Is There One Particular Subconscious Memory You Wish To Have Made Conscious?

by R J Dent

Martin Ambler looked at the large black letters on the sign over the double doors of the SMMC building and felt a twinge of nervous energy surge through his body. He quickly suppressed an instinct to turn away from the imposing white-facaded building and go back home. Resolved, he pushed the left hand door open and entered.

To his right was a long wood-veneered reception desk. He walked over to it.

          A young, blond, bespectacled receptionist looked up at him.

          “Can I help you, Sir?” she asked brightly.

          “Ambler, Martin. I have an appointment with Doctor Xavier.”

          The receptionist ran her index finger down a sheet of computer printout. She stopped near the top, looked up at Ambler, nodded, then extended her arm, pointing to her right, Ambler’s left.

          “Room sixty nine. Doctor Xavier is expecting you.”

          Ambler turned and set off in the direction she had pointed. As he walked over the green-carpeted floor, he noticed the large white room numbers fixed to the doors – doors covered in the same veneer as the reception desk. He walked past forty eight, forty nine, fifty, until finally… sixty nine. He paused to collect himself, and then knocked on the door.

          “Come in.”

          Ambler went in.

          Doctor Xavier had a deep baritone voice. He looked like the actor Michael Caine. Because of this, Ambler found the discrepancy between the doctor’s voice and appearance disconcerting. The doctor was sitting on a swivel chair at his desk. He had spun to face the door as Ambler entered.

          “Good morning, Mister Ambler. Welcome to SMMC.”

          “Thank you,” Ambler said.

          “Please take a seat,” Doctor Xavier said, indicating a chair.

          Ambler sat.

          Doctor Xavier turned to his desk and continued his perusal of Ambler’s file. He read the contents quickly, put the file down, then swiveled back to face Ambler.

          “So, Mister Ambler, is there one particular subconscious memory you wish to have made conscious?”

          “I think so,” Ambler replied hesitantly. “I mean, I do have a few scraps of memory about one particular thing, but I’m not sure if they’re the tip of a deeply-buried subconscious memory, or if-”

          “Or if they are the only remaining residue you have of a fully conscious memory,” Doctor Xavier finished for him.

          “Yes,” Ambler answered, feeling relieved for the first time since he’d walked into the SMMC building.

          “You have nothing to worry about, Mister Ambler,” Doctor Xavier said soothingly. “Either way, you will learn something. If your memories turn out to be the only remaining remnants of something conscious, we can contextualize them for you and you’ll learn something. If, on the other hand, they are the conscious images from a subconscious memory, you’ll still learn something. No one loses and neither is a waste of time – yours or mine. Hop into the chair please.”

          Ambler got up and crossed the consulting room. He sat down in the large padded chair that was backed up against the SM-CM converter.

          Doctor Xavier strapped him in, and then slipped the helmet over Ambler’s head.

          Soft music – Mozart – filled Ambler’s ears. A blank white screen filled his vision. The music faded away and Doctor Xavier’s soft baritone spoke.

          “What I’d like you to do now, Mister Ambler, is to think of those few images you have in your conscious mind and hold on to one definitive central visual image for about half a minute. That will be long enough for the SM-CM converter to locate the image, scan the attached subconscious zone, and begin recording. Please signal by raising the thumb of your left hand when you have the image firmly in your mind.”

          Doctor Xavier’s voice went away and Bach came back, delicate but unobtrusive.

          Ambler thought about his memory fragments, calling up the few static images he had left, re-feeling the unpleasantness that accompanied them: the ladder, the drainpipe, the pebble-dashed wall, the scraped knuckles – No! Not that one! Not that one! The other, yes, the other – the metal-framed greenhouse, long rusted, the grimy panes of glass, some replaced by plastic sheets, the paving slabs inside, forming a central path, the strong smell of the tomato plants which were held up with bamboo canes and growing in the soil on the left of the path, the stink of parsley growing in square pots on the right.

