by Yoko Ogawa
First, he spread out the plastic sheet to keep the floor from getting wet. Then he undressed and sat down on it with his legs crossed under him. His neatly folded clothes were stacked on the bed. Working quickly, before the water cooled, he wet the towel, wrung it out, and then carefully washed his neck, his back, his shoulders, his arms. When the towel was no longer wet enough, he dipped it in the basin again. His skin, so far removed from air and sunlight, was pale and soft, and the towel left red marks if he rubbed too hard. His face expressionless, he moved his hands in silence. Drops of water sparkled on the plastic sheet. I was able to trace the contours of his body, able to recall the movement of each muscle, the angle of each joint, the pattern of each vein showing through his white skin. Even though the sounds coming through the funnel were barely audible, as they came to my ears and to my memory, the sensation became clearer and clearer.
The curtains on the window by the desk were parted slightly, and I could see stars in the night sky—a rare enough sight in recent days. The darkness had painted black the snow that blanketed the town. The wind rattled the windowpane from time to time. I untangled the rubber tube that ran down to the floor. The funnel had warmed in my hand. The pages of my manuscript were neatly stacked and secured under a paperweight on the desk. To me, they seemed the only ticket I could use for admittance to the hidden room below me.
I could hear a thin stream of water being slowly poured into the basin.
Several weeks had passed since the old man’s birthday party. During that time, a few incidents occurred, though nothing to compare with the visit from the Memory Police.
One of these was a chance encounter with an old woman during a walk one evening. She had come in from a farm somewhere and set out a mat along the road to sell vegetables. The selection was small, but her prices were cheaper than those at the markets in town, so I happily filled a bag with a cauliflower, bean sprouts, and some green peppers. But as I was handing over the money, she suddenly leaned in close to my face.
“Do you know a safe hiding place?” she whispered. I was so startled I nearly dropped the coins.
“What?” I blurted out, thinking I might have misunderstood.
“I’m looking for someone who can hide me,” she said clearly. But she did not glance at me as she slipped the money into a bag hanging from her belt. I looked around but saw no one except a few children playing in the park across the way.
“Are the Memory Police looking for you?” I asked, trying to appear as though we were simply chatting after my purchase. She said nothing more, perhaps afraid she’d already said too much.
I looked at her again. She seemed solidly built, but her clothes were threadbare. Her work pants, which had probably been fashioned out of material from an old kimono, were tattered, and the shawl she had wrapped around her shoulders was pilling. There were holes at the toes of her tennis shoes. The corners of her eyes were crusty with sleep, and her hands were chapped and swollen. But no matter how long I stared at her face, I had no recollection of having seen her before.
But then why had she made such an important request of someone she had never met? I found the whole thing puzzling. How did she know that I wouldn’t denounce her to the Memory Police? Was she really in such danger that she had no other choice? If so, I felt I wanted to do something to help her even if I couldn’t give her a place to hide. But then again it was also possible that this was some sort of trap laid by the Memory Police, as that was just the sort of trick to be expected from them. Or then again, perhaps this old woman already knew that I was hiding someone in my house, and she’d approached me because she wanted to be hidden as well. But that seemed unlikely. There was no way our secret had gotten out—not if the Memory Police themselves had been unable to discover it.
My mind was racing, but I found I couldn’t say a thing for a moment.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you,” I said finally, picking up the bag. The old woman said nothing more. Her expression was blank as she went back to arranging her vegetables, the coins clinking at her hip. “I’m sorry,” I said and hurried away.
Later, I was saddened at the thought of her red, swollen hands, but I knew there was nothing I could have done, given the situation. A careless move would have put R in danger. Still, I couldn’t get the woman out of my mind and for the next week, when I went out for my walk, I would find myself at her makeshift vegetable stand. Sometimes I would buy something, and other days I would pass by in silence. She always had the same modest assortment on offer, but she never seemed to give a sign that we’d met before and she never mentioned her need of a refuge again. Perhaps the enormity of her problem had caused her to completely forget my face, or the request she had made of me.
A week later, she suddenly vanished, and I had no way of knowing whether she had run out of vegetables to sell, or had moved on to a different spot, or had found a place to hide—or if she had been caught by the Memory Police.
Another significant incident that took place was that the former hatmaker and his wife who lived in the house across the way came to stay with me for the night. They were having their whole house painted and asked whether I could put them up just until the smell dissipated.
Needless to say, I offered them the Japanese-style room on the first floor, as far as possible from the hidden room. Though it caused both R and me no end of anxiety for the whole time they were there, refusing them would have been even more awkward.
“I’m sorry to put you out,” the hatmaker had said, “but it will take at least a day or two for the paint to dry, and we couldn’t really sleep with the windows open in this cold.”
“You’re more than welcome,” I told him, smiling as warmly as I could. “There’s plenty of room.”
