The Memory Key (31 page)

A word of warning, folks. We don’t like bad memories and nasty images, and our brains will play all sorts of tricks to suppress them. So save the traumatic images for traumatic words like war, OK? Right, back to how to learn a language.

The peg system, which we looked at in Chapter 4 and will look at again in Chapter 9, is the first step. What is the peg system again? What, you forgot?! No problem. A peg is something you hang a memory on, but you know what? I don’t like the term. I would have liked to call it the ‘cloud’ system, but nowadays everyone thinks of the cloud as a place where you store your files remotely. But think of how a cloud forms. A droplet of moisture attaches itself to a piece of dust, which attaches itself to another droplet, and a piece of dust, to another piece of dust, and so on. Eventually you have a big dark cloud ready to burst and rain down information. The point is everything we know now we learned by associating it with something else. At some stage, you say, like when we were really small babies, there must have been a moment when we just learned something without associating it. That’s actually a pretty deep question of the type that gets Greek philosophers and Noam Chomsky worked up, so let’s not go there. Let’s just say that the basic rule is this: anything you learn you learn by associating it with what you already know.

One of these Greeks was a man called Protagoras, who is supposed to have said that man is the measure of all things, a point of view I agree with. He is also credited with inventing the genders masculine, feminine, and neuter for nouns in those languages that make such distinctions. Jacob Grimm (fairy-tale guy) did the same for German. My point is they might as well have called them air, rain, and sand nouns as masculine, feminine, and neuter. Like plant classifications, it is a system made up by humans, and essentially arbitrary. The word ‘table’ is feminine in Spanish, masculine in German, both in Italian, nothing in particular in English. It is arbitrary – though, obviously, words like mother and woman are going to be assigned to the ‘feminine’ gender.

No technique for remembering this demented system, invented by academics, not nature, can be considered ‘cheating’. The original arrangements of plants, dates, nouns, words – everything – is arbitrary and made up by brains just like yours. There is nothing intrinsically male about, say, a cup or the floor or a tree, but if we are learning German we find that they are masculine, and so we are supposed to think of them as having some of the qualities of a ‘male’. It’s like the old joke about whether a computer is male or female. It’s female because it stores all your mistakes in permanent memory for later retrieval and it uses a language all of its own to communicate. On the other hand, it’s male because you have to turn it on before it will work for you and it holds a lot of information but is still very stupid.

In short, there is no ‘cheating’. If instead of trying to associate a word with an arbitrary gender, you decide instead to ‘put’ it in an arbitrary place of your own deciding, that will help you remember.

Personally, I put all masculine nouns from all languages in a huge big field with a copper beech tree that I remember from my childhood, I leave female ones floating on the open ocean, which is not very chivalrous of me, and I throw neutral nouns into the darkness of space. You need big places if you want to learn a lot of words. Smaller places will do if you want to learn a shorter list.

All pretty weird, right? It seems like too much effort, but the brain reorganizes things pretty quickly. If you can type, play an instrument, ride a bicycle, knit, or drive a car, you’ll know the truth of this. For a while it was a HUGE effort, slow, complicated, impossible to learn, frustrating, and, above all, so mechanical and laborious – not to say dangerous in the case of the bike and the car. Then it became natural, so natural that you can sing while playing guitar, chat while knitting, compose while typing, and text while driving (that’s a joke, by the way).

Let’s go back to the Chinese character for war:
. . .

Blume’s phone rang. It was Panebianco.

‘Commissioner?’

‘Hi, Rosario. Listen, thanks for coming in to see Caterina today. I am at the hospital now. What’s up?’

Panebianco did not answer.

‘What is this about, Rosario?’

‘I think you need to come in now.’

‘But I haven’t seen Caterina yet.’

‘You’ll have plenty of time later, I promise.’

Chapter 33

What did Panebianco mean by telling him he would have plenty of time later? As he walked up the steps into the Collegio Romano station, a policeman, whose tight uniform bore the sheen of age and many overheated ironings, made some comment. Blume missed the content, but the tone had been friendly enough.

‘Thanks, Roberto,’ he called without turning round, delighted with himself at remembering the name in time.

He walked quickly through the staff room on his way to his office, throwing greetings left and right, but they were not returned.

‘What, did you all come in to stare at me today?’ Blume made his way over to Panebianco, who obviously had something to say.

‘This is scandalous!’ said Panebianco with some venom. ‘Come on, into your office. This is fucking unbelievable!’

Panebianco closed the door behind them, and leaned against it. ‘Alec, you have been suspended from service.’

‘What?’

‘You heard me.’

‘They can’t do that. I got no notice.’

‘They can. You have been served with an interlocutory order for immediate suspension, pending the commencement of disciplinary hearings within 40 days.’

‘But I haven’t been informed.’ Blume squared his voice against hitting a plaintive note. ‘My phone has been on. Apart from you, no one called.’

‘This is totally unacceptable. You need to talk to your
Siulp
representative about this,’ said Panebianco. He shook his head in disgust. ‘I am sorry. I don’t know why they are doing this. For all I know they have every reason to suspend you. I can think of a few reasons myself, but that is not the point. It’s the way they have done it. They let everyone know before you. That is deliberate humiliation. It is an offence to the dignity of your office. You can get the union on your side on this. I am willing to be a witness.’

