The Memory Police

Chapter 17

I froze, instinctively grabbing the old man’s arm. He held the music box on his lap with one hand, but the other arm he put around my shoulders. R had not flinched, but his eyes stayed fixed on the ceiling.

The bell continued to ring, and we could hear a fist pounding on the door.

“The Memory Police,” I whispered, though my voice trembled so much I hardly recognized it.

“Is the door locked?” asked the old man.

“Yes.”

“Then we should go and let them in.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to pretend I’m not home?”

“No. They’ll just break down the door and come in anyway. And they’ll be all the more suspicious. We need to ask them in as if we couldn’t care less and let them search to their heart’s content. Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.” He took my hand and together we stumbled the few steps from the table to the bottom of the ladder.

“No need to worry.” The old man turned and spoke to R from halfway up the ladder. “I’ll be back soon for my wonderful birthday present.” R just nodded.

We closed the trapdoor, praying as we did that it would never be opened by anyone other than the two of us.

“Memory Police. Put your hands behind your head. Don’t touch anything. Don’t talk until we are finished. If you do not comply, you’ll immediately be placed under arrest.”

There were five or six of them, and they must have been accustomed to giving this speech on doorsteps all over town. After one of them had delivered these lines, they all made their way quickly into the house.

It was snowing hard outside, but I could see that dark green trucks were stationed in front of other houses in the neighborhood. The tension felt palpable in the still of the night.

Their operation proceeded as it always did. Efficiently, thoroughly, systematically, and without any trace of emotion. One after the other, they searched the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, the bath, the basement. They wore their boots and coats throughout. As though their roles had been assigned in advance, some of them moved furniture while others tapped on the walls or rifled drawers. Spots formed on the floor as the snow melted from their boots.

We stood with our backs against a pillar in the hallway and our hands behind our heads, as ordered. They appeared to be focused on their work, but at the same time they never took their eyes off the old man and me, making it impossible for us to move closer together or even so much as exchange looks. The old man’s tie was crooked, probably because we had left the hidden room in such a hurry, but his eyes remained fixed straight ahead. To calm myself, I tried to recall the song from the music box, and though it had played only a few times, I was able to remember the whole tune from beginning to end.

“Who are you and why are you here?” A man who appeared to be the leader of the group pointed at the old man and barked his question.

“I’ve been doing odd jobs here for a long time, so I’m sort of part of the family,” said the old man firmly, after first pausing to take a breath.

“The sink is full of dishes. Were you cooking?” The man who had been searching the kitchen turned back to question us.

He had seen the pile of dirty pots and pans and bowls and utensils from the party preparations—clearly a bigger mess than one woman living alone was likely to make—and there was not a single dirty dish in the pile, since we had not started clearing the ones we’d taken to the hidden room. Nor did the dinner table show any sign that we’d eaten there. Perhaps they had sensed that something was strange. The melody inside me played faster and faster.

“Yes.”

I had meant to answer clearly, but nothing more than a weak sigh slipped out. The old man took a half step toward me.

“I cook enough for a week and then freeze it,” I added, surprised that such nonsense was coming out of my mouth. But of course! I suddenly realized it would have been even more suspicious if there had been three sets of plates in the sink. I told myself I should calm down and be grateful for this stroke of good luck.

The man picked up the pot I’d used to boil the vegetables and the bowl in which I’d mixed the cake batter and studied them for a moment before returning them to the sink and moving off to search the cupboard. I swallowed with relief.

“Move on,” the man in charge told the others. “Upstairs.” The men filed up the staircase and we followed behind.

I wondered whether their footsteps and the noise from the search had reached R in the hidden room. Was he clutching his knees, his back rounded into a ball, trying to make himself smaller? He was probably sitting on the floor, since the bed and chair tended to squeak, and no doubt he was barely breathing for fear of being heard. And through it all, the music box was watching over him.

There were fewer rooms on the second floor, but the search was even more thorough. The Memory Police rattled about noisily, held things up to the light to examine them, fidgeted with their guns. Each activity seemed to have some hidden meaning, which made the process all the more oppressive.

We were standing against the windows along the hallway on the north side of the house. My arms, still crossed behind my head, grew heavier and heavier. The river flowing beneath the windows had vanished into the night. Lights were on in the neighboring houses, which were probably being searched as well. The old man coughed quietly.

We could see what was happening in the office through the half-open door. One of the men had taken all of the books from the bookshelf and was shining a flashlight into the space between the shelf and the wall. Another had pulled the mattress from the bed and was removing its cover, and a third was glancing through manuscript pages he had found in the desk drawers. Their long, carefully tailored coats made the men seem terribly tall, as though they were looking down menacingly on everything around them.

