The Forgotten Tale

— J. Chr. de Vries

Mortals call him fluttering love, but the immortals call him the winged one, because the growth of wings was a necessity for him.
— Plato, Phaedrus [quote from Homer]

On a very hot late summer afternoon in 1991, I was sitting in the intercity train from Amsterdam to The Hague. The train was quiet, and I was in an empty smoking compartment. The train departed from Haarlem station, which I thought was the perfect moment to light up a cigar. The compartment door slid open, an older man, dressed in a black suit with a vest and a black fedora on his distinctive gray-bearded head, stumbled in puffing. He sat right in front of me, carefully placing his hat on the seat next to him, and said in a raspy voice, “Well, Mr. De Vries, your name does not do justice to the weather.” [‘Vries’ refers to ‘frost’ in Dutch.] He pulled out a large white silk handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his forehead and neck. Only then that I recognized him. I hadn’t seen him in years. Suddenly, I saw the brass nameplate of his practice next to the front door of his stately building in the center of Leiden: Dr. S. Zeele, psychiatrist. Before I had a chance to say anything, he continued while pulling out a cigar of his own, “Everything must go up in smoke!” 


“Or else we’ll be smoked as well!” I couldn’t resist. I feared it would be an exhausting trip. Zeele had a weakness for overly cheesy jokes. I suddenly remembered the sign next to the doorbell in his waiting room, a feeble pun. Zeele was of German origin: Binnen zonder blaffen. [Enter without barking – ‘bellen’ in Dutch means ‘ringing’, in German it means ‘barking’]. I never found out why that doorbell was installed there; it probably existed only to legitimize the wordplay. Fortunately, further jokes were mostly avoided.


We reminisced about old times, as people do when they haven’t seen each other in a long while, particularly about our time in Paris. Zeele had studied there shortly after the war, and in the ’70s, he had a small practice there for a few years. I had briefly studied art history in Paris, but it didn’t work out very well. I had drinking problems and ended up in his practice, searching for a Dutch-speaking psychiatrist. As we spoke about that time in Paris, I tried to recall his first name, but it eluded me, and I didn’t dare ask him. Instead, I steered the conversation towards the topic of ‘forgetting,’ in the probably vain hope that his name would come to mind. I started with a reference to a famous passage by Freud on the subject which I read a long time ago.


“When I was in therapy with you during that time, you once referred to that story by Freud about a man sitting across from him on a train who had forgotten the name of a girlfriend. The text was was about repression. What was that name again? I’m not able to remember it.” It seemed to me an appropriate question to ask.


“Ah! Psychopathologie des Alltaglebens. Yes, I remember it. But it wasn’t about the name of his girlfriend at all; it was about her possible unwanted pregnancy.” He blew an envy-inducing thick smoke ring into the compartment. “Try to make some associations,” he suggested. 


“Um… Siquila.” Something with an ‘S’ seemed like a good plan. I thought it could very well be close to his name. 
 “Hmm,” he grumbled. “I understand. Tequila, you had a severe drinking problem.” 


“Oh yes, that was my favorite drink.” 


“I referred you to Alcoholics Anonymous back then, didn’t I?” 


That was true, but that didn’t work out for me at all. I got sick of those meetings. The conversation continued like that for a while, and eventually, he gave a hint by going from the AA meetings through the letter A to the term ‘a-liquid’ and finally reaching the forgotten term ‘aliquis’. That was the moment we arrived at Leiden station. A lady, enveloped in a penetrating cloud of caramel-like perfume, walked past our compartment, coughing loudly and looking angrily in our direction.

“She’s dazzled by the smoke,” Zeele grinned. 


I made a feeble attempt to grin back at him, and was relieved that he had reached his destination. Out of politeness, we exchanged contact information. There was a moment when it seemed like he would forget to. take his hat from the seat, but before I could point this out, he beat me to it. With a graceful flourish, he placed the headgear on his head and waved me goodbye. I assumed I wouldn’t see him for quite some while, not that I was eager for a too swift reunion, but I was mistaken. Less than a week later, he called me in the late afternoon. He said he had been thinking about the subject of ‘forgetting’ and that it had reminded him of a case from his student days. He proposed to have an exchange of thoughts over it during a dinner, as it would surely interest me greatly.

