The Memory Police

by Yoko Ogawa

  The children, apparently already bored, had begun throwing stones in the water and stirring it up with long poles they had found somewhere. But the current was undeterred by these small disturbances. A sandbar here or stump there proved no impediment to the overwhelming flow of petals. Were you to stretch out in the water, it looked as though the petals would cover you like a soft, comforting blanket.

  “Who would have imagined this?” someone murmured.

  “It’s the most beautiful disappearance ever.”

  “We should take a picture.”

  “Better not. What’s the use of a picture when something’s disappeared?”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  The bystanders discussed the strange sight in low voices, taking care not to attract the attention of the Memory Police.

  With the exception of the bakery, none of the stores had opened yet. It occurred to me to go and see what had happened to the roses at the florist, but the shop was still shuttered. The buses and trolleys were mostly empty. The sun was trying to break through the clouds, and the mist had begun to burn off, but the floral fragrance was as strong as ever.

  * * *

  . . .

  Needless to say, not a single flower was left in the rose garden. The bare stalks, reduced to leaves and thorns, were thrust into the slope like brittle bones. From time to time, a breeze would blow down from the top of the hill—where the observatory had been—pick up the few remaining petals, and carry them away toward the river.

  The garden was deserted. The woman with heavy makeup who was usually at the entrance, the caretakers, the visitors—not a soul to be seen. I wondered for a moment whether I still needed to pay the admission fee, but at last I pushed past the gate and walked along the sloping path, following the route marked out by the signs.

  The few flowers in the garden other than roses had survived—bellflowers, a couple of spiny cacti, some gentians. They bloomed discreetly, as though embarrassed to have been spared. The breeze seemed to discriminate, choosing only the rose petals to scatter.

  A rose garden without roses was a meaningless, desolate place, and it was terribly sad to see the trellises and other signs of all the care that had been lavished on the flowers. The murmur of the river did not reach me here and the rich, soft soil made a pleasant sound underfoot. With my hands thrust in my pockets, I wandered across the hill as though walking through a cemetery of unmarked graves.

  In years past, I had carefully studied the stems, leaves, and branches and had read the tags that identified the different varieties, but I realized now that I was already unable to remember what this thing called a rose had looked like.

  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.

  It will soon be three months since I lost my voice. Now nothing passes between the two of us except by means of the typewriter. Even when we’re making love, it waits quietly by the bed. If I want to tell him something, I reach out for the keys. Typing is much quicker for me than writing by hand.

  In the early days of my muteness, I was continually struggling to speak. I tried running my tongue far down my throat, or filling my lungs with air to the point of bursting, or twisting my lips into all sorts of shapes. But once I realized that this was just a waste of energy, I took to relying on the typewriter.

  “What should I get you for your birthday?” he asked one day, and I lowered my eyes to my knees, where my typewriter was usually perched.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  I’d like an ink ribbon.

  He cocked his head, resting his hand on my shoulder, and read the words printed on the page.

  “An ink ribbon? That’s not very romantic,” he said, smiling at me.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  But I’m worried that they’ll disappear and we won’t be able to talk anymore.

  It made me happy to feel the warmth of his shoulder next to mine whenever we were together—so much so, I could almost forget the pain of having lost my voice.

  “I understand. I’ll go to the stationer’s and buy every last one they have.”

  Tap, tap.

  Thank you.

  The words lined up on the page felt quite different from those that were spoken.

  I can remember the first time he showed me how to change a typewriter ribbon when I was at the school. I was still at the stage in my studies where I was simply practicing typing “it, it, it, it” or “this, this, this, this” over and over.

  “Before you go home today,” he told us, “you’ll know how to change a typewriter ribbon. Watch carefully.”

  He gathered the students around a desk in the center of the classroom and opened the cover of the typewriter. It made a soft clicking sound.

  The insides of the machine were much more interesting than I had imagined. The levers supporting the letters, the wheel that worked like a pulley, pins of various shapes, and metal rods dark with oil—all brought together in a complex whole.

