Memory Two

1980s

We all have memories. Our lives are basically memories of what we did yesterday, creating new memories for tomorrow. How little we know, of others, or ourselves. We may think we know, but do we?

The world we have lived in. The people we have known. How we interacted. We can look back at who we were, aided by photographs, by what others wrote and what we wrote to others. What others had to say about their times. Newspapers. Books. To give us a picture of the times we lived in. That is where diaries and memoirs come in. And novels that recreate the period in question. Research in archives can tell us a lot. But we will always be outsiders, even to ourselves, never really knowing who we are. 

A letter or a receipt can give us a glimpse into our past.  Recall what we had thought forgotten. Memory is a funny thing. Looking back, our lives would be a mystery were it not for letters and receipts. Simple things such as one from a hotel where we stayed 60 years ago, indicating cost and where we were on a given date.  

It brings to mind Tony Judt’s memory chalet. We can relive the story of our lives, lives that have moved through space and time, captured in those countless rooms of our memory. Often we need a nudge, an object or a sound, a voice that tries to set things straight. For memory by itself is unreliable, one day it can be this, the next day it will be that.  My memory may not coincide with that of someone else who was there at the same time, who witnessed what happened, as did I.  I say that the first time we met you were wearing a jacket and a tie. You say that was impossible, that you never wore a tie any more. There must however be just one true version corresponding to reality.  But then what is reality? Can there be a single reality? In Korosawa’s film Rashomon there were four different versions of the murder of a samurai, as witnessed by four participants, including the ghost of the samurai. Which one was real?

True we all have our memories. Often they are safes requiring a key to unlock them and while a piece of paper gives you irrevocable facts, a memory can play hide and seek. 

Perhaps being in the field of art history and research is why I hesitate to discard paper documents of all kinds. Some, like invoices for the shop I used to have, are supposed to be kept either 15 or 20 years for tax purposes. I have kept them, and it is now way more than 20 years. They document the artisans who supplied me, weavers, potters, glass blowers (foto glass negozio105), of whom all that remains now are their names, if that, and the objects they made.

Many were small artisans who made traditional wares of the kind one might find at a fair, some had regular commercial activities, at other times it might be difficult to get an invoice for they preferred to remain under the tax radar. There were young kids who made earrings and pins and bracelets and probably didn’t even know what an invoice was and were  hoping to make a few lire on the side. At the time it was lire and not euros. So why keep all these slips of paper? 

I am not the merchant of Prato, that 14th-century Tuscan merchant whose life and times Iris Origo meticulously documented. No one is likely to be interested in how I lived or where I went to get my merchandise or from whom. Still, in addition to receipts, there are fleeting memories destined to disappear when my time is up. Objects on consignment. Perhaps returned unsold, or consigned now to memories, both theirs and mine.  What I did in those in between times, the children I tutored, the strangers I took in. The friends I made. 

There are my memories of children who came to get a present for their mother at Christmas – and who now may themselves be grandmothers. My shop was a magical place in those years.

It was part of my life as well as of the little ones whose teacher might bring his small wards so they could get an inexpensive souvenir to take home. My fondest memory is of a little boy who might have been six and who was crying because he had lost the coins he had knotted in a handkerchief and now couldn’t buy his mother a present. I wonder if he still remembers how I gave him something to take to his mom.

As we go out into the world, our contacts multiply. Memories are no longer ours alone but shared. Some may be passed down. There will be those who may not even remember they were ever in Orvieto. But they have not remained unnoticed for in one way or another they have left a sign on me and on others whose lives they touched.