Casus X.

Two weeks after our phone conversation, we met at a restaurant called ‘Pegasus,’ located on a picturesque canal in his hometown. In the late afternoon, around six o’clock, we started with an aperitif. We had planned to give ourselves enough time for a thorough discussion of the case. He had brought the documentation of the case in a dark brown, hard cardboard folder. ‘This case dates back to 1947, so it’s been so long ago that I can freely discuss it with you,’ Zeele offered as an apology. He explained that this case was an interesting study on the phenomenon of ‘forgetting.’ He was closely involved in the treatment of a patient of his mentor, Dr. Yschá Piëte, a Hungarian psychiatrist who taught in Paris. The patient, registered under the name X., was severely wounded in December 1944 during the civil war that was raging in Greece. As a member of a leftist resistance movement, he became involved in a battle with British tank troops. He was hit by a shrapnel and as a consequence lost sight in one eye. He fled to Paris because he was wanted by the Greek ultra-right-wing government and later was even sentenced to death in absentia. The French government granted him asylum. X. sought treatment because he suffered from nightmares and depressive disorders. During a long session, he began to talk about a ‘forgotten story.’


“This extraordinary, magnificent history of this ‘forgotten story’ has stayed with me throughout my entire life,” Zeele concluded his introduction. I was immediately captivated by his narrative and very curious about the continuation, despite my slight antipathy towards this man.

“I woke up from an intense dream about a story that I could use, it was brilliant, lucid, and perfectly ‘rounded’. The only problem was that, right after I woke up, I had completely forgotten it. I couldn’t remember anything about it,” Zeele placed the folder from which he had quoted back on the chair next to him. “This was the issue that Piëte was confronted with. His patient was a writer, and the story he apparently dreamt about turned out to be of great importance to this X. He suggested that it would be the solution to solve his writer’s block which was caused by his depressions.” Piëte was faced with the task of uncovering the background of this ‘forgetting,’ Zeele explained. There can be various causes for memory loss, Zeele lectured, firstly a physical defect, such as from an accident or old age, think of dementia; but there can also be a psychological cause, like the case of repression we talked about on the train. Dreams present a special case, as it is rare to remember dreams precisely and completely. The famous example is the story recorded by the French astronomer Lalande in 1766 about the composer Tartini, regarding his Sonata del Diavolo, which was played by the devil in a dream, it appeared to have been an ‘excellent and superior, unrivaled violin sonata.’ When he woke up however, he couldn’t remember one single note of it.


Piëte tried everything to retrieve the story from X.’s dream. He followed all the procedures which were at his disposal, but without any result, at least as far as the story is concerned.


Meanwhile, a lot was happening in his therapy sessions, and X. began to reveal many things, except one single word from the story in his dream. However, other stories did emerge, including one of the most peculiar tales from Greek mythology: Bellerophon. Piëte arrived at this connection after X. had mentioned that he remembered flying in his dream and crashing to the ground, losing his one eye in the fall. When Piëte finally, much later, unraveled the mystery of the ‘forgotten story’ and managed to solve the reason behind the ‘loss of memory’, it turned out to have a quite different cause than usual; Piëte named it later the Bellerophon Syndrome.


“I had a letter with me, a secret letter. I don’t know what it contained, but I knew it was important, a matter of life and death.” Zeele placed the folder beside him and continued his explanation. The letter didn’t actually appear in X.’s dream, yet he couldn’t explain where the idea of the ‘secret letter’ came from. It had to have to do with that dream somehow, but he didn’t remember in what way.


“Do you mean he remembered the letter but not that it came from the dream?” I asked for clarification.
 “Exactly,” confirmed Zeele. “And therefore, he didn’t remember if and how it was connected to the ‘forgotten story’ either.”


“Perhaps he had brain problems that disrupted his memory, which wouldn’t be surprising after that grenade injury,” I suggested. “Was that investigated?”


“Of course!” Zeele responded, slightly indignant. “We’re not amateurs!”


I raised my arms apologetically, but he continued with his discourse. More and more clues were emerging.


