The Memory Police

Chapter 19

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 referred 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 moments, 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.”

“Of course! A hat!” I was suddenly able to remember. “The man who lives across the street used to make them, but they disappeared years ago. You wore them on your head—the way she did—didn’t you?”

I looked up at the old man, but he just seemed puzzled.

At that moment someone moved out of the crowd, picked up the hat, and, without a word, tossed it into the fire. It spun as it flew and then fell among the flames.

“Well then, we should be getting on with it,” the old man said.

“You’re right,” I said, looking up from the spot where the hat lay burning.

We left the cart near the fountain and walked toward the fire, our arms filled with books. But as we approached, the heat grew more fierce and sparks threatened to burn our clothes and hair, so we could not get very close.

“You should keep back,” the old man said, as always worried for my safety. “I can manage.”

“No, it’s fine. We can’t get closer anyway. Why don’t we just throw them from here?”

I took a book with a pea-green cover decorated with a picture of fruit and tossed it toward the fire. I’d thrown it as hard as I could, but it barely reached the edge of the pile. The next one, thrown by the old man, made it a little farther up the side. The people around us glanced in our direction, but they said nothing and their faces remained expressionless.

We continued throwing the books, one after the other, without flipping through the pages or so much as glancing at the covers. We repeated the movements almost automatically, as if performing some solemn duty. Still, as each volume left my hand, I felt a slight twinge, as though the hollow place in my memory were being enlarged book by book.

“I had no idea books burned so well,” I said.

“I suppose it’s because they pack so much paper into such a small object,” said the old man, as he continued tossing them into the fire.

“It may take a long time for every word to disappear.”

“I wouldn’t worry, they’ll be nothing but ashes by tomorrow morning,” he said. Pulling a towel from his pocket, he wiped the sweat and soot from his face.

When we’d burned about half the books, we left the park and once again began wheeling the cart through the town. Working so close to the heat of the enormous blaze had tired us out, so we were looking for a smaller fire to finish the job.

The town was quiet. I could sense the roughness in the air that I’d felt after other disappearances, but somehow people seemed calmer. There were almost no cars on the streets, with the exception of the Memory Police trucks, and though the crowds were thick, no one seemed to be stopping to talk. The only sound was that of burning books.

We walked aimlessly, and the cart was easier to pull now that our load was lighter. We turned north, along the street where the streetcar ran, cut through the parking lot at city hall, and made our way along a street lined with houses. From time to time we came upon a vacant lot where a small fire was burning.

“Would you mind if we joined you?” the old man asked the people standing around, and we would stop to warm our hands and burn an armful of books. We might have burned the rest of the cartload at any of these fires, but we worried about the danger of the fires spreading, so we repeated the process: burning some books, pulling the cart farther along, finding another fire. The night was deepening but fires continued to burn. I would have thought the number of novels on the island was relatively small, but pillars of smoke rose in many places with no sign of stopping.

We passed the community center, a gas station, the cannery, a company dormitory, and arrived at last at the sea. Following the coast road, we came upon groups of people gathered around fires on the sand. The sea had dissolved into the darkness. No more than a few books remained in the cart, but we walked on.

The hill came into view. A fire was raging halfway up the slope.

“The library,” I murmured.

“I’m afraid you’re right,” said the old man, holding up his hands to shade his eyes and squinting at the flames.

The road up the hill was steep and narrow, so we left the cart and decided to carry the rest of the books in our arms. Under normal circumstances, it would have been too dark to walk this way at night, but thanks to the fire above us, it was nearly as light as day. Partway up, we came upon the garden, though there were no longer any flowers to be seen. Just the occasional bare, withering stalk, above which sparks danced like glittering flower petals.

The library was completely engulfed in flames. Never before had I seen anything burn as brightly or as beautifully, and the intense light and heat chased away all traces of the fear and sadness I had been feeling. The things about which R had been trying to persuade me, the words the woman had screamed into the fire—everything seemed to recede into the distance.

People had gathered to watch the fire, and we could hear them talking.

“I don’t know why they had to burn the whole building.”

“But there’s nothing but books inside, so it’s simpler to just do it all at once.”

“I wonder what they’ll do with the land when it’s gone.”

“I suppose they’ll leave it, the way they did with the garden. But I heard they’ll build a headquarters for the Memory Police someday.”

