Total Recall

“We’re going to follow up on today’s extraordinary story by talking to the therapist who worked with Paul Radbuka. Rhea Wiell has been having remarkable success-and started remarkable controversy, I might add-with her work in helping people get access to forgotten memories. Memories they’ve usually forgotten because the pain of remembering them is too great. We don’t bury happy memories so deep, do we, Rhea?”

The therapist had changed into a soft green outfit that suggested an Indian mystic. She nodded with a slight smile. “We don’t usually suppress memories of ice-cream sodas or romps on the beach with our friends. The memories we push away are the ones that threaten us in our core as individuals.”

“Also with us is Professor Arnold Praeger, the director of the Planted Memory Foundation.”

The professor was given due face time to say that we lived in an era that celebrated victims, which meant people needed to prove they had suffered more terribly than anyone else. “Such people seek out therapists who can validate their victimization. A small number of therapists have helped a large number of would-be victims remember the most shocking events: they begin recalling satanic rituals, sacrificing pets that never even existed, and so on. Many families have been terribly damaged by these planted memories.”

Rhea Wiell laughed softly. “I hope you are not going to suggest that any of my patients have recovered memories of satanic sacrifices, Arnold.”

“You’ve certainly encouraged some of them to demonize their parents, Rhea. They’ve ruined their parents’ lives by accusing them of the most heinous brutality-accusations which can’t be proved true in a court of law because the only witnesses to them are your patients’ imaginations.”

“You mean the only witness besides the parent who thought he was safe from ever being found out,” Wiell said, keeping her voice gentle as a contrast to Praeger’s sharp speech.

Praeger cut her off. “In the case of this man whose tape we just watched, the father is dead and can’t even be summoned to speak on his own behalf. We’re told about documents in code, but I wonder what key you used to break the code? And whether someone like me would get the same result if I looked at the documents.”

Wiell shook her head, smiling gently. “My patients’ privacy is sacrosanct, Arnold, you know that. These are Paul Radbuka’s documents. Whether anyone else can see them is his decision alone.”

Blacksin stepped in here to draw the conversation back to what recovered memories actually were. Wiell talked a little about post-traumatic stress disorder, explaining that there are a number of symptoms that people share after trauma, whether it’s from battle-as soldiers or civilians-or experiencing other fragmenting events, like sexual assault.

“Children who’ve been sexually abused, adults who’ve been tortured, soldiers who’ve endured battle, all share some common problems: depression, inability to sleep, inability to trust people around them or form close co

“But people can be depressed and have sleep disorders without having been abused,” Praeger snapped. “When someone comes into my office complaining of those symptoms, I am very careful about forming an opinion of the root cause: I don’t immediately suggest he’s been tortured by Hutu terrorists. People are at their most dependent and vulnerable with psychotherapists. It is all too easy to suggest things to them which they come ardently to believe. We like to think that our memories are objective and accurate, but unfortunately, it’s very easy to create memories of events that never took place.”

He went on to summarize research on planted, or created, memories that showed how people were persuaded they had taken part in marches or demonstrations when there was objective evidence that they’d never been in the city where the demonstration was held.

A little before eleven, Blacksin cut the argument short. “Until we truly understand the workings of the human mind, this debate will continue between people of goodwill. Why don’t each of you take thirty seconds to summarize your positions, before we say good night. Ms. Wiell?”

Rhea Wiell looked at the camera with a wide, serious gaze. “We often like to dismiss other people’s horrible memories, not because we’re not compassionate. And not because we don’t want to be victims. But because we’re afraid to look inside ourselves. We’re afraid to find out what lies hidden-what we’ve done to other people, or what has happened to us. It takes a lot of courage to take a journey to the past. I would never start someone on that journey who wasn’t strong enough to make it to the end. I certainly never let them travel that dangerous road alone.”

After that, Professor Praeger’s rebuttal sounded cruel and unfeeling. If the rest of the viewing audience was like me, they wanted Wiell back, wanted her to say they were strong enough to travel to the past, and good or interesting enough that she would guide them on the way.

When the camera faded to commercials, Morrell switched off the set. Don rubbed his hands.

“This woman has book, six figures, written all over her. I’ll be a hero in Paris and New York if I get her before Bertelsma

“Remember the shaman we met in Escuintla?” Morrell said to Don. “He had the same expression in his eyes. As if he saw into the most secret thoughts of your mind.”

“Yes.” Don shuddered. “What a horrible trip. We spent eighteen hours underneath a pigsty outwaiting the army. That was when I decided I’d be happier working full-time at Envision Press and letting people like you hog the glory, Morrell. So to speak. You think she’s a charlatan?”

Morrell spread his hands. “I don’t know anything about her. But she certainly believes in herself, doesn’t she?”

A yawn split my face. “I’m too tired to have an opinion. But it should be easy enough to check her credentials in the morning.”

I pushed myself upright on leaden legs. Morrell said he’d join me in a minute. “Before Don gets too carried away with this new book, I want to go over a few things about my own.”

“In that case, Morrell, we’re doing it outside. I’m not dueling with you over contracts without nicotine.”

I don’t know how late the two of them sat up: I was asleep almost before the door out to the porch closed behind them.

V Sniffing for a Scent

W hen I got back from my run the next morning, Don was where I’d left him the night before: on the back porch with a cigarette. He was even wearing the same jeans and rumpled green shirt.

“You look horribly healthy. It makes me want to smoke more in self-defense.” He sucked in a final mouthful of smoke, then ground the butt tidily on a broken piece of pottery Morrell had given him. “Morrell said you’d operate the coffee thingy for me; I suppose you know he’s gone into town to see someone or other at the State Department.”

I knew: Morrell had gotten up when I did, at six-thirty. As his departure date loomed, he’d stopped sleeping well-several times in the night I’d woken to find him staring rigidly at the ceiling. In the morning, I slid out of bed as quietly as possible, going to the guest bathroom in the hall to wash, then using his study to leave a message for Ralph Devereux, head of claims at Ajax Insurance, asking for a meeting at his earliest convenience. By the time I finished that, Morrell was up. While I did my stretches and drank a glass of juice, he answered his mail. When I left for my run, he was deep in an on-line chat with Humane Medicine in Rome.

My return route took me past Max’s lakefront home. His Buick was still in the driveway, as were two other cars, presumably Carl’s and Michael’s rentals. There didn’t seem to be any signs of life: musicians go to bed late and get up late. Max, who usually is at work by eight, must be following his son’s and Carl’s rhythms.