第19章 The Morning Interview

The consolidation interview took place at seven in the morning on the twenty-eighth day, in the room with the window painted on the inside of it, which they had cleaned and lit, and which was not on the fifth floor. They walked her down the stairs, past the berths under the paint, and past the nameplate with C-14 in the clean rectangle of dust, and Sandoz went ahead with the key and Voskuil came behind with the folder, and Cleo walked between them down the worn rail and felt her own hand find the shine at the height of a hand, which meant the rail had been worn by people who held it at her height, which meant many. The room was small and warm and had a camera and a screen and a chair. The screen showed the bank. The chair was for her. Voskuil sat at the screen and Sandoz stood at the wall with her arms crossed, and Voskuil asked her, in a formal voice, whether she consented to give her account of the material, and Cleo said yes, and the camera light came on. She gave the account. She gave it well. She had been rehearsed in it for a fortnight and she had been rehearsed in being rehearsed for longer than that, and she spoke in the sensory present, with the coat and the rain and the bus, with the room with the crack shaped like a bird, with the corridor and the red door and the man who did not come in, and at the end of the account the screen prompted her, in the grey of the system, to describe the night her mother died. She described it. It came out of her in a voice she trusted, and the details were the details of the file, the ward and the green and the naming of her from the far end of a long hall, and she felt the memory settle into the place where a memory of her mother's death should be, and it fit, and it hurt, and the hurt had the grain of weather, and she sat in the chair with her hands in her lap and knew that she had just been given back the night she had lost, and that she had lost it in the first place because they took it, and that she could not tell the two facts apart anymore, and that this was the whole design and she was inside it the way the console and the chair and the nameplate were inside it. Then Voskuil asked whether the account was complete, and Cleo said yes, and then, in the small silence after the yes, she did the one thing she had rehearsed in the drying room with the fans on, the one thing that was not in the notebook. She said, in the same flat clinical voice, on camera, into the record: "One deviation." Voskuil looked up. Sandoz uncrossed her arms. "None of this is mine," Cleo said, "and I am saying it anyway, and I am signing it as theirs, and the log will show that I said so, because the log hears everything and the log only reports what it recognizes, and I am telling you now that this sentence is mine, and you can bank it, and you can place it in the next one, and I hope the next one reads it in time." She gave the account the way she had been rehearsed, which is to say she gave it well. She began with the coat on the bus because the coat was first in the order the screen had shown her, and the coat came out with rain on it and a seat and a stop missed, and she heard herself describe the smell of wet wool and the sound of the bell, and she did not stop, because stopping is the one thing the protocol does not allow and because she had promised herself, in the drying room, that she would not be the participant who failed on a technicality. She gave the room with the crack in the plaster shaped like a bird, and the lamp with the burn on its shade, and the bulb changed in the dark by a woman who was not her mother, and she gave the corridor and the red door and the man in the coat who did not come in, and each piece arrived in the sensory present, and each piece was hers by the time it left her mouth, and she understood somewhere in the fourth minute that this was the exact and only meaning of the word *carry*: not to remember a thing, but to be the place a thing is kept. Then the screen prompted her for the last material, and Voskuil asked her, in the formal voice, whether she was ready, and Cleo said yes. She was not ready. There is no rehearsal for it. The night her mother died came back into her the way a room comes back when someone turns on a light in it, and it came back whole, the ward and the green and the far end of the long hall and the name said twice and then not said again, and it fit into the place where a memory of her mother's death should be, and it fit with the grain of weather, and the hurt of it was ordinary and enormous, and Cleo sat in the chair with her hands in her lap and her eyes open and her mouth working and for the length of that minute she had the night back and could not tell whether she was remembering it or being handed it, and the not being able to tell was the design, and the design was working perfectly, and she let it work, because the alternative was to refuse the only copy she would ever be offered of the last night of her mother's life. When it was over the camera light was still on and Voskuil asked whether the account was complete. And Cleo did the thing she had rehearsed with the fans running, and did it in the flat voice, on the tape, into the record that the funder would own. "One deviation," she said, and then she said the rest of it, and the screen, in its docile grey, logged the sentence with a code beside it, and the code was the code the annex used for material the protocol could not bank, because it was not a memory and not a rehearsal and not an ordinary hurt, and the log heard every word of it, and the log only reports what it recognizes, and the log recognized it. The camera light went off. Voskuil sat back and looked at the screen for a while. Sandoz put a hand over her mouth, which Cleo had not seen her do, and then took it away, and the two of them did not look at each other, and Cleo understood that she had not stopped the study. She had only made the product dirty, and a dirty product is still a product, and she sat in the chair with her mother's night in her and her own sentence on the tape and could not decide, and would never again be able to decide, which of the two she had come down those stairs to carry back up. ---