He was the only thing holding me together now. Only his fingers. And so, again this evening, I wait for the sound of his footsteps as he climbs the tower.
I did not venture back down to the hidden room again after the Memory Police came to search the house. As before, when I took R his meals, we would still exchange a few meaningless words. I would cast about for plausible excuses to climb down the ladder, but in the end I closed the trapdoor without voicing any of them.
The shock of that evening seemed to sink in gradually. R smiled only rarely now and often left food on his plate. Perhaps because the invasion by the Memory Police had upset me so much, he had missed the opportunity to express his own feelings—which seemed now to be festering like a wound. As I would turn to go, I would stop in midmotion and hold the heavy trapdoor for a moment, peeking inside and thinking I would give him a chance to say something more before we parted. But I invariably found him at the desk, his back turned, or already burrowing his way into the covers on the bed.
It was too painful to realize that there was no chance he would open the interior latch, lift the door, crawl out from under the rug, and come to me. I knew, of course, that his situation was complicated, but no matter how often I reminded myself of this, I still worried that he was simply avoiding me.
The more I thought back over the events of that night, the more they seemed to retreat, one by one, from reality. The various dishes we had prepared, the cake, the pile of dirty pots and pans, the presents, the wine, the boots, the burned datebook, the turned-up corner of the rug, the three figures in the distance, the covered truck, the tears… I had trouble believing that all of this could have happened to me in one evening. But I knew that sleeping with R had been the only way to survive that horrible night. In order to protect each other, we had simply taken refuge in the only safe place left to us. Or so I said, to comfort myself.
I put aside the manuscript pages I’d written that day, took the speaker from its hiding place behind the dictionary, and held it to my ear. At first I couldn’t hear anything, but as I continued to listen, I gradually began to make out the quiet sounds from the hidden room.
First came the sound of water. Then coughing, the rustling of cloth, the motor of the ventilation fan. I gripped the funnel and pressed it harder against my ear.
He was washing himself. That evening, I’d brought him the usual items: washbasin, pot of hot water, plastic sheet, towel.
“Ah, it’s bath day, is it?” he said as I handed all this down to him. “I’d forgotten.”
“I’m sorry it’s such a poor excuse for a real bath,” I told him, gently bumping the bottom of the basin against the handrail.
“Not at all,” he said, gathering all the items in his arms. “I’m grateful that you manage to remember the schedule even without a calendar.”
The sound of water came to me intermittently like a soft murmur. Of course I had never seen how he managed to wash himself, but as I listened I felt as though his movements were coming to me through the funnel.
First, he spread out the plastic sheet to keep the floor from getting wet. Then he undressed and sat down on it with his legs crossed under him. His neatly folded clothes were stacked on the bed. Working quickly, before the water cooled, he wet the towel, wrung it out, and then carefully washed his neck, his back, his shoulders, his arms. When the towel was no longer wet enough, he dipped it in the basin again. His skin, so far removed from air and sunlight, was pale and soft, and the towel left red marks if he rubbed too hard. His face expressionless, he moved his hands in silence. Drops of water sparkled on the plastic sheet. I was able to trace the contours of his body, able to recall the movement of each muscle, the angle of each joint, the pattern of each vein showing through his white skin. Even though the sounds coming through the funnel were barely audible, as they came to my ears and to my memory, the sensation became clearer and clearer.
The curtains on the window by the desk were parted slightly, and I could see stars in the night sky—a rare enough sight in recent days. The darkness had painted black the snow that blanketed the town. The wind rattled the windowpane from time to time. I untangled the rubber tube that ran down to the floor. The funnel had warmed in my hand. The pages of my manuscript were neatly stacked and secured under a paperweight on the desk. To me, they seemed the only ticket I could use for admittance to the hidden room below me.
I could hear a thin stream of water being slowly poured into the basin.
Chapter 19
Several weeks had passed since the old man’s birthday party. During that time, a few incidents occurred, though nothing to compare with the visit from the Memory Police.
One of these was a chance encounter with an old woman during a walk one evening. She had come in from a farm somewhere and set out a mat along the road to sell vegetables. The selection was small, but her prices were cheaper than those at the markets in town, so I happily filled a bag with a cauliflower, bean sprouts, and some green peppers. But as I was handing over the money, she suddenly leaned in close to my face.
“Do you know a safe hiding place?” she whispered. I was so startled I nearly dropped the coins.
“What?” I blurted out, thinking I might have misunderstood.
“I’m looking for someone who can hide me,” she said clearly. But she did not glance at me as she slipped the money into a bag hanging from her belt. I looked around but saw no one except a few children playing in the park across the way.
“Are the Memory Police looking for you?” I asked, trying to appear as though we were simply chatting after my purchase. She said nothing more, perhaps afraid she’d already said too much.
I looked at her again. She seemed solidly built, but her clothes were threadbare. Her work pants, which had probably been fashioned out of material from an old kimono, were tattered, and the shawl she had wrapped around her shoulders was pilling. There were holes at the toes of her tennis shoes. The corners of her eyes were crusty with sleep, and her hands were chapped and swollen. But no matter how long I stared at her face, I had no recollection of having seen her before.
But then why had she made such an important request of someone she had never met? I found the whole thing puzzling. How did she know that I wouldn’t denounce her to the Memory Police? Was she really in such danger that she had no other choice? If so, I felt I wanted to do something to help her even if I couldn’t give her a place to hide. But then again it was also possible that this was some sort of trap laid by the Memory Police, as that was just the sort of trick to be expected from them. Or then again, perhaps this old woman already knew that I was hiding someone in my house, and she’d approached me because she wanted to be hidden as well. But that seemed unlikely. There was no way our secret had gotten out—not if the Memory Police themselves had been unable to discover it.
My mind was racing, but I found I couldn’t say a thing for a moment.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you,” I said finally, picking up the bag. The old woman said nothing more. Her expression was blank as she went back to arranging her vegetables, the coins clinking at her hip. “I’m sorry,” I said and hurried away.
Later, I was saddened at the thought of her red, swollen hands, but I knew there was nothing I could have done, given the situation. A careless move would have put R in danger. Still, I couldn’t get the woman out of my mind and for the next week, when I went out for my walk, I would find myself at her makeshift vegetable stand. Sometimes I would buy something, and other days I would pass by in silence. She always had the same modest assortment on offer, but she never seemed to give a sign that we’d met before and she never mentioned her need of a refuge again. Perhaps the enormity of her problem had caused her to completely forget my face, or the request she had made of me.