Memory Wall

Alma Konachek, a 74-year-old woman in Cape Town, South Africa, hears someone breaking into her home in the middle of the night. She investigates and finds that the intruder is gone but left the front door open. She jots down the words: “A man. Tall man in the yard” (2).

Later, Alma looks at the wall of her upstairs bedroom, covered in labels, diagrams, maps, and hundreds of cartridges the size of matchbooks. A machine marked “Property of Cape Town Memory Research Center” sits on the nightstand (2), connected to a helmet. A photo in the center of the wall shows a man walking in the surf. It’s her husband, Harold, she reminds herself. He’s been dead for over four years now.

Pheko has worked for the Konachecks for 15 years. He drives Alma to her appointment with Dr. Amnesty at the memory clinic. There, Alma reports that her memory is improving, only because she knows it’s what people want to hear. Nurses unscrew the ports in her skull and lock her head into place for memory extraction. 

Three years earlier, at her first visit with Dr. Amnesty, he’d explained that the procedure isn’t a cure for dementia, only a way to slow its progression.