Almost Memories / Almost True Stories

The Organ and the Eggs Memories are neither stories nor true stories but something in between that emerges to become submerged again, its confirmations turning into suspicions. Augustine said that memories are the presence of things past. But if the past could speak directly, it might challenge the truth of memories because that presence would have changed the past to fit contemporary needs. And if you want to search for truth because it must be somewhere, it would be in the changes. Soothing or terrifying, they might be as imaginary as resurrection in the flesh; and as seductively deceptive. There was that small, muddy village in Northern Bavaria where we had inexplicably landed at the end of the War. Over the decades, I have sometimes remembered those years as nothing but hunger, cold, boredom and fear. But it also seemed that in these memories the child preoccupied with finding food and staying clear of the ferocious village geese, dogs, and teenage boys was retreating. I was forgetting what it had felt like to be this child. Had I been able to watch my former self running away in panic from Wotan's wind-borne chase of a thousand geese, wildly gesticulating and infernally screeching, I would have sympathized with that terrible, hilarious panic. But the mesh of memories growing between her and the person I would have become in each subsequent instant of remembering made it easier to smile at that old fear. Later, I might even have been tempted to think that the teasing I still remember as unfair could have been partly deserved. Suspecting my memories, however gently, I would never really know who I was then, and where; and what the War had done to us. But, then, what do we mean when we say "really" or "truly." Time changes everything. Appealing to our memories to sort out pasts and presents we act as if we know that. But do we understand that what we witness is the pastness of our fears and desires? More destructive than anything else in Western historical memory, the Second World War inexorably separated the past from the future. It is true, many remote villages like ours seemed barely touched by it. But as if it needed an epilogue to Germany's dead cities and the enforced migrations of many millions of homeless people, the War had deposited into them large numbers of refugee mothers and children. Packed tightly into an open truck, we clutched our small wet bundles, ourselves shaken like rags by the cold wind and the fear of being flung off the truck. It stopped abruptly; our eyes shut against the heavy rain opened; we looked at the village and knew that it would always have been cut off from the rest of the world. All hopes of leaving here would be nothing but a hazy dream; and trying to get back to where we had come from nothing but a black rock of futility. Back there, in the past, I had been taught to ride the tram by myself when I started school. I had loved the safe adventure of riding around our city naming, as my mother had taught me, the famously beautiful old palaces, churches, and bridges so that I would always know where I was. That city would soon be famously bombed out of existence; we would leave our burnt-out house and for many months walk towards the promised land of the American Zone. Here, our mother said, we would all be safe. There were many millions of refugee children uprooted by the War and there would be many more in the wars to come, though that would have seemed unimaginable in 1 945. Many children must have felt hope - and helplessly out of place as I did in those unwelcoming villages with their ancient, alien ways. Mother said this was the first time in many months that we could stay for a little while, and in a house; and that we had to be grateful. We were; grateful and trying hard not to be seen or heard. But there was also the sudden sharp flash of memories of our house before it was bombed, all the things we loved now burnt or shattered. In the refugee camp we had inhabited a small square drawn on the floor, floating in our one-dimensional living space and trying not to trespass into the neighboring square. …