At a certain point, X. spoke about someone he might have killed during his time in the anti-fascist resistance. Although it was unclear whether this person was an enemy soldier, a Greek informant, or if there was some kind of personal motive involved, the leader of the resistance movement decided not to hold X. accountable for it. Soon after, this history took a dramatic turn: the mistress of the resistance leader tried to seduce X., but he rejected her advances. He believed it wouldn’t be wise to cross paths with the leader through his mistress. The mistress felt deeply hurt and accused X. of attempted assault. The leader, who was well aware of his mistress’s amorous inclinations and behaviour, but also knew that she was highly popular among the troops as a formidable partisan, was torn apart. He felt offended regardless indeed, but nevertheless he decided that publicly blaming X. would undermine the group’s morale too much. Thus, he considered he had no choice but to remove X. from his unit within the resistance group. Not wanting the issues surrounding his mistress to reach the resistance group through other channels, he gave X. a sealed letter to deliver to the leader of a related resistance group to which X. was sent by him. X. had no idea what was written in the sealed letter; he believed it contained secret information about the enemy. However, when his new leader opened the letter, he looked at X. in a weird way, shook his head, and sent him on a futile mission a little over a week later — a battle against a British tank unit.

The waiter arrived with the menu, and we placed our orders for food and wine before Zeele resumed his story.

Against all expectations, X. survived the grenade attack. He hovered on the edge of life and death for weeks, but ultimately the Fates chose life for him. When X. eventually came up with some new fragments of memory, of which it was still unclear whether they were related to the dream or possibly one of his nightmares, Piëte suddenly saw a connection. Zeele read from the folder again: “I met with the leader of my new resistance group, who seemed surprised to see me, but for some reason, he wasn’t pleased. He immediately sent me on a new mission, of which I don’t remember much. I see water, I’m at sea. And naked women on a beach. No idea where this comes from.”

At this point, Piëte thought of Bellerophon. There were already indications of Greek mythology, such as references to the four elements: air through flying, earth through crashing, fire through the grenade, and finally water in X.’s last image — the sea and the beach. The presence of naked women further confirmed this hypothesis. The entire story that X. had pieced together bit by bit could be overlaid onto the history of Bellerophon. It was clearly a variation of it.

“What about the naked women?” I asked. “I’m not familiar with that myth.”

“Oh, naked women, and suddenly we’re awake again…” Zeele joked. I laughed sheepishly. “But that story is indeed magnificent.” He looked at me eyes that expressed a mixture of tolerance, arrogance and the coldness of a snakes eye.

He waited for a moment with his story until a waitress had placed the cutlery and drinks on the table. I noticed Zeele looking disapprovingly and somewhat disturbed at a tattoo on her arm, which appeared to be a combination of a lion and a snake. Before she turned around, Zeele resumed his discourse. However, Zeele had barely begun when the waiter appeared with the appetizer. I saw Zeele checking his arms for tattoos. He seemed reassured, and as I took the first bite with my fork, Zeele was able to complete his sentence.

Just like in X.’s story, Bellerophon had killed someone, there are several versions of this event. It could have been an enemy, Belleron or Belleros, in which case the name Bellerophon means ‘Slayer of Belleron’. Other sources mention his brother. However, King Proetus does not hold him responsible for the murder. In this story too, a woman is involved: the queen tries to seduce Bellerophon, he rejects her advances, she cries out and claims to have been raped by Bellerophon. Proetus believes his wife, but he cannot have Bellerophon killed because he was a guest, and the laws did not allow it. Instead, he sends Bellerophon away from the city to his father-in-law, King Iobates. Proetus gives him a sealed letter addressed to Iobates, which says, ‘The bearer of this letter must be killed.’ But Iobates also hesitates to kill a guest, so instead, he sends Bellerophon on an impossible mission: to kill the monster Chimera, a hybrid creature with the body of a lion, the head of a goat, and the tail of a serpent.

Iobates was convinced that Bellerophon would not survive this mission. But Bellerophon managed to kill the Chimera with help of his father Poseidon, and returned to report to Iobates. However, Iobates either could not believe him, or did not want to believe him. He sent Bellerophon on even more impossible missions: to combat the warlike Solymi, the Amazons, and the pirate Cheimarhos. Finally, when Bellerophon furiously stormed the palace of his adversaries, accompanied by a massive tidal wave summoned by Poseidon to support him, the women of the city climbed the walls and exposed their lower bodies. Bellerophon could not resist this display of female nudity and retreated. Iobates understood that the battle had to be stopped and showed Bellerophon the secret letter. It was then that Bellerophon finally saw its contents, which read: ‘Kill the bearer of this letter.’ Bellerophon had carried his own death sentence.


