“And the stone was beautiful?” he asked.
“Yes, I suppose so. It must have been, since my mother often took it out and held it up to admire in the moonlight. But nothing about it remains with me—that it was beautiful or dear or that I wanted to have it—nothing. Just the cold sensation when my mother once set it on my palm. When I stand here in front of the cabinet, my heart feels like a silkworm slumbering in its cocoon.”
“But that’s just the way it is—everyone feels that way about the things that have disappeared.” He touched his hand again to the frames of his glasses. “Could the green stone have been called an emerald?” he added.
“Em… er… ald,” I murmured over and over, and as I did I began to sense a faint stirring somewhere deep within. “Of course, that was it… em… er… ald. I’m sure that’s right. But how did you know?”
He said nothing for a moment. Instead, he began opening the drawers again one after the other. The handles gave a muffled clank. When he got to the drawer farthest to the left in the fourth row, he stopped and turned toward me.
“This one held perfume,” he said. I was about to repeat my question—how had he known?—but stopped myself. “There’s still some here,” he said, gently pressing on my back to force me closer. “Can you smell it?”
I peered into the little drawer and took a deep breath, recalling suddenly that my mother had made me smell odors this same way. But all that filled my chest was the chill, stale air. The sensation of his hand on my back was much more vivid than the memory of the perfume.
“I’m sorry,” I sighed, shaking my head.
“Don’t apologize,” he said. “It’s very hard to recall things that have disappeared.” He blinked and closed the “perfume” drawer. “But I remember,” he added. “The beauty of the emerald and the smell of perfume. I haven’t forgotten anything.”
Chapter 9
As the winter deepened, the island was blanketed with heavy, stagnant air. The sun shone pale, and the wind blew every afternoon. People walked quickly, shoulders hunched, hands shoved deep in their pockets.
The dark green trucks with canvas covers appeared more often on the streets. Sometimes they would race by, covers rolled up, sirens blaring, and at other times they would trundle heavily along, covers down. In the gap between the canvas and the bed of the truck, you could catch a glimpse of someone’s shoe or a suitcase or the hem of a coat.
The methods used by the Memory Police were becoming more and more brutal. No longer were there advance warnings of their visits, like the one my mother had received. Everything happened by surprise, and they now carried heavy battering rams capable of breaking down any door. They invaded houses in search of any space where someone could be hidden—storage rooms, under beds, in the back of closets. If there was enough space for one human body, it was unlikely to escape their attention. They dragged out anyone they found, along with those who had hidden them, and loaded them all in the covered trucks.
There had been no further widespread disappearances since the roses, but it became increasingly common to hear that someone had suddenly vanished—a friend from the next town, an acquaintance from school, a distant relative of the fishmonger. You never knew whether they had been taken away or had been fortunate enough to find a place to hide—or if the place they’d been hiding had been discovered and they’d been arrested.
Nor did anyone try very hard to find out. Regardless of what had happened, it was almost certainly an unfortunate event, and, moreover, simply talking about it could put you in danger. If on occasion a whole household suddenly went missing with no warning at all, the neighbors would simply pass their house with a furtive glance at the windows, hoping that the former inhabitants were safe somewhere. The citizens of the island were by now quite accustomed to these losses.
“If you don’t want to hear what I’m about to say, please tell me.”
The old man’s hand froze as he was about to cut the apple cake, and he let out a little cry. “But how can I answer before you’ve told me?”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to. Once I’ve told you, it will be too late. What I’m going to tell you must be kept completely secret—and I need you to promise you’ll do that. If you’d rather not, it’s perfectly fine. I’ll simply keep what I know to myself. But I want you to answer me truthfully, without feeling any pressure. Do you want to hear or not?”
He set down the knife and rested his hands on his knees. The water in the kettle on the stove was coming to a boil. A ray of sunlight shining in through a porthole in the first-class cabin fell on the cake. The buttery frosting glittered.
“I want to hear,” he said, looking directly at me.
“You realize this could be dangerous?”
“I know.”
“It could cost you your life itself.”
“The little I have left,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“I am. It’s fine. Please tell me.” He looked down, hands still on his knees.
“I’d like to try to help someone. To hide him.” I studied the old man’s face but there was no reaction. He seemed to be waiting for me to continue. “I know what will happen if I’m found out, but if I do nothing, I know I’ll lose a person who is important to me. Just like I lost my mother. I can’t do this by myself. I need help—someone I can trust completely.”
A strong gust of wind made the ferry groan. The cake plates rattled against one another.
“Can I ask you a question?” he said.
“Of course.”
“How are you connected to the person you want to help?”
“He’s my editor. The first person who reads my work. He’s the friend who knows the self that I put in my novels better than anyone else.”
“I understand,” he said. “And I’ll help you.”
“Thank you.” I folded my hands over his large, wrinkled ones where they lay on his knees.
After discussing the matter, we decided that the safest option would be the little room where my father used to store his books and documents. It was a space between the ceiling of the first level and the floor of the second that my father had commissioned a carpenter to construct for storage. The only way to access it was through a small hatch in the floor of his office.
The room was long and narrow, about the size of three tatami mats in total, and not more than six feet in height. R, who was quite tall, would probably be unable to stand up straight in it. Furthermore, while there was electricity, there was no running water or light from outside.
The basement was much larger and more comfortable, but the neighbors all knew of its existence, and one had only to brave crossing the little crumbling bridge to gain access. If the house was searched, that would be the first place the Memory Police would look. But they had overlooked the storage room even when they’d come to confiscate my father’s research materials. If I was going to protect R, I needed a place far removed from the outside world.
On a blank page of his ferry log, the old man wrote down what each of us needed to do.
First, the list for me:
1. Clear out all books and documents remaining in the room; since they related to birds, they needed to be disposed of carefully.
2. Clean and disinfect everything; hygiene will be important since no doctor can come to take care of R if he falls ill.