“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.
Chapter 8
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.