“What an insane detail! Women displaying their genitals as a weapon in the battle!” I was stunned.


“The female genitalia is considered taboo in various cultures,” lectured Zeele.

“Now that you mention it,” I interrupted him, “in Japanese pornographic videos, the genitals are obscured by a grid, so they cannot be seen.”


““Mr. De Vries!” barked Zeele, “Do you really think I am concerning myself with something as banal as pornography!” I quickly focused on the last bites of my appetizer. “But I do know that in Japanese nightclubs, there exists a practice where men sit between the spread legs of a naked woman and carefully examine her genitals with a magnifying glass.” I choked on my last bite and had an uncontrollable fit of coughing.

Zeele immediately handed me a glass of water, and the waiter rushed over, vigorously patting my back. “Totem und Tabu,” commented Zeele, as he finished his glass of wine. Once I had recovered from my coughing fit, Zeele resumed his explanation about the taboo surrounding the female genitalia. He referred to a study by Margaret Mead — he couldn’t recall which study it was exactly, perhaps Sex and Temperament, but it could just as well have been some other text — in any case, it was about a tribe that fell under British colonial rule, where women, like some sort of Amazones, held the dominant role over the men of the tribe. For example, if a man did something that displeased the women, they would punish him by forcing him to lie on the ground while one or more women stood over him with their legs spread and their lower bodies exposed. The men would cower in fear, uttering cries of distress. This was how the men were disciplined.


I could see from the expression on Zeele’s face that he was enjoying his own story. “But the story continues, and there’s an interesting parallel with Bellerophon,” he continued. He refilled his glass and went on to tell me about a clash between these women and the British army. The women displayed an unprecedented level of aggression, and when there was renewed conflict between these women and another tribe, the British colonial authorities decided to restore order by sending a company of soldiers there. Zeele paused for a moment, not only to take another sip of wine but also to heighten the effect of his story.

In the mean time the plates and cutlery from our appetizers were cleared away. Once we had regained our composure, Zeele continued his story. He recounted that when the women saw the soldiers approaching their village and understood their hostile intentions, they immediately reacted. They were standing in a formation, lifted their clothing, and exposed their genitals, expecting the soldiers to flee. At first, the soldiers were stunned, but then they didn’t hesitate for one moment. They dropped their rifles, took off their pants, and eagerly threw themselves at the women. “Voilà, a textbook example of how culture clash looks like,” Zeele concluded with a triumphant grin.


I almost choked again, but fortunately, I just managed to maintain my composure.
 “Yet, the parallels between the story of X. and the myth of Bellerophon go even further,” Zeele continued. After Bellerophon reached an agreement with Iobates, according to certain sources, he attempted to ascend Mount Olympus with Pegasus, the winged horse he received from his father Poseidon, that had helped him to defeat the Chimera. He believed he deserved a place in the house of the gods. This did not sit well with Zeus, who sent a gadfly in the direction of Pegasus, and it stung the horse in it’s nose during flight. The horse began to rear wildly, and Bellerophon was thrown off and plummeted to the ground, losing his sight in one eye as a result.


The waiter, assisted by the waitress, arrived to serve the main course. A new bottle of wine was opened, Zeele tasted it, nodded approvingly, and the waiter filled our glasses. We then turned our attention to our dishes.

“Anyway,” Zeele continued, as the waiter and waitress had disappeared again, “up until this point, the story of X. is an almost perfect copy of the myth of Bellerophon. And what is especially striking is that both stories revolve around a secret letter containing a death sentence for its carrier. The question is, of course, how this is possible.”


He began lecturing once more. Piëte assumed that X. was familiar with the myth of Bellerophon, as he was interested in ancient Greek heritage as a writer, so he must have had some knoledge of it. But strangely enough, X. denied knowing anything at all about that myth. The case report stated: ‘Perhaps I did read about it at some point, but I had forgotten about it completely.’ Regardless, X. insisted adamantly that the myth had nothing to do with his ‘forgotten story.’ At most, the knowledge he might have once acquired about the myth found its way into his dream in some manner, but not as a part of that specific ‘forgotten story’. No matter what Piëte tried, attempting to uncover if X. had repressed the myth of Bellerophon to suppress the pain of his own experiences, which seemed to be related to that myth, or even administering electroshocks as an experimental approach, nothing led to a plausible explanation. A correct diagnosis was missing, and therefore, there was no proper basis for an adequate treatment.


