When I blinked my eyes, I realized that the only things floating on the water outside the porthole were the plumes of seaweed. It had been years since I’d seen a boat moving across the horizon. The day they had disappeared, my memories of them had been fixed in place and had sunk into the bottomless swamp of my soul—so that now it was hard work indeed to imagine these people who had gone off over the water.
“I wonder if they got away safely,” I said.
“I’m sure that they managed to get off the island. But the seas are rough in winter. It’s possible they vanished without a trace.”
He set his cup on the table next to the bed and then wiped his mouth with the napkin.
“But where do you think they were going? You can’t see anything beyond the horizon,” I said, pointing out at the sea.
“I don’t know. Maybe there’s a place out there where people whose hearts aren’t empty can go on living.”
He folded the napkin and set it on the blanket.
In addition to the old man’s return, there was another happy event to celebrate: R’s child was born. A baby boy, six and a half pounds.
Since the old man had not completely recovered, I was making his regular trip to the elementary school myself. The snow was too deep to go by bike, and I didn’t have the money to hire a driver, so I had to walk all the way to the north of the hill.
Once you turned the corner at the far end of the cape, the smelting works came into view and all you had to do was continue straight on. The iron tower rose beyond the shuttered cafeteria, the cluster of company apartments, the gas station, the withered fields. Just as I’d been told, it looked like a great iron mummy of a corpse that had died of exhaustion.
The streets were unplowed, with only a few tracks from those who had already passed in the same direction, so I had trouble walking. Any number of times I lost my footing and fell to the ground. Only occasionally did I meet another traveler—an old woman shrouded under her scarf, a single sputtering motorbike, a mangy cat.
It was long past noon by the time I reached the school. The playground was an untouched field of snow. On my right were a horizontal bar, a seesaw, and a basketball hoop. On the left, several hutches that must have held rabbits or some other animal, but which were empty now, of course. Ahead of me was the school building, three stories high with evenly spaced windows.
Nothing moved in this little tableau—no wind, no sign of life—with the sole exception of my breath, which labored quietly in the cold. Everything that had lost its purpose seemed to have been gathered together right here.
Blowing on my fingers through my gloves, I crossed the schoolyard, heading for the meteorological box. The snow was so perfect and untouched that it was almost frightening to disturb it, and I found myself unable to resist turning around to see whether my footsteps were following me as I made my way across the field of white.
A round cap of snow was perched atop the box. Just as the old man had advised, I pulled on the door while lifting it up just a bit, and it opened with a creak. A spider’s web was draped across the dim interior, and I could see the objects behind the thermometer and the hygrometer. A neat package, bound in twine, small enough to fit in my two palms—underwear, some paperbacks, a small box of candy—and tucked on top, a picture of a baby.
Who could have drawn it? I picked it up and studied it. A portrait of a baby with its eyes closed, drawn in colored pencil on a heavy piece of paper the size of a postcard. His hair was soft and brown, his ears perfectly formed, his eyes clearly outlined. Wrapped around him was a pale blue crocheted blanket. The drawing wasn’t particularly skillful, but it was clear that tremendous care had been taken in rendering each strand of hair, each stitch in the blanket.
A note from R’s wife was written on the back: “The baby was born on the twelfth at 4:46 a.m. The midwife said that it was the easiest birth she’d assisted with in her entire career. He’s doing fine. He peed almost as soon as they set him down on my belly. I bought both pink and blue buttons for his clothes, and today I sewed the blue ones on everything. Please don’t worry about us. We’re waiting, hoping for the day when you’ll be able to take him in your arms. Please take care of yourself.”
I read these words over three times, then tucked the picture back under the twine and closed the door of the box. The snow piled on top broke into pieces and fell at my feet.
I opened the trapdoor to the hidden room without knocking. R was busy at his desk and seemed not to notice as he continued to work on the task I had given him the day before: polishing all the silver in the house.
I watched him from behind for a few moments. Was it an illusion, or had his body actually begun to shrink since he’d hidden himself away here? He had definitely grown pale, without any contact with sunlight, and his appetite was poor, so he’d lost weight, but what I sensed was not that sort of tangible change but some more abstract transformation. Every time I saw him, I could feel the outline of his body blurring, his blood thinning, his muscles withering.
Perhaps this was just evidence that his body was adapting to the secret room. Perhaps it was necessary to rid oneself of everything that was superfluous in order to immerse completely in this airless, soundproof, narrow space shrouded in the fear of discovery and arrest. In recompense for a mind that was able to retain everything, every memory, perhaps it was necessary that the body gradually fade away.
I recalled a circus freak show I’d once seen profiled on television. There was a shot of a wooden box that held a young girl who had been sold to the show. Her head protruded from a hole, but her arms and legs must have been folded tightly inside. She had been forced to pass months and then years in that state, never released even to eat or sleep. In time, her arms and legs would have frozen in place, and she was exhibited to the public as a kind of deformed human insect.
For some reason, as I stared at R’s back, this young girl came to mind, her withered limbs and knobby joints, her protruding ribs, filthy hair, downcast eyes.
Still unaware of my presence, R continued his polishing. His back was bent as though in prayer, and he spent a long time rubbing the cloth between each tine of the fork in his hand, each groove in the design. The pieces that did not fit on the desk were lined up on sheets of newspaper he had spread on the floor—the sugar bowl, the cake server, some finger bowls and soup spoons.
My mother used to bring out the silver for special guests. It had been part of her trousseau. But it had been years since anyone had last used it; it had been hidden away in the back of the cupboard in the dining room. No matter how carefully R polished it, I knew it was unlikely I would ever have occasion to use it again. Never again would there be guests, nor parties to invite them to, nor was my grandmother alive to prepare food worthy of these elegant utensils.
It had been harder than I’d imagined to find tasks to distract R that could be done in the hidden room but weren’t too tiring. Whether they were truly useful or not was beside the point. Among the chores I had come up with, polishing silver proved to be the one best suited for R.
“Do you plan to go on polishing that fork when the Memory Police come barging in?” At the sound of my voice, R started and turned. He let out a quiet cry, the fork still clutched in his hand. “I’m sorry,” I added quickly, “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“No, it’s fine. But I really didn’t notice you,” he said, setting the polishing cloth on the table.
“You were so absorbed in what you were doing, I didn’t want to interrupt you.”
“I suppose I was, though I can’t imagine what was so interesting.” Embarrassed, he took off his glasses and set them next to the polishing cloth.