          Greenhouse, rusty metal frame, grimy glass, plastic sheeting, concrete slabs, tomato plants, bamboo canes, soil, parsley, square pots, the smell, the stink…

          Ambler raised his thumb.

*

“See if any of those tomatoes are ripe yet,” Marty’s father said, before striding briskly away towards the garage.

          Marty was confused. Ripe? How could you tell?

          He paused for a moment, then opened the greenhouse door and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. The warmth of the greenhouse and the smell of the ripening tomatoes hit him simultaneously. The warmth was lovely, the smell delicious. He crouched down, looking carefully at the tall green plants with their broad green leaves. There were a few tomatoes on each plant. There were about twelve plants. He examined the tomatoes carefully. He was seeing growing tomatoes for the first time.

          Some of them were tiny and green. Some were not so tiny and had streaks of orange amongst the green. Some had streaks of green amongst the orange. Some were all orange. Some had streaks of green and orange amongst the red. Some were orange and red. Some were red. All had a waxy surface.

          Ripe. If ripe meant perfect, then they all looked ripe. Ripe for what? More growing?

          Tomatoes. What were they? Plants. Flowers. Vegetables. Fruit.

          See if any of those tomatoes are ripe yet.

          Marty analyzed the order.

          See: look, observe, study empirically.

          If any of: those you are to observe.

          Those tomatoes: the vegetables, flowers or fruit of the twelve plants in the greenhouse.

          Are: have reached a state in which.

          Ripe: can grow no riper.

          Yet: At this point in time.

          Marty looked at the tomatoes carefully.

          In his opinion, they could all be left to grow a lot bigger and riper than they were at present. Besides, didn’t they fall off when they were fully ripe? He was sure they did.

He scanned the ground carefully, moving a few leaves aside, looking for fallen tomatoes. There were none. Should he pick the riper ones? No. His instructions had been to ’see’ if any of those tomatoes were ripe yet, that was all. Nothing more. So, having found out, should he report his findings? He wasn’t sure. What should he do? The instructions had been clear, yet unclear at the same time. Was he stupid? Unable to understand simple sentences? He didn’t think so.

          See if any of those tomatoes are ripe yet.

          Okay. He’d done that and all of them were, but none of them were.

          If ripe meant red, then some were.

          If ripe meant fallen, then none were.

          If ripe meant edible, then he didn’t know.

          Besides, were all tomatoes the same? Weren’t there different types of tomato – vine, plant, sundried, beefsteak, etcetera? Did they all ripen in the same way? Weren’t tomatoes tropical? Did that mean English tomatoes ripened differently?

          Marty knew nothing about tomatoes. He stood up, deciding to go and find out about them. He stepped out of the greenhouse, closed the door and made his way into the house and up to his bedroom. He pulled the encyclopedia from his bookcase and opened it on T, leafing through until he came to the entry he was looking for.

          TOMATO: the glossy red or yellow fruit of a plant, Lycopersicon esculentum, native to tropical America. Originally called the love-apple because considered to be an aphrodisiac, it arrived in Europe from South America at the end of the 16th century and became widely cultivated in Italy for use with pasta. In Britain, its reputation delayed its acceptability; the Puritans circulated a story that it was poisonous, and until the 19th century they were grown as decorative plants only, not for eating.

          Not enough information, Marty mused, leafing through the encyclopaedia some more.

          RIPE: ready to be gathered and used; matured and ready to be eaten or drunk; mature, fully-developed; advanced; ready, in a fit state.

          Marty now nearly had enough to go on. He surmised that he’d been given the instructions so that the ripe tomatoes could be harvested and used, probably in the salad that was the usual family Sunday evening meal. Those tomatoes were always deep red. And soft. All he had to do was have another look, see which ones -and how many- were ripe, then tell his father, who would -presumably- harvest them later. He needed to get it right. Getting it wrong always led to trouble.

          Marty’s father had a different frame of reference to the rest of the world.