That day, I got up well before they were due to arrive and made lots of sandwiches and tea and took them to the hidden room.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with this today,” I told R. He nodded silently, apparently a bit nervous himself. “And no footsteps, or running water for the toilet.” I repeated my cautions and then carefully closed the trapdoor, which would not open again until the following day.
The hatmaker and his wife were simple, honest people, not the type to poke around my house or ask question about my private life. She made herself at home in the Japanese-style room and occupied herself with her knitting much of the day. When the hatmaker got back from work, the three of us ate dinner and then chatted for a while in front of the television. Shortly after nine o’clock, they were ready for bed.
But the whole time they were there, my mind was focused on the second floor. Every sound frightened me, even those that had nothing to do with R—the distant moaning of the sea, honking horns, the wind—and I found myself studying their faces intently. But they showed no signs of suspicion. In fact, at times I myself felt that the hidden room must have emerged from a fevered dream and that my preoccupation with it was nothing more than some sort of hallucination.
The next day, when the paint had dried, they returned to their house. By way of thanking me, they sent a sack of flour, a can of sardines in oil, and a sturdy black umbrella that the hatmaker had made himself.
Also during this period I began taking care of the dog that had belonged to the neighbors to my east. The day after the family had been taken away, the Memory Police sent a truck to remove all the furniture from the house, but for some reason they had left the dog. For several days I fed him scraps or bowls of milk through the fence, but when it became clear that no one was coming for him, I consulted with the head of the neighborhood association and finally decided to adopt him.
The old man helped me move the doghouse into my garden, and then we drove a stake into the ground to secure his chain. We brought his dish, which had been covered in the snow, over from next door. The name “Don” was written on the roof of his house, so that is what I called him. I wasn’t sure whether this ref
erred to Don Juan or Don Quixote, but he was, at any rate, a docile and obedient animal. He very quickly grew accustomed to the old man and me. He was a mutt, with brown patches on his coat and a slight crimp in his left ear. Though it was rather odd for a dog, his favorite food was whitefish; he had a habit of licking the links of his chain.
So it was that a walk with Don during the warmest part of the day became one of my regular duties. Since the nights were cold, I made him a bed from an old blanket and let him sleep in a corner of the entry hall. It occurred to me that I was giving Don all the love and care I wished I could give to the couple who had been his owners, the boy who had been hidden in their house, the Inui family, and Mizore, their cat.
* * *
. . .
After these relatively uneventful weeks, another disappearance occurred. I thought I’d become accustomed to them, but this one was more complicated: this time novels disappeared.
* * *
. . .
As usual, it started during the night, but this time it developed more slowly. Throughout the morning, there was no apparent change in the town.
“We didn’t have a single novel in the house, so this one was easy. But it must be horrible for you as a writer. If there’s anything I can do to help, just let me know. Books are heavy things.”
I was standing in the street in front of the house when the former hatmaker came over to offer his condolences.
“Thanks,” I said, my voice barely audible.
Needless to say, R was violently opposed to losing our collection of novels.
“You’ve got to bring them all here,” he said, “including your manuscript.”
“If I do, the room will be buried in books, with no place for you to live.” I shook my head.
“Don’t worry about that, I don’t need much space. If we hide them here, they’ll never find them.”
“But then what happens to them? What’s the point of storing away books that have disappeared?”
He sighed and pressed his fingers to his temples—as he always did when we talked about the disappearances. Try as we might to understand each other, nothing changed for either of us. The more we talked, the sadder we became.
“You write novels. You of all people must know that you cannot choose between them, divide them into categories. They are all useful in their own way.”
“Yes, I know. Or at least I did until yesterday. But that’s all changed now. My soul seems to be breaking down.” I said those last words cautiously, as though I were handing over a fragile object. “Losing novels is hard for me,” I said. “It’s as though an important bond between the two of us is being cut.”
I stared at him for a moment.
“You mustn’t burn your manuscript. You must go on writing novels. That way, the bond will remain.”
“But that’s impossible. Novels have disappeared. Even if we keep the manuscripts and the books, they’re nothing more than empty boxes. Boxes with nothing inside. You can peer into them, listen carefully, sniff the contents, but they signify nothing. So what could I possibly write?”
“Don’t be impatient. You have to take your time and try to remember. Where did all those words come from? How did you find them?”
“I’m afraid I’ve lost my nerve. The word ‘novel’ itself is getting harder to pronounce. That’s how you know the disappearance is taking hold. It won’t be long now until I’ll have forgotten everything. Remembering is impossible.”
I lowered my head and ran my fingers through my hair. R leaned over to look up at me and rested his hands on my knees.
“No, it will be all right. You may think that the memories themselves vanish every time there’s a disappearance, but that’s not true. They’re just floating in a pool where the sunlight never reaches. All you have to do is plunge your hand in and you’re bound to find something. Something to bring back into the light. You have to try. I can’t just stand by watching as your soul withers.”
