The Memory Police

by Yoko Ogawa

  “All right. The rest of you come forward slowly, but make sure we can see your papers as you pass. When we’ve cleared you, hurry up and get on the train.” With a wave of his hand, the officer who seemed to be in charge dismissed the farmer and ordered us through the checkpoint. My arms were aching from the weight of the three bags, but I fumbled in the pocket of my coat and pulled out my identification as quickly as I could. The old man asked the girl’s mother to retrieve his from his pants pocket. And so it was that the remaining passengers passed through the ticket gate in a single mass—with only a cursory glance at our papers and no luggage inspection at all. Once through, we ran toward the platform, because we’d been ordered to, but also because we were anxious to get away before the Memory Police officers changed their minds. The girl apologized to the old man again and again as he carried her onto the train, and as soon as we had collapsed into seats, the wheels began to turn.

  * * *

  . . .

  It was after ten o’clock when we finally sat down to dinner that evening. We had parted with the mother and daughter when we changed trains to catch the express into Central Station. From there, we took the bus home, saying barely a word the whole way. The trains and buses were crowded and hardly seemed like the right place for a talk, and we were elated but exhausted from our good fortune at the checkpoint. Even the old man, who was always a tower of strength in a tight situation, seemed almost too tired to sit up.

  After we reached the house, we sat, dazed, on the living room sofa for a time, our bags left where we dropped them. We lacked the energy to open them and investigate the contents.

  Dinner was little more than a plate of crackers, pickles, and a few slices of an apple that we’d received as thanks from the mother and daughter on the train.

  “I’m sorry there’s nothing warm to eat,” I said.

  “No, this is perfect,” the old man answered, reaching toward the pickles with his fork. I washed down a dry cracker with a glass of water and stared at the plate without really seeing it. The old man tried several times to skewer a pickle without success, his fork stabbing at the empty air, and just when I thought he had one, he’d miss and hit the plate or the tablecloth instead. Then he tried adjusting his grip on the fork, but that was no better. Finally, he cocked his head and stared at his target with a worried frown, as if trying to swat a nasty insect.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked, but he didn’t seem to hear me. “What’s wrong?” I asked again, but he just continued his futile efforts. I could see that his mouth had gone slack and his lips were turning blue. “That’s enough,” I told him. “I’ll get one for you.” I took the fork from his hand, stuck it into a pickle, and lifted it to his mouth.

  “Ah, ah, thank you…,” he murmured, as though regaining consciousness.

  “Are you feeling ill? Are you dizzy? Numb anywhere?”

  I moved closer and rubbed his shoulder, just as he had always done to comfort me.

  “No, not at all. I’m just a little tired,” he said, munching on his pickle.

  Two weeks had passed and the old man had finally recovered from the exhaustion of the trip to the cabin and the fright we’d had at the checkpoint. He was his energetic self once again, finishing all the housework while I was away at the office and even going out to help the neighbors shovel snow. His strength and appetite and spirits had all returned to normal.

  We decided that we would not tell R what had happened at the station. It would have upset him terribly, and there was nothing he could have done about it, even if he had known. No matter what disappeared next, no matter how close the Memory Police came to finding us, he could do nothing but remain in the secret room.

  But he was very anxious to see what was inside the statues we had brought back from the cabin. He urged us to hurry, as though he were waiting to meet old friends he had not heard from in decades. For the old man and me, however, the job of breaking open the statues and revealing their contents was far less exciting—not to mention the fact that we were not sure how best to go about it. We knew beforehand that no matter how precious the discoveries we were making, our hearts would remain frozen in the face of them, and it was terribly sad to see R’s futile attempts to thaw us, to move us with these objects. For us, the more pressing concerns were whether we would be able to find something for the three of us to have for dinner or when the Memory Police would make their next visit.

  Still, since we could not leave the backpacks and suitcase sitting out forever, we decided to set to work on the statues on the following Sunday. First, we carried them to the basement, lined them up on the worktable, and tapped each one with a hammer. The trick was knowing how hard to hit them. For some, a light tap was enough to break the statue neatly in two, but for most of them it was not nearly so simple. We were afraid that striking too hard would destroy the contents along with the statue, and we also worried about making too much noise. Not many people took the path that ran between the house and the river, but there was nothing to prevent the Memory Police from passing through on patrol and hearing suspicious noises.

  We took turns with the hammer, one of us trying various angles and degrees of force, while the other kept watch out the door that led to the laundry platform. If anyone passed by, a quick signal halted the work for a moment.

  In the end, we found that each statue concealed a single object, different from the others. One was so tiny we almost failed to notice it, another was wrapped in oiled paper, a third had a complicated shape. There was a black one, a sharp one, a fuzzy one, a thin one, a sparkly one, a soft one…

  The old man and I were completely disoriented. If we held them too tightly, would they break? Should we pick them up with tweezers or some other tool? Would we leave fingerprints? We had no idea. We could do nothing more than stare at each object in silence.

