by Yoko Ogawa
I closed my eyes. My eyelashes touched the wool of his sweater.
“The people in the house next door were loaded into a truck and taken away,” I murmured. “They were hiding an innocent boy. I wonder how long he’d been there. It seems strange to think that I had no idea there was someone nearby who was going through exactly the same thing you are.”
“Where do you suppose they took him?” He breathed the words into my hair.
“I watched for a long time in the dark after the truck had gone, wondering the same thing. I didn’t even notice that I wasn’t wearing a coat or gloves, that the snow was hitting my face. I stood there hoping that if I waited long enough I might discover where my memories have gone.”
R took my shoulders in his hands and gazed into the space between our bodies.
I wanted to tell him that I knew I’d never learn anything, no matter how long I waited, but he had covered my lips with his and I could say nothing more.
I wonder how many days I’ve been stuck here, in the clock tower. I have no way of knowing.
Of course, with this enormous clock right here, you can always find out what time it is. There’s even a bell that rings twice a day, at eleven in the morning and again at five in the afternoon. In the beginning, to count the passing days, I made a mark with my fingernail each morning on the leg of the chair. But I’ve long since lost track. The chair was scarred to begin with and it eventually became impossible to tell which marks were ones I’d made.
Time passes like a long, frigid stream, without my knowing the month or date or day of the week. But I suppose it’s enough to be imprisoned here just as he wants me to be, surrounded by innumerable voices of the dead. What good would it do me to know the day or the date?
At first I could see only the typewriters and the mechanism of the clock, but after a time, I began to notice other details about the room.
Near the center of the wall to the west, the mountain of typewriters dropped off precipitously. I had only to climb over a few machines to reach a door, through which I found a simple bathroom. There was a small window above the sink, and from time to time I would climb up on the sink, open the window, and stare at the scene outside. I could see the roofs of houses, fields, a stream, a park. The clock tower is the tallest building in the town, so there was nothing above me as I looked out, just the sky stretching in every direction. It felt good to breathe fresh air like this. It soon became apparent that the sink was not strong enough to support my weight, and water began seeping from a spot where the pipe must have pulled away from the porcelain and the tiles.
Another revelation came from the contents of the drawer in the table, though it contained nothing as interesting as a hammer that I might have used to smash the lock on the door. What I did find was a puzzle made of bent wire, some thumbtacks, a tube of menthol-scented cream, an empty box of chocolates, a pack of cigarettes, toothpicks, a shell, finger cots, a thermometer, a glasses case…that sort of thing. Not much, but better than nothing. Things to add a little flavor to my life of captivity.
I tried to imagine how all these things had come to be in the drawer. In the days before the mechanism had been automated, an attendant must have lived in this room to look after the clock. Wind the spring, oil the gears, ring the bell at the appointed hours—a regular sort of job. He had probably helped out around the church when he had free time. A serious, taciturn old man without attachments. The cigarettes and glasses case must have been his. The cigarette pack was an old-fashioned design, and though there were still a few cigarettes left, they no longer smelled of tobacco. The case, made of cloth, was quite ragged. It seemed entirely possible that the old man had lived and died in this room.
At least I could pass the time playing with the wire puzzle. I made my mind go blank and stared at the ball of silver wires. Come what may, manipulating something with my fingers was always good for my mental state, and when I remembered how anxious I’d been when I’d first taken up the typewriter, the puzzle seemed rather nice by comparison. Still, as my fingers became accustomed to the way the wires fit together, I began to worry that it would not take me long to solve.
The menthol cream was also useful. I could rub it on my temples, under my nose, along my neck. I knew that the sharp odor would improve my spirits as soon as I smelled it. Not that it stimulated me; rather, it felt like a cool breeze blowing over my body and calming my nerves. The feeling lasted a long while, until the menthol evaporated. The tube was already half empty, so I would have to use it infrequently, in small quantities.
The bed was another thing that altered my impression of the room. He had brought it up himself, and it was just a simple folding sofa, but still it must have been extremely difficult to carry up the winding stairway. I had never seen him look tired before. He had always seemed completely in control. His clothes, his hair, the movement of his fingers, the words he spoke—everything had been subject to his will, and I was certain now that he had not willingly shown me his sweaty brow.
Still, it had apparently been worth the effort it had cost him to move the bed, since he did all sorts of things to me on it.
* * *
. . .
The ringing of the bell is more frightening here than it was in town, which makes sense since it’s so close I can almost touch it. As eleven and five o’clock approach, I cower in a corner of the room and rest my head on my knees. I close my eyes and hold my breath, hoping to block the sound and minimize the shock. But as the last second ticks away and the clapper of the bell begins to swing back and forth, I realize how meaningless my feeble resistance will be.
The sound of the clock flows along the ceiling, strikes the wall, shakes the floor, and, having nowhere to go, rattles about the room for a long time. It washes over me like a crushing wave, and though I steel myself in an attempt to push it away, it’s no use.
