Still, it was extremely difficult to fill the boxes on the blank manuscript paper with characters, and the number of words I produced for an entire night’s effort was painfully small. At times I grew so weary and frustrated that I wanted to throw the stack of paper out the window, but then I would choose one of the objects I had borrowed from the hidden room, set it on my open palms, and breathe deeply to calm myself.
Little by little, the boat slipped lower. When I took Don out for a walk, I stopped at the ruins of the library to sit and gaze out at the sea. It was lonely but peaceful there, with the sound of cars on the coastal road barely audible in the distance. The rumor had continued to spread that they were planning to build a headquarters for the Memory Police on the site, but the piles of burned bricks had not been removed and there was no sign that construction would be starting anytime soon.
“Do you remember how the old man looked sitting right here?” I asked Don. “I never imagined that would be the last time I’d see him.” Don galloped about, clearly unconcerned with what I was telling him. “I should have noticed something was wrong that day. But he looked fine, his usual self. Though I suppose he did seem a bit sad, and he was never willing to ask for help. I wish I could put my arms around him and tell him there’s nothing to fear, that everything will be all right—the way he always did for me. But he’s gone, Don.”
I took a cracker from my pocket, broke it in pieces, and tossed them to Don. He jumped and twisted, deftly catching them in midair, and as I clapped my approval he raised his nose and capered about, begging for more.
“If I’d realized sooner what was happening, we might have saved him.”
I tried to put into words the regret that lingered in my head, though I knew that saying this aloud might only make things worse. Don noisily chewed his cracker.
Now, when the waves were high, they hid the last bit of the boat still visible. And it seemed clear that it would soon vanish entirely beneath the surface. My heart ached when I thought about that day. Would I remember how we had eaten cake in the wheelhouse? Or made our plans to build the hidden room? Or stood on deck, leaning against the rail, watching the sunset? It was more than my empty heart could stand.
By the time their right arms disappeared, people were less troubled than they had been with the disappearance of their left legs. They didn’t linger in bed, wondering what had happened, or spend long hours trying to figure out how to get dressed, or worry about how to dispose of the disappeared item. To be honest, we had been certain something like this would happen sooner or later.
The disappearances of body parts were, in fact, easier and more peaceful than earlier ones, as no one had to gather in the square to burn the objects or send them floating down the river. There was no uproar, no confusion. We merely went about our usual morning routines, accepting that a new cavity had opened in our lives.
Of course, this disappearance brought subtle changes to my daily routine. I could no longer apply polish to my nails. I had to come up with a new way to type using only my left hand. It took inordinate amounts of time to peel vegetables. I had to move the rings I had worn on my right hand to my left… But none of this posed any real problem. I had only to surrender to each new disappearance to find myself carried along quite naturally to the place I needed to be.
I was no longer able to carry a tray of food and climb down the ladder to the hidden room. I would hand the tray carefully down to R and then descend the rungs, one by one, leaning on him for support. Nor was climbing back up any easier, as I struggled with the ladder and the trapdoor before pulling myself through the narrow entrance. As I did, R would watch me from below with a worried look.
“The time will come when I won’t be able to get in and out of this room,” I told him.
“Don’t be silly. I’ll just pick you up and carry you, like a princess,” he said, holding out his arms toward me. They still seemed surprisingly strong, though they’d had no more taxing exercise than organizing receipts, shelling peas, or polishing silver. They were supple and alive, unlike my right arm, which seemed to have hardened like plaster.
“That would be wonderful,” I said. “But how can you hold something that has disappeared?”
His hands dropped to his knees and he looked up at me and blinked as though he hadn’t grasped the meaning of my question.
“I can hold you, I can touch any part of you I want.”
“You can touch me, but what does it mean if I don’t feel anything?”
“What do you mean? Look, what about here? And here?…” As he spoke, he took hold of the limp rods that hung from my shoulder and hip. The hem of my skirt swayed. My hair fell across my face.
“Yes, I know you take good care of my body. And I know you can summon up memories of the music box and the ferry ticket, the harmonica or the ramune. But that doesn’t mean the things themselves come back. It’s no more than a momentary flash, like the tip of a sparkler when you light it in the dark. When the light’s gone, it’s instantly forgotten, and you can scarcely believe what you saw just a moment ago. They’re all illusions—my leg and arm and all the rest of the things lined up on the shelves.”
I looked around at the objects in the room and then tucked my hair behind my ears. R let go of my arm and leg, and I scuffed my foot in and out of my slipper. The traces of his fingers on my ankle and calf vanished almost immediately as they reverted to their plaster state.
