The bell continued to ring, and we could hear a fist pounding on the door.
“The Memory Police,” I whispered, though my voice trembled so much I hardly recognized it.
“Is the door locked?” asked the old man.
“Yes.”
“Then we should go and let them in.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to pretend I’m not home?”
“No. They’ll just break down the door and come in anyway. And they’ll be all the more suspicious. We need to ask them in as if we couldn’t care less and let them search to their heart’s content. Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.” He took my hand and together we stumbled the few steps from the table to the bottom of the ladder.
“No need to worry.” The old man turned and spoke to R from halfway up the ladder. “I’ll be back soon for my wonderful birthday present.” R just nodded.
We closed the trapdoor, praying as we did that it would never be opened by anyone other than the two of us.
“Memory Police. Put your hands behind your head. Don’t touch anything. Don’t talk until we are finished. If you do not comply, you’ll immediately be placed under arrest.”
There were five or six of them, and they must have been accustomed to giving this speech on doorsteps all over town. After one of them had delivered these lines, they all made their way quickly into the house.
It was snowing hard outside, but I could see that dark green trucks were stationed in front of other houses in the neighborhood. The tension felt palpable in the still of the night.
Their operation proceeded as it always did. Efficiently, thoroughly, systematically, and without any trace of emotion. One after the other, they searched the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, the bath, the basement. They wore their boots and coats throughout. As though their roles had been assigned in advance, some of them moved furniture while others tapped on the walls or rifled drawers. Spots formed on the floor as the snow melted from their boots.
We stood with our backs against a pillar in the hallway and our hands behind our heads, as ordered. They appeared to be focused on their work, but at the same time they never took their eyes off the old man and me, making it impossible for us to move closer together or even so much as exchange looks. The old man’s tie was crooked, probably because we had left the hidden room in such a hurry, but his eyes remained fixed straight ahead. To calm myself, I tried to recall the song from the music box, and though it had played only a few times, I was able to remember the whole tune from beginning to end.
“Who are you and why are you here?” A man who appeared to be the leader of the group pointed at the old man and barked his question.
“I’ve been doing odd jobs here for a long time, so I’m sort of part of the family,” said the old man firmly, after first pausing to take a breath.
“The sink is full of dishes. Were you cooking?” The man who had been searching the kitchen turned back to question us.
He had seen the pile of dirty pots and pans and bowls and utensils from the party preparations—clearly a bigger mess than one woman living alone was likely to make—and there was not a single dirty dish in the pile, since we had not started clearing the ones we’d taken to the hidden room. Nor did the dinner table show any sign that we’d eaten there. Perhaps they had sensed that something was strange. The melody inside me played faster and faster.
“Yes.”
I had meant to answer clearly, but nothing more than a weak sigh slipped out. The old man took a half step toward me.
“I cook enough for a week and then freeze it,” I added, surprised that such nonsense was coming out of my mouth. But of course! I suddenly realized it would have been even more suspicious if there had been three sets of plates in the sink. I told myself I should calm down and be grateful for this stroke of good luck.
The man picked up the pot I’d used to boil the vegetables and the bowl in which I’d mixed the cake batter and studied them for a moment before returning them to the sink and moving off to search the cupboard. I swallowed with relief.
“Move on,” the man in charge told the others. “Upstairs.” The men filed up the staircase and we followed behind.
I wondered whether their footsteps and the noise from the search had reached R in the hidden room. Was he clutching his knees, his back rounded into a ball, trying to make himself smaller? He was probably sitting on the floor, since the bed and chair tended to squeak, and no doubt he was barely breathing for fear of being heard. And through it all, the music box was watching over him.
There were fewer rooms on the second floor, but the search was even more thorough. The Memory Police rattled about noisily, held things up to the light to examine them, fidgeted with their guns. Each activity seemed to have some hidden meaning, which made the process all the more oppressive.
We were standing against the windows along the hallway on the north side of the house. My arms, still crossed behind my head, grew heavier and heavier. The river flowing beneath the windows had vanished into the night. Lights were on in the neighboring houses, which were probably being searched as well. The old man coughed quietly.
We could see what was happening in the office through the half-open door. One of the men had taken all of the books from the bookshelf and was shining a flashlight into the space between the shelf and the wall. Another had pulled the mattress from the bed and was removing its cover, and a third was glancing through manuscript pages he had found in the desk drawers. Their long, carefully tailored coats made the men seem terribly tall, as though they were looking down menacingly on everything around them.
“What’s this?” the man who had been going through the desk asked. He had a wad of pages in his hand. The fact that he’d taken an interest in the desk was, in itself, dangerous, since the speaker for our makeshift intercom was concealed behind the dictionaries.
“A novel,” I replied, speaking in the direction of the door.
“A novel?” he repeated, as though the word was somehow vulgar. Then he threw the papers on the floor with a snort, scattering them about the room. More than likely he was the sort of person who had never read a novel in his life. Which was, in fact, a stroke of good luck. As soon as he lost interest in the manuscript, he turned away from the dictionaries as well.
Their boots crisscrossed the rug on the floor of the office, heavy-looking boots that had been carefully greased and polished, that must have been difficult to pull off at the end of the day. As I watched them, I realized something important. One corner of the rug was ever so slightly turned up.
I had been the last one to close the trapdoor and replace the rug. Even in such a rush, how could I have failed to do it more carefully? If one of them noticed and pulled up the rug even a bit, the entrance to the secret room would be discovered instantly.
Once I’d noticed it, I was unable to take my eyes off the turned-up corner. I knew I might be drawing their attention to it, but I couldn’t help myself. I glanced to the side, wondering whether the old man had noticed, but his eyes seemed to be focused on some point deep in the distant night.
The boots moved back and forth across the rug. The turned-up corner was barely an inch in length and under normal circumstances would hardly have attracted notice, but now it seemed to fill my entire field of vision.
“What’s this?” one of the men said. I immediately thought he must have noticed the rug, and my hands came reflexively to cover my mouth. “What is this?” he repeated, coming toward us with long strides. I repeated a phrase from the music box melody to myself, trying to keep from screaming. “Keep your hands behind your head,” he ordered in a deep voice.