  “It’s hard to believe they’ve been hidden away for fifteen years. They seem so new and untouched,” said the old man.

  “You’re right,” I agreed.

  There were more objects than could have been held in the drawers of the chest under the stairs. My mother must have had other secret hiding places. As I continued to study them, I began to be able to distinguish the objects I’d seen long ago in the basement and dimly recall some of the stories my mother had told me. But that was the extent of it. The swamp of my memory was shallow and still.

  * * *

  . . .

  When we brought the objects up to R arrayed on a tray, he greeted us from the bottom of the ladder, a grin on his face.

  “We were worried they’d break if we put them in a bag, so we brought them like this,” I told him.

  “You didn’t need to be that careful,” he said, running his eyes over the assortment.

  The hidden room was too small to set out everything in one place, so we put some on the shelves and others down on the floor. Being careful not to tread on them, the three of us made our way to the bed and sat down.

  “I feel as though I’m dreaming,” R said. “I never thought there would be so many of them…Oh! This brings back memories! I had one just like it, but when the disappearance came my father burned it. And this! It’s worth a fortune. We should take good care of it—though I suppose we’re not likely to find any buyers even if we did want to sell…But look, just touch this one. Don’t be afraid. It feels wonderful.”

  All this came out in a rush, and then he continued more slowly. “Your mother hid everything away with such care! We should be grateful to her.” He picked up one object after another and told us what it was used for, or the memories he associated with it. The old man and I could only listen, barely able to get a word in.

  “I’m glad they please you so much,” I said when at last he had finished his explanations and paused to take a deep breath.

  “But that’s hardly the point,” he responded. “I’m not the one who needs these things—you two are.” Th
e old man let out a low sigh, as though lost in thought. “I truly believe they have the power to change you, to alter your hearts and minds. The slightest sensation can have an effect, can help you remember. These things will restore your memories.”

  The old man and I glanced at each other and then looked down. We had known that R would tell us something like this, but now that we were confronted with his actual words, no appropriate response came to mind.

  “If we do remember something,” said the old man, struggling to find words, “what do we do then?”

  “Nothing in particular. We’re all free to do as we choose with our own memories,” R said.

  “I suppose memories live here and there in the body,” the old man said, moving his hand from his chest to the top of his head. “But they’re invisible, aren’t they? And no matter how wonderful the memory, it vanishes if you leave it alone, if no one pays attention to it. They leave no trace, no evidence that they ever existed. But I suppose you’re right when you say we should do everything we can to bring back memories of the things that have disappeared.”

  “You should,” said R, after a moment’s pause. “Our memories have been battered by the disappearances, and even now when it’s almost too late, we still don’t realize the importance of the things that have been lost. Here, look at this,” he said, picking up the manuscript pages that had been sitting on the desk. “These exist here and now, no doubt about it. As do the characters written on them. A mind that we cannot see has created a story that we can. They may have burned the novels, but your heart did not disappear. We know, because you’re sitting here next to me right now. The two of you have rescued me, so I must do everything I can to return the favor.”

  I looked at the sheets of paper R had clutched in his hand. The old man held his fingers to his temples, as though trying to follow the train of the conversation.

  “But what if everything on the island disappears?” I murmured. The two of them were silent for a moment. I realized I had said something that should not be said, and they seemed stunned to silence by the fear that once these words had been said aloud, it might actually come to pass.

  “Even if the whole island disappears, this room will still be here,” R said. His tone was even and calm, filled with love, as though he were reading an inscription engraved on a stone monument. “Don’t we have all the memories preserved here in this room? The emerald, the map, the photograph, the harmonica, the novel—everything. This is the very bottom of the mind’s swamp, the place where memories come to rest.”

  * * *

  . . .

  Several weeks passed largely without incident. My typing skills improved considerably, and I was given a number of projects at the office. Spices continued to sell well, and with our market expanding to include jams and jellies and frozen foods, we were quite busy. Some days I worked overtime and got home late, but thanks to the old man there was no need to worry about the house. He took care of everything, from shopping and cooking to cleaning and looking after R.

  One day, the drain got clogged and we were unable to run the water. Under normal circumstances we would simply have called a plumber, but for us even a clogged pipe could have been fatal. So, instead, the old man spent a day and a half covered in mud and snow before we could use the plumbing again.

  There was also a day when Don fell ill. I’d wondered why he was rubbing his head against the wall of his doghouse, and then I noticed a sticky yellow liquid coming from one of his ears. When I wiped it with a cotton ball, he squinted his eyes and looked up at me as if to say he was sorry to be causing so much trouble. But a half hour later his ear was running again.