Blume felt like a spectator in a theatre watching himself and Panebianco act out a scene on a stage far below. He recited another line: ‘Witness to what?’

‘The fact that news of your suspension was leaked to your colleagues before it was officially communicated to you as the directly interested party. What else have you done, if you don’t mind my asking?’

‘What
else
? I’m not sure I like the way you framed the question.’

Panebianco gave him a look that stopped him dead. There was genuine contempt in his eyes.

‘I annoyed a Carabiniere,’ said Blume with a touch of humility. ‘I came in late to the questore’s speech. With the questore, I think it’s sort of cumulative hatred.’

‘I just want you to know that I am opposed to the way they did this, not necessarily the fact of the suspension.’

‘Well fuck you, too.’

‘And if the image of the
squadra mobile
has been deliberately insulted by the questore, I think people need to remember that you gave him and his office plenty of opportunity.’

‘Spoken like a real friend.’

‘Like a colleague whose dignity of office is threatened by the antics of his commanding officer.’

‘Did I say “fuck you” a second ago? Because just in case I didn’t –’

His desk phone rang.

‘That thing never rings any more.’

‘That will be them now,’ said Rosario. He glanced at his watch. ‘It is now 16:03 p.m. Make sure you don’t delete the incoming call on your phone. Date, time, details. Log everything. Record them if you can.’

‘I don’t know how to.’

‘But you had better answer the phone, Commissioner.’

Blume looked at the display. It was a short number, the Rome prefix plus 46861, the switchboard of a public office. He glanced at Panebianco, who flashed him a heartless smile and left the room. Blume went over, lifted the receiver, and put it down on his desk.

Two minutes later, as he was on his way downstairs, his mobile rang.

The appointment with the questore was set for an hour later at the offices off Via San Vitale. If he went to the hospital, he might not make it back in time, even if he used his siren and the public service lanes. And even if it were possible, how long would he have with Caterina? Five minutes? Ten? Fifteen tops, but then the anxiety of the appointment would distract his attention. He descended the steep flight of steps leading straight out to the piazza outside and walked away from the station. He did not want to be within the earshot or even the line of sight of his colleagues until he had this all worked out. He called Caterina on the off chance, and was shocked into silence when she actually answered.

‘Alec?’

‘Hi. I didn’t expect you to answer . . . so quickly.’

‘Well, here I am.’

‘You’re fine, then?’ This was met with silence, so he added, ‘I was in earlier and you were having tests, so how did they go?’

‘You’re talking like they were multiple choice or something. It was a CT scan. Presumably they’ll tell me.’

‘Your mother is coming in soon.’

One beat, two beats, three, four, five. It was time enough for her to remove all inflections of outrage from her voice. ‘I see. You’re not coming.’

‘Something important has come up. I wasn’t cancelling.’

He waited for her to ask him what had come up, but it seemed she wasn’t interested, and he was damned if he was going to volunteer information. The silence stretched a few more seconds, then he said, ‘OK, like you said, I’ll call later. You sound fine. I hope you are.’

‘Wait.’

Here it comes, he thought. She had to realize he must have a compelling reason not to visit. She had to know something serious was happening. But her next question was too female for him to have anticipated.

‘When’s the last time you saw Elia?’

‘Elia?’

‘Yeah, you know, that kid who lives with us. My son, the child you refer to as your nephew. How I ever let you get away with that.’

Blume felt his temples throb, a reminder his headache was just biding its time.

‘Your mother started that uncle thing.’

‘Where did he spend the night? No, don’t answer that. It was at his grandmother’s.’

Thoughts too deep in him to get out caused him to sound prim and defensive. ‘I would have been perfectly happy for him to stay with me.’

‘With you. In my house? That’s very kind of you.’

‘Caterina, you said we had to talk. I think I know what about. Can we save all this until later?’

‘Sure. It’s not as if I am going anywhere.’

She was refusing to tell him she was pregnant. As long as she withheld that from him, what was the point in trying to do the best by her?

The conversation had filled his muscles with immanent ticklish energy. He had to walk. Cutting through Piazza Collegio Romano and past the Trinity pub, he emerged on to Via del Corso, which had become less busy over the past few years as the tourists vanished and the shops moved to out-of-town malls. It was easier to walk down, but there was little to look at. Moving quickly to keep his blood warm against the wind, he headed straight up Via dell’Umiltà as far as the Foreign Press Centre, then stopped, realizing that at this rate he would arrive too early at the Questura with a raging and ungovernable headache.

He doubled back, and stood for a moment underneath the entrance to the Forza Italia headquarters. Far less movement around here in recent years as the party sank back into the murky oblivion from which it had emerged. Just two policemen stood guard outside, whereas half a division was still posted around Berlusconi’s pleasure palace down the road.

One of the guards came out, took a look at him, and nodded. Blume nodded back, unable to place the man, who had either recognized him in person or, as often happened, simply recognized him as a colleague. A squad car was parked where the road opened to become a small piazzetta. A uniformed officer leaned casually against it, watching the world go by, but straightened up defensively as Blume approached. His colleague was nowhere to be seen, which gave Blume an idea.