          Marty set off for the greenhouse once more, pleased to have another chance to examine the fruit once mistrusted by the Puritans. He’d read a lot about them at school and knew that the Civil War had been a fight between the Royalists and the Puritans – who’d won and ended – for a while – the monarchy in England. Cromwell, the leading Puritan had eventually died and the monarchy had – by popular demand – returned.

          Back in the greenhouse, Marty counted eight ripe tomatoes. After closing the greenhouse door again, he reluctantly made his way towards the garage.

          Marty pushed the door open.

*

In his chair in the SMMC consulting room, Martin Ambler struggled to free himself. He wanted to help Marty – wanted to take him by the hand and lead him away from that terrible place – lead him to safety.

          He tried to change his memory by sheer force of will. He tried to keep the garage door shut, but couldn’t. What had happened had happened. A was A. He tried to close it because he knew what was behind it.

          Death.

          The death of Marty.

          The deaths of every Marty at every age from the age of seven onwards.

          A long line of dead Marties. Marty, dead at the age of seven because of the submarine game. Marty, dead at eight because of the drainpipe. Marty, dead at nine because of the ash tree. Marty, dead at ten because of the scythe. Marty, dead at eleven because of the tape recorder. And now? Marty about to die again at twelve because of the greenhouse. Later, there’d be Marty dead at thirteen because of his game with Linda Edwards, followed by Marty dead at fourteen because of the records. At fifteen, there would be no more deaths because Marty would become Martin and he wouldn’t allow anyone else to do anything terrible to him. No one would be big enough.

          In his chair, Ambler struggled harder with his restraints – he wanted to be free to grab Marty’s hand and pull him away from the danger zone.

          “HE’LL KILL YOU, MARTY – KILL YOU AGAIN!” Ambler screamed. “STAY AWAY! GO TO YOUR BEDROOM AND STAY THERE! RUN AWAY? QUICKLY MARTY! RUN AWAY!”

*

Marty heard the voice of his older self, but ignored it. It could be wrong this time. This time his father might like what he had to say – he had asked him for the information, after all. Pleased with his job well done, Marty stepped into the garage.

          A dimly-lit room. A large, rusty van taking up most of the concrete floor. An open area at the back of the garage where a table stood. On the table a selection of tools, oily rags, scraps of metal, broken household objects awaiting repair, junk. His father’s workshop.

          Next to the table, working on a metal tube with a soldering iron, his father. He was wearing protective goggles and gloves and had his back to Marty.

          He doesn’t know I’m here.

          Marty wondered whether he should speak, which would make his father jump, which he undoubtedly would, or whether he should wait until his father finished working, turned and jumped at seeing him there? Marty had once thought he was too quiet, then he’d realized it was just that other people didn’t listen – or hear – very well.

          He coughed.

          His father jumped.

          The soldering iron crashed to the floor, sparked and died.

          Me next, Marty thought incoherently, a worm of fear travelling up his stomach, past his chest and into his throat.

          “Damn! Don’t creep up behind people when they’re working,” his father snapped at him,  bending and picking up the cooling soldering iron. “What do you want?”

          “The tomatoes. There are eight that are ripe.”

          “Eight!” His father sounded pleased. “Are you sure?”

          Marty nodded.

          “They’re big and red. Ready to eat. Are they for the salad?”

          “You’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?” his father said. He looked at the soldering iron. “Meanwhile, what are we going to do about this?”

          “Is it broken?” Marty asked, his fingers crossed behind his back, despite knowing it wouldn’t work – it never did. Nothing did. Things were as they were – no amount of crossing fingers, touching wood, praying, or anything else made any difference to what was going to happen. What was was. A was A.

          “I could pay to get it fixed,” Marty said hastily. “And you can borrow mine until then.”

          “Yours?” Marty heard the sneer in his father’s voice. He was meant to.

          “The one you gave me last year,” Marty amended. Whenever something went wrong, the rules changed, the ground shifted, things were not as they had been. Everything changed, despite A being A.

          My father gave me a soldering iron he ‘got’ from work last year. Marty told himself. He told me it was mine, to use as I wished. Now it’s no longer mine.