  I thought for a moment, unsure whether I should take him to the veterinarian. He was no ordinary dog, in the sense that his former owners had been taken away by the Memory Police. And I knew they kept a close watch on the doctors and hospitals, hoping to trap people who were forced out of hiding to seek medical care. So if someone realized that Don had been overlooked in a search by the Memory Police, it could mean a great deal of trouble for us. And even if I said that I’d simply adopted him when he’d been abandoned, there was nothing to prevent them from taking me in for questioning anyway.

  On the other hand, had they been interested in Don, they could have taken him away with them during the raid, or when they’d come back to search the house. But they had ignored him. So there was nothing to be worried about, I concluded, deciding to take him to the neighborhood veterinarian.

  The vet was an old man with white hair and a kindly, almost priestlike manner. He cleaned Don’s ear, treated it with an ointment, and prescribed some pills for me to give him for a week.

  “Just a minor infection,” he said, scratching Don’s throat. “Nothing to worry about.” Don wriggled with pleasure on the examination table, looking up at the doctor as if to say he didn’t want the visit to end. I was relieved to realize that all my worry had been unnecessary.

  One other small event was the haircut the old man gave R. Obviously, he had not been to the barber since he’d come to live in the hidden room, and his hair was getting unsightly, but it proved to be something of an ordeal to manage a haircut in the narrow room that was now overflowing with disappeared objects.

  First, the old man spread newspapers on the tiny space remaining on the floor. Once R was seated there, he wrapped a towel and a plastic sheet around his neck and fastened them with clothespins. Then he began cutting R’s hair, moving nimbly around in the confined space to find just the right angles. I watched from the bed.

  “I didn’t know you were a barber, too,” I said.

  “I’m not, really. I just cut here and there, almost at random.” As he talked, the scissors moved continuously over R’s head. From time to time R would roll his eyes up, attempting to see what was happening to him, but the old man would grip his head. “Hold still please,” he told him.

  The finished product proved to be quite passable. While it was clear that the old man was not a professional, R seemed satisfied, and the slightly uneven patches had the effect of making him look younger.

  Cleaning up afterward was another ordeal. Despite having taken precautions with the newspaper, hair seemed to have made its way into every corner of the room, and we spent a long time sweeping it out from under all the objects.

  * * *

  . . .

  After this period of relative calm, I was walking Don one Saturday evening when I happened to meet the old man on the hill, not far from the ruins of the library.

  “Ah!” I called. “Done with the shopping already? Did you get anything good?” He was sitting on a pile of charred bricks and raised his hand to wave when he noticed me.

  “No, just the usual. A shriveled cabbage, three carrots, some corn, yogurt that’s two days beyond its sell-by date, and a little bit of pork.”

  I tied Don to a tree nearby and sat down next to the old man.

  “Well, we can manage with that. At least for the week. But you spend more and more energy just to get enough for us to live on. I suppose it’s even worse for someone living alone. How could anyone work and still find time to hunt through the shops and markets for hours a day?”

  “It would be impossible. It’s awful when food is so difficult to find.” He poked at the bricks with the toe of his shoe. Pieces fell from the pile, scattering in the snow.

  The library had been reduced to a mound of blackened rubble, and it seemed as though the smoke might start rising again from between the bricks at any moment. The lawn in front of the entrance, which had been so carefully tended, was now hidden under the snow. Far below, the sea spread out to the horizon.

  “What are you doing, sitting out here in the cold?” I asked him.

  “Looking at the boat,” he said. “It’s been just the same since the day of the earthquake—half sunk out there, catching the waves as they race to shore. But the part protru
ding above the water seems smaller today, as though it’s being pulled under, though it may just be my imagination.”

  “Would you like to go back to your old life?” I asked him, knowing that the question was pointless, that the boat would never come back. And I knew how he would answer.

  “No, not at all,” he said, shaking his head vigorously. “I couldn’t be happier living with you. If it wasn’t for your kindness, I would be wandering the streets. Why would I ever want to go back to the way it was before? Besides, the boat was worn out. Even without the earthquake, it would have sunk sooner or later. That’s the way with the things that have disappeared.”

  “I know, but I worry that the earthquake changed everything too suddenly, that it was too shocking.”

  “No, the truth is that I was dying under that rubble and you saved me. There was nothing to be shocked about. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for what you’ve done, and I’m not watching the boat out of nostalgia, but to remind myself how lucky I am.”

  We stopped talking then and looked out at the sea. The color of the sky began to change slowly at the horizon, and the boat was swallowed up by the dusk. The beach and the docks were deserted, and the only signs of life were the cars running along the coastal road. Don was restless and looking for attention, wagging his tail and staring over at us, licking his chain, scratching at the tree trunk. His ear, which had begun to heal, must have been itchy, and it twitched from time to time.

  I turned and looked up the hill at the observatory, half buried under a heavy blanket of snow. It had been unnecessary for the Memory Police to bulldoze it, since it was already in ruins. The sign for the arboretum along the promenade was still standing, but the arrow pointed in the direction of a void. Nothing remained on the hillside except things that were quietly awaiting their ruin.