The Memory Police

Chapter 9

As the winter deepened, the island was blanketed with heavy, stagnant air. The sun shone pale, and the wind blew every afternoon. People walked quickly, shoulders hunched, hands shoved deep in their pockets.

The dark green trucks with canvas covers appeared more often on the streets. Sometimes they would race by, covers rolled up, sirens blaring, and at other times they would trundle heavily along, covers down. In the gap between the canvas and the bed of the truck, you could catch a glimpse of someone’s shoe or a suitcase or the hem of a coat.

The methods used by the Memory Police were becoming more and more brutal. No longer were there advance warnings of their visits, like the one my mother had received. Everything happened by surprise, and they now carried heavy battering rams capable of breaking down any door. They invaded houses in search of any space where someone could be hidden—storage rooms, under beds, in the back of closets. If there was enough space for one human body, it was unlikely to escape their attention. They dragged out anyone they found, along with those who had hidden them, and loaded them all in the covered trucks.

There had been no further widespread disappearances since the roses, but it became increasingly common to hear that someone had suddenly vanished—a friend from the next town, an acquaintance from school, a distant relative of the fishmonger. You never knew whether they had been taken away or had been fortunate enough to find a place to hide—or if the place they’d been hiding had been discovered and they’d been arrested.

Nor did anyone try very hard to find out. Regardless of what had happened, it was almost certainly an unfortunate event, and, moreover, simply talking about it could put you in danger. If on occasion a whole household suddenly went missing with no warning at all, the neighbors would simply pass their house with a furtive glance at the windows, hoping that the former inhabitants were safe somewhere. The citizens of the island were by now quite accustomed to these losses.

“If you don’t want to hear what I’m about to say, please tell me.”

The old man’s hand froze as he was about to cut the apple cake, and he let out a little cry. “But how can I answer before you’ve told me?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to. Once I’ve told you, it will be too late. What I’m going to tell you must be kept completely secret—and I need you to promise you’ll do that. If you’d rather not, it’s perfectly fine. I’ll simply keep what I know to myself. But I want you to answer me truthfully, without feeling any pressure. Do you want to hear or not?”

He set down the knife and rested his hands on his knees. The water in the kettle on the stove was coming to a boil. A ray of sunlight shining in through a porthole in the first-class cabin fell on the cake. The buttery frosting glittered.

“I want to hear,” he said, looking directly at me.

“You realize this could be dangerous?”

“I know.”

“It could cost you your life itself.”

“The little I have left,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“I am. It’s fine. Please tell me.” He looked down, hands still on his knees.

“I’d like to try to help someone. To hide him.” I studied the old man’s face but there was no reaction. He seemed to be waiting for me to continue. “I know what will happen if I’m found out, but if I do nothing, I know I’ll lose a person who is important to me. Just like I lost my mother. I can’t do this by myself. I need help—someone I can trust completely.”

A strong gust of wind made the ferry groan. The cake plates rattled against one another.

“Can I ask you a question?” he said.

“Of course.”

“How are you connected to the person you want to help?”

“He’s my editor. The first person who reads my work. He’s the friend who knows the self that I put in my novels better than anyone else.”

“I understand,” he said. “And I’ll help you.”

“Thank you.” I folded my hands over his large, wrinkled ones where they lay on his knees.

After discussing the matter, we decided that the safest option would be the little room where my father used to store his books and documents. It was a space between the ceiling of the first level and the floor of the second that my father had commissioned a carpenter to construct for storage. The only way to access it was through a small hatch in the floor of his office.

The room was long and narrow, about the size of three tatami mats in total, and not more than six feet in height. R, who was quite tall, would probably be unable to stand up straight in it. Furthermore, while there was electricity, there was no running water or light from outside.

The basement was much larger and more comfortable, but the neighbors all knew of its existence, and one had only to brave crossing the little crumbling bridge to gain access. If the house was searched, that would be the first place the Memory Police would look. But they had overlooked the storage room even when they’d come to confiscate my father’s research materials. If I was going to protect R, I needed a place far removed from the outside world.

On a blank page of his ferry log, the old man wrote down what each of us needed to do.

First, the list for me:

Next, the list for the old man:

We discussed everything in detail, going over the plans for preparing the hidden room and hiding R, making sure we had missed nothing. We imagined every possible hitch or obstacle and how we would cope with it. What to do if our truck was stopped for inspection as we were moving construction materials. What if the neighbor’s dog caught wind of something. What if the Memory Police took R before we were ready… There were any number of causes for worry.

