The History of History - By Ida Hattemer-Higgins Page 0,58
the dry bone, not the bloody flesh. For the sake of the bone, you have danced and been entertained. You’ve been reading history so that it will be easier to shed your own flesh. That is the history of history—the violence against the body for the sake of the skeleton.”
Margaret drew her head back as if she’d been struck. Oddly, the doctor’s words made instant sense to her. And she was defensive. “You don’t know anything,” she said. The presumptuous doctor didn’t know her. She thought of her apartment, the hallway of which was like a rope bridge over a great gorge of knowledge, with its many piles of books on either side—biographies, histories, sociologies, old telephone and address directories stacked so high it could only cunningly be traversed—used books bought over the Internet from dealer-collectors, new books from the fair in Frankfurt, books from the Antiquariat on the corner. And then she thought of her painting of Magda Goebbels. No one could say she, Margaret, of all people, had been gesturing frivolously at the past.
But the doctor went on. “You want to drain the elderly fluids so you can march hypnotized into the future!” she said. “Your living, breathing, fleshy Berlin—ha-ha! I’ll tell you what that is!” the doctor laughed. “A step back from disingenuousness! For nothing living can ever be completely misunderstood. If you have to see the buildings alive, then it will put a stay of execution on your murder of time.” The doctor beamed. “Everything is going according to plan, comrade—your defenses are breaking down. My way,” she said, “is winning you over!”
Margaret was dizzy with anger. “You’re most certainly not winning me over, doctor. I’m here to say it’s not working!” She stood up. “This was supposed to be a cure for amnesia. But my amnesia is not cured.”
The doctor’s voice lowered to a purr hardly louder than the sound of her rasping breath. “I know you feel guilty, my dear, I know it hurts you. Regardless of whether you remember what you’ve done, you will still feel guilty, for guilt is not a matter of deed but a matter of character. Therefore a contagion. It is very difficult to become connected to someone else’s crime, but never difficult to become connected to someone else’s heart. You can always stop seeking the truth of life, but you can never stop seeking the truth of character! You can never stop worrying over the shadows of your own riddling heart!”
The doctor waved her hands in the air. “Bid the history of history adieu, comrade! The living apartment houses are eager to have their way. A new sun is rising, the time of the anesthetized past is drawing to a close.”
Margaret clutched the lip of the desk. “Doctor, I have never tried to anesthetize the past. On the contrary.”
“Oh, I’ve been on your ‘tours of Berlin,’ ” the doctor said.
Margaret cried out. No she hadn’t! She would have certainly remembered an ancient, goggle-eyed German woman.
Or would she have? Recently she had been so distracted … But the doctor cut her off. “If you are not in the habit of anesthetizing the past, then how do you explain that you don’t remember one bit of your own past?” She wrapped her knuckles against the desk.
Margaret pulled at the bottom of her sweater. “I have nothing to remember.” Her cheeks burned.
“Yes, you do.”
“In that case, why don’t I remember it? Why don’t I find it? It doesn’t make sense!”
“My dear, let me answer that question with another question: what is the difference between having a knife thrown at your head and reading a story about having a knife thrown at your head?”
Margaret hid her face. She wanted to get up, but her whole body was leaden; she suspected that she was rooted to the floor as a rabbit freezes in hopes of camouflage. So many animals believe predators cannot see them when they are still. She didn’t say anything, her nostrils sick with the task of breathing. The clock ticked in the corner. With little warning, the heavy handle of one of the knives in the door won out against the blade, and it fell to the ground with a clatter.
“Dr. Arabscheilis,” Margaret said. “Did you throw a knife at me?”
“I did not throw a knife at you,” the doctor said. “But come, come. That won’t do. What’s the difference?”
“Any number of differences,” said Margaret, breathing heavily.