Afterward, Piëte had focused on the ‘sealed letter.’ Did that letter represent the ‘forgotten story’? Can a secret be comparable to something that is forgotten? At first glance, the psychiatrist rejected this thought, however without being absolutely certain.


“Well…” I wanted to contribute to our conversation, which had actually turned into a monologue; I finally also need to have my say. “… in a secret, something is hidden, concealed. The same can be said for memory loss, there is something hidden and even suppressed in the case of repression.”


“That’s correct,” Zeele said kindly, “but there is also a fundamental difference: a secret is not based on the loss of memory, it is a deliberate act of keeping the knowledge that exists hidden from others. It is an instrument, whereas memory loss is not…”


“But that is precisely the case with repression,” I interrupted him.


Zeele paused to think. “Apparently I need to express myself more accurately…” He took a bite, chewed for a moment — I tried to ignore his smacking sounds. “The point is, in a secret, the perpetrator, the ‘culprit’ if you will, knows the content of the secret. In the case of a repressed memory, it is the opposite; the ‘culprit’ doesn’t know the content.” He looked at me in a condescending manner.

I began to grow irritated with this ‘Dr. Zeele.’ What an arrogant know-it-all he was! And then he made it even worse.

“I understand that you want to contribute out of enthusiasm, but you must understand that I am telling a story that has already reached its conclusion. Dr. Piëte has convincingly deciphered this history!” he declared.


I was on the verge of getting up and leaving, but instead, I excused myself briefly and retreated to the restroom. “My apologies, just a moment please, I’ll be right back,” I said in a neutral tone.

When I returned to the table, the plates and cutlery had been cleared, and the dessert menu was placed in front of me. We ordered our desserts, and I chose for a brandy and a double espresso. The psychiatrist opted for a Dame Blanche. ‘Wie ein Feuer, kalt wie Eis,’ he quoted. When I looked at him questioningly, he explained, ‘Salomé. Richard Strauss, with text by Oscar Wilde.’ German late Romanticism wasn’t really my cup of tea, so I mumbled something like ‘Hmm…’


After the desserts were brought to the table, Zeele continued unabated. “Good,” he said, “we were discussing the possibility of whether the ‘secret story’ had anything to do with the ‘forgotten story.’”

I listened to him with a polite look on my face, although I must admit I was also very curious about the outcome of this strange history.


“Actually, you were on the right track just now when you tried to connect the ‘secret’ and the ‘loss of memory,’” he said.


An attempt at reconciliation? I wondered. Could he have sensed my irritation?


“But, Piëte eventually understood that it was more complicated than that; the man was a genius!” Ah, as I thought, not a reconciliation after all. I looked at Zeele encouragingly, trying to salvage some of my wounded pride.


“The crux was a reversal, as creative minds often discover — to their own surprise.” He took a big bite of his ice cream covered in hot chocolate. “In short, you touched upon the quintessence: the intentional or unintentional nature of the act, or the motives of the ‘culprit.’ It wasn’t about forgetting as such, but about the purpose.”


Zeele was now speaking in a louder, more hurried tone, accompanied by vigorous gestures. “Instead of fixating on conventional explanations for the act of forgetting, Piëte understood that it was about something else completely! It wasn’t about something being forgotten at all; there was no forgotten story. Forgetting was an instrument, without anything actually being forgotten. There was only the idea that something was forgotten — it was a motive.”


“So, X. had imagined that he had forgotten something,” I said, trying to comprehend it all.


“Exactly!” Zeele pointed his index finger in the air. “He needed that notion of a ‘forgotten story’, not the story itself, because it had never existed, but he needed the idea of that story. The idée-fixe of the forgotten story allowed him to escape the thought that he could no longer produce stories, that he could escape, or master his writer’s block. Therefore it was some sort of an inverted repression. He hadn’t been hidding a memory. No! He had invented a non-existent memory.” Zeele scraped the last remnants of his Dame Blanche from the glass, both his face as gestures articulating his pleasure.