          “I don’t suppose you ever use the damn thing, do you?”

          “I used it to fix my radio,” Marty said.

          “Oh, so now you’re a radio technician, are you?”

          “It was only the battery terminals,” Marty said. “It was easy.”

          Marty’s father loomed forward, soldering iron brandished. He slapped it into Marty’s hands.

          “Then you won’t have any trouble getting that fixed before tea, will you, genius?”

          “I’ll try,” Marty said.

          “Get a move on then. Bring it back when I can use it. I’ll be in the greenhouse.”

          Marty went out of the garage and back up to his bedroom. He unscrewed the soldering iron handle, slid the metal sides apart and examined the workings. Once it was dismantled, he saw the problem immediately – the element was broken in two places. Irreparable. He disconnected it at the terminals, then slid it out. He found his own soldering iron and checked it was the same model as his father’s. It was – they’d both been ‘got’ from the same place. He unscrewed it, took the working element out and placed it inside the housing. He then connected wires to the terminals and replaced the metal sides, then fitted the handle back on. Finally, he examined the plug wiring. Content, he switched the soldering iron on. It glowed warm in a few seconds, hot within a minute. He switched it off, unplugged it, let it cool down, and then took it downstairs.

          His father was inside the greenhouse, harvesting the tomatoes. He had six of them in a white plastic bowl. Marty went in, pulling the door shut behind him.

          “Six are edible, not eight.”

          Marty looked at the six in the bowl. Then at the two still on the plants. There was no discernible difference between them.

          “Your soldering iron’s fixed,” Marty said, holding it out towards his father.

          “It wasn’t.” The tone was accusatory.

          Marty knew what was coming and tried to avert it.

          “No, it wasn’t, but I fixed it for you.”

          “No, it wasn’t, but I fixed it for you,” his father mimicked. Without warning, he slapped the soldering iron out of Marty’s hand. Marty yelped.

          The soldering iron crashed into the tomato plants, bending one of them over in the middle. The soldering iron crashed to the path, skittering over the paving slabs. The top of the tomato plant thumped to the soil. One of the unpicked red tomatoes detached itself and rolled across the greenhouse floor, bumping into the parsley pots and stopping.

          “Now look what you’ve done,” Marty’s father said. As he spoke, he raised his right foot and stamped down hard on the soldering iron. A thousand minute crunches signaled its demise. “Get out of my greenhouse before you cause any more damage.”

          Marty turned and left the greenhouse. He tried to close the door, but his father followed him out. Marty pretended not to notice and started walking towards the house. He had walked four steps when his father spoke.

          “And where do you think you’re going?”

          Resigned to the inevitable, Marty turned to face his father.

          “To my room.”

          “No you’re not. You’ve got some explaining to do.”

          Marty’s father was breathing heavily. He paused for a moment, then continued.

          “I want you to explain to me why you feel it is necessary to go around today, destroying things that belong to me.”

          Marty stared at his father, wishing he could destroy him.

          “I haven’t destroyed anything of yours,” he stated.

          “Oh. So I’m a liar, am I?”

          Marty knew all of the trigger points in this particular minefield, and so trod carefully, despite knowing it would make no difference. He wanted to say ‘Yes’, but knew that such an honest statement would simply speed up the inevitable retribution. He was still clinging to the vain hope that he could find a way to defuse the situation.

          “No,” he lied.

          “What do you mean, no?”

          This was an old routine.

          “I mean, no, you’re not a liar,” Marty said with difficulty.

          “Well, one of us is, and if it’s not me, who does that leave?”

          Marty was stuck. If he ‘owned up’ to being a liar, he would be punished. If he denied he was, his father would punish him for the inference. Marty’s favourite phrase –the lynch-pin of his philosophy – A is A, suddenly seemed ironic. In his father’s world, A was everything but A.

          “It leaves me, but I’m not a liar,” Marty said.

          “It leaves you. That’s right. And what do we do with liars?”