We climbed a bit farther up the hill to the observatory and found it deserted. The last time I had stopped in on a walk during the day, I had thought it seemed largely unchanged, but now, at night, I realized that it was practically in ruins. The windows were broken and covered with cobwebs. Cabinets and desks had been overturned. And the floor was strewn with trash of all sorts—old mugs, pencil holders, blankets, shredded documents. We made our way across the room, and I set the remaining books by the window where my father and I had watched the birds through his binoculars.

“There could be broken glass, be careful,” said the old man. I nodded as I leaned against the window frame.

The library was visible down the slope, through a thick tangle of underbrush. It seemed so close you could reach out and touch it and, at the same time unreal, like an image on a movie screen. In the darkness, only the flames appeared to move. We held our breath, just as the trees below us and the sea beyond seemed to, as though fearful of disturbing this beautiful scene.

“I remember hearing a saying long ago: ‘Men who start by burning books end by burning other men,’ ” I said.

“Who said that?” asked the old man, speaking softly and bringing his hand to his chin.

“I’ve forgotten, though I’m sure it was someone important. But I wonder if that’s where we’re headed.”

“I wonder,” echoed the old man. “It’s hard to say.” He looked up at the ceiling, blinked, and rubbed his chin again. “But there’s nothing to be done. It’s not as though they’re burning every printed word. It’s just the novels, so there’s no reason to think they’ll go further anytime soon.”

“But what if human beings themselves disappear?” I asked. This was the question that had been on my mind. The old man swallowed and blinked again.

“You have to stop worrying about things like that. The disappearances are beyond our control. They have nothing to do with us. We’re all going to die anyway, someday, so what’s the difference? We simply have to leave things to fate.”

The library continued to burn. I picked up one of the books from the pile at my feet and threw it out the window. It opened as it flew through the air, cleared the underbrush, and fell gently into the flames. The pages had caught the breeze, and it fluttered as it flew, as if dancing on air.

Next it was the old man’s turn. He chose a thinner, lighter volume, so it floated even more gracefully before vanishing in the flames.

We repeated this ritual over and over, handling each book with great care.

When the wind changed, a current of warm air came blowing in the window. Our feet were frozen from walking the snowy streets, but our cheeks were warm.

“How did it feel when the ferry was disappeared?” I asked him.

“It’s so long ago I don’t really remember.”

“Did you worry about how you would make a living?” I picked up a thick, heavy book with a brown paper cover.

“I suppose I did. It was upsetting at first. But don’t worry. You’ll find something else to do, and eventually you won’t even remember that you used to write novels.” He stared out the window into the distance.

“But I’m going to go on writing them in secret,” I told him.

He let out a little gasp and turned to look at me. I threw the thick volume into the air with both hands. The paper wrapper made a sound that was almost a sob.

“Do you think you’ll be able to?”

“I don’t know, but R told me that I had to, that my soul would die if I didn’t.”

“He did, did he?…” The old man’s chin came to rest on his hand again, and a thoughtful look settled over his wrinkled face. “I’ve been doing what he told me to do,” he said. “I’ve been listening to the music box every day, but I don’t feel any different. My lost memories aren’t coming back, and I don’t feel any stronger. All I hear is a lot of strange sounds.”

“I know it may not do any good, but I’ve hidden the manuscript I’m working on. I know it’s dangerous, but I don’t want to disappoint R. I don’t know that I’ll feel any different if my soul withers away, but I don’t think I could stand to see him looking so sad.”

“And I’ll keep listening to the music box. What else would I do with such a wonderful present?” As he spoke, the old man brushed away some ash that had landed on my hair. “You should take care not to tire yourself, and you must tell me if there’s ever anything I can do to help.”

“Thank you,” I said.

The last book had finally been tossed out the window. The library building was beginning to collapse in upon itself. From time to time, a portion of the roof or a section of wall would come down with a crash. The circulation desk and the chairs in the reading room could be seen burning in the ruins.

I followed the arc of the last book as it tumbled through the air—and suddenly I realized that, long ago, I had stood at this same window with my father and looked out at a similar sight. I took a deep breath and felt a slight pain, as though a spark had found its way into the bottomless swamp of my heart.

“A bird.”

I remembered. The pages of the book had opened and fluttered through the air just the way birds had once spread their wings and flown off to distant places. But this memory, too, was soon erased by the flames, leaving behind nothing but the burning night.