by Yoko Ogawa
“But how do they access our genes?” I asked.
“You just drank from this cup, didn’t you?” R said, stubbing out his cigarette and lifting my coffee cup to eye level. I nodded.
“They could take this and isolate your genetic material from your saliva. Nothing could be simpler for the Memory Police. They’re lurking everywhere—maybe in the back room where they do the dishes. Before we know it, they’ll have tested everyone on the island and stored our information in their database, though it’s impossible to know how much progress they’ve made so far. No matter how careful we are, we all leave behind little bits of ourselves as we go about our lives. Hair, sweat, fingernails, tears…any of which can be tested. No one can escape.”
Slowly he lowered the cup back to the saucer, his eyes looking down at the coffee that remained in the bottom.
The men who had been talking near the ficus tree had finished their conversation. Three cups were left behind on their table. The receptionist began clearing them, her face completely blank.
I waited until she had gone. “But why do they take people away? They haven’t done anything wrong.”
“The island is run by men who are determined to see things disappear. From their point of view, anything that fails to vanish when they say it should is inconceivable. So they force it to disappear with their own hands.”
“Do you think my mother was killed?” I knew it was pointless to ask R, but the question slipped out.
“She was definitely under observation, being studied.” R chose his words carefully.
He was quiet for a moment. The only sound was the splashing of water in the fountain. The crumpled envelope lay on the table between us. R pulled it to him and took out the manuscript.
“It seems strange that you can still create something totally new like this—just from words—on an island where everything else is disappearing,” he said, brushing a bit of dirt from one of the pages as though he were caressing something precious.
I realized then that we were thinking the same thing. As we looked into each other’s eyes, I felt, once again, the anxiety that had taken root in our hearts a long time ago. The light reflecting from the spray of the fountain lit R’s face.
“And what will happen if words disappear?” I whispered to myself, afraid that if I said it too loudly, it might come true.
Autumn passed quickly. The crashing of the waves was sharp and cold, and the wind brought the winter clouds from beyond the mountains.
The old man came from his boat to help me prepare for the cold weather. Together we cleaned the stove, wrapped the pipes, and burned the dead leaves in the garden.
“We haven’t had snow in ten years, but we may well this winter,” he said as he hung onions on the rack atop the storehouse in my backyard. “It always snows when the onions’ skins are deep brown, like these, and thin as butterfly wings.”
He peeled off a layer and it made a pleasant crackling sound as he crushed it in his palm.
“Then I might get to see snow for the third time in my life. I’d like that,” I said, feeling almost cheerful. “How many times would it make for you?”
“I’ve never counted. When I ran my ferry in the northern sea, it snowed so much I got sick of it. Though that was long before you were born,” he said, going back to hanging the onions.
When we had finished the chores, we lit the stove and ate waffles in the dining room. Perhaps because it had just been cleaned, the stove was slow to start and made a sputtering sound. The vapor trail of a jet was visible in the sky outside the window. A thin pillar of smoke rose from the smoldering leaves.
“Living here alone, I feel a little nervous when winter comes, so I’m truly grateful for your help. Which reminds me, I just finished knitting a sweater and I’d like you to try it on,” I said. After my first waffle, I went to get the gray Fair Isle sweater I had made for him. Surprised, he swallowed his tea noisily and reached out to take it with both hands.
“I’m always happy to help, but I’ve hardly done anything. This is too much, really.” But he immediately pulled off the old sweater he was wearing and wadded it up like a used towel. Then he slipped his arms into the new one with infinite care, as if it were delicate and might unravel at the slightest touch. “Oh my, how warm!” he said. “It’s so light I feel as though I’m going to float away.”
The sleeves were a little long and the collar a bit tight, but he didn’t seem to care. He ate another waffle, but he was so taken with the new sweater that he didn’t even notice when a bit of cream dribbled on his chin.
After supper, the old man put his pliers and his screwdriver, his sandpaper and his oilcan back in the toolbox attached to his bicycle, and he headed home to the boat.
Winter began in earnest the next day. Suddenly, you needed a coat when you went outside. There was ice on the river behind my house in the morning and fewer kinds of vegetables in the market.
I was hiding away at home, working on my new novel. This one was about a typist who loses her voice. She goes off in search of it, accompanied by her lover, a teacher at the typing school. She consults a speech therapist. Her boyfriend massages her throat and warms her tongue with his lips, and plays songs that the two of them had recorded long before. But her voice doesn’t come back. She communicates her feelings to him by typing. The clack-clack of the keys flows between them like music, and then…
I myself wasn’t sure what would happen next. The story seemed simple and pleasant enough, but I had a feeling it might take a frightening turn.
* * *
. . .
I was still working when, well past midnight, I thought I heard someone knocking on glass off in the distance. Setting down my pencil, I listened for a moment, but the only sound was the wind blowing outside. I went back to my manuscript, but before I had finished another line, I heard the rattling of glass again. Clack, clack, clack…A quiet, rhythmic sound.