On the first day I was brought here, when the bell rang at five o’clock, I had the feeling that the typewriters were crying out together, as though the voices locked in them had been released all at once. In reality, if all the keys on all the typewriters were struck at the same time, that would be an even more dreadful noise than the bell itself.
I can no longer tell which of them was mine. At first it seemed newer than the rest, with shiny levers and a brightly painted cover. But gradually the dust clogged the keys and the paint faded, so that it was impossible to tell it from the others, and now it has simply melted into the mountain of machines.
I wonder if what he says is true, that someone’s voice is trapped in every typewriter here. If voices, like bodies, decline and decay, then most of these, crushed under this mountain, have been choked off and are hardened and useless.
At some point I realized that I could no longer recall the sound of my own voice, and the thought dumbfounded me. How could I have so easily forgotten something I’d heard for so many years, a sound that had been silenced only for a fraction of that time?
But in a world turned upside down, things I thought were mine and mine alone can be taken away much more easily than I would have imagined. If my body were cut up in pieces and those pieces mixed with those of other bodies, and then if someone told me, “Find your left eye,” I suppose it would be difficult to do so.
* * *
. . .
He treats me just as he pleases.
He brings me my meals. It seems he prepares them in the little room at the back of the typing classroom where there’s a burner to heat water. They are far from gourmet, but they are perfectly acceptable. For the most part, he brings soft, liquid things that have been stewed or simmered.
He sets the tray on the table, sits down across from me, rests his chin in the palm of his hand, and stares at me. He never takes a bite. I’m left to dine alone.
I have never been able to get used to eating this way. It wears on my nerves to have to swallow each bite under his unwave
ring gaze, without music or laughter or conversation. I have no appetite, picturing as I do the morsels of food falling down my throat, scraping past my ribs, and finally making their way to my stomach. When I’m barely half finished, I’ve had enough, but I force myself to eat everything—because I’m afraid to imagine what he might do with anything left over.
“You have some sauce on your lip,” he’ll say to me from time to time. I’ll hurry to lick it off, since there’s never a napkin. “More to your right,” he’ll say, forcing me to lick my lips from one side to the other. Then he’ll tell me to go on eating.
He has the mannerisms of a waiter in a fancy restaurant. And I eat slowly, ripping off small pieces of bread, cutting my meat into tiny bites, sipping my water, and glancing up at him from time to time.
At night, he strips me, makes me stand under the light, and then washes my body. The water he brings in a bucket is very hot, and steam floats around the room. But he takes so long and washes me so carefully that it has all dissipated by the time he’s finished. He moves his hands much as he does when he polishes the stopwatch.
As he works, I find myself surprised by the sheer number of parts that make up a human body. The job seems almost endless. Eyelids, scalp, behind the ears, collarbone, armpits, nipples, belly, the hipbone cavity, thighs, calves, between the fingers. Nothing is neglected, not the tiniest part. He works tirelessly, wiping every inch of my body, without seeming to strain himself, without so much as a change of expression.
When he’s done, it’s up to him, of course, to choose the clothes I put on, and his choices are always odd, unlike anything I have seen in the stores. So odd, indeed, it’s unclear they should be called “clothes” at all.
First of all, the materials themselves are strange: vinyl, paper, metal, leaves, fruit peels. When they’re handled roughly, they tear away from the body or cut the skin or tighten around the chest. Which is why the garments have to be put on slowly, with great care.
One day he confessed that he had made the clothes himself. An image would come to him, he would sketch it, make a pattern, and then gather the materials from here and there. As he told me this, the most absurd, inexplicable realization came to me: I was absolutely certain that his fingers were terribly beautiful as they fashioned these clothes. That’s what I thought. To imagine his fingers as they threaded a needle or cut the peel from a piece of fruit held the same charm as imagining them as they typed out words on a page.
He stands smiling with satisfaction as I hunch my shoulders and bend my legs and wriggle my hips in order to force myself into the strangely shaped garments. The light from the lamp overhead is reflected in the bucket of water, which is by now quite cool. By morning, the clothes will be crumpled on the floor like a worn-out rag.
* * *
. . .
Needless to say, my nerves are frayed. But it is the inability to speak that confines me much more than being shut up in the room. As he’d said, to be deprived of one’s voice is much the same as having one’s body go to pieces.
From time to time he gives me an icy stare and asks whether I want to speak.
I shake my head violently from side to side, knowing full well that nothing will come from nodding.
In the past few days I’ve begun to feel my body growing more distant from my soul. It’s as though my head and arms, my breasts and torso and legs are all floating somewhere just out of reach, and I can only watch as he plays with them. And that, too, is because I have lost my voice. When the voice that links the body to the soul vanishes, there is no way to put into words one’s feelings or will. I am reduced to pieces in no time at all.
