The Decipherment

  * * *

  It was raining heavily outside. The Aimerys had been back from Rome after one of their archeological trips. Isabelle’s father had bought some ancient artifacts from a shop in the streets of Rome. It was a round pot with Homer’s depiction of the Trojan wars. While keeping it safe in a chest, Isabelle found some rusted pages with upturned corners. She had unfolded them – they were painting. Colourful and artistic, each one was a beauty in itself. Some of them her father had made himself, while the rest were copies of a few famous artworks from all over the world. Isabelle had started looking at them when her father had come and showed them to her himself, telling each one’s names and of the artists who painted them.

  Isabelle still remembered as her father uttered the words, naming each painting one by one. Until now, she didn’t know she still held that memory. Her father named each one so clearly, she had wondered if she could ever remember so many names at once.

  . . . The Annunciation by Leonardo da Vinci.

  The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci.

  The Battle of Anghiari by Leonardo da Vinci.

  Et in Arcadia ego by Nicolas Poussin.

  The Night Watch by Rembrandt.

  The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali.

  Isabelle had liked Da Vinci’s paintings the most. But when her father had showed her the last painting, Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory, she had claimed that she liked it the best.

  Her father had given her some introduction regarding Salvador Dali. She had found his moustache the most amusing thing of all. Her father had told her how the artist was often times asked to paint with his moustache. However, it was this flamboyant moustache style that made him somewhat of a cultural icon for the bizarre and surreal.

  In the image, Isabelle, aged 10 at that time, sat beside her father, looking curiously at the painting with eyes wide open. Though she saw her father’s lips were moving, she could not hear what he was saying. But from her memory, she remembered all her father had told her. Amazed, she still couldn’t fathom the fact that the memory of something she hadn’t even understood or paid much attention to was still in her mind. She heard her father’s tender voice as if he was speaking to her now.

  “Look closely here, Isabelle. Observe carefully how the artist has kept the mountains and water in the background lit by sunshine, but the clocks and this head that you see here appear somewhat dark, don’t you think? Do you know why this difference is? The artist has tried to keep a boundary line between the mind’s two states: the conscious and subconscious, by representing the distorted or soft images in the shade as a sign that they are the subconscious images. In the same way, the images at the back which are lit, they are the hard images representing consciousness. So you see, in a sense, the soft objects that appear to be melting signify uncertainty whereas the hard objects that are firm in shape signify certainty. Just like at first sight, the viewer’s eye falls directly upon the objects in the front, on the subconscious; and after that on the background, the consciousness, which is lit. With these different lit and dark sides of the painting, the idea that Dali wanted to express is that the world of dreams and thoughts, which is in the subconscious, is more distinct than our aware state, the consciousness. And keeping this in view, Dali also suggests here that during the unconscious state, only time stops, our memories do not.”

  After experiencing this herself, Isabelle fully understood now what her father had told her. It actually made more sense to her than anything else – she had witnessed it herself, after all.

  So that is why my watch stopped working – because time has stopped in my subconscious.

  So far, she had recalled most of her memories. Even the ones she had seen earlier seemed to be persistence.

  So in a sense, I have practically proved Dali’s supposition.

  Apart from the memories, Isabelle thought, her whole subconsciousness – including her thoughts, ideas and dreams, were persistent.

  The moment Isabelle knew what she had done; she prepared herself for the worst.

  She had thought.

  In the blink of an eye, the image before her broke into pieces like shards of glass. The silence around her intensified so much that it made a certain pointy sound. The portals that held her thoughts re-appeared. The glows around them dimmed and then gradually faded. The opening of each closed and the images broke within them. Their round shapes were lost and they turned into thick, black streaks of black, like large black snakes that began to swirl round in the air. They looked like dark shadows looming overhead. Isabelle was afraid of shadows . . . and now, her own thoughts had turned into her darkest fears.

  She stared wide-eyed as the shadowy black streaks started to whirl and spin above her – and then they came after her.