  “You remove the used ribbon like this,” he said, sliding it from the bobbin on the right side. The end of the ribbon unspooled through the levers and wheel and pin. “You hold the new ribbon with the inked surface facing up and insert the end into the left roller. The inked surface is the smooth side. Hold the end of the ribbon firmly in your right hand and do not let go of it. The important thing here is the direction and order in which you insert the ribbon. It’s like threading a sewing machine. First, you insert the ribbon in this hook-shaped wire; next, through the wheel; then, behind this pin; and finally, you come back a bit to this…”

  It was, indeed, a complicated procedure. Not something you could remember after one attempt. The other students seemed anxious, too. But his fingers moved nimbly, almost automatically.

  “There, all done,” he announced.

  At the sight of the ribbon snaking through the typewriter from one spool to the other, the students heaved a collective sigh of relief.

  “Did you follow that?” he asked, looking around at the class and resting his hands on his hips. They were clean, without a trace of ink or oil, his fingers as beautiful as ever.

  I never was able to learn how to change a ribbon in his class. Inevitably it would get tangled and nothing would appear on the paper, no matter how much I typed. I lived in fear of the ribbon breaking in the middle of class while I was typing.

  But now I have no trouble. I can actually change a ribbon even more quickly than he can. Since I started using the typewriter in place of my voice, I use up a ribbon in about three days, but I no longer throw away the old ones. Somehow, I have the feeling my voice may come back one day if I study the letters imprinted on the used ribbon.

  * * *

  . . .

  I showed R what I’d written. Since there were quite a few pages, he came to my house so I wouldn’t have to carry the bulky manuscript.

  We went over the work, debating each line. We changed words and added sentences where something was missing. In one place, we cut several dozen lines altogether.

  Seated on the sofa, R calmly turned the pages. He treated my manuscripts with the greatest of care. When I watched him working like this, I was always a bit nervous, wondering whether what I’d written was worthy of such consideration.

  “Let’s stop here for today,” he said. The work over, he took his cigarettes and lighter from his pocket while I gathered up the marked pages and clipped them together.

  “Would you like some more tea?” I asked when I had finished.

  “I’d love a cup, on the strong side.”

  In the kitchen, I sliced some cake, made tea, and carried everything into the living room.

  “Is this your mother?” he asked, pointing to a photograph on the mantel.

  “It is.”

  “She was very beautiful,” he said. “And you look a great deal like her.”

  “No, my father used to say that the only thing I inherited from my mother was my good teeth.”

 
“Teeth are important.”

  “My mother always kept dried sardines wrapped in newspaper on the desk in her studio, and she would snack on them as she worked. If I got fussy in my playpen, she would slip one in my mouth to quiet me even before I had any teeth. I still remember the way they smelled, mixed with the odors of sawdust and plaster. They were awful, gritty things.”

  He looked down and smiled, putting his hand to the frames of his glasses.

  After that, we ate our cake in silence for a while. When the two of us had spent time discussing my novel, it often happened that we had no idea what else to say. There was nothing at all unpleasant about it, and I would relax, enveloped by his steady, peaceful breathing. And in any case, the only R I knew was the one who read my manuscripts. I knew nothing else about him, not his childhood, nor his family, how he spent his Sundays, his preference in women or his favorite baseball team. When we were together, he did nothing but read my writing.

  After what seemed a long while savoring the silence, R spoke up.

  “Do you still have many of your mother’s works here?”

  “Just a few, the ones she gave as presents to my father and me,” I answered, looking once more at the picture of my mother. She wore a flowing summer dress and was smiling bashfully as she held me on her lap. Her hands, remarkably strong from handling chisels, hammers, stone, and other heavy objects, caressed my baby legs. “I don’t think she liked keeping her work around. But I do have the feeling that there were more sculptures scattered around the studio when I was a child. I think she must have hidden some of them just after she received the summons from the Memory Police. Perhaps she knew something would happen to her. But that was when I was still very young, so I don’t really remember.”

  “Where is her studio?”

  “Downstairs. I think she also worked in a small house somewhere up the river, but after I was born, she was always down in the basement.” I tapped the floor with the toe of my slipper.