“What’s this?” the man who had been going through the desk asked. He had a wad of pages in his hand. The fact that he’d taken an interest in the desk was, in itself, dangerous, since the speaker for our makeshift intercom was concealed behind the dictionaries.

“A novel,” I replied, speaking in the direction of the door.

“A novel?” he repeated, as though the word was somehow vulgar. Then he threw the papers on the floor with a snort, scattering them about the room. More than likely he was the sort of person who had never read a novel in his life. Which was, in fact, a stroke of good luck. As soon as he lost interest in the manuscript, he turned away from the dictionaries as well.

Their boots crisscrossed the rug on the floor of the office, heavy-looking boots that had been carefully greased and polished, that must have been difficult to pull off at the end of the day. As I watched them, I realized something important. One corner of the rug was ever so slightly turned up.

I had been the last one to close the trapdoor and replace the rug. Even in such a rush, how could I have failed to do it more carefully? If one of them noticed and pulled up the rug even a bit, the entrance to the secret room would be discovered instantly.

Once I’d noticed it, I was unable to take my eyes off the turned-up corner. I knew I might be drawing their attention to it, but I couldn’t help myself. I glanced to the side, wondering whether the old man had noticed, but his eyes seemed to be focused on some point deep in the distant night.

The boots moved back and forth across the rug. The turned-up corner was barely an inch in length and under normal circumstances would hardly have attracted notice, but now it seemed to fill my entire field of vision.

“What’s this?” one of the men said. I immediately thought he must have noticed the rug, and my hands came reflexively to cover my mouth. “What is this?” he repeated, coming toward us with long strides. I repeated a phrase from the music box melody to myself, trying to keep from screaming. “Keep your hands behind your head,” he ordered in a deep voice.

I slipped my hands behind my head and clasped them together to keep them from trembling.

“Why is this still here?” he said, holding a small rectangular object in front of my face. I blinked and stared at a pocket datebook that had been in my handbag.

“No particular reason,” I said, trying to stop the tune from the music box that was still playing in my head. “I just forgot about it because I hardly ever used it.”

He was interested in the datebook and had not noticed the rug—or so I told myself. And the datebook presented no real problem. Nothing important was written in it, at most the date the dry cleaning would be ready or the schedule for street sweeping in the town or an appointment with the dentist.

“The disappearance of the calendars means that we no longer have any use for days and dates. You know what happens if we keep things around us that should have gone away.” He flipped through the pages at random but apparently had no interest in what was written on them. “We need to get rid of this right away.”

He took a lighter out of his coat pocket, lit the pages of the book, and tossed it out the window. I could see the rug in the space between his widespread legs. The book tumbled through the air, sending off sparks like tiny fireworks. There was a splash, and the sparks lingered briefly in the darkness before being sucked into the river below the window.

At that moment, as though the sound were a prearranged signal, the leader of the group called out, “Stop!” The men left what they were doing, quickly formed a line, and marched downstairs. Then they walked out the front door, their guns clattering at their belts, without so much as a word to us or any attempt to close the drawers and cupboards they had left in disarray. When they were gone, I collapsed against the old man’s chest.

“It’s all right now,” he murmured, smiling down at me. The corner of the rug had escaped their notice.

Outside, having completed their search, the Memory Police climbed into their trucks and prepared to depart. The neighbors watched the scene from the shadows of their gates. Cold snow fell against their cheeks and necks and hands, but they didn’t seem to feel it. Tension and fear lingered in their bodies, leaving no room for other sensations.

The headlights of the trucks mixed with the streetlights and the white of the snow and chased away the darkness. Though there were now many people gathered in the street, it was so quiet you might almost have heard the snow pressing against the night air.

Just then, three shadows emerged from the house to the east of mine. It was too dark to distinguish their features, but they walked wearily through the snow, backs bent, the Memory Police pushing them from behind, the light glinting cruelly off their guns.

Snatches of my neighbors’ voices could be heard in the dark.

“I had no idea they were hiding people in there,” said the former hatmaker. “Who would have thought it?”

“Seems as though both the husband and wife were in a secret group that helps folks like that.”

“I guess that’s why they didn’t get to know anyone in the neighborhood.”

“Look at him. He’s just a child.”

“Poor thing.”

The old man and I held hands and watched as the Memory Police forced them into the covered back of one of the trucks. We could see a boy of fifteen or sixteen being held on either side by the couple. He looked sturdy enough, but the pom-poms decorating the fringe of his scarf made it clear he was still young.

The canvas cover was lowered and the line of trucks drove away. The neighbors retreated to their houses. Alone now in the street, the old man and I squeezed our hands more tightly and stared into the darkness for a long time. The dog from the house next door, left to his own devices, was rubbing his snout in the snow and snorting.

