The Memory Police

Chapter 7

Already on the second day, people who had raised roses in their gardens came to the river to lay their petals to rest. They carefully dismantled the flowers, petal by petal, and slipped them quietly into the stream.

At the base of the bridge next to my laundry platform stood an elegantly dressed woman.

“What lovely roses,” I told her. Anything I had ever felt about these flowers had already vanished from my heart, but she was plucking the petals from her own blooms with such tenderness that I’d wanted to say something to her. This was the first thing that came to mind.

“Thank you. They won the gold medal at last year’s fair, you know.” My comment seemed to have pleased her. “They are the last and most beautiful memento I have of my late father.” But there was no regret in her voice as she tore apart the petals and sent them fluttering into the water. The polish on her fingernails was nearly the same shade as the flowers. Once her work was done, she turned and, without a glance at the stream, gave me the sort of graceful bow typical of people of her class and left.

In three days’ time, the river had returned to normal, with no visible change in the color or level of the water. The carp, too, were swimming again.

Every last petal washed downstream and out to sea. While they had covered the narrow river in impressive fashion, they vanished almost instantly in the vastness of the ocean, sucked under by the waves. The old man and I watched them go from the deck of the boat.

“I wonder how the wind could tell the roses from all the other flowers,” I said, as I rubbed my finger along the rail, dislodging some flakes of rust.

“There’s no way of knowing,” he said. “The only thing we can know for sure is that the roses are gone.” He was wearing the sweater I’d knitted for him and his work pants from his days as a mechanic.

“But what’s to become of the rose garden?” I wondered aloud.

“That’s nothing for you to worry yourself over. Maybe some other flower will bloom there, or they’ll plant fruit trees, or turn it into a graveyard. No one knows and no one needs to know. Time is a great healer. It just flows on all of its own accord.”

“The hill will be lonely now that the observatory and the rose garden are gone. There’s nothing left but the old library.”

“That’s true. When your father was alive, he often invited me to come to the observatory. If an unusual bird happened by, he would lend me his binoculars. And to thank him, I would make some minor repairs to the plumbing or wiring. I was also friendly with the gardener who looked after the roses, and when some new variety came into bloom, he would let me have the first peek. So you can see why I was constantly going up the hill. But a person like me doesn’t have much use for a library. Except when one of your books came out. Then I went to make sure they had put it on the shelf.”

“You actually went all the way there just to see my books?”

“And I’d have complained if one had been missing. But they were there.”

“I’m glad. Though I can’t imagine many people were borrowing them.”

“You’d be wrong then. Two people had checked one out: a middle-school girl and a man who worked in an office. I looked at the library card.” His nose was red from the cold sea breeze.

A whirlpool of rose petals had formed around the motionless propeller of the boat. They were wilted and wrinkled after traveling downstream to salt water. Their color and luster had faded, and they were now nearly indistinguishable from the seaweed and fish bones and trash. And their fragrance had dissipated.

When a particularly large wave struck the hull, the boat would give a gentle shudder. At such moments, there was a faint grinding noise somewhere in the bowels of the boat. The setting sun struck the lighthouse at the tip of the cape.

“What will your gardener friend do now?” I asked.

“He has already retired. At our age, there’s no need to look for another job, so there’s nothing to worry about with the Memory Police. He can just forget about tending roses with so many other things to occupy him. Cleaning his grandchildren’s ears or plucking fleas from his cat, all sorts of things.” He tapped the deck with the toe of his shoe, which was old but sturdy, and so well worn it might almost have been part of the old man himself.

“I worry sometimes,” I told him, without looking up. “I don’t know what will happen to the island if things continue to disappear.”

He put his hand to the stubble on his chin, as if he wasn’t quite sure of the meaning of my question. “What will happen?” he murmured.

“I mean, things are disappearing more quickly than they are being created, right?” I asked him.

He nodded and furrowed his brow, like someone suffering from a headache.

“What can the people on this island create?” I went on. “A few kinds of vegetables, cars that constantly break down, heavy, bulky stoves, some half-starved stock animals, oily cosmetics, babies, the occasional simple play, books no one reads… Poor, unreliable things that will never make up for those that are disappearing—and the energy that goes along with them. It’s subtle but it seems to be speeding up, and we have to watch out. If it goes on like this and we can’t compensate for the things that get lost, the island will soon be nothing but absences and holes, and when it’s completely hollowed out, we’ll all disappear without a trace. Don’t you ever feel that way?”

“I suppose so,” he murmured, repeatedly pushing up the sleeves of his sweater and then pulling them back down in a manner that seemed more and more agitated. “Maybe because you write novels, you come up with these extreme ideas… No, I’m sorry, that’s rude—maybe I should say grand ideas. Isn’t that what it means to be a novelist? To come up with grand stories?”

“Well, I suppose so,” I mumbled in turn. “But I’m not talking about stories. This is real—”

“Now, don’t you worry,” he said, cutting me off. “I’ve lived here three times longer than you have, which means I’ve lost three times as many things. But I’ve never really been frightened or particularly missed any of them when they were gone. Even when the ferry was disappeared. It meant you couldn’t ride across to the other side to go shopping or see a movie. For me, it meant I lost the fun of getting my hands oily tinkering with the engine. And I lost my salary. But it didn’t really matter. I’ve managed to get by all this time without the ferry. Once you get the hang of being a watchman at a warehouse, it can be pretty interesting, and I’ve even managed to go on living here on the boat, where I’m most comfortable. I’ve got nothing to complain about.”

“But not one memory of the ferry remains here,” I said, glancing up at him. “It’s nothing more than a floating scrap of iron. That doesn’t make you sad?”

His lips worked silently as he searched for a response.

“It’s true, I know, that there are more gaps in the island than there used to be. When I was a child, the whole place seemed… how can I put this?… a lot fuller, a lot more real. But as things got thinner, more full of holes, our hearts got thinner, too, diluted somehow. I suppose that kept things in balance. And even when that balance begins to collapse, something remains. Which is why you shouldn’t worry.”

He nodded again and again as he spoke. I suddenly remembered how, when I was a child, he would answer this same way, mobilizing all the wrinkles on his face when I’d asked him some question—why your fingers turned orange when you ate clementines, or where the stomach and intestines went when you had a baby in your belly.

“I’m sure you’re right,” I told him. “It’ll all be fine.”

“It will, I guarantee it. There’s nothing too terrible about things disappearing—or forgetting about them. And those Memory Police are only after people who aren’t able to forget.”

Dusk was falling over the sea, and no matter how long I peered into the distance, I could no longer make out the petals.