He embraced me gently, his hands encircling my back as though holding a cloud, and at last my tears stopped. Everything that had happened—shopping in the market, the death of the fish, lighting the candles on the cake, opening the music box, the burning of the datebook—seemed like memories from the distant past. We were entirely in the present. There, behind your heartbeat, have you stored up all my lost memories? I thought this to myself, cheek pressed against R’s chest. If I could, I would have liked to take them out and line them up in front of me one by one. I was sure that any memories that remained inside him would be very much alive, so different from my own, which were few in number and very pale—sodden flower petals sinking into the waves or the ashes at the bottom of the incinerator.
I closed my eyes. My eyelashes touched the wool of his sweater.
“The people in the house next door were loaded into a truck and taken away,” I murmured. “They were hiding an innocent boy. I wonder how long he’d been there. It seems strange to think that I had no idea there was someone nearby who was going through exactly the same thing you are.”
“Where do you suppose they took him?” He breathed the words into my hair.
“I watched for a long time in the dark after the truck had gone, wondering the same thing. I didn’t even notice that I wasn’t wearing a coat or gloves, that the snow was hitting my face. I stood there hoping that if I waited long enough I might discover where my memories have gone.”
R took my shoulders in his hands and gazed into the space between our bodies.
I wanted to tell him that I knew I’d never learn anything, no matter how long I waited, but he had covered my lips with his and I could say nothing more.
Chapter 18
I wonder how many days I’ve been stuck here, in the clock tower. I have no way of knowing.
Of course, with this enormous clock right here, you can always find out what time it is. There’s even a bell that rings twice a day, at eleven in the morning and again at five in the afternoon. In the beginning, to count the passing days, I made a mark with my fingernail each morning on the leg of the chair. But I’ve long since lost track. The chair was scarred to begin with and it eventually became impossible to tell which marks were ones I’d made.
Time passes like a long, frigid stream, without my knowing the month or date or day of the week. But I suppose it’s enough to be imprisoned here just as he wants me to be, surrounded by innumerable voices of the dead. What good would it do me to know the day or the date?
At first I could see only the typewriters and the mechanism of the clock, but after a time, I began to notice other details about the room.
Near the center of the wall to the west, the mountain of typewriters dropped off precipitously. I had only to climb over a few machines to reach a door, through which I found a simple bathroom. There was a small window above the sink, and from time to time I would climb up on the sink, open the window, and stare at the scene outside. I could see the roofs of houses, fields, a stream, a park. The clock tower is the tallest building in the town, so there was nothing above me as I looked out, just the sky stretching in every direction. It felt good to breathe fresh air like this. It soon became apparent that the sink was not strong enough to support my weight, and water began seeping from a spot where the pipe must have pulled away from the porcelain and the tiles.
Another revelation came from the contents of the drawer in the table, though it contained nothing as interesting as a hammer that I might have used to smash the lock on the door. What I did find was a puzzle made of bent wire, some thumbtacks, a tube of menthol-scented cream, an empty box of chocolates, a pack of cigarettes, toothpicks, a shell, finger cots, a thermometer, a glasses case… that sort of thing. Not much, but better than nothing. Things to add a little flavor to my life of captivity.
I tried to imagine how all these things had come to be in the drawer. In the days before the mechanism had been automated, an attendant must have lived in this room to look after the clock. Wind the spring, oil the gears, ring the bell at the appointed hours—a regular sort of job. He had probably helped out around the church when he had free time. A serious, taciturn old man without attachments. The cigarettes and glasses case must have been his. The cigarette pack was an old-fashioned design, and though there were still a few cigarettes left, they no longer smelled of tobacco. The case, made of cloth, was quite ragged. It seemed entirely possible that the old man had lived and died in this room.
At least I could pass the time playing with the wire puzzle. I made my mind go blank and stared at the ball of silver wires. Come what may, manipulating something with my fingers was always good for my mental state, and when I remembered how anxious I’d been when I’d first taken up the typewriter, the puzzle seemed rather nice by comparison. Still, as my fingers became accustomed to the way the wires fit together, I began to worry that it would not take me long to solve.
The menthol cream was also useful. I could rub it on my temples, under my nose, along my neck. I knew that the sharp odor would improve my spirits as soon as I smelled it. Not that it stimulated me; rather, it felt like a cool breeze blowing over my body and calming my nerves. The feeling lasted a long while, until the menthol evaporated. The tube was already half empty, so I would have to use it infrequently, in small quantities.
The bed was another thing that altered my impression of the room. He had brought it up himself, and it was just a simple folding sofa, but still it must have been extremely difficult to carry up the winding stairway. I had never seen him look tired before. He had always seemed completely in control. His clothes, his hair, the movement of his fingers, the words he spoke—everything had been subject to his will, and I was certain now that he had not willingly shown me his sweaty brow.
Still, it had apparently been worth the effort it had cost him to move the bed, since he did all sorts of things to me on it.
The ringing of the bell is more frightening here than it was in town, which makes sense since it’s so close I can almost touch it. As eleven and five o’clock approach, I cower in a corner of the room and rest my head on my knees. I close my eyes and hold my breath, hoping to block the sound and minimize the shock. But as the last second ticks away and the clapper of the bell begins to swing back and forth, I realize how meaningless my feeble resistance will be.
The sound of the clock flows along the ceiling, strikes the wall, shakes the floor, and, having nowhere to go, rattles about the room for a long time. It washes over me like a crushing wave, and though I steel myself in an attempt to push it away, it’s no use.
On the first day I was brought here, when the bell rang at five o’clock, I had the feeling that the typewriters were crying out together, as though the voices locked in them had been released all at once. In reality, if all the keys on all the typewriters were struck at the same time, that would be an even more dreadful noise than the bell itself.
I can no longer tell which of them was mine. At first it seemed newer than the rest, with shiny levers and a brightly painted cover. But gradually the dust clogged the keys and the paint faded, so that it was impossible to tell it from the others, and now it has simply melted into the mountain of machines.
I wonder if what he says is true, that someone’s voice is trapped in every typewriter here. If voices, like bodies, decline and decay, then most of these, crushed under this mountain, have been choked off and are hardened and useless.