By evening, the disappearance was settling in more rapidly. People were bringing books to burn in fires that had been started in parks and fields and vacant lots. From the window of my study, I could see smoke and flames rising all over the island, being absorbed into the heavy, gray clouds that covered everything. The snow had turned filthy with soot.
In the end, I chose a dozen books from my shelves and took them to R for safekeeping, along with the manuscript I was writing. I asked the old man to help me pile the rest in the back of my bicycle cart, and we took them to burn at one of the fires. It would have been impossible to hide all of them, and furthermore I knew it would seem suspicious if I, as a writer, had nothing to destroy.
It was difficult to decide which books to keep and which to part with. Even as I picked up each volume, I realized I could no longer remember what it had been about. But I knew I couldn’t linger over these decisions, since it was quite possible the Memory Police would be around to check on my progress. In the end, I decided to keep books that had been given to me by dear friends and those with beautiful covers.
At five thirty, as dusk was falling, the old man and I set off, pulling the cart behind us.
Don came running, apparently eager to join us.
“We’re not going for a walk this time,” I told him. “We have important work to do. You keep guard at home.” He went to lie down on the blanket in the entranceway.
We passed several other people carrying heavy paper bags or bundles. The street was icy in places and there were snowdrifts, making it difficult to pull the cart. My books, which had been loaded in neat bundles, were soon reduced to a jumble in the cart, but since we were taking them to be burned, it didn’t seem to matter.
“If you get tired, you can climb on the cart and take a rest,” said the old man.
“Thanks, but I’m fine,” I told him.
We made our way along the main street, skirted the market, and arrived at last at the park in the center of town. The whole area was filled with light and heat. A great mountain of books was already burning, sending sparks high into the night sky. A crowd had gathered around the fire, and Memory Police officers could be seen standing among the trees just outside the circle.
“What an incredible sight…,” the old man murmured.
The flames, like some enormous living creature, shot up to the sky, higher than the streetlights, higher than the telephone poles. When the wind blew, a great mass of burning pages danced into the air. The snow had melted all around and the mud sucked at your shoes with each step. An orange light illuminated the slide, the seesaw, the park benches, the walls of the restroom building. The moon and the stars were nowhere to be seen, as though they had been scattered by the brilliance of the flames, and only the corpses of burned books lit the sky.
The people in the crowd, cheeks blazing with the fire, stared, openmouthed, at the spectacle before them. Stunned and silent, as if attending a solemn ceremony, they made no move to brush away the sparks that rained down on them.
The pile of books was taller than I was. Some had not yet caught fire, but it was impossible to read the titles. I squinted at the spines, though it would have made no difference had I been able to recognize them. Still, by watching them until the moment they disappeared, I hoped to preserve in my memory something from their pages.
There were books of all sorts—some in slipcases, some bound in leather, weighty tomes and slender novellas—piled together awaiting their turn in the flames. From time to time, the mountain would collapse with a muffled whoosh, the flames would shoot up, and the heat would grow more intense.
After one of these moments, a young woman suddenly moved out of the circle of onlookers, climbed up on a bench, and began to shout something. Startled, the old man and I exchanged a nervous glance. Others in the crowd turned to look at her.
She was screaming so frantically that it was impossible to understand what she was saying. Arms flailing, saliva flying, she was clearly agitated, but it was hard to tell whether she was angry or just distraught.
She was dressed in a shabby overcoat and checked pants, and her long hair was tied up in a braid. On top of her head, perched at a jaunty angle, she wore an odd thing made of soft material. As she rocked violently to and fro, I found myself fearing it would come tumbling off.
“Do you think she’s mad?” I whispered to the old man.
“I wonder,” he answered, crossing his arms. “She seems to want them to put out the fire.”
“But why?”
“To stop the novels from disappearing, I suppose.”
“Do you mean, she’s—”
“—unable to rid herself of her memories. Poor thing.”
Her cries gradually rose to something close to a scream, but of course no one made a move to extinguish the enormous mountain of flames. The people nearby just watched her with pitying looks.
“They’ll take her if she goes on like that,” I said, starting toward the bench. “She’s got to get away, we’ve got to do something.”
“I’m afraid it’s too late,” said the old man, catching hold of me before I could move.
Three members of the Memory Police had appeared from the woods and were already pulling on her arms. She tried to resist, clinging to the bench, but it was hopeless. The thing on her head fell into the mud.
“No one can erase the stories!” The last words she said as they dragged her away were the only ones I was able to understand clearly.
I heard sighs from the people around us as they turned back to stare at the fire. I looked down at the thing she had left on the ground, which was now even more limp and filthy than it had been. Her words continued to ring in my ears—“No one can erase the stories.”
“Of course! A hat!” I was suddenly able to remember. “The man who lives across the street used to make them, but they disappeared years ago. You wore them on your head—the way she did—didn’t you?”
I looked up at the old man, but he just seemed puzzled.
At that moment someone moved out of the crowd, picked up the hat, and, without a word, tossed it into the fire. It spun as it flew and then fell among the flames.
“Well then, we should be getting on with it,” the old man said.
“You’re right,” I said, looking up from the spot where the hat lay burning.
We left the cart near the fountain and walked toward the fire, our arms filled with books. But as we approached, the heat grew more fierce and sparks threatened to burn our clothes and hair, so we could not get very close.
“You should keep back,” the old man said, as always worried for my safety. “I can manage.”
“No, it’s fine. We can’t get closer anyway. Why don’t we just throw them from here?”
I took a book with a pea-green cover decorated with a picture of fruit and tossed it toward the fire. I’d thrown it as hard as I could, but it barely reached the edge of the pile. The next one, thrown by the old man, made it a little farther up the side. The people around us glanced in our direction, but they said nothing and their faces remained expressionless.
We continued throwing the books, one after the other, without flipping through the pages or so much as glancing at the covers. We repeated the movements almost automatically, as if performing some solemn duty. Still, as each volume left my hand, I felt a slight twinge, as though the hollow place in my memory were being enlarged book by book.
“I had no idea books burned so well,” I said.
“I suppose it’s because they pack so much paper into such a small object,” said the old man, as he continued tossing them into the fire.
“It may take a long time for every word to disappear.”
“I wouldn’t worry, they’ll be nothing but ashes by tomorrow morning,” he said. Pulling a towel from his pocket, he wiped the sweat and soot from his face.