The Box in the Attic: o objeto como arquivo de uma infância esquecida (C2)
The doll came out of the box last, after the letters, which no one had wanted to read either. Its dress had gone the colour of weak tea and one eye had ceased to close, so that it lay in the tissue with an expression of permanent, mild scepticism, as though it had heard the will read and formed a view. My aunt said I had loved it. I have no memory of loving it. I have instead the memory of a memory, which is a different currency and buys less. What the object retained, and I had not, was the record of the handling: a smoothness at the wrists where a thumb had gone a thousand times, a crease under the chin from being carried face-down, evidence of an intimacy filed away in a body that was not mine. Grief, when it came, was misdirected and therefore honest. I was not mourning the aunt in whose house it had waited, nor the child I had been, both of whom were beyond reach. I was mourning the small stupid patience of the thing itself, which had gone on being available for forty years in a dark box, in case anyone came back.
Fonte: English for ALL (texto original).
A frase "I have instead the memory of a memory, which is a different currency and buys less" sustenta no conto a ideia de que
- A) a infância é irrecuperável porque a família se recusou a transmitir ao narrador as histórias que teriam preservado seu sentido.
- B) a memória afetiva depende de um valor econômico atribuído às heranças, o que explica o desinteresse dos parentes pelas cartas e pela boneca.
- C) o narrador finge não se lembrar da boneca para poupar-se do desconforto de reconhecer o vínculo que o unia à tia falecida.
- D) toda recordação da infância é necessariamente falsa, já que se constrói a partir de relatos alheios e não de impressões diretas.
- E) a lembrança do narrador é de segunda ordem e por isso vale menos que as marcas de uso conservadas no próprio objeto, verdadeiro registro daquela intimidade.