Snapshots notice when something is missing, because it has to be repaired or because you have lent it, for example.’ Again I heard the unnatural sound of my voice and I went on: ‘I remember my mother once asked me if I would help her polish the silver. It was a very long time ago and I was probably bored that day or perhaps I had to stay at home because I was ill, as she had never asked me before. I asked her which silver she meant and she replied, surprised, that it was the spoons, forks and knives, of course. And that was the strange thing, I didn’t know the cutlery we ate off every day was silver.’ The girl laughed again.
‘I bet you don’t know it is either.’ I looked intently at her. ‘What we eat with?’ she asked. ‘Well, do you know?’ She hesitated. She walked to the sideboard and wanted to open a drawer.
‘I’ll look. It’s in here.’ I jumped up. ‘I was forgetting the time. I must catch my train.’ She had her hand on the drawer.
‘Don’t you want to wait for my mother?’ ‘No, I must go.’ I walked to the door. The girl pulled the drawer open. ‘I can find my own way.’ As I walked down the passage I heard the jingling of spoons and forks. At the corner of the road I looked up at the name-plate.
Marconi Street, it said. I had been at Number . The address was correct. But now I didn’t want to remember it any more.
I wouldn’t go back there because the objects that are linked in your memory with the familiar life of former times instantly lose their value when, severed from them, you see them again in strange surroundings. And what should I have done with them in a small rented room where the shreds of black-out paper still hung along the windows and no more than a handful of cutlery fitted in the narrow table drawer? I resolved to forget the address. Of all the things I had to forget, that would be the easiest.