          “I’m not lying,” Marty protested, simultaneously wondering who the ‘we’ was his father always referred to at times like this.

          “What do we do with liars?” his father repeated.

          “Give them another chance,” Marty suggested.

          “Are you trying to ridicule me?” Marty’s father asked, his voice darkly menacing as he took a quick, threatening step forward.

          Marty shook his head, hiding his involuntary flinch.

          “No.”

          “It sounds very much like it to me. Here I am, standing in front of a destructive, ridiculing liar. What do you think I should do?”

          LEAVE ME ALONE! Marty wanted to shout. FUCK OFF AND DIE! was another phrase urgently vying for a hearing.

          “I don’t know,” Marty mumbled.

          “Don’t mumble!” his father snapped. “Breaking my things, ridiculing me and lying are quite enough for today. Don’t add to your crimes. I think it would be best if you tried to make amends by clearing up all that mess in there, then we’ll see what else you can do.”

          Slowly Marty walked towards the greenhouse. As he reached the door, he felt his father’s hand on the back of his head.

*

In the chair, Ambler was frantic. He knew this scenario. It was why he’d buried it in his subconscious in the first place. It was why he didn’t want to remember. He struggled to get free, but the straps were built for resistance to people far stronger than him.

          Doctor Xavier watched the memory unfold on his desk monitor. Once it was over, he’d counsel Ambler until Ambler felt that the memory was no longer a threat. After that, the real work would start. He turned and scrutinized the patient.

          Ambler was clearly reliving a very painful memory at present. His father had obviously been a sadist and a bully. According to the records, there were four other siblings – three male, one female, all younger. Ambler, as first-born son, had clearly been subjected to numerous horrors. Psychotherapy would bring about a reconciliation with the truth for him, after which he would be a more unified and integrated person – if such an ideal being actually existed.

          Doctor Xavier sometimes wondered about the nature of psychology – whether it was a justified and valid form of medicine. His thoughts on this had been formulated during his studying for his doctorate, when he had read that most psychologists spent their time working to psychically unify their patients’ conscious and unconscious minds. The fact that such a division existed suggested that it was supposed to exist and therefore, any attempt at unification was an unnatural process. Some psychologists agreed with this theory. Some leading analysists believed it whilst trying to ‘cure’ patients through integration.

          ‘And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness,” the doctor quoted, despite not believing in god or good. He did, however, believe in light and dark – not only as visual entities, but also as metaphors. At this moment in time, he considered his consulting room and what it offered to be the light, and the memory that Martin Ambler was re-experiencing to be a form of darkness, one that would become lighter as it was acknowledged and dealt with emotionally.

          In Doctor Xavier’s mind, religion had been a precursor to psychology. The waning of religion had resulted in the advancement of psychology. The doctor as shaman, just as he had been thousands of years before. The patient’s cry of “Heal me! Heal me!” had never changed, whether it was said to a priest or to a medicine man – in fact, at one time, priests had been medicine men.

          And here was Martin Ambler, strapped into a chair, reliving a painful memory, so that he could come to terms with his father’s cruelty, in order to advance emotionally as an adult human being.

          The light from the dark indeed.

*

Marty’s feet left the ground and he crashed through the panes of glass.

          The rusty metal frame of the greenhouse hit his chest and knocked the air out of his lungs. Glass smashed. Shards rained down, hitting his head, his neck, his hands, some tinkling onto the ground. The backs of Marty’s hands were cut. They bled. He’d raised his hands to protect his face – and had succeeded, but his hands had paid dearly. In the back of his left hand, amidst the many cuts, one puncture wound spurted dramatically. A piece of glass had stabbed a vein. Blood pumped out of it rhythmically, in time to his pounding heartbeat.

          Despite his injuries, shock and lack of breath, Marty pulled himself up from his slumped position and whirled to face his father.

          “GET AWAY FROM ME OR I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!” he screamed.

          Abruptly, the memory ended.

