“So what happened?” R asked, his tone careful.
“Nothing, really. I slept, of course, but there was no world of sleep. Just darkness stretching out in every direction. No, that doesn’t quite capture it. It wasn’t even darkness. There was nothing, nothing at all, no air or noise or gravity—not even me to experience them. Just overwhelming nothingness. It was evening when I woke again. I looked around, wondering how long I’d slept. Five days? A month? A year? The windows were dyed with the colors of the sunset. But I realized almost immediately that it was the evening of that same day. My parents had come home from the wedding, but neither of them seemed to realize that I’d slept the entire day. They were animated and wanted me to taste the cake they had brought home from the reception.”
“The pills didn’t make you sick?”
“On the contrary, I felt refreshed after so much sleep. Which made the whole thing worse. Perhaps they weren’t sleeping pills at all, but just vitamins or something. In any case, I never made it to the land of sleep or anywhere else—like the snow vanishing into the sea.”
The night had deepened and my hand had grown cold holding the funnel. The flame in the stove was wavering, the fuel having run low.
“Would you like me to hold the funnel by the window so you can hear the snow falling?”
I stood up to open the window. The cold was sharper than I’d imagined, and it stung my cheeks. The tube was not long enough, but I pulled it out as far as it would go to bring the outside air to R. As I opened the window, the snow swirled upward for a moment, then quickly settled back into its quiet pattern.
“How is that?” I asked. The snow falling into the room collected on my hair.
“Aah, I can feel it. I can feel the snow.”
His quiet words were absorbed into the night.
Chapter 14
The old man was released three days later. I had stopped by to check on the boat during my usual evening walk and found him stretched out on the bed in the first-class cabin he used as his room.
“When did you get back?” I asked him, kneeling by the bed.
“This morning,” he answered, his voice hoarse and weak. His face was pale, his beard had grown out, and his lips were covered with scabs.
“I’m so glad you’re safe,” I said, stroking his hair and cheeks.
“I’m sorry I worried you.”
“That doesn’t matter. How are you feeling? Are you injured? Should I take you to the hospital?”
“No, I’m fine. I’m just a little tired, so I’ve been lying down.”
“Are you sure? Then you must be hungry. Hold on a minute. I’ll make you something.” I patted his chest through the blanket.
During his absence, everything in the refrigerator had gone limp and stale. But it hardly seemed the moment to worry about it, so I made soup out of every vegetable I could find and then made some tea. Propping him up in the bed, I tucked a napkin around his neck and spooned the soup into his mouth. After a moment, when I thought he seemed to have recovered a bit, I began to question him.
“But what did they do to you?”
“Don’t worry. They don’t know anything about the room. I’m sure of that at least. Their attention is focused on a smuggling incident.”
“Smuggling?”
“At the end of last month, some men took a boat and escaped from the cape by the lighthouse. They were fleeing the Memory Police.”
“But how? I thought the boats were useless. They disappeared years ago. Your ferry doesn’t work, does it? And no one would remember how to sail it anyway.”
“No, the people who they were hunting haven’t forgotten anything—the sound of the engine, the smell of the fuel, the shape of the waves as the boat glides through them.” He wiped his mouth with the napkin and coughed before continuing. “There must have been someone in the group who was a naval architect or a navigator, someone who still knew about boats. That must be why they were able to do the impossible—smuggle themselves off the island. Up until now, everyone has been focused on trying to hide. No one even imagined he could get away by crossing the sea. Even the Memory Police seemed caught off guard.”
“Did they think you had helped them somehow?”
“Yes. It seems they brought in everyone who knew anything about boats. They questioned me over and over, about everything. Showed me pictures of people I didn’t know, took my fingerprints, made me go back over the past few months and tell them where I’d been and what I’d done. It was an impressive interrogation. But I didn’t tell them anything about the room, and they were too focused on boats to be suspicious.”
I stirred the soup, scooping up some parsley and a piece of carrot, and fed them to the old man. With each bite, he bowed his head, as though excusing himself again for the trouble he was causing.
“But it’s too terrible, doing all that to someone who wasn’t involved with the escape.”
“No, no, it wasn’t so bad. Since I had nothing to hide as far as the boat was concerned, their questions didn’t really bother me. I just wish I’d been able to put up a bit more of a fight.”
“But how did they manage to get the boat ready without the Memory Police finding out?”
“I don’t know the details, but I think they must have secretly repaired a boat that was left in the shipyard. They wouldn’t have had the right tools or parts. The Memory Police stripped out all the engines when the boats disappeared, broke them in pieces and threw them in the sea. They probably had to make do with all sorts of improvised parts—that’s what the police were asking me about, technical things about ships. But of course I didn’t help them, since I don’t remember anything at all.”
“Of course,” I said, pouring some tea and passing it to the old man. The air outside the window was still, but the sea had worked up a considerable swell. Strands of seaweed floated in the waves. Evening was creeping over the horizon. The old man took his cup in both hands, peered into it for a moment, and then drained it in one gulp. “But it must have been terrifying—heading out to sea like that in the middle of the night.” I shuddered.
“I’m sure it was. Especially since the boat would have been patched together from whatever they could find,” said the old man.
“How many do you think there were?”
“I don’t really know. But I’m sure it was more than the boat was intended to hold. There must be more than one boatload of people trying to get off the island.”
I looked out the porthole again, trying to imagine it—a little wooden boat like the fishermen used, with a flimsy little roof, floating on the sea. The paint peeling away, the hull covered in barnacles and seaweed, the engine puttering softly. And the people crowded together on the deck.
The lighthouse had, of course, long since ceased working, so the only light would have come from the moon, making it difficult to see the expressions on their faces. But perhaps it had been snowing and even the moon had failed to shine, leaving them no more than a black lump huddled close in the bottom of the boat. So tightly packed that the slightest loss of balance threatened to tip them into the sea like so many kernels of popcorn scattering from a pan.
The overloaded boat would have had difficulty working up speed. Nor could they have opened the throttle completely, since the noise would have alerted the Memory Police. That was their greatest fear, a fear that would have forced them to make their way toward the horizon at only the slowest of speeds. Every soul aboard keeping one hand firmly on the rail, the other pressed to his or her chest, praying continually that the boat would clear the cape and find its way to the open sea.