I wonder if there is any way out of here. Of course I think about the possibility. At the instant he opens the door, I could push past him and run down the stairs. I could beat on the floor with a typewriter to alert the students in the classroom below, or take one apart and throw the pieces out the window. But these ideas all seem useless, and besides, even if I found my way outside again, I wonder whether I would be able to reassemble the pieces of myself.
While he’s busy teaching the typing students downstairs, I peek out from behind the face of the clock and look at the scene below. The church garden is carefully tended, with some flower always in bloom. People often gather here, chatting in the shade of the trees, sitting on the benches to read. Children play badminton, the typing students pass through on bicycles. Occasionally someone will look up at the clock on the tower to check the time, but of course no one notices me.
If I listen, I can hear the sound of their voices, but I can’t understand what they are saying. At first I thought it was because they were too far away. But that wasn’t really the reason. It’s simply that I can’t comprehend the words.
One day I saw him laughing and chatting with some of his students in the garden. From a distance, he looked stylish, intelligent, and distinguished, and the students seemed quite taken with him. I am the only one who knows what he becomes here at the top of the tower.
“No matter how much you’re tempted, you mustn’t look at the keyboard. That’s the secret to improvement. You find the keys with your fingers, not your eyes.”
They seemed to be talking about typing. I could hear his voice quite clearly, as though the wind bore it up through the crack in the clock face and into my ears. But then one of the students, a woman with short hair and dangly earrings, turned and said something to him.
I could hear the sound of her voice, but not her words. The wind seemed to carry her words past the clock and off into the sky.
“Close your eyes and let your fingers feel the typewriter. The position of the keys, of course, but also the shape of the levers, the thickness of the roller—learn all of it with your fingers.”
I had heard the same instructions when I was his student, and I could hear each word he spoke now.
The young women around him spoke one after the other, but nothing they said meant anything to me.
“From now on, if you look at the keyboard during class, I’ll be handing out a punishment. So that’s clear? We’ll start tomorrow.”
He clapped his hands, and the girls recoiled, letting out a sound that was neither laugh nor scream.
It was then I realized that I could no longer understand anyone but him. Any words but his, coming from the outside, sounded to me like the random squeaking of an out-of-tune instrument.
Even if I were able to escape now, I realized it was too late. My degeneration was already too far advanced. If I took one step outside, my body would dissolve into a million pieces.
He was the only thing holding me together now. Only his fingers. And so, again this evening, I wait for the sound of his footsteps as he climbs the tower.
* * *
. . .
I did not venture back down to the hidden room again after the Memory Police came to search the house. As before, when I took R his meals, we would still exchange a few meaningless words. I would cast about for plausible excuses to climb down the ladder, but in the end I closed the trapdoor without voicing any of them.
The shock of that evening seemed to sink in gradually. R smiled only rarely now and often left food on his plate. Perhaps because the invasion by the Memory Police had upset me so much, he had missed the opportunity to express his own feelings—which seemed now to be festering like a wound. As I would turn to go, I would stop in midmotion and hold the heavy trapdoor for a moment, peeking inside and thinking I would give him a chance to say something more before we parted. But I invariably found him at the desk, his back turned, or already burrowing his way into the covers on the bed.
It was too painful to realize that there was no chance he would open the interior latch, lift the door, crawl out from under the rug, and come to me. I knew, of course, that his situation was complicated, but no matter how often I reminded myself of this, I still worried that he was simply avoiding me.
The more I thought back over the events of that night, the more they seemed to retreat, one by one, from reality. The various dishes we had prepared, the cake, the pile of dirty pots and pans, the presents, the wine, the boots, the burned datebook, the turned-up corner of the rug, the three figures in the distance, the covered truck, the tears…I had trouble believing that all of this could have happened to me in one evening. But I knew that sleeping with R had been the only way to survive that horrible night. In order to protect each other, we had simply taken refuge in the only safe place left to us. Or so I said, to comfort myself.
* * *
. . .
I put aside the manuscript pages I’d written that day, took the speaker from its hiding place behind the dictionary, and held it to my ear. At first I couldn’t hear anything, but as I continued to listen, I gradually began to make out the quiet sounds from the hidden room.
First came the sound of water. Then coughing, the rustling of cloth, the motor of the ventilation fan. I gripped the funnel and pressed it harder against my ear.
He was washing himself. That evening, I’d brought him the usual items: washbasin, pot of hot water, plastic sheet, towel.
“Ah, it’s bath day, is it?” he said as I handed all this down to him. “I’d forgotten.”
“I’m sorry it’s such a poor excuse for a real bath,” I told him, gently bumping the bottom of the basin against the handrail.
“Not at all,” he said, gathering all the items in his arms. “I’m grateful that you manage to remember the schedule even without a calendar.”
The sound of water came to me intermittently like a soft murmur. Of course I had never seen how he managed to wash himself, but as I listened I felt as though his movements were coming to me through the funnel.