The old man came to live in my house. I’d already decided this would be best and had begun preparations for the move, so it was no trouble for me. But he had seemed strangely subdued since the earthquake and I’d begun to worry about him. Of course, it was natural for him to be in shock—he had lost his home and all his possessions with no warning. Furthermore, though he had spent time at my house and knew it well, that was different from actually living here. He just needed time to get used to things—or so I tried to convince myself.
And, in fact, when it came to the project of putting my house back in order after the earthquake, he seemed to revive and pitch in with great energy. We were fortunate that there was no real damage to the structure, but inside was in such a terrible state that it was difficult to know where to begin. Still, the old man set to work, and in no time at all he had put everything back in its place.
First, he righted all the toppled furniture and fixed the pieces that were broken. If something was beyond repair, he chopped it up and burned it in the garden. Then he sorted everything that had been strewn around the house and put it back where it belonged. He even waxed the floors. Finally, he fixed the frame on the trapdoor to the hidden room and all the other doors and windows that had been damaged, so they worked as well as they ever had.
“The wound on your face doesn’t seem to be healing very quickly. You should take it easy,” I told him.
“No, no, no time for that. It’s easier just to get this kind of thing done all at once. By the way, I ran into the man who lives across the street and he asked me about my eczema, said he could still see traces of it on my face, and told me to take care of myself.” He laughed as he went off, tapping here and there with his hammer.
While the old man and I were cleaning up the basement we found some mysterious objects.
The basement had always held random stacks of old things, but the disorder after the earthquake was extreme, and there was barely anyplace to walk when we made our way down the stairs. I had decided I would use this as an opportunity to get rid of things I no longer needed, but everything I touched—sketchbooks, chisels, everything—reminded me of my mother, and in the end I was unable to make any progress at all.
“Young lady, could you come over here for a moment?” said the old man. He was squatting next to a cupboard.
“What is it?” I asked, my gaze following his pointing finger. Inside the cupboard were my mother’s sculptures, the ones the Inuis had left with me for safekeeping, fallen now from the shelves where they had been stored. The tapir she had given them as a wedding present, the doll she’d made when their daughter was born, and three more abstract objects she’d sent them before she was taken away.
“Look here,” the old man said, still pointing. While the tapir and doll seemed to be intact, the other three were cracked or broken in places. But I quickly realized that he had not called me over to inspect the damage, but rather because there appeared to be things hidden inside that were now visible through the cracks.
“I wonder what those are,” I said, carefully gathering up the three objects in my hands and setting them on the table. We sat down for a few moments and just looked in silence at the objects peeking out from the broken statues.
“Shall I take them out?” I said.
“I suppose so. We can’t tell much just staring at them like this. But please be careful. They might be dangerous.”
“I doubt it. Not inside my mother’s sculptures.”
I pinched them between my thumb and index finger and pulled them out one by one.
One was a rectangular piece of paper, folded over a number of times. It had yellowed and was ripping at the creases. There were letters and numbers barely visible on it.
The second was a metallic square about the size of a chocolate bar. Tiny holes covered one side of it.
And finally, there was a plastic bag that contained several white tablets that looked like medicine.
“My mother hid these inside the statues,” I said, as soon as they were lined up on the table.
“That certainly seems to be the case,” said the old man, moving around the table to examine the objects from every angle. I soon realized that these were all things that had been kept in the secret drawers in my mother’s chest. I gathered up the broken pieces of the statues and set them at one end of the table. A careful search for more hidden treasures turned up nothing more. The scrap of paper, metal bar, and white lozenges seemingly had nothing in common, but they all shared a certain gentle modesty.
“I wonder if the Inuis knew about this.”
“If they had, I would think they’d have told you about it when they left the statues with you.”
“I suppose so. Then that means these things have been hidden for fifteen years without anyone knowing about them.”
We sat again at the table, resting our chins in our hands, and studied the mysterious objects. The heater in the basement was working no better today than it ever had, and though it had been running a long time, the room was still cold. Snow beat against the transom window, but the sky was invisible. The ice floes on the river outside made creaking noises from time to time.
“What should we do with them?” I asked.
“I wonder…” The old man reached out to pick up the metal bar, but his hand was trembling and closed on nothing but the empty air. The more he tried to reach for the objects, the more his hands seemed to move off in unexpected directions.
“What’s the matter?” I asked him, and he quickly used his left hand to pull back his right arm and place it on his knees.
“Nothing, nothing at all. I’m just a little nervous seeing all these unusual things.”
“Something’s wrong with your arm. Show me.”
“No, no. It’s nothing, really.” He turned, trying to shield his right arm.
“You must be tired. Let’s just leave all this and get some rest.” He nodded silently. “But we should take these up to R’s room. I’m sure they’re the kinds of things that can exist only there.”
“Did your mother make other sculptures between the time she got the summons and the day they took her away?” R asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said, clutching the quilt as I spoke. “But if she did, I think the three the Inuis left are the only ones here in the house.” The three objects were lined up now on R’s bed. “The other sculptures she left my father and me were made long before they ordered her to report to the ministry.”
“And she didn’t store her work anywhere else?”
“The only place I can think of is the cabin we have up near the source of the river, but I haven’t been there in years. It must be a ruin.”
“Still, I bet that’s where they are. She must have hidden her sculptures there, or rather, hidden things that had disappeared inside the sculptures—to protect them from the Memory Police.” He pushed his hands down into the bed and recrossed his legs. The springs groaned.
“That’s why the things in the secret drawers disappeared at some point?” I looked up at him.
“That’s right.”
He picked up the piece of paper first. It seemed extremely fragile, so he set it in the palm of his hand and gently unfolded it.
“Do you remember this?” he asked.