A week later, she suddenly vanished, and I had no way of knowing whether she had run out of vegetables to sell, or had moved on to a different spot, or had found a place to hide—or if she had been caught by the Memory Police.
Another significant incident that took place was that the former hatmaker and his wife who lived in the house across the way came to stay with me for the night. They were having their whole house painted and asked whether I could put them up just until the smell dissipated.
Needless to say, I offered them the Japanese-style room on the first floor, as far as possible from the hidden room. Though it caused both R and me no end of anxiety for the whole time they were there, refusing them would have been even more awkward.
“I’m sorry to put you out,” the hatmaker had said, “but it will take at least a day or two for the paint to dry, and we couldn’t really sleep with the windows open in this cold.”
“You’re more than welcome,” I told him, smiling as warmly as I could. “There’s plenty of room.”
That day, I got up well before they were due to arrive and made lots of sandwiches and tea and took them to the hidden room.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with this today,” I told R. He nodded silently, apparently a bit nervous himself. “And no footsteps, or running water for the toilet.” I repeated my cautions and then carefully closed the trapdoor, which would not open again until the following day.
The hatmaker and his wife were simple, honest people, not the type to poke around my house or ask question about my private life. She made herself at home in the Japanese-style room and occupied herself with her knitting much of the day. When the hatmaker got back from work, the three of us ate dinner and then chatted for a while in front of the television. Shortly after nine o’clock, they were ready for bed.
But the whole time they were there, my mind was focused on the second floor. Every sound frightened me, even those that had nothing to do with R—the distant moaning of the sea, honking horns, the wind—and I found myself studying their faces intently. But they showed no signs of suspicion. In fact, at times I myself felt that the hidden room must have emerged from a fevered dream and that my preoccupation with it was nothing more than some sort of hallucination.
The next day, when the paint had dried, they returned to their house. By way of thanking me, they sent a sack of flour, a can of sardines in oil, and a sturdy black umbrella that the hatmaker had made himself.
Also during this period I began taking care of the dog that had belonged to the neighbors to my east. The day after the family had been taken away, the Memory Police sent a truck to remove all the furniture from the house, but for some reason they had left the dog. For several days I fed him scraps or bowls of milk through the fence, but when it became clear that no one was coming for him, I consulted with the head of the neighborhood association and finally decided to adopt him.
The old man helped me move the doghouse into my garden, and then we drove a stake into the ground to secure his chain. We brought his dish, which had been covered in the snow, over from next door. The name “Don” was written on the roof of his house, so that is what I called him. I wasn’t sure whether this referred to Don Juan or Don Quixote, but he was, at any rate, a docile and obedient animal. He very quickly grew accustomed to the old man and me. He was a mutt, with brown patches on his coat and a slight crimp in his left ear. Though it was rather odd for a dog, his favorite food was whitefish; he had a habit of licking the links of his chain.
So it was that a walk with Don during the warmest part of the day became one of my regular duties. Since the nights were cold, I made him a bed from an old blanket and let him sleep in a corner of the entry hall. It occurred to me that I was giving Don all the love and care I wished I could give to the couple who had been his owners, the boy who had been hidden in their house, the Inui family, and Mizore, their cat.
After these relatively uneventful weeks, another disappearance occurred. I thought I’d become accustomed to them, but this one was more complicated: this time novels disappeared.
As usual, it started during the night, but this time it developed more slowly. Throughout the morning, there was no apparent change in the town.
“We didn’t have a single novel in the house, so this one was easy. But it must be horrible for you as a writer. If there’s anything I can do to help, just let me know. Books are heavy things.”
I was standing in the street in front of the house when the former hatmaker came over to offer his condolences.
“Thanks,” I said, my voice barely audible.
Needless to say, R was violently opposed to losing our collection of novels.
“You’ve got to bring them all here,” he said, “including your manuscript.”
“If I do, the room will be buried in books, with no place for you to live.” I shook my head.
“Don’t worry about that, I don’t need much space. If we hide them here, they’ll never find them.”
“But then what happens to them? What’s the point of storing away books that have disappeared?”
He sighed and pressed his fingers to his temples—as he always did when we talked about the disappearances. Try as we might to understand each other, nothing changed for either of us. The more we talked, the sadder we became.
“You write novels. You of all people must know that you cannot choose between them, divide them into categories. They are all useful in their own way.”
“Yes, I know. Or at least I did until yesterday. But that’s all changed now. My soul seems to be breaking down.” I said those last words cautiously, as though I were handing over a fragile object. “Losing novels is hard for me,” I said. “It’s as though an important bond between the two of us is being cut.”
I stared at him for a moment.
“You mustn’t burn your manuscript. You must go on writing novels. That way, the bond will remain.”
“But that’s impossible. Novels have disappeared. Even if we keep the manuscripts and the books, they’re nothing more than empty boxes. Boxes with nothing inside. You can peer into them, listen carefully, sniff the contents, but they signify nothing. So what could I possibly write?”
“Don’t be impatient. You have to take your time and try to remember. Where did all those words come from? How did you find them?”
“I’m afraid I’ve lost my nerve. The word ‘novel’ itself is getting harder to pronounce. That’s how you know the disappearance is taking hold. It won’t be long now until I’ll have forgotten everything. Remembering is impossible.”
I lowered my head and ran my fingers through my hair. R leaned over to look up at me and rested his hands on my knees.
“No, it will be all right. You may think that the memories themselves vanish every time there’s a disappearance, but that’s not true. They’re just floating in a pool where the sunlight never reaches. All you have to do is plunge your hand in and you’re bound to find something. Something to bring back into the light. You have to try. I can’t just stand by watching as your soul withers.”
He took my hands in his, warming each finger.
“If I go on writing stories, will those memories protect me?”
“I know they will.” He nodded and I could feel his breath on my hands.