“But then, ultimately, isn’t this the same as Tartini’s forgotten sonata?” I tried contribute my part. “That also never existed.”


“No!” Zeele shook his head as he wiped his mouth with a napkin. “There is a fundamental difference: Tartini actually ‘heard’ that sonata in his dream; he just couldn’t reproduce the notes. X. couldn’t remember anything about that story; instead, he reproduced a new version of the Bellerophon myth. He never heard or read that so-called ‘forgotten story’ in that dream.”


“Then he definitely must have known that myth, otherwise he could never have create this whole fantastic enterprise,” I remarked. “And what also is remarkably strange: the parallels that exist between that myth and what actually happened to X.; or is that all based on fabrication? That mutilated eye, he didn’t make that up, did he?”

“No, he didn’t make up that mutilated eye, that’s absolutely clear, without any doubt; but the rest seems rather dubious. Well, it was obviously impossible to verify that part of the story for authenticity. X. admitted he wasn’t sure, but he never admitted it was a fabrication. Piëte believed that, because of the eye trauma, X. projected the rest of the story onto his own life through the Bellerophon myth. Everything in service of that ‘forgotten story.’”


“What happened to him in the end? Did Piëte ultimately prescribe an adequate treatment for him?”


Zeele made a gesture with his hands as if to say it could be interpreted either way. “Yes and no. Actually, Piëte’s analysis was already sufficient for X. It seemed like something had fallen off of him. In any case, he stopped the treatments not long after. It was unsatisfying for Piëte, but he couldn’t force him, of course.” Zeele also ordered a cognac, and I decided to have another glass as well.


“The last one,” I said.


“The last one,” Zeele echoed. We sat silently at the table for a while, swirling our cognac in the glass. “I met him again years later,” Zeele suddenly said.


“Where? In Paris?”

“Yes, a few years after our sessions,” Zeele said. “In 1976, to be precise.”

“Piëte had already retired at that time. I suspect that X. went searching and found me through connections. In any case, he seemed to be doing quite well. He told me that not long after the treatments with Piëte, he stopped writing. Somehow, the history with the ‘forgotten story’ worked as a catharsis for him. He decided to study aeronautical engineering. It turned out he had a great aptitude for mathematics. Eventually, he ended up working as an engineer at Dassault, a French aircraft manufacturer, and through that company, he joined Aérospatiale, the French branch of the famous Concorde project. X. had contributed to the development and construction of the supersonic aircraft. He had been on the test flight in 1969 and also on the first flight to New York. In the end, he had found his own Pegasus, which had brought him to his own Olympus. It was a kind of resurrection from his Bellerophon past.”


“What a beautiful conclusion to this tragic story!” I exclaimed, feeling delighted.

“Yes, indeed.” But there was a hint of doubt in Zeele’s voice.

“That doesn’t sound entirely enthusiastic,” I said, inquiringly.


Zeele remained silent for a while. “No, you’re right, because there is an additional twist to it, which I haven’t been able to figure out quite well; and I still haven’t. He told me something during that meeting in 1976, something that has haunted me ever since. He had conducted research on that ‘secret letter’ from the resistance leader. And he had finally managed to get hold of it. He had it examined, and the letter turned out to be real, it truly existed.”

— Den Haag, September 9, 1991

Postscript

After a few days, I found myself sitting in my armchair in the evening with a glass of cognac and a good cigar in my hands. The story of the ‘forgotten tale’ had stayed with me. After trying to put the pieces together once again, I still had a few fundamental questions. It was clear that X. had constructed a ‘forgotten tale’, not an actual story, but the suggestion that there had been a story, in his dream. The ‘forgetting’ functioned as a strategy. The purpose of this strategy was to escape his writer’s block by initially fueling or confirming it with that ‘forgotten tale’. That non-existent story became actually the ‘cause’ of his writer’s block, as he finally had a story to write, but then for mysterious reasons it had disappeared. Secondly, Piëte’s treatment, through the Bellerophon myth, made him aware that he was not a writer at all. Now he could let go of this compulsion and focus on the talent he truly possessed: mathematics and aeronautical engineering.


