The email message from Ingrid came in as Matt was getting ready to shut down his laptop. It was a reflex to check for messages just before closing everything down. He supposed it was a hedge against the darkness — in case his computer never again hummed back to life, he would at least have missed the fewest messages possible. Statistically, he supposed, there was no greater likelihood that you should receive messages in the seconds just before you shut down than at any other time, and yet he had found that was exactly when things tended to come in. Often, they were messages he would rather not have read just before going to bed, questions or crises or requests that kept him awake at night. He paused for a minute when he saw Ingrid’s name in the sender line, considered leaving it till morning. And then he clicked.
She was back in Norway. He had known that. There was a new memory project, this one funded by Arts and Culture Norway, with a performance soon. She didn’t suppose he’d be able to make it, wouldn’t expect him to, but wanted him to know the dates. She was attaching a photo she hoped he might like. There was no salutation. Matt lamented how email had gradually degenerated to the style of text messaging. He remembered fondly the days when the speed had been in the delivery, but not in the composition. The only signature was her initial. I. Or was it the first-person singular?
The photo she attached might be of almost any subject. He did not think it would be anything too intimate. People were too smart these days for that. Most likely a headshot, smiling across the months and miles, perhaps to show off a new haircut or eyeglass frames. If not that, then some object, either odd in itself or shot in an unusual way, another of her homages to the Surrealists as she understood them. He was surprised, then, when it was neither. Rather, she had sent him a photo — it could have been a postcard — of a streetscape in Bergen. The very spot where he and Jennifer had the conversation that was the genesis for the Model Villages exhibition. How had Ingrid known? He remembered telling her he had been to Bergen once. And he had told her a little about St. Andrews, of course. Maybe even mused about the similarities. It could have been one of those times they had exchanged memories, between her Ikea sheets, when they were too tired to make love again quite yet.
The Tell-Me-Yours-and-I’ll-Tell-You-Mine game that Ingrid had improvised at the museum had evolved, over time, into a much looser exchange of remembered experiences and impressions. As it shifted from foreplay to post-coital pastime, the revelations became less and less guarded. Too intimate, he thought now.
One night, they had been trading stories of their respective adolescences. “Did you masturbate when you were a teenager?” Ingrid asked.
Matt hadn’t wanted to answer, but he knew he had to; it was the game. “Yes, I suppose. Did you?” He hoped that might cut the thread.
“Of course. Everyone does.”
Matthew doubted that.
“Can you remember a specific time?”
“A specific time?”
“Yes. Can you isolate one instance? Recall what you thought. What you did.”
“The doing part didn’t change that much from time to time.”
“Tell me.”
“You know. Touching myself. Then the clenched hand. And so forth.”
“The memory doesn’t sound very vivid.”
“I guess it’s not. Just routine, you know.”
“And your thoughts? Were they always the same?”
“No. Now that you mention it, they weren’t. Different things went through my mind.”
“Different images? Ideas? What?”
“Sometimes one, sometimes the other.”
“So, you would think of a naked lady, for example, of sex with a soft warm body.”
“I guess.”
“Or about a sexy situation, something naughty or forbidden.”
“Sometimes.”
“Had you ever been in such a situation yourself, or been with a naked woman?”
“I was … what was I … I was thirteen, fourteen.”
“When you began.”
“Yes.”
“So you had no experience to base the fantasy on.”
“None.”
“And yet you called up breasts and bushes and thighs. Maybe spankings?”
“Not spankings.”
“With no experience of any of them! Interesting, isn’t it?”
“Is it? It feels a little sordid. We could talk about something else.”
“Interesting for what it tells us about memory. What was going through your mind when you jerked off. Is that what you call it? That does make it sound sordid. What was going through your mind was essentially an act of memory, wasn’t it? You called up in your mind’s eye bodies and situations that were not present. That’s obvious. But they had never been present for you. Never. It’s like false memory. Paramnesia.”
“And I thought you were going to beat me up for not being able to recall a specific incident, for mixing them all up together. I thought you were going to use my pathetic adolescent onanism as some spectacular illustration of the difference between semantic and episodic memory.”
“Oh, well, that too. Obviously.” She laughed then and pinched his nipple.
“And you? Can you remember specific times?”
“It’s odd. I can remember the doing in detail on several different occasions. The thinking is all a blur.”
And then she treated him to accounts of several discrete occasions. Was discrete the right word? Yes, he assured her. She had also been the other kind of discreet, no doubt.
When she was finished, he said, “But they still fall into categories that repeat themselves, don’t they? How can you be sure now that you haven’t substituted one for another? Every episode involves your nipples. Two of the five include your bum. In three, your fingers are doing one thing and in two they’re … well … mainly rubbing. Spread that over a whole career of masturbation —”
“A career?”
“You were the one who started this conversation, the one who said everyone does it. Spread that over a career of pleasuring yourself and how could you possibly isolate a single instance? How could you tell them apart?”
She thought for a minute. “I have an excellent memory. Have I told you that before?” She laughed.
“An excellent memory for body parts and what they do. A Rabelaisian memory.”
“The two go hand in hand. Or something in hand. Your classical memory heroes knew that. Lewd images were their favourites for stocking their memory palaces. The dirtier the better. People try to tell you the invention of writing put an end to the art of memory. I think I even read that on a panel in your exhibition. It’s nonsense. The Greeks knew how to write, for heaven’s sake. It was the Puritans who put a stop to the ancient art of memory. Too rude for them. They thought they’d go blind or something. Speaking of masturbating and memory, would you like to try sex with an actual woman, in the present, again? It will be nothing short of memorable, I promise.” She rolled over on top of him before he could answer.
It might have been later that same night — or was it another? — that she asked him why he seemed so gloomy. Was what they were doing bothering him, making him feel guilty? She had never raised it before, never once alluded to his marriage.
“I’ve never been … unfaithful … before. I don’t think Jennifer has. It will hurt her.”
“If she finds out.”
“Is that supposed to make it better?”
“Think about it. If I remember that I have a bunch of boxes stored in my basement, that memory remains valid even after my neighbour comes in and steals them. Isn’t that so? The thing is that until I see an empty basement, or am told of the theft, my memory of those boxes in that basement is absolutely true, right?”
“I guess.” Matt had never liked these epistemological plums.
“Why should it be any different with infidelity? Her memory of your being faithful is what matters. Until that is challenged, there is no problem.” With that, she had rolled over and fallen asleep. Matt had lain awake for an hour, then dressed and gone home.
He reread Ingrid’s message, tried to compose a response, although he knew he shouldn’t. He thought opening the attachment again might help him. It was still Bryggen. He didn’t know what had led him to hope it might somehow have become an indecent photo to remember her by.