That night, I wept in the hidden room. Never in my life had I cried for so long without stopping. I knew, of course, that I should be happy that nothing had happened to R, but for some reason I was unable to control my emotions and they were swept away in a direction I hadn’t anticipated.

But I’m not sure the word “crying” did justice to what I was experiencing. Clearly, it was not a matter of being sad. Nor was it just relief from the tension I had felt. It was simply that all the thoughts that had floated through my mind since I’d first taken R into my care had been changed into tears and come flooding out. And there was no way to stop them. I clenched my teeth, telling myself that I shouldn’t let him see me in such a pitiful state, but despite his attempts to comfort me with gentle reassurances, it was useless. I could do nothing but sit very still, eyes downcast, in the company of my flowing tears.

“I never thought I’d be happy that this room is so small,” I murmured, turning to sprawl facedown on the bed.

“And why is that?” He was sitting next to me, stroking my hair and back, trying as best he could to calm me.

“Because the smaller it is, the closer we feel. On a night like this, when I couldn’t stand to be alone, it’s peaceful to be in such a tiny space.”

The quilt was warm and damp against my cheek. The folding table and dishes from the party had been put away and the room was back to normal. I thought I detected the slightly sweet smell of the cake, the only sign of our celebration.

“You can stay here as long as you want to. I don’t think they’ll be coming back again tonight.” As he spoke, he bent toward me as though trying to read my expression.

“Forgive me,” I said. “The truth is, I should be comforting you.”

“Don’t be silly. Your night was much more frightening than mine. All I had to do was stay here and keep quiet.”

“They walked back and forth, back and forth, right above you. You must have heard them.”

“Of course,” he said, nodding.

“The corner of the rug was turned up ever so slightly. We were hurrying when we left you and I didn’t put it back quite the right way. I knew it would be the end if they noticed it. It felt terrible that your fate depended on something as insignificant as the corner of a rug. I wanted to run over and stomp it down, stomp it until the rug melted into the floor—but I knew I couldn’t. I could only stand there trembling like a frightened rabbit.”

My tears had continued to flow the whole time I was speaking, and it seemed strange that I was able to express myself so clearly while I was crying. My feelings and tears and words all seemed to flow from a place I could not reach.

“I’m sorry you were suffering so much on my account.”

He looked down at the electric heater at his feet.

“I’m not crying about that. Believe me, if I were so afraid of the Memory Police I never would have agreed to hide you in the first place. I don’t really know why I’m crying. I can’t explain it myself, much less stop it.”

I raised my head from the quilt and brushed the hair out of my eyes.

“There’s no need to look for an explanation for something that has none. What matters now is that I’ve put you and the old man in danger,” said R.

“No, it’s not that. I think all this crying must be proof that my heart is so weak that I don’t know how to help myself.”

“But I’d say it’s just the opposite. Your heart is doing everything it can to preserve its existence. No matter how many memories these men take away, they’ll never reduce it to nothing.”

“I hope that’s true.”

I looked at R. I needed only to lean slightly in his direction for us to be touching. He raised his hand and brushed away a tear at the corner of my eye with his fingers. They were warm. I watched as my tears fell on his hand. And then he took me in his arms.

The silence of the night had returned. It suddenly seemed unbelievable that less than an hour ago the doorbell had rung and boots had stomped across the floor above this room. Now I could feel nothing but the beating of his heart through his sweater.

He embraced me gently, his hands encircling my back as though holding a cloud, and at last my tears stopped. Everything that had happened—shopping in the market, the death of the fish, lighting the candles on the cake, opening the music box, the burning of the datebook—seemed like memories from the distant past. We were entirely in the present. There, behind your heartbeat, have you stored up all my lost memories? I thought this to myself, cheek pressed against R’s chest. If I could, I would have liked to take them out and line them up in front of me one by one. I was sure that any memories that remained inside him would be very much alive, so different from my own, which were few in number and very pale—sodden flower petals sinking into the waves or the ashes at the bottom of the incinerator.

I closed my eyes. My eyelashes touched the wool of his sweater.

“The people in the house next door were loaded into a truck and taken away,” I murmured. “They were hiding an innocent boy. I wonder how long he’d been there. It seems strange to think that I had no idea there was someone nearby who was going through exactly the same thing you are.”

“Where do you suppose they took him?” He breathed the words into my hair.

“I watched for a long time in the dark after the truck had gone, wondering the same thing. I didn’t even notice that I wasn’t wearing a coat or gloves, that the snow was hitting my face. I stood there hoping that if I waited long enough I might discover where my memories have gone.”

R took my shoulders in his hands and gazed into the space between our bodies.

I wanted to tell him that I knew I’d never learn anything, no matter how long I waited, but he had covered my lips with his and I could say nothing more.