So far so good, I thought as I took a sip of my cognac and a deep puff of my cigar. However, there were still a few issues remaining: the ‘secret letter’ and, because of that letter, the matter of the parallel with the Bellerophon myth, which was certainly extremely puzzling. Since the letter containing his own death sentence was genuine, with no room for any doubt according to the authenticity certificate, the rest of that story had to be accepted as real as well. The woman who had tried to seduce him was presumably real, with the letter as a result.

The impossible task he was given, of fighting the tank battalion, had to be based on truth as well, with his mutilated eye as tragic evidence. The issue of the sea with the naked women on the beach was, however, less clear, but it could easily be the result of a projection of the Bellorophon myth. All in all, there were more than enough real similarities between the myth and X’s actual experiences. This parallel had several possible explanations. The first was that it was purely coincidental, but given the striking similarities, this was an unsatisfactory outcome. A second explanation, which would find eager acceptance in New Age circles, was that it wasn’t a coincidence at all, but a case of delayed Jungian synchronicity. This explanation didn’t quite appeal to me either. That left only one other logical possibility: a reversal — it wasn’t the woman who had seduced X, but the other way around: he had made advances, she had refused, and then he had assaulted her. This then led to that letter, with the well-known result. This explanation aligned well with something else Zeele had told me at the restaurant, namely that during their last meeting in 1976, when he asked about the history, X. had no desire to talk about it anymore. That history was a closed book for him. The similarities with the myth were in this way reduced to the letter, but written from a different motive, and, of course, there was the mutilated eye as well. This had the following, profound consequences, which I suspected were precisely what had troubled Zeele at the end of our dinner.


The letter from the resistance leader would then have to be the ‘forgotten story,’ a narrative that X. had repressed, because the truth of his assault placed a too heavy burden on his conscience. Taken together, first the killing of a man, whether an enemy or not; then the assault on the mistress of his leader, which actually casts doubt on the motive for that murder, this all combined mad obvious that X. was evidently a violent person; and finally, there is the loss of his eye. All of this undoubtedly explained his mental state. It made on the other hand the parallel with the Bellerophon myth less significant, and certainly challenged the hypothesis of the fabricated memory. As a result, Piëte’s theory of the Bellerophon syndrome was called into question. Zeele could not, or did not want to take responsibility for this, as it would likely feel like a betrayal of his mentor. Thus, he had decided to forget this history. After all, the syndrome still seemed to be a plausible and workable theory, and even if it were based on an incorrect case, who would care? Why throw the baby out with the bathwater? I could actually agree with this and had no intention of bringing this issue out in the open. It was not my responsibility, and who would benefit from it? Especially when it had been proven that the theory was indeed meaningful in other treatments. I would survive the slight unease that I had tucked away in the back of my mind. I concluded this story with this decision and resolution, and miraculously managed to forget about it.

Over nine years later, on a cold December evening, with snow covering everything, and freezing temperatures, the phone rang unexpectedly. I was surprised because I expected to spend this Christmas Eve in solitude, not anticipating any visitors, nor any phone calls.


“De Vries…” I said hesitating, when I answered the phone call.

“This time your name is quite fitting for today’s weather!” I recognized Zeele’s raspy voice.

“Oh, Dr. Zeele — to what occasion do I owe this honor?” I hesitated whether to address him by his last name or more familiarly by his first name, until I realized that I still couldn’t remember his first name.

“Have you heard about the Concorde accident a few months ago?” Zeele’s voice turned serious again. After I replied that I had indeed had read something about it, he abruptly interrupted me.


“Right. It was on July 25, a flight from Paris to New York. The plane crashed shortly after takeoff.” Suddenly, a feeling of a dreadful unease washed over me. Zeele continued speaking, “X. was on that flight. All the passengers died, including X. The parallel with Bellerophon turned out to be greater than we initially thought. X. also rode Pegasus three times, and he crashed on the third time. The Olympus turned out to be ultimately unattainable, or at least, the gods did not allow it.”


After Zeele hung up, I had to sit down immediately; I felt dizzy. It seemed as though the gods wanted to teach us one final lesson. And in that moment of understanding, I suddenly realized something else: I had never known Zeele’s first name, so I couldn’t have forgotten it either.

— Den Haag, December 24 2000