He took my hands in his, warming each finger.
“If I go on writing stories, will those memories protect me?”
“I know they will.” He nodded and I could feel his breath on my hands.
* * *
. . .
By evening, the disappearance was settling in more rapidly. People were bringing books to burn in fires that had been started in parks and fields and vacant lots. From the window of my study, I could see smoke and flames rising all over the island, being absorbed into the heavy, gray clouds that covered everything. The snow had turned filthy with soot.
In the end, I chose a dozen books from my shelves and took them to R for safekeeping, along with the manuscript I was writing. I asked the old man to help me pile the rest in the back of my bicycle cart, and we took them to burn at one of the fires. It would have been impossible to hide all of them, and furthermore I knew it would seem suspicious if I, as a writer, had nothing to destroy.
It was difficult to decide which books to keep and which to part with. Even as I picked up each volume, I realized I could no longer remember what it had been about. But I knew I couldn’t linger over these decisions, since it was quite possible the Memory Police would be around to check on my progress. In the end, I decided to keep books that had been given to me by dear friends and those with beautiful covers.
At five thirty, as dusk was falling, the old man and I set off, pulling the cart behind us.
Don came running, apparently eager to join us.
“We’re not going for a walk this time,” I told him. “We have important work to do. You keep guard at home.” He went to lie down on the blanket in the entranceway.
We passed several other people carrying heavy paper bags or bundles. The street was icy in places and there were snowdrifts, making it difficult to pull the cart. My books, which had been loaded in neat bundles, were soon reduced to a jumble in the cart, but since we were taking them to be burned, it didn’t seem to matter.
“If you get tired, you can climb on the cart and take a rest,” said the old man.
“Thanks, but I’m fine,” I told him.
We made our way along the main street, skirted the market, and arrived at last at the park in the center of town. The whole area was filled with light and heat. A great mountain of books was already burning, sending sparks high into the night sky. A crowd had gathered around the fire, and Memory Police officers could be seen standing among the trees just outside the circle.
“What an incredible sight…,” the old man murmured.
The flames, like some enormous living creature, shot up to the sky, higher than the streetlights, higher than the telephone poles. When the wind blew, a great mass of burning pages danced into the air. The snow had melted all around and the mud sucked at your shoes with each step. An orange light illuminated the slide, the seesaw, the park benches, the walls of the restroom building. The moon and the stars were nowhere to be seen, as though they had been scattered by the brilliance of the flames, and only the corpses of burned books lit the sky.
The people in the crowd, cheeks blazing with the fire, stared, openmouthed, at the spectacle before them. Stunned and silent, as if attending a solemn ceremony, they made no move to brush away the sparks that rained down on them.
The pile of books was taller than I was. Some had not yet caught fire, but it was impossible to read the titles. I squinted at the spines, though it would have made no difference had I been able to recognize them. Still, by watching them until the moment they disappeared, I hoped to preserve in my memory something from their pages.
There were books of all sorts—some in slipcases, some bound in leather, weighty tomes and slender novellas—piled together awaiting their turn in the flames. From time to time, the mountain would collapse with a muffled whoosh, the flames would shoot up, and the heat would grow more intense.
After one of these mo
ments, a young woman suddenly moved out of the circle of onlookers, climbed up on a bench, and began to shout something. Startled, the old man and I exchanged a nervous glance. Others in the crowd turned to look at her.
She was screaming so frantically that it was impossible to understand what she was saying. Arms flailing, saliva flying, she was clearly agitated, but it was hard to tell whether she was angry or just distraught.
She was dressed in a shabby overcoat and checked pants, and her long hair was tied up in a braid. On top of her head, perched at a jaunty angle, she wore an odd thing made of soft material. As she rocked violently to and fro, I found myself fearing it would come tumbling off.
“Do you think she’s mad?” I whispered to the old man.
“I wonder,” he answered, crossing his arms. “She seems to want them to put out the fire.”
“But why?”
“To stop the novels from disappearing, I suppose.”
“Do you mean, she’s—”
“—unable to rid herself of her memories. Poor thing.”
Her cries gradually rose to something close to a scream, but of course no one made a move to extinguish the enormous mountain of flames. The people nearby just watched her with pitying looks.
“They’ll take her if she goes on like that,” I said, starting toward the bench. “She’s got to get away, we’ve got to do something.”
“I’m afraid it’s too late,” said the old man, catching hold of me before I could move.
Three members of the Memory Police had appeared from the woods and were already pulling on her arms. She tried to resist, clinging to the bench, but it was hopeless. The thing on her head fell into the mud.
“No one can erase the stories!” The last words she said as they dragged her away were the only ones I was able to understand clearly.
I heard sighs from the people around us as they turned back to stare at the fire. I looked down at the thing she had left on the ground, which was now even more limp and filthy than it had been. Her words continued to ring in my ears—“No one can erase the stories.”