by Yoko Ogawa
Since the old man had lost all his clothing in the tsunami, he was wearing things that had belonged to my father that I had kept carefully stored away—corduroy pants, a wool sweater, and an overcoat with a collar of artificial fur. The pants were faded and the fur was a bit worn, but everything fit perfectly and seemed made for him. As I started to talk, he leaned slightly toward me, as if unwilling to miss a word, and placed his large, strong workman’s hands on his knees.
I have always loved his hands, from the time I was a little girl. They could make almost anything: a toy box, a plastic model, a cage for a rhinoceros beetle, a beanbag, a desk lamp, a bicycle seat cover, smoked fish, an apple cake. The knuckles were large and knobby, but his palms were pleasantly soft. One touch of these hands was enough to reassure me that no one was going to hurt me or leave me all alone.
“Do you think we’ll have trouble keeping the things we got from the sculptures, just as it was impossible to keep the boat?”
“I don’t know…,” he said, sitting slightly back on the pile.
“R seems to think he can keep anything in the hidden room.”
“Yes, he believes in the power of the hiding place we’ve made. But I have my doubts. Of course, I wouldn’t think of telling him about them, and what good would it do if I did?”
“You’re right, none at all. But he’s the only one on the island who truly understands the disappearances. You and I don’t even understand the things from the statues…”
“So even if we resist the Memory Police, we can’t resist the fate that separates us from R,” he said.
“Sometimes I find myself wishing that the next thing to disappear would be the Memory Police themselves. Then no one would need to hide ever again.”
“That would be wonderful. But what if the hidden room disappears before that happens?” he said, rubbing his hands together in front of his chest. Perhaps he was trying to warm them—or perhaps he was praying. I was at a loss at these words, never having imagined what it would mean if the hidden room disappeared, if a time came when I no longer knew what was there, under the rug. How to raise the trapdoor. Why R was there beneath our feet.
Don began barking insistently, no doubt upset that I had taken him for a walk only to tie him up under a tree for so long.
“I’m sure you don’t have to worry about that,” I said as cheerfully as I could, trying to cover my confusion. “We’ve managed to cope with all kinds of disappearances in the past, but no one has suffered terribly, no one even seems to mind much. I’m sure we’ll be able to cope with whatever comes next.”
The old man rested his hands on his knees once more and smiled at me.
“I’m sure you’re right,” he said, his smile seeming to dissolve into the evening shadows.
I rose from the pile of bricks I’d been sitting on and wrapped my scarf tightly around my neck. Then I went to get Don.
“The sun will be setting soon. Let’s head home. We don’t want to catch cold,” I said. Elated to be free, Don took off running and rubbed his nose against the old man’s feet.
“You go on ahead,” he said. “I’m going to rest here awhile and then stop in at another butcher shop on my way home. I found a place on the other side of the hill that’s well stocked. I’m going to buy a nice ham.”
“But haven’t you done enough for one day? You shouldn’t overdo it.”
“No, I’m fine. It’s just a little detour.”
Suddenly remembering the ramune, I retrieved the plastic bag from the pocket of my skirt. “Here’s something to give you a little lift,” I said.
“What’s this?” he asked, tilting his head and blinking.
“It’s called ramune. It was in one of the sculptures the Inuis left with me.” I emptied the contents of the bag into my hand. R and I had each eaten two, so there were three left.
“It’s dangerous walking around with something like this. What if you came to another checkpoint?…” As he spoke, his eyes were fixed on the tablets.
“Don’t worry, when you put them in your mouth, they dissolve almost instantly. Here, try one.”
He gingerly picked up one of the pills and brought it to his mouth. Held between his thick fingers, it looked still smaller than it had before. His lips curled and his eyes blinked even harder.
“It’s very sweet,” he said, rubbing his chest as if to reassure himself of the fact.
“But delicious, don’t you think? Here, you have the rest.”
“Really? Something so precious? You’re too kind! Far too kind!” With each succeeding ramune, he pursed his lips and rubbed his chest. When they were gone, he joined his hands together and bowed. “Thank you.”
“I’ll go on ahead, then,” I told him, “and see you at home.” I waved. Don gave two short barks and pulled me away down the hill.
“Until later, then…” The old man smiled at me, still seated on the bricks.
That was the last I saw him alive.
Around seven thirty that evening, a call came from the hospital saying that the old man had collapsed in front of the butcher shop. Worried that he was late, no matter how far out of his way he might have gone, I had just been going out to look for him when the phone rang. The woman—a nurse or a secretary—spoke quickly and the connection was poor, so I didn’t understand everything she said. Still, I knew I had to get to the hospital right away.
After telling R the news through the funnel speaker, I ran out of the house with nothing but my wallet. I thought I’d be able to find a taxi at some point, but not a single one appeared and I ended up running all the way to the hospital.
The old man was not in a bed but rather had been laid out on a plain metal table with wheels that resembled a kitchen cart. The room was tiled and very cold. His body was draped with a cloth, a frayed, faded blanket that looked rough to the touch.
