academia, and having invited the friend of a man I suspected to be a murderer to visit me, but the trouble was that I wasn’t sure about anything. It was true that I had begun to doubt what I had seen in Saint-Germain, both on my present trip, and even in 1944 . If that sounds odd, believe only that I have often pondered the nature of memory; the way in which we can distort our memories over time, so that as the years pass something is exaggerated, added to, subtracted from, or otherwise twisted to the point where it no longer has much basis in reality. Sometimes, perhaps, these changes are not significant, but at other times a whole memory can be effectively destroyed, reduced to nothing – or created from nothing.
And as time passes, the mind can play various tricks. I once had a memory, for example, of something that I was sure had happened in my childhood: of falling from an apple tree and my father catching me. Years later, my mother told me it was a dream I’d reported having at the age of six; that it had never actually happened. Yet I still remember telling it to my friend Donald when we were undergrads as though it were the historical truth, because somehow in my mind it had become just that.
I wondered if I had done something like that with my encounter in the hole in the ground, but then there had been the blood, the blood on the ground when I went back for a second look. I could still smell it if I closed my eyes, and sense its warmth.
Still, it was too late by then. Marian had my phone number and we had arranged a tentative date for her arrival. To meet the great Hunter Wilson.
Hunter himself guffawed at that when I phoned him the evening I got back, but said he’d be delighted to help if he could, and at the very least he had a recipe for pork belly that he was keen to try out on me.
Though it had been cold and wet in Paris, Cambridge was, as so often, a couple of degrees colder than anywhere else, and I shivered as I climbed into bed, wondering when spring would come.
I dreamt.
In my dream, it was dark, or at least, I was not supposed to be seeing anything much, at first mostly just hearing something. I was in a small warm space, I knew that, and I was somehow hovering near, very near, the naked body of a woman.
I was excited. So was she, for she was softly moaning, her head tilted back, hanging over something, her lips apart as small cries of pleasure escaped; gentle, high cries of pleasure.
She seemed dreamy, unaware, as if drugged, high on some opiate, hallucinating perhaps, or maybe just her senses dulled.
The dream continued, and now sight began to play a bigger role. Her cries increased in volume and in frequency, she began to arch her back, her mouth opened wider, and her eyes scrunched up tight. Her long hair flowed wildly back from her head, as if blown by the wind. Her moans began to come in small, heaving gasps; I could feel her breath on my face, and I pulled away from her a little more.
And then I saw the truth.
The moans were not cries of pleasure.
She was in pain, in torment. There was a knife sticking out of her stomach, from which blood flowed and flowed. She was softly crying in terrible pain, from the knife, and from the man who was forcing himself into her, again and again.
I woke, screaming, and knew that I’d been dreaming of the girl in the bunker being tormented by that terrible figure, that man, that beast. And that I was the beast.
Chapter 12
Immediately upon waking, I knew what the dream meant. It meant that I felt guilty, that by doing nothing when the woman might still have had a chance, I had as good as killed her myself.
It took a long time for the horror of that dream to pass off, several days in fact, during which my mind was not really on my work and every night I feared I might have the same dream.
I went to see Hunter one evening, late.
I scurried from Caius over the cobbles of Green Street to Sidney, through the ever-present
And as time passes, the mind can play various tricks. I once had a memory, for example, of something that I was sure had happened in my childhood: of falling from an apple tree and my father catching me. Years later, my mother told me it was a dream I’d reported having at the age of six; that it had never actually happened. Yet I still remember telling it to my friend Donald when we were undergrads as though it were the historical truth, because somehow in my mind it had become just that.
I wondered if I had done something like that with my encounter in the hole in the ground, but then there had been the blood, the blood on the ground when I went back for a second look. I could still smell it if I closed my eyes, and sense its warmth.
Still, it was too late by then. Marian had my phone number and we had arranged a tentative date for her arrival. To meet the great Hunter Wilson.
Hunter himself guffawed at that when I phoned him the evening I got back, but said he’d be delighted to help if he could, and at the very least he had a recipe for pork belly that he was keen to try out on me.
Though it had been cold and wet in Paris, Cambridge was, as so often, a couple of degrees colder than anywhere else, and I shivered as I climbed into bed, wondering when spring would come.
I dreamt.
In my dream, it was dark, or at least, I was not supposed to be seeing anything much, at first mostly just hearing something. I was in a small warm space, I knew that, and I was somehow hovering near, very near, the naked body of a woman.
I was excited. So was she, for she was softly moaning, her head tilted back, hanging over something, her lips apart as small cries of pleasure escaped; gentle, high cries of pleasure.
She seemed dreamy, unaware, as if drugged, high on some opiate, hallucinating perhaps, or maybe just her senses dulled.
The dream continued, and now sight began to play a bigger role. Her cries increased in volume and in frequency, she began to arch her back, her mouth opened wider, and her eyes scrunched up tight. Her long hair flowed wildly back from her head, as if blown by the wind. Her moans began to come in small, heaving gasps; I could feel her breath on my face, and I pulled away from her a little more.
And then I saw the truth.
The moans were not cries of pleasure.
She was in pain, in torment. There was a knife sticking out of her stomach, from which blood flowed and flowed. She was softly crying in terrible pain, from the knife, and from the man who was forcing himself into her, again and again.
I woke, screaming, and knew that I’d been dreaming of the girl in the bunker being tormented by that terrible figure, that man, that beast. And that I was the beast.
Chapter 12
Immediately upon waking, I knew what the dream meant. It meant that I felt guilty, that by doing nothing when the woman might still have had a chance, I had as good as killed her myself.
It took a long time for the horror of that dream to pass off, several days in fact, during which my mind was not really on my work and every night I feared I might have the same dream.
I went to see Hunter one evening, late.
I scurried from Caius over the cobbles of Green Street to Sidney, through the ever-present
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