“Let’s take a break and have a snack,” the old man said at last. He took the kettle from the stove and poured boiling water in the teapot. Then, while the tea was brewing, he went back to cutting the apple cake. “In general,” he continued, “most things you worry about end up being no more than that—just worries.”

“I suppose so.”

“I know so,” he said. “Just leave it to me. We’ll manage, you’ll see.”

“I suppose so,” I repeated. “I suppose we will.”

He put a large slice of cake on my plate. He still thought of me as a young, growing girl and invariably offered me too much to eat. The plate rested on a snow-white paper napkin. The tablecloth was smooth and starched, and in a bud vase at the center was a small branch with red berries from a tree I often saw at the top of the hill.

We reread the notes we had made in the ferry logbook in order to commit everything to memory. Then, to be rid of the evidence, the old man tore out the page and tossed it in the stove. Engulfed in flames, the paper shriveled and dissolved. We stood in silence for a moment, staring into the fire. Horrible things were about to happen, but somehow we felt increasingly calm. The air in the wheelhouse was warm and smelled of cake.

The work began the next day. I divided the research materials from the storeroom into small batches and burned them in the garden incinerator as though disposing of old magazines. As for the rug, I decided to use one that had been in the living room, and I managed to find all the basic necessities around the house.

But the remodeling of the room proved to be a more difficult problem. It was rumored that all the carpenters on the island had been recruited by the Memory Police and instructed to alert them to any suspicious construction projects. But it would also attract attention if they found out that we were quietly doing the work on our own.

So we were already in a state of nervous exhaustion by the time we had merely assembled the tools and materials. The old man proved his ingenuity in gathering all the things we would need. He slid lengths of pipe and lumber under his sweater, hung bags of nails and hinges and screws around his waist, and stuffed his pockets full of tools. When he finally reached the house for a delivery, the look of relief on his face was obvious. He would laugh and give an odd stretch to his spine, explaining that the clattering sound all around him as he pedaled his bicycle had made him feel as though his bones were coming apart.

It was wonderful to see how he went about his work. He was careful, precise, conscientious, and, on top of all that, quick. From time to time he would study a drawing he had made ahead of time—probably on a page from the logbook as well—then, once he had collected his thoughts, launch into the work without hesitation. Cutting a hole in the wall, he ran a pipe through it and then connected it with another pipe he found running under the ceiling. He spliced an electrical cable, fastened it onto a new outlet, cut a piece of plywood, and affixed it with nails. I helped him as much as I could, taking care not to get in his way.

To cover the noise from the construction, I played records of symphony music in my father’s old office. The old man became adept at timing his work with the hammer or saw to correspond to the climax of a piece when all the instruments were playing together. Often we would work straight through the day, without stopping to eat lunch.

The project was finished in the evening on the fourth day. We sat down and looked around at a room that was better than anything we could have imagined. It was simple, neat, and cozy. The beige wallpaper had proven to be a good choice. There was no getting around the lack of space, but we had still managed to provide all the basic necessities in a compact form. There was a bed, a desk, and a chair, and in one corner a toilet concealed behind plywood walls. The new plumbing allowed the water in the plastic tank above the toilet to flush down to the sewer. I could foresee that from now on it would be my task to refill the tank each day.

The old man had come up with the idea of installing a simple system to communicate with the hidden room. He ran a rubber tube from the office to the storeroom below and inserted funnels he had found in the kitchen in either end. By speaking into the funnels, you could talk without actually opening the trapdoor, as though on the telephone.

The freshly washed sheets and blankets were clean and soft. The desk and chair gave off the scent of new wood. The pale orange light of the lamp was enough to illuminate the room. We switched it off, climbed the steps of the ladder, and pushed up the hatch. Negotiating the tight entrance was no mean feat. You had to narrow your shoulders and twist them to one side as you pulled yourself up with both hands. The old man helped me as I struggled through the opening.

I worried that a man as large as R would get stuck somewhere in the middle of this maneuver, but then I realized that he would probably not have many occasions to leave the room once he entered it.

We fit the door back into the opening and covered it with the rug, leaving no sign at all of the room that lay hidden beneath.