The Memory Police

Chapter 13

It was the first time in ages that snow had fallen. When it started, it had seemed as though white sand was being blown in with the wind, but gradually the flakes grew larger, and in no time the whole countryside was covered. Snow collected on the tiniest leaves on the trees, on the streetlights, on the window frames—and it stayed there for a very long time.

The hunt for memories became a daily activity in the midst of the snowstorm. The Memory Police roamed the town in trench coats and boots. The coats were made of material that looked soft and warm, and the collars and cuffs were trimmed in fur that had been dyed deep green. You could have searched every clothing store on the island and never have found such elegant coats—which made them stand out immediately in any crowd.

Sometimes the Memory Police would appear in the middle of the night, completely surrounding a whole block with their trucks, and search every house without exception. At times these searches would yield results, but at other times they came up empty. No one knew which block would be chosen next. I began waking at night at the slightest sound. My eyes focused on the pattern in the carpet, floating up out of the darkness, while my thoughts turned to R, holding his breath below. I prayed he would pass the night in safety.

The townspeople avoided going out any more than necessary, and on weekends they stayed home and shoveled the snow. They closed their curtains at dusk and lived as quietly as possible. It was as though the snow had frozen their hearts.

Nor did the secret we harbored escape the influence of the island’s oppressive atmosphere. One day, out of the blue, the old man was taken by the Memory Police.

I raised the trapdoor and called, “They must have learned something! What should we do?”

I was trembling so hard it was difficult to climb down the ladder, and when I reached the floor, I collapsed on the bed.

“I’m sure they’ll be coming soon. We’ve got to hide you somewhere safer, but where? We should hurry before it’s too late. What about going to your wife’s family? But I suppose that’s the first place they’d look. No, I know. What about the abandoned school where we leave her messages? There must be plenty of rooms you could use: the teachers’ lounge or a laboratory, the library or the cafeteria. That would be the perfect place to hide. I’ll go to prepare it right away.”

R sat down next to me and put his arm around my shoulders. As the warmth of his hand worked its way into my skin, I trembled harder and harder, unable to stop myself—even though I knew he meant his touch to soothe me.

“The first thing we need to do is calm down.” He spoke slowly as he loosened my fingers from his knee one by one. “If they knew about this place, they wouldn’t have arrested him, they would have come straight here. So there’s nothing to worry about for the present—they haven’t found us out. But they might, if we make a careless mistake. More than likely, they are looking elsewhere.”

“But why did they take the old man?” I asked.

“You can’t think of any reason? Had he been stopped on the street while he was carrying something suspicious? Or had the Memory Police come to search the old boat?”

“No, nothing like that,” I said, staring at the tips of my fingers, which were still numb despite his gentle care.

“So then don’t worry. The investigation probably has nothing to do with me. They’re always gathering information. They round up anyone and question him or her about anything at all. A neighbor raising roses in his greenhouse; someone buying slightly more bread than strictly necessary for the number of people in their family; suspicious shadows on the window curtains—things like that. At any rate, we should wait here as quietly as we can. That’s the best plan.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I just hope nothing terrible has happened to him.”

“What could have happened?”

“They could have tortured him. There’s no knowing what they’re capable of. And then even if he didn’t want to, he might break down and tell them about this place.”

“You mustn’t let yourself worry so much.” R hugged my shoulder tightly. The electric coils of the space heater lit our faces from below, and the fan continued to rotate with a creaking noise, like the whimper of some small animal.

“If you tell me you need me to leave here, I’ll go,” he said, his voice low and calm.

“No, of course not. I wouldn’t dream of it. I’m not afraid of being arrested. I’m afraid that you’ll disappear. That’s why I’m trembling like this.”

I shook my head as I said this, my hair brushing against his sweater. He held me in his arms for a long while, though there was no way to measure the flow of time in this room where the sun never entered.

I wondered how long we sat there. As the heat of his body warmed me, the trembling gradually subsided. Finally, I pulled free of his embrace and stood up.

“I’m sorry to have lost my nerve,” I said.

“There’s no need to apologize. The old man is our friend.” He looked down at his lap.

“I suppose all I can do is pray,” I said.

“I’ll pray, too.”

I climbed the ladder and released the latch. Then I pushed open the trapdoor. When I turned to look back, R was still sitting on the bed, staring at the coil in the heater.