“He apparently collapsed on the sidewalk and was brought here by ambulance, but he had already lost consciousness by the time he arrived and his heart stopped; we did everything in our power to revive him, but he passed away at seven fifty-two p.m….As for the cause of death, we found an intracranial hemorrhage, but we’d need to do additional tests to discover why it occurred.”
The doctor stood next to me and talked, but I understood almost nothing of what he said. The flat voice of this unknown man droned in my ears.
“Had he recently received any sort of trauma? A sharp blow to the head?”
I looked up at the doctor and tried to answer, but the pain in my chest kept the words from coming out.
“The hemorrhage was not deep in the brain but close to the surface, just under the skull. In those cases, the cause usually turns out to be head trauma. But it’s also possible that he had a heart attack and hit his head as he fell, in which case…” He continued in the same monotone.
I lifted the corner of the blanket. The first thing I saw were the old man’s hands folded on his chest. Hands that would never make anything again. I remembered the dark blood that had come from his ear when he’d been pinned under the dish cupboard after the earthquake. I remembered how much trouble he’d had skewering a pickle or feeling the objects inside the statues. Had the bleeding started slowly back then?
“But he fixed the drainpipe. And what about R’s haircut? He did that so beautifully,” I murmured. But my words were absorbed by the tiles on the walls and did not seem to reach the doctor’s ears.
The old man’s shopping basket had been left next to the cart, carrot greens and a package wrapped in butcher’s paper peeking out from the top.
* * *
. . .
The funeral was modest. Those in attendance included a few distant relatives—the grandson of a cousin, a niece and her husband—some old friends from work, and a few neighbors. R, of course, could offer only his prayers from the hidden room.
I found it terri
bly difficult to come to terms with the old man’s death. I had lost many people who were important to me in the past, but somehow my parting with them had been different from what I experienced now. I had of course been terribly sad when my mother and father and my nurse had died. I missed them, and wished I could see them again, and I regretted the times I’d been selfish or cruel when they were alive. But that pain had lessened with the passage of time. Their deaths grew distant with the years, leaving behind only the most precious memories I associated with them. But the laws of the island are not softened by death. Memories do not change the law. No matter how precious the person I may be losing, the disappearances that surround me will remain unchanged.
But this time I had the impression that something was different. In addition to the sadness, I was overcome by a mysterious and menacing anxiety, as though the old man’s death had suddenly transformed the very ground under my feet into a soft, unreliable mass.
I had been left alone, with no one to comfort me, no one to reach out and take my hand, no one to share the terrible void in my heart. Of course R would sympathize with me, would console me, but he was locked away forever in that tiny space, and I found it difficult to descend from my unstable, unbalanced state into the hidden room. Likewise, once I was with him I found myself unable to stay for long. It always proved necessary to return to where I’d come from. And always alone.
The materials of the world that surrounded R and me were simply too different—as though I were trying to glue a pebble I’d found in the garden to an origami figure. And the old man, who always reassured me at such moments, who promised we could find a different type of glue, was no longer here.
In order to boost my courage, I threw myself into the activities of daily life. I rose early in the morning and prepared the most elaborate meals possible for R. At the office, my head was full of schemes to get my work done as efficiently and accurately as possible. At the markets, I persevered, no matter how long the lines, navigating my way through the crowds and somehow managing to fill my shopping basket. I carefully ironed the laundry, recycled old blouses as pillow covers, unraveled a frayed sweater and reknit it into a vest. I scrubbed the kitchen and bathroom until they sparkled, took Don for his daily walk, cleared snow from the roof.
Yet when I crawled in bed at night, what came was not sleep but deep exhaustion and anxiety. Closing my eyes, I would feel a kind of panic, and tears would begin to flow. Certain I would never get to sleep, I would go to the desk and take out my manuscript. I could think of no other way to pass the night.
I would take some of the objects from the statues that I’d hidden next to the funnel speaker and arrange them on the manuscript pages. Often, when I was visiting him in his room, R would tell me to take any that interested me and keep them with me. To be honest, nothing was likely to interest my soul in its weakened state, but in order not to disappoint R, I chose one or two that happened to be close at hand.
Now, in the middle of the night, I would stare at them. And when I tired of that, I touched them, smelled them, opened their lids, wound their springs, rolled them about, held them up to the light, blew on them. I had no idea how they were really meant to be used.
From time to time, for just a moment, one of the objects would show me something more. A slight curve in the shape or a depth of color would catch my eye—and I would startle, wondering whether this could be the revelation that R was hoping for. But whatever it was, it never lasted more than a moment. Nor was it within my power to bring it back. Worse still, only a small fraction of the objects ever showed these special traits; the rest were content to remain sitting modestly on the manuscript pages.