*

Doctor Xavier switched the music back in and gave Ambler time to readjust. He got up and unstrapped the limp and sweating man. Carefully he removed the helmet. Ambler’s eyes were shut. Gently, the doctor led him over to the bed and helped him lay down. Ambler was asleep in seconds. This was normal post-remember procedure – all patients slept immediately after a recollection. It was as though the mind was trying to protect them from the harshness of the memory, and give them a rest from it too.

          As Ambler slept, the doctor re-ran the disc, watching the drama unfold. He saw Ambler trying to do everything right. He saw Ambler’s father deliberately doing everything wrong, in order to have a spuriously legitimate excuse to vent his sadism. Light and dark. The abrupt termination of the memory was interesting too, for it revealed an incredible amount of psychic overload. Had Ambler’s father backed down? Had he beaten his son? Had he realized he’d gone too far? Had he got medical aid? What had he done next? Did Ambler know? This part of the memory might well be conscious.

          Doctor Xavier would ask him when he awoke.

*

Marty’s father turned away. He stood perfectly still, not moving, looking, but not looking, into the distance.

          Marty waited. He had no need to run away now.

          After a while, his father turned to face him. When he spoke, his voice was light and almost caring.

          “You’d better get those cuts washed, clumsy. Your mum will put plasters on them if you tell her you fell and hit the glass. I’ll clear all this up.”

          Marty nodded and started towards the house. Once inside, he didn’t bother finding his mother – he simply went to the bathroom, washed the blood off his hands, then wrapped a handkerchief around the one injured the worst. He put a glove on to hold the handkerchief in place, then set to work.

          He picked up the cannibalized soldering iron and the broken element and took them out to his father’s garage, where he dumped them on the junk table. On the way to the garage, he passed his father, but neither acknowledged the presence of the other. This was as Marty wanted it.

          Back in his room, he sat and read for a while, then went down to tea when called. His salad was delicious. Then, as he chewed one of the tomatoes from the greenhouse, his mother looked at his father and asked – quietly – what had happened to the greenhouse.

          Marty’s father indicated Marty.

          “Clumsy over there fell into one of the panes. Him and the greenhouse lived to tell the tale though.”

          Marty stopped chewing. Suddenly the tomato didn’t taste like tomato any more. It tasted of flesh – raw, bloody flesh. Staring at his father, daring him to say one word, Marty spat the tomato pulp out onto his plate. There was silence at the table. Expectations of imminent violence hung palpably in the air.

          Marty’s father carried on eating his meal as though nothing unusual had happened. As though nothing had happened at all.

          Marty got up from the table and walked out of the room. In his bedroom, he put some music on his tape recorder and lay on his bed, listening to the slow beat of Barclay James Harvest’s Negative Earth.

          He drifted off to sleep within minutes.

*

When Ambler awoke, his lethargy was gone. He felt vibrant and alive. He opened his eyes and knew where he was immediately. He also knew what he’d undergone. He sat up and saw Doctor Xavier watching him.

          “You do know you were using one particular subconscious memory to suppress another, don’t you?” the doctor asked without preamble.

          Ambler nodded.

          “I was actually using it to suppress many,” he admitted.

          “How many of them do you know?

          “Not many of them – most of them are like that one – just bits of static imagery, nothing more.”

          “Then how do you know they need suppressing?”

          “Because they’re suppressed. I don’t do it consciously.”

          “You need to examine them. You have time to take a look at one more today and still have counseling. Or we can concentrate on the one experienced today. You choose.”

          Ambler considered. Two memories in one day. How would that make him feel? Would it be too much? He decided to ask.

          “Can I handle two, doctor?”

          “You have already handled them,” Doctor Xavier answered. “The question now is, do you want to see in full the memory beneath the memory?”

          “Yes,” Ambler answered without hesitation.

          “In that case, Mister Ambler, is there one particular subconscious memory you wish to have made conscious?”

*

Is There One Particular Subconscious Memory You Wish To Have Made Conscious?

© R J Dent (2009)

www.rjdent.com