The next day, without consulting R, I decided to pay a visit to the headquarters of the Memory Police. I knew that he would have been opposed if I had so much as mentioned this plan, and it was true that nothing good was likely to come from intentionally entering their stronghold. But I couldn’t sit by and do nothing. Even if I couldn’t get in to see the old man, I would probably be able to learn something about his situation and perhaps even send something to him in his cell. I wanted to help him in any way I could.

The sun was shining weakly that morning, but on the sidewalks, the snow was still piled up, fluffy and new, and it came up to my ankles with each step I took. The Memory Police wore snow boots, but the townspeople had great difficulty making their way through the streets. With their backs bent and their bags clutched to their chests, they pushed ahead step by careful step, like so many animals trudging along, lost in thought.

The snow poured down into my shoes as I walked, and before long my socks were soaking wet. In my bag, I had brought some extra clothes, a blanket, a hand warmer, a tin of hard candies, and five rolls I had baked earlier that morning. On the avenue where the tramway ran, an old theater had been renovated to serve as the Memory Police headquarters. The main entrance was reached by climbing a flight of wide stone steps flanked on either side by ornate pillars. The flag of the Memory Police hung limply atop the building in the still morning air.

Guards were posted on either side of the entrance, their legs slightly apart, hands crossed behind their backs, eyes staring straight ahead. I hesitated, unsure whether I should announce my business to them or try to enter without saying anything. The wooden door ahead of me was thick and heavy, and I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to open it by myself. But the guards continued to ignore me, as though they were under orders not to speak.

“I wonder if I could ask a question.” Having summoned my courage, I addressed the guard on the right. “I’ve come to see someone and deliver a few things to him, and I’d like to know where I should go.”

The guard continued looking straight ahead and never batted an eyelash. He was pale and much younger than I was, just a boy. The fur trim at his collar looked damp, as though snow had melted on it.

“Then may I go inside?” I said, this time addressing the guard on the left. But the result was the same. So, having no other choice, I put my hand on the knob and tried to pull the door open. As I’d imagined, it was extremely heavy, but by hitching my bag over my shoulder and tugging with both hands, I was at last able to move it little by little. Needless to say, neither young man made any move to help me.

Inside, the hall was dim, with an enormously high ceiling. A number of officers dressed in the familiar uniforms paced back and forth across the room. There were also a few outsiders hurrying along with tense looks on their faces, but no voices could be heard, no sound of laughter. Nor was there any music playing. Just the ringing of heels against the hard floor.

Facing me was a gently curving stairway leading to a mezzanine lobby, and behind that an elaborate elevator left over from the days when the building had been a theater. To my left were a massive antique desk and chair. An enormous chandelier hung from the ceiling, but the glass around the electric bulbs was cloudy and it cast much less light than one would have imagined. And every available space—next to the elevator buttons, over the telephone on the wall, on the pillars under the staircase—was hung with pennants emblazoned with the insignia of the Memory Police.

An officer was seated at the desk, utterly absorbed in something he was writing. Deciding this must be the reception area, I took a deep breath and approached him.

“I have a package I’d like to have delivered to an acquaintance…” My voice trailed off, echoing from the ceiling before being lost in the vastness of the hall.

“Package?” He paused, twirling his pen in his fingers, and repeated the word as though trying to recall the meaning of some rarely used philosophical term.

“Yes,” I said, thinking this was at least an improvement from the stony guards outside. “Just a few things I thought he could use, some clothes and food.”

The man replaced the cap on his pen with a loud click and then cleared away the pages he had been working on to make space on the desk, where he then rested his folded hands. Finally, he looked up at me with a blank expression on his face.

“Actually, I’d like to see him in person, if that’s possible.” Since I was getting barely any response at all, I decided to throw caution to the wind and add this request.

“And whom would you like to visit?” he said, his words quite polite but his tone so flat that it was difficult to read. I said the old man’s name and then repeated it a second time.

“I’m afraid he’s not here,” he said.

“But how can you be sure if you haven’t even checked?” I answered.

“There’s no need to check. I know the names of everyone who is being held here.”

“But they bring in new people every day. Do you mean to say you memorize the names of every one of them?”

“That’s right. That’s my job, you see.”

“My friend was just brought in yesterday. I’d be very grateful if you could check to see whether he’s here. He must be listed somewhere.”

“I’m afraid that would be useless.”

“Then where is he?”

“This is our headquarters, but we have branch offices in many other places. The only thing I can tell you is that the person you are looking for is not here.”

“So he’s being held in one of your other offices. Could you tell me which one?”

