.’ That’s all I want for you. To remember, so you can be all your selves again.”

They sat in silence for the next few minutes until Jeremy reached the Praterstrasse and Meer noticed the familiar Hebraic signage on some of the buildings. This was where she’d wandered on Saturday night. “Where are we?”

“The old Jewish ghetto. Most of it has been restored by Jews who’ve moved back to Vienna,” he said as he turned off the main street and drove down a narrow lane. Glancing over at her, he asked: “Why, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I’m fine.”

Jeremy pulled into a parking spot. Without waiting for him, Meer got out of the car, turned right and started walking down the block.

“You don’t know where-” He broke off to hurry and catch up to her just as she stopped in front of the nondescript building at 122 Engerthstrasse. “How did you know this was where we were going?”