I pulled back the curtain and looked out. The houses were dark and there was no sign of anyone in the street. Closing my eyes, I tried to hear where the sound was coming from, when I suddenly realized it was coming from the basement.
Since my mother’s death, I had rarely been down to her studio, and I generally kept the door locked. In fact, it had been so long since I’d needed the key that I’d forgotten exactly where I’d put it. It took me a few moments to remember, and then there was considerable rattling as I poked around in a drawer. At last I found the tin where I kept keys, but there was more noise as I opened it and located the rusty key on the ring. Somehow I felt like I should have been doing all this more quietly, but the knocking from the basement, even and patient, had pushed me to hurry.
At last I managed to open the door. I went down the stairs and turned on the light, and when I did I could see someone standing outside the door that led to the laundry area built out on the river. It hadn’t been used regularly since my grandmother’s time. My mother had occasionally washed her sculpting tools there, but even that was more than fifteen years ago.
The washing area was little more than a few square feet paved in brick, set into the riverbank. It was built up above the basement level, and from there one could walk down a few steps to the glass door at the back of the house. The river itself was only a few yards wide at this point, and my grandfather had built a small wooden bridge to the far bank—though it was now in a state of disrepair.
But why would someone be standing out there?
I turned that question over in my head as I considered what to do. Perhaps it was a burglar. No, a burglar wouldn’t knock. The knocking continued, measured and almost polite.
Screwing up my courage, I managed to call out, “Who’s there?”
“I’m sorry. I know it’s late. It’s Inui.”
* * *
. . .
When I opened the door, I found Professor Inui and his family
standing outside. Inui, an old friend of my parents, taught in the dermatology department at the university hospital.
They certainly appeared to be in some kind of difficulty. “What’s happened?” I asked, ushering them inside. The sound of the river rushing nearby made the cold even more piercing.
“I’m so sorry to show up like this. I know it’s a terrible inconvenience…” The professor murmured apologies as they shuffled through the door. His wife wore no makeup, and her face was gaunt. Her eyes were damp, whether from the cold or with tears. Their daughter, who was perhaps fifteen years old, stood with her lips pressed tightly together, while her younger brother, who I remembered was eight, stared curiously around at the room. They clustered together in a group, holding on to one another. Mrs. Inui clutched her husband’s arm, which was wrapped around his daughter’s shoulders, while the children held hands. To complete the circle, the little boy held the hem of his mother’s coat with his other hand.
“It’s no trouble, really,” I told them. “But I’m amazed you made it across the bridge. Wasn’t it a bit scary? It’s on its last legs. And I don’t understand why you didn’t come to the front door. But you’re here now, and we should go up to the living room where it’s nice and warm.”
“You’re more than kind, but I’m afraid we have no time. And we should be as discreet as possible. We don’t want to attract attention.”
The professor sighed, and as if that were a signal, the four of them huddled still closer together.
They were wearing long, well-made coats, and their necks, hands, and feet—anyplace not covered by the coats—were bundled in warm woolens. They carried two bags each, one in each hand, larger or smaller depending on the size of the bearer. The bags appeared to be heavy.
Working quickly, I cleared my mother’s table and brought chairs for them to sit on. When their bags were arranged under the table, I waited to hear their story.
“It finally arrived,” the professor said, his fingers folded in front of him, as if he hoped to conceal his voice in the semicircle they formed.
“What did?” I asked, urging him on when he paused.
“A summons from the Memory Police.” His voice was calm.
“But why?”
“I’ve been ordered to present myself at the genetic analysis center. Tomorrow—no, this morning it is now—they’re coming to escort me there. I’ve been dismissed from my post at the university, and we’ve been ordered to vacate our faculty house. Our whole family is to move to the center.”
“But where is it?” I asked.
“I have no idea. No one seems to know where it is, what sort of building it’s in. But I can guess what they’re doing there. Officially, they’re conducting medical research, but in reality it’s simply a front for the Memory Police. And I suspect they want to use my research to identify people who are able to keep their memories.”
I remembered what R had told me. So it wasn’t just a rumor.
“The order came three days ago. We had no time to consider what we should do. They’re offering to triple my salary, and they apparently have a school for the children. They make special provisions for everything—taxes, insurance, a car, housing. The arrangements are so generous it’s frightening.”
“Just like the letter for your mother that came fifteen years ago.”
His wife spoke up for the first time. The girl listened quietly, her head swiveling toward whoever was speaking. The boy played carefully with the sculpting tools on the table, his hands still in his gloves.
* * *
. . .
I recalled when my mother was taken away, and how the Inuis had comforted me at the time. I was just a little girl, and their daughter was a baby in her mother’s arms.