“Our work is divided up into a number of divisions, and the structure is complex. It’s not as simple as you might imagine.”

“I never said it was simple. I just want to get this package to my friend.”

The man’s brow knit with frustration. The brightly polished desk lamp illuminated his folded hands, highlighting the bulging veins. His papers were thickly covered with numbers and letters in a script I did not understand. The rest of the tools of his trade were close at hand—files and cards, a bottle of correction fluid, a letter opener, a stapler.

“You don’t seem to understand how it works,” he murmured, glancing at someone or something behind me. It was the subtlest of gestures, but in an instant two officers appeared and stood on either side of me. These men wore fewer badges on their chests, so I assumed they must be of lower rank than the officer at the desk.

After that, things moved along in silence. Orders were unnecessary, since the procedure had apparently been decided in advance. I was hurried into the elevator, an officer on either side, and then guided through a maze of corridors and into a room at the heart of the building.

As I looked about me, I was puzzled by the unexpected luxury of the furnishings: elegant leather couches, Gobelins tapestries on the walls, a crystal chandelier, and heavy curtains on the windows. There was even a maid who brought in tea. I wondered what they had in store for me. But when I recalled the fancy limousine that had come to take away my mother, I knew I had to be on my guard. I sat down on the couch and set my bag on my lap.

“I’m sorry you’ve gone to the trouble of coming all this way through the snow, but both visits and packages are forbidden.”

The man who had come to sit across from me was short and slender, but the elaborate insignias and medals on his chest seemed to indicate he was quite important. His large eyes made it easier to read his expression. The guards who had brought me to the room stood at the door.

“But why is that?” I said, though I was conscious that I had done nothing but ask questions since I’d arrived at the headquarters.

“Because those are the rules,” the man replied, his eyebrows raised.

“There’s nothing dangerous here, you can see for yourself,” I said, turning over my bag and emptying the contents onto the table between us. The candy tin and the hand warmer rattled noisily as they tumbled out.

“You have no need to worry. Your friend has plenty to eat and a warm room to sleep in,” the man said, ignoring my offerings.

“He’s an old man whose memories disappear right on schedule. He spends his days doing almost nothing at all. Surely you can’t have any reason to keep him here.”

“That’s for us to determine.”

“Then can you tell me what you’ve decided?”

“You have a talent for asking the impossible, young lady.” The man pressed his fingers against his temples. “Most of what we do here must be kept secret. That’s the nature of our work,” he added.

“Then can you at least tell me whether he’s being kept safe somewhere?”

“I can assure you he’s perfectly safe. And haven’t you just told me there’s no need to interrogate him? Or is there something that causes you to worry that he might come to harm?”

I told him no, that there was nothing, and reminded myself that I mustn’t get drawn into this sort of exchange.

“Then you have nothing to worry about. We are asking only for his cooperation. He’s being served three meals a day, as much as he can eat, and the chefs who work for us come from first-class restaurants. Even if we were to send him that,” he said, casting a disdainful glance at the objects on the table, “I suspect he wouldn’t want to eat any of it.”

“I suppose your rules also prevent you from telling me when he’ll be able to go home?”

“Indeed they do,” the man said, smiling and recrossing his legs. “You catch on quickly.” The tassel from one of the medals on his chest shook. “Our primary function here is to assure that there are no delays in the process and that useless memories disappear quickly and easily. I’m sure you’d agree that there’s no point in holding on to them. If your big toe becomes infected with gangrene, you cut it off as soon as you can. If you do nothing, you end up losing the whole leg. The principle is the same. The only difference is that you can’t touch or see memories, or get inside the hearts they’re kept in. Each one of us hides them away in secret. So, since our adversary is invisible, we are forced to use our intuition. It is extremely delicate work. In order to unmask these invisible secrets, to analyze and sort and dispose of them, we must work in secret, to protect ourselves. I think you can understand.” He stopped his monologue here and began tapping the table with his fingers.

I could see the streetcar running outside the window. As it turned the corner, a layer of snow slid from the roof. However weakly, the sun was shining for the first time in many days, and the glare from the snow was blinding. Outside the entrance to the bank across the way, people were lined up to withdraw money. As they waited, they rubbed their hands together and hunched their shoulders against the cold.

Inside, the temperature was comfortable. It was silent, except for the tapping of the man’s fingers. The guards continued to stand quietly by the door. I looked down at my muddy shoes, realizing that my stockings had dried at some point.