Passing my nights this way did not relieve the anxiety I’d felt since the old man’s death, but it was better than weeping in my bed. Occasionally, these flashes of recognition were sparked by some object two nights in succession—once it happened three times in one night—but then I might go four nights without encountering even one. I began to wait for these brief moments with increasing impatience, seeing them as luminous signposts that would lead me to R. And I, too, hoped the light would illuminate the cavity in my heart.
One night I made an effort to write some words on the manuscript paper. I wanted to leave a record of what I saw in that dimly illuminated void of my memories. It was the first time I had done such a thing since the novels disappeared. I held the pencil awkwardly, and my characters were either too large to fit within the lines or too small and misshapen. Nor did I have any confidence in the things I wrote—and yet my fingers were moving—however slowly.
I soaked my feet in water.
It had taken me an entire night to write that one line. I tried reading it aloud a number of times, but I had no idea where the words had come from nor any guess as to where they might be leading. When I returned the objects to R the next day, I held out my manuscript along with them. He stared at it a long time, though it was no more than a single line.
“It’s just scribbling,” I told him. “Not something you need to read. I’m sorry. Just throw it away.” He had been quiet so long, I was sure he was disappointed.
“Don’t be silly!” he said at last, placing the page carefully on his desk. “It’s extraordinary progress! This is the first thing you’ve written without tearing holes in the paper with your eraser.”
“I don’t know if you can call it progress. It’s more like a whim. And tomorrow, I may be unable to write anything.”
“No, don’t say that. The stories have begun to stir again.”
“I wonder if you’re right. I don’t expect much, but what do they mean? I have no idea. They make no sense to me.”
“The meaning isn’t important. What matters is the story hidden deep in the words. You’re at the point now where you’re trying to extract that story. Your soul is trying to bring back the things it lost in the disappearances.”
He went on encouraging me. In all likelihood he was telling me lies, unwilling to hurt me further and deepen the damage done by the old man’s death, but I didn’t care. If he was willing to be kind to me, the reason didn’t matter.
Not a speck of dust floated on the water.
I looked out on the grassy meadow.
When the wind blew, it made patterns in the grass.
Patterns like those in cheese nibbled by mice.
Still without feeling the sense of a story, I continued to put together strings of words, one line each night.
The size and balance of my characters gradually improved, but my hand still shook when it came time to select a word.
“That’s wonderful! You’re doing fine.” R took each piece of paper and added it to the pile.
* * *
. . .
The first disappearance since the death of the old man. I lay in bed collecting my wits, trying to determine the nature of the thing that no longer existed. It was quiet outside, no sign that the neighbors were stirring. Which might mean that it was something relatively insignificant. I tried to get up, but I felt as though dense air had coiled around my body. Weak sunlight filtered in through the curtains, promising a gray day. Perhaps another heavy snowfall. I should get out of the house early and catch the seven o’clock tram. There were always delays on the day of a disappearance.
I pulled back the quilt and made a bizarre discovery—something was stuck fast to my hip. And no matter how much I pulled or pushed or twisted, it would not come off, just as though it had been welded to me.
“What in the world?” I said, gripping the pillow with frustration. I had the feeling I would fall out of the bed if I didn’t hold on to something. At the slightest movement, the thing attached to my hips threw my body off balance.
I held still, my face against the pillow, trying to calm myself. A chilly sensation lingered in my hands from where I’d touched whatever it was that was attached to me a moment earlier. Had I come down with s
ome sort of disease? Perhaps an enormous tumor had developed overnight? How could I get to the hospital with this sort of affliction? I glanced down again at my body, which was still stretched out in the same position on the bed.
Since I couldn’t remain where I was indefinitely, I decided to get up and get dressed. First, I put my weight on my right leg and slowly sat up. But as I did, the thing fell with a heavy thud and I was thrown to the floor. I fell against the wastebasket, knocking it over and spilling the contents, but I managed to crawl to the dresser and pull out a sweater and some pants.
The sweater went on easily. The problem was the pants, which seemed to have two openings. Once I’d slid my right leg into one of them, I had no idea what to do with the other. The thing was still there on my hip, as though it were looking at me, waiting for something. I wasn’t exactly afraid of it, but it did seem somehow rather ominous. But the more I studied it, the more I realized that it had a shape that would exactly fit the other opening in my pants. The right length, the right thickness, it was perfect. I tried taking it in both hands and putting it into the opening. It was heavy and difficult to work with, but after some time, just as I’d imagined, it slid neatly into the pants. As though someone had measured it in advance.
It was then I finally realized what had disappeared: my left leg.
I had trouble getting down the stairs without falling. Holding on to the railing, I had to drag the thing—my disappeared leg—one step at a time. Outside, the snow piled up on the ground made things even more difficult. Fortunately, however, after hesitating for a moment, I had decided to put a shoe on my left foot as well.
The neighbors were gradually beginning to gather in the street outside. They all seemed to be wondering how to deal with their own bodies, as though fearful that the least motion would cause them pain. Some walked holding on to walls or fences, others moved in family groups, using one another’s shoulders for support, and some, like the former hatmaker, were using umbrellas or other objects as crutches.
