“Thank you,” I said.
The last book had finally been tossed out the window. The library building was beginning to collapse in upon itself. From time to time, a portion of the roof or a section of wall would come down with a crash. The circulation desk and the chairs in the reading room could be seen burning in the ruins.
I followed the arc of the last book as it tumbled through the air—and suddenly I realized that, long ago, I had stood at this same window with my father and looked out at a similar sight. I took a deep breath and felt a slight pain, as though a spark had found its way into the bottomless swamp of my heart.
“A bird.”
I remembered. The pages of the book had opened and fluttered through the air just the way birds had once spread their wings and flown off to distant places. But this memory, too, was soon erased by the flames, leaving behind nothing but the burning night.
Chapter 20
As the old man had predicted, I soon found another job. The head of the neighborhood association made an introduction for me at a trading company run by an acquaintance.
“They sell spices in bulk. It’s not a large firm, but the owner is an interesting man and the offices are nice enough. He’s apparently looking for a typist.”
“A typist?” I said.
“That doesn’t interest you?”
“I don’t have much experience, just a bit when I was at school. I’m not sure I’d be good enough…”
I repeated the word “typist” silently to myself several times. It seemed to have a special significance.
“Not to worry,” he said. “You can learn as you go. The owner said as much. At any rate, I’m sure you’ll have various other duties to start.”
“I’m very grateful, and I apologize for putting you to so much trouble.” I bowed, but all the while the word “typist” repeated itself in my head. I tried to recover my faded memory, but it remained distant and vague.
“Not at all! Don’t mention it. I was just connecting the dots. We all have to pull together after a disappearance.” He smiled with satisfaction.
And so I came to work at a spice company, and the rhythm of my days changed drastically. I woke early in the morning, prepared the food, water, and other things R would need during the day, and carried them all to the hidden room. In the evening, when I got home from work, I would check to see that R was all right before taking Don for a walk. After that, I would start making dinner. At first, it bothered me to be away from the house for ten hours a day. Inevitably, I imagined the worst happening while I was gone, a fire or a robbery or R suddenly falling ill—or another visit from the Memory Police—and besides that, I was much busier now than I’d been before. It proved to be fairly difficult to juggle my job, watching over R, caring for Don, and managing the house, and I rarely had time to visit the old man on the boat. But the days passed without any major problems.
The spice company was a pleasant, almost homey place. My duties included dusting, answering the phone, and some basic filing. And I was lent a portable typewriter and a typing manual and asked to practice at home. It was the first time I had worked outside the house, but it seemed as though I would manage well enough. The one thing that bothered me, however, was the strong smell of the spices that came from the warehouse behind the office. The bitter, medicinal odor clung to me like the stench of rotting fruit.
On the other hand, one of the perks of the job was that I received gifts of food from some of our clients, like sausage and cheese and corned beef, which had long since vanished from the markets and were an enormous treat for the old man, R, and me.
I understood why I had reacted so strongly to the word “typist” when I reread the manuscript I’d given to R for safekeeping, though in point of fact I was no longer capable of reading a novel, much less writing one. I could read the words out loud, but I could no longer understand them as parts of a coherent story with a plot to connect them. They were just characters on the manuscript page, and they evoked in me no feeling or atmosphere, no recognizable scene.
As I traced the words one by one and came at last to that word, I remembered that my novel was about a typist. But the discovery only made it clearer that writing the rest would not be as easy as R had suggested.
On Friday and Saturday evenings, I sat down at my desk. Putting aside the paperweight, I carefully examined the manuscript, beginning from the first page. But the work never went smoothly. I tried various strategies—reading the same line several times, staring at a single word, running my eyes over the words at a steady speed—but nothing seemed to help. By the fifth or sixth page, I had invariably lost the will to continue. Then I would flip through the pages until I came upon a section that looked promising and try the same thing again, but the results were always the same. In the end, I was so weary that the mere sight of the lines on the paper made me dizzy.
But if continuing what I’d already written was impossible, it occurred to me that perhaps I could write something new, and so I took out a fresh sheet of paper. To warm up my fingers, I tried writing a, i, u, e, o. Then, taking care to match the size of the characters to the lines on the paper, I continued with ka, ki, ku, ke, ko. And as I wrote these meaningless characters, I began to feel a certain satisfaction in the knowledge that I was fulfilling R’s hopes for me, even in the tiniest way. But when I erased the characters and the blank lines spread out in front of me, my fingers grew numb and my anxiety returned with the realization that I had no idea what to write.
What had I written? I asked myself. At night, I would try to recall anything at all about those moments, seated at my desk, when I had been searching for words. The typewriter had sat at the edge of the desk, watching me in silence. Fortunately, my coworkers at the spice company had not said much about my typing practice, since I was making little progress. I would tap the keys at random, producing a stream of metallic clicks. In these moments, I would suddenly have the feeling that a story was coming back to me and I would reach out instinctively to seize it. But there was nothing for me to hold. When I could no longer stand to stare at the blank page, I would type a, i, u, e, o, and then, imagining that I would now be able to write something, I would erase them again. But of course nothing came to me, and I would return to a, i, u, e, o. And the process would repeat itself. In the end, all that was left was a torn page, from the many times I’d erased what I’d written.
“You shouldn’t force the memories. Just try to untangle them slowly,” R told me. I had apologized for handing him a blank sheet of paper, but his response was encouraging and showed no sign of disappointment.
“I’ve tried, but I’m afraid it’s useless.”
“You shouldn’t say that. You’re the same person now that you were when you wrote novels. The only thing that’s changed is that the books have been burned. But even if paper itself disappears, words will remain. It will be all right, you’ll see. We haven’t lost the stories.”
He took me in his arms, as he always did now. The bed was soft and warm. His skin was growing whiter and whiter, and his muscles seemed more visible than ever. His hair had grown out and hung down over his eyes.
“The flames burned all night. So long that I thought the night itself might never end. And everyone stayed on to stare at the fire, even after they’d burned all their books. The sound of burning paper filled the air, and yet, for some reason, I felt as though I were surrounded by total silence. As though my eardrums were frozen. This was the first time a disappearance seemed like a solemn ceremony. The old man and I just stood there holding hands, because it felt as though I would be sucked into the flames if someone didn’t hold me back.”