I came to the conclusion that it would be useless to inquire further about the old man. Thinking back over everything that had been said since I’d entered the building, I realized I had no idea what had become of him. I gathered the items on the table and returned them to my bag. The rolls, which had been warm when I’d left home, were completely cold.

“Now then,” said the man, taking a sheet of paper from a drawer in the table, “it’s my turn to ask you some questions.” The paper, gray and shiny, contained boxes with endless categories: name, address, and occupation, of course, but also academic history, medical history, religious affiliation, employment experience, height, weight, shoe size, hair color, blood type, and on and on. “Please fill this out,” he said, taking a pen from his pocket and setting it in front of me.

That was the moment I began to regret having come. The more information I provided, the closer they would be to R. I should have realized that beforehand. Still, it was even more dangerous to hesitate. Given their history with my mother, it was more than likely they already knew all the information they were asking me to write down. They weren’t interested in my name and address; they were testing me. So the important thing was to remain calm, to act naturally.

Telling myself exactly that, I looked the man in the eye as I picked up the pen. The questions weren’t particularly difficult, but in order to avoid trembling, I moved my hand more slowly than usual across the paper. The pen glided smoothly, and I could tell it must be expensive.

“Please,” said the man, nodding at the tea. “Before it gets cold.”

“Thank you,” I murmured, but at the first sip I knew it wasn’t tea I was drinking. The smell and flavor were subtly different, like nothing I’d ever consumed. A mixture of bitter and sour, as though brewed from dried leaves piled up on a forest floor. The taste was bearable, but it took considerable courage to swallow that first sip, since I was all but certain it was drugged. Was it a potion to make me sleep so they could extract my secrets, or a solution that would allow them to analyze my genes? Or who knew what else?

The man stared at me from across the table, and I could feel the eyes of the men by the door as well. I drained the cup in silence and then handed him the completed form.

“Excellent,” he said, glancing down at the page with a slight smile as he returned the pen to his pocket. The tassel on his medal brushed back and forth.

It snowed again that night. I found I wasn’t at all sleepy, wired from the stress of the afternoon and the strange drink. I took out my manuscript, thinking I would make some progress on my novel, but not a single word came to mind. In the end, I sat by the window and watched the snow through the gap in the curtains.

After some time, I moved aside the dictionary and thesaurus on my desk and pulled out the funnel hidden behind them that we had rigged as a speaker.

“Are you asleep yet?” I asked, my voice hesitant and quiet.

“No, not yet,” R answered, and I could hear the mattress springs squeaking. The funnel in the hidden room was mounted on the wall next to his bed. “What’s happening?”

“Nothing in particular,” I said. “I just can’t sleep.”

The funnel was made of aluminum, dented and quite old. Though I had washed it carefully, it retained a faint odor of spices from its days in the kitchen.

“It’s snowing again,” I told him.

“Is that so? It must be getting deep.”

“It is,” I said. “This is an unusual year.”

“It’s hard to believe it’s snowing just outside the wall here.”

I liked the sound of R’s voice through the makeshift speakers. Like a spring bubbling up from far below me. As it traversed the long rubber tube between the two funnels, all unnecessary sounds faded away, leaving only the soft, transparent liquid of his voice. I pressed my ear against the funnel, unwilling to waste even a single drop.

“Sometimes I put my hand on the wall and try to imagine what’s going on outside. It almost seems as though I can sense it—the direction of the wind, the cold, the damp, where you are, the sound of the river, all the vague signs. But in the end, it never works. The wall is just a wall. There’s nothing on the other side, no connection to anything else. This room is completely closed off. All my effort only serves to convince me that I’m living in a cave, suspended in the middle of nothingness.”

“Everything outside is completely different from when you came here. The snow has changed everything.”

“Changed how?”

“Well, it’s difficult to describe. For one thing, the world is completely buried. The snow is so deep that the sun barely starts to melt it when it does come out. It rounds everything, makes it look lumpy, and it somehow makes everything seem much smaller—the sky and sea, the hills and the forest and the river. And we all go around with our shoulders hunched over.”

“Is that so?” he said, and I could hear the springs squeaking again. Perhaps he had stretched out on the bed as we talked.

“Right now, the flakes are quite large, as though all the stars are falling out of the sky. They dance in the shadows and glint in the streetlights and bump into one another. Can you picture it?”

“I’m not sure I can. It’s almost too beautiful to imagine.”

