The Memory Police The island is run by men who are determined to see things disappear. From their point of view, anything that fails to vanish when they say it should is inconceivable. So they force it to disappear with their own hands.” It seems strange that you can still create something totally new like this—just from words—on an island where everything else is disappearing,” he said, brushing a bit of dirt from one of the pages as though he were caressing something precious. I realized then that we were thinking the same thing. As we looked into each other’s eyes, I felt, once again, the anxiety that had taken root in our hearts a long time ago. The light reflecting from the spray of the fountain lit R’s face. “And what will happen if words disappear?” I whispered to myself, afraid that if I said it too loudly, it might come true. But you’ll be giving up your work, your whole life. Wouldn’t it be better to obey their orders? Your children are still so young.” “I don’t think we can be sure we’d be safe, locked up in the research center. After all, it’s being run by the Memory Police. They can’t be trusted. Once I’d outlived my usefulness, I’m sure they’d do anything they felt was necessary to ensure secrecy.” “I worry sometimes,” I told him, without looking up. “I don’t know what will happen to the island if things continue to disappear.” “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 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? “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.” “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.” 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. “My memories don’t feel as though they’ve been pulled up by the root. Even if they fade, something remains. Like tiny seeds that might germinate again if the rain falls. And even if a memory disappears completely, the heart retains something. A slight tremor or pain, some bit of joy, a tear.” “I don’t know. Because I don’t even know what it is I should be remembering. What’s gone is gone completely. I have no seeds inside me, waiting to sprout again. I have to make do with a hollow heart full of holes. That’s why I’m jealous of your heart, one that offers some resistance, that is tantalizingly transparent and yet not, that seems to change as the light shines on it at different angles.” But quite apart from the small satisfactions we enjoyed, the world outside was deteriorating day by day. “Photographs are precious. They preserve memories. If you burn them, there’s no getting them back. You mustn’t do this. Absolutely not.” “It’s their photographs that will disappear, not my mother and father,” I said. “I’ll never forget their faces.” “They may be nothing more than scraps of paper, but they capture something profound. Light and wind and air, the tenderness or joy of the photographer, the bashfulness or pleasure of the subject. You have to guard these things forever in your heart. That’s why photographs are taken in the first place.” “Yes, I know, and that’s why I’ve always been very careful with them. They brought back wonderful memories every time I looked at them, memories that made my heart ache. As I wander through my sparse forest of memories, photographs have been my most reliable compass. But it’s time to move on. It’s terrible to lose a compass, but I have no strength to resist the disappearances.” “But even if you can’t resist them, you don’t have to burn your photographs. Important things remain important things, no matter how much the world changes,” said R. “Their essence doesn’t change. If you keep them, they’re bound to bring you something in return. I don’t want to see any more of your memories lost.” “No,” I said, shaking my head wearily. “Nothing comes back now when I see a photograph. No memories, no response. They’re nothing more than pieces of paper. A new hole has opened in my heart, and there’s no way to fill it up again. That’s how it is when something disappears, though I suppose you can’t understand…” He looked down, his eyes sad. “The new cavities in my heart search for things to burn. They drive me to burn things and I can stop only when everything is in ashes. Why would I keep them when I don’t think I will be able to recall the meaning of the word ‘photograph’ much longer, not to mention the danger if the Memory Police find them. They’re even more vigilant after a disappearance, and if they suspect me, that will put you in danger.” Even if we were to send him that,” he said, casting a disdainful glance at the objects on the table, “I suspect he wouldn’t want to eat any of it.” “I don’t know. Maybe there’s a place out there where people whose hearts aren’t empty can go on living.” In recompense for a mind that was able to retain everything, every memory, perhaps it was necessary that the body gradually fade away. “They’re certainly worth the effort it takes to keep them polished. The more care you take with them, the more gratifying they are.” “Gratifying? How so?” “The film of age gets peeled away and their luster returns—it isn’t grand, but something humble, even solitary. When you hold them in your hands, it seems as though you’re holding light itself. I feel they’re telling me a story.” “The thing that I