The order had come in a coarse pale purple envelope. At that point no one had heard of the Memory Police, and neither my parents nor the Inuis saw anything particularly ominous in the letter. They were just a bit anxious because it was unclear why my mother was being called or how long she would be needed.
But I had been fairly certain that it had something to do with the drawers in the chest in the basement. As the adults had stood talking about the envelope, I remembered the quiet sound of my mother’s voice as she told me stories about the secret objects—and the troubled look on her face when I had asked her why she remembered these stories and had not forgotten them like everyone else.
The discussion of the letter had ended inconclusively. There was no obvious reason to refuse.
“Everything will be fine. There’s no need to be so worried,” my mother had said.
“And we’ll help look after your house and your little girl, anything at all,” said Professor Inui, offering his support to my parents.
The car sent the next morning by the Memory Police was terribly elegant. Jet black and polished to a brilliant shine, it seemed as large as a house. The chrome wheels and door handles and the police insignia on the hood glinted in the sunlight. The leather seats looked so soft I could barely resist hopping in to try them.
The white-gloved driver opened the door for my mother. She gave a few final instructions to the Inuis and to my nurse, kissed my father, and then took my cheeks in her hands.
We were somehow reassured by the opulence of the car and the careful manners of the driver. If she was to be so well taken care of, there was no need to worry.
Mother sank down into the feather-soft seat, and we waved as if she were headed off to receive a prize at a sculpture exhibition.
But that was the last time we ever saw her alive. Her body came back to us a week later, along with her death certificate.
It listed the cause of death as a heart attack. An autopsy was performed at Professor Inui’s clinic, but nothing suspicious was found.
“A sudden illness struck her as she was helping with our classified research…We would like to offer our sincere condolences in your time of grief…”
My father read aloud from the letter the Memory Police had sent, but I understood nothing, as though I were hearing some magic formula uttered in a foreign tongue. I watched, transfixed, as my father’s tears made little stains on the lavender paper.
* * *
. . .
“The quality of the paper, the font on the typewriter, even the watermark—it was all exactly the same as the one that came for your mother.” Mrs. Inui had two scarves around her neck, knotted tightly in front. Her eyelashes fluttered as she spoke.
“Couldn’t you refuse?” I asked.
“If I do, they’ll just take me away by force,” Professor Inui answered without hesitating. “If you don’t cooperate, you become their victim. And I doubt they’d spare my family. I have no idea where they take you once they have you. Prison? A labor camp? The gallows? But you can be sure it isn’t anyplace pleasant.”
“So then you’ll go to the research center?”
“No,” said the professor, and he and his wife shook their heads in unison. “We’re going to a safe house.”
“A safe house,” I murmured, realizing this wasn’t the first time I had heard these words.
“We were lucky enough to find a group that runs them, and they’re willing to hide us. We’re going there now.”
“But you’ll be giving up your work, your whole life. Wouldn’t it be better to obey their orders? Your children are still so young.”
“I don’t think we can be sure we’d be safe, locked up in the research center. After all, it’s being run by the Memory Police. They can’t be trusted. Once I’d outlived my usefulness, I’m sure they’d do anything they felt was necessary to ensure secrecy.”
The professor had chosen his words carefully to avoid frightening the children. They were sitting quietly, behaving themselves. The boy was fiddling with a nondescript stone as though it were a toy with some elaborate hidden mechanism. His plain light blu
e gloves had obviously been knit by hand. They were connected to each other with a strand of yarn, to keep them from becoming separated. I remembered wearing the same kind, long ago, and, in this basement so full of anxiety, they seemed like the lone sign of innocence and peace.
“And besides, we have no intention of helping the Memory Police,” added Mrs. Inui.
“But how will you manage in hiding? What will you do for money, food, school for your children? What if one of you gets sick? What will become of you?”
There were so many things I still didn’t understand. The genetic code, decryption, the research center, the safe houses, their supporters…All these words, not yet properly defined or understood, were buzzing incessantly in my head.
“We don’t really know,” Mrs. Inui said, tears welling up in her eyes now. I knew somehow that she wasn’t actually crying. I knew somehow that she was too sad to cry—her tears were simply drops of liquid appearing of their own accord.
“It all happened so suddenly,” she continued. “We had no time. I couldn’t think about what to bring, what to leave behind. We have no way of knowing what will happen to us, so it’s all we could do to make the most immediate decisions. Should we bring our checkbook? Or did we need cash instead? What clothing should we pack? Did we need to have food? Should we leave behind Mizore, our cat?”
The drops of liquid flowed down her cheeks now without stopping. Her daughter produced a handkerchief from her pocket.
“And we had one more decision to make,” said the professor. “We had to figure out what to do with the sculptures your mother gave us. Once we vanish, the Memory Police will search our house. They may destroy much of what we’ve left behind. Which is why we wanted to protect at least a few of the things we value most—though that could prove dangerous, too. Our secret could get out. We have to limit knowledge of the safe houses to the smallest possible number of people.”