“It’s truly lovely,” I said. “But I suppose that even on a night like this, the Memory Police are out there hunting. Perhaps some memories never perish, even in this cold.”

“I suspect you’re right. And I doubt the cold has any effect. Memories are a lot tougher than you might think. Just like the hearts that hold them.”

“Is that so?”

“You sound as though that’s a bad thing.”

“It’s just that you have to hide here because of those memories. If you could let yours fade away like the rest of us, there’d be no need.”

“Oh, I see.” The words were half murmur, half sigh.

When we talked using this makeshift system, we were forced to move the funnel back and forth from our ears to our mouths, leaving a brief silence between each utterance. And thanks to these pauses, the most mundane conversation sounded quite important.

“If it keeps up like this, I’ll have to shovel the walk tomorrow morning,” I said, reaching out to part the curtains a bit wider. “Trucks from the town hall come every Monday and Thursday to collect the snow. They dump it into the sea at the harbor near the old man’s boat. It gets terribly dirty and sad on the way, and you can hear the sound when it gets sucked into the water, as though the sea were swallowing it down its enormous throat.”

“They throw it into the sea? I didn’t know that.”

“It’s the perfect place. But I’ve watched from the wheelhouse on the boat, and I always wonder what happens to it after it vanishes into the waves.”

“I suspect it melts almost immediately,” R said. “Melts and mixes with the salt water, and then onto the fishes and the seaweed.”

“I suppose so. Or the whales drink it in, release it to the tides.”

I switched the funnel to my right ear and rested my elbow on the desk.

“At any rate, it’s gone without a trace,” I added.

“Yes, I suppose it is.” He took a breath.

The windows were dark in the neighboring houses, and no noise reached me, no sirens, no cars, not even the wind. The whole town slept, and the only waking sound was the voice coming to me through the funnel.

Though the old man had done a wonderful job of constructing our listening system, it was still extremely rudimentary, and the slightest twist of the tube or tilting of the funnel made our voices seem distant and weak. Nor did it do much good to speak louder. I put my mouth into the funnel and let my words tumble down the tube.

“When I was a child, I was drawn to the mystery of sleep. I imagined it as a land with no homework, no bad meals, no organ lessons, no pain or self-denial or tears. When I was eight years old, I was thinking of running away from home. I no longer remember why. The reason was probably something insignificant—a bad grade on a test or the fact that I was the only one in the class who couldn’t do a pull-up. I decided to run away in search of the land of sleep.”

“That was quite a plan for an eight-year-old.”

“I put it into effect one Sunday when my parents were away at a wedding. My nanny was in the hospital for gallbladder surgery. I found a bottle of sleeping pills in a drawer in my father’s desk. I had seen him take a pill every night before he went to bed. I don’t remember how many I took that day. I certainly intended to take as many as possible, but it was probably just four or five. But soon I started to feel sleepy, and I let myself drift off, satisfied that I’d taken enough to ensure that I would be going to the land of sleep and would never return.”

“So what happened?” R asked, his tone careful.

“Nothing, really. I slept, of course, but there was no world of sleep. Just darkness stretching out in every direction. No, that doesn’t quite capture it. It wasn’t even darkness. There was nothing, nothing at all, no air or noise or gravity—not even me to experience them. Just overwhelming nothingness. It was evening when I woke again. I looked around, wondering how long I’d slept. Five days? A month? A year? The windows were dyed with the colors of the sunset. But I realized almost immediately that it was the evening of that same day. My parents had come home from the wedding, but neither of them seemed to realize that I’d slept the entire day. They were animated and wanted me to taste the cake they had brought home from the reception.”

“The pills didn’t make you sick?”

“On the contrary, I felt refreshed after so much sleep. Which made the whole thing worse. Perhaps they weren’t sleeping pills at all, but just vitamins or something. In any case, I never made it to the land of sleep or anywhere else—like the snow vanishing into the sea.”

The night had deepened and my hand had grown cold holding the funnel. The flame in the stove was wavering, the fuel having run low.

“Would you like me to hold the funnel by the window so you can hear the snow falling?”

I stood up to open the window. The cold was sharper than I’d imagined, and it stung my cheeks. The tube was not long enough, but I pulled it out as far as it would go to bring the outside air to R. As I opened the window, the snow swirled upward for a moment, then quickly settled back into its quiet pattern.

“How is that?” I asked. The snow falling into the room collected on my hair.

“Aah, I can feel it. I can feel the snow.”

His quiet words were absorbed into the night.