found most surprising,” I said, taking up the story, “was that over time, the servants who did this work lost the power of speech. After many long days, dawn to dusk, rubbing their cloths in that stone room, they actually became mute. They had no fear of clouding the silver with their words, for even after they finished work and left the room, they could no longer recall the sound of their own voices. But these were poor, uneducated people who were unlikely to find work elsewhere, so they continued polishing year after year, willing to sacrifice their voices for a steady income. And the room became quieter and quieter as one after another lost the power of speech, with nothing to be heard but the muffled sound of cloth on silver. But I wonder how it got to that point.” “Your voice is trapped inside this machine. It’s not broken, it’s just been sealed off now that it no longer has a purpose.” Sealed…sealed…sealed…The word spun meaninglessly in my head. “It’s an extraordinary sight, don’t you think?” he said. “Every one of these is a voice. A mountain of voices wasting away here, never again able to make the air tremble. And today, yours joins them.” He picked up my typewriter with one hand and tossed it back where it had been resting. It sounded like a heavy door slamming shut—closing off my voice. “You’ll forget you ever had a voice,” he continued. “You may find it annoying at first, until you get used to it. You’ll move your lips as you just did, go looking for a typewriter, a notepad. But soon enough you’ll see how pointless it is. You have no need to talk, no need to utter a single word. There’s nothing to worry about, nothing to fear. Then, at last, you’ll be all mine.” But what could be more natural? I say what I want to say, move my fingers as I want to move them. You only give orders in the class. “I was glad that I was able to erase your voice. Did you know that an insect will fall silent if you cut off its antennae? It will just sit there, as if frozen, and even refuse to eat. The same as you, really. When you lost your voice, you lost the ability to make sense of yourself. But don’t worry. You’ll be staying right here. You’ll live among the fading voices trapped in these typewriters, and I’ll be here with you, giving you instructions. Nothing too difficult. In fact, it will be a bit like learning to type.” With the calendars gone, no matter how long we wait, we’ll never get to a new month…so spring will never come.” No matter how long we waited, spring never came, and we lay buried under the snow along with the ashes of the calendars. The disappearance of the calendars means that we no longer have any use for days and dates 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. But in a world turned upside down, things I thought were mine and mine alone can be taken away much more easily than I would have imagined. If my body were cut up in pieces and those pieces mixed with those of other bodies, and then if someone told me, “Find your left eye,” I suppose it would be difficult to do so. But it is the inability to speak that confines me much more than being shut up in the room. As he’d said, to be deprived of one’s voice is much the same as having one’s body go to pieces. In the past few days I’ve begun to feel my body growing more distant from my soul. It’s as though my head and arms, my breasts and torso and legs are all floating somewhere just out of reach, and I can only watch as he plays with them. And that, too, is because I have lost my voice. When the voice that links the body to the soul vanishes, there is no way to put into words one’s feelings or will. I am reduced to pieces in no time at all It was then I realized that I could no longer understand anyone but him. Any words but his, coming from the outside, sounded to me like the random squeaking of an out-of-tune instrument Yes, I know. Or at least I did until yesterday. But that’s all changed now. My soul seems to be breaking down.” I said those last words cautiously, as though I were handing over a fragile object. “Losing novels is hard for me,” I said. “It’s as though an important bond between the two of us is being cut No one can erase the stories.” Men who start by burning books end by burning other men, “But what if human beings themselves disappear?” I asked. But even if paper itself disappears, words will remain. It will be all right, you’ll see. We haven’t lost the stories. “I thought I could hear the sound of my memory burning that night.” “I suppose it is. Even if you haven’t seen or heard about something, it seems you can just imagine it and then write it down. It doesn’t have to be exactly like the real thing; it’s apparently all right to make things up or even lie. At least that’s what R says That’s right. Apparently no one blames you for lying in a novel. You can make up the story out of nothing, starting from zero. You write about something you can’t see as though you can see it. You make up something that doesn’t exist just by using words. That’s why R says we shouldn’t give up, even if our memories disappear.” “When the surface of your soul begins to stir, I imagine you want to capture the sensation in writing. Because that’s how you’ve written all your novels