“I’m sure you’re right.”
“So there’s nothing to worry about.”
When we’d all had our say, we made our way home—though we were less sure-footed than the Memory Police. The old woman fell by her gate, and the hatmaker’s umbrella got stuck in a snowbank.
Don had come out of his house and was pacing in front of the door, wagging his tail nervously. When he saw me, he came running, kicking up snow and snorting with pleasure, but as he approached I realized that his back left leg had disappeared.
“You too, boy? Don’t worry, you’ll be all right.”
I wrapped my arms around him. His hind leg dangled limply.
That night in bed, R massaged my disappeared leg. He worked at it for a long time, as though he thought his efforts might bring it back.
“When I was a little girl and had a fever, my mother would rub me like this,” I murmured.
“You see?” he said. “How can your leg have disappeared when you still have a memory like that?” He smiled and pressed harder with his hand.
“I suppose so,” I said, nodding vaguely and looking up at the ceiling.
In fact, the feelings I remembered from my mother’s hand and those from R’s now were completely different. No warmth, no sensation at all came to my leg from his touch. Just the uncomfortable feeling of one thing grating against another. But I worried that it would hurt him if I told him the truth.
“Look,” he said. “Here you have five toenails lined up neat as you please. Smooth and translucent like the skin of a fruit. And here’s the heel, and the ankle. All the same as your right leg. And the lovely curve of your knee fits perfectly in the palm of my hand. You can feel the intricate bone structure. Your thigh is amazingly white, your calf is soft and warm. I can feel every part of your leg, each scratch and bruise and bump. How can you say all that has disappeared?”
He knelt at the edge of the bed, his hands continuing to move.
I closed my eyes, more conscious than ever of the new cavity that had opened up in my body. It was filled to the brim with clear water that retained no trace of any memory. R’s hand stirred the water, but no more than a few tiny bubbles rose to the surface and popped silently.
“I’m happy you’re here,” I told him. “Happy to know you’ll go on looking after my leg even though it’s gone. The other legs on the island must feel sad and abandoned.”
“I can’t imagine what it must be like in the outside world, with things disappearing one after the other…”
“I doubt the changes seem as great to us as they would to you. We shrug them off with as little fuss as possible and make do with what’s left. Just as we always have. Though this time people do seem a bit more concerned. Maybe because we haven’t been able to dispose of the thing that’s disappeared and have to keep carrying it around with us. Though I’m already getting used to that, thanks to you.”
“You go to great lengths to get rid of these things, don’t you?”
“I suppose we do. But this time there’s nothing to be done. We can’t burn them or crush them or throw them in the sea. We just try to avoid them as much as possible. But I’m sure that will pass soon enough. I don’t know how, but sooner or later everything will fall back into place.”
“Fall back into place? What do you mean?”
“Eventually, the hole left by our legs will find a place in our hearts and minds that fits it perfectly, a place to fall into.”
“But why would you do that? Why would you want to get rid of these things? I need your leg as much as I need the rest of you…” He closed his eyes and sighed. I started to reach out to touch his face but then froze when my leg threated to slip off of the bed. He took it in his hands and brought it to his mouth, kissing it on the calf. A quiet kiss that was almost like a whisper.
I thought how wonderful it would be had I been able to feel his lips, to sense them on skin and flesh that had not disappeared. But on my left leg there was only a slight pressure, like the weight of a bit of modeling clay.
“Stay a bit longer, like that,” I told him. Though the feeling was empty, I wanted to watch him holding on to that void.
“Of course,” he said. “As long as you like.”
Chapter 26
Gradually we became accustomed to living without our legs. Needless to say, things did not go back to the way they had been before, not exactly, but our bodies acquired a new sense of balance, and a new kind of daily rhythm took hold. Eventually we stopped noticing people who were unable to stand without holding on to something, or who were too tense to walk naturally, or who fell at random moments. We learned to control our bodies without too much inconvenience.
Even Don began running around again at full speed. He would jump up on the roof of his house to bask in the sun or leap at the branches of trees in the yard to bring the snow tumbling down. From time to time he proved too successful at this game and would come running to me for help after an enormous lump of snow had fallen on his head. But once I had wiped his face and rubbed his chin, he went right back to the tree, aiming this time for even heavier branches.
No matter how much time went by, there was no sign that our left legs were going to rot and drop off. They remained firmly in place, fixed to our hips. But no one seemed to care.
The number of people who were taken away by the Memory Police suddenly increased. Those who had used all sorts of tricks in the past to blend in could no longer fool the police after the disappearance of their left legs. It was surprising to see how many people had managed to hide in plain sight without being captured or resorting to safe houses, but now they found it impossible to imitate our new sense of balance. No matter how much they tried, something was slightly different about the distribution of the weight or the alignment of the muscles or the movement of the joints. And the Memory Police could spot it immediately.
This crackdown, and the loss of the old man, meant that our communication with R’s wife had now been suspended for some time. There was always the fear that the phones were tapped, and sending me for a face-to-face meeting seemed still riskier. Letters and packages from his wife were R’s only ties to his former life, but receiving them was dangerous, and the best way to keep him safe was to keep him completely isolated. Still, at some point we decided we could use the telephone to communicate if we managed to settle on a code. We decided that we would let the phone ring three times at a predetermined hour before hanging up—the signal that R was healthy and doing well. Three rings from the other end meant the message had been received and understood.
But in order to set up this system, I needed to go back to the elementary school for the first time in a long while. When I did, I discovered that the meteorological box was no longer mounted on its post. I found it in pieces on the ground, perhaps destroyed in the earthquake or crushed under the weight of the snow. I could see the thermometer, shattered and half covered by a pile of boards. I hesitated, wondering what to do, but in the end I decided to push the letter in among the remains of the box. This tiny meteorological station had long ago been forgotten, and now that it was in ruins, it was even less likely to attract attention—making it all the more ideal for our purposes. My one concern was whether R’s wife was still coming to look for letters here.
Still, at the appointed hour, I dialed the number and let it ring three times before hanging up. Then I waited in front of the phone. After a moment, it began to ring. Three rings that seemed to dissolve into the shadows and then silence. I had the feeling that the receiver had been trembling.
I continued with the task of writing strings of words that made almost no sense. The feeling of purpose I’d had during my time as a novelist was gone, but compared to the emptiness I’d felt after the burning of the library, things were going more smoothly. At any rate, I’d gotten to the point where the shapes of certain words seemed to be returning. I could vaguely recall the fingers of the typist locked away in the clock tower, the pattern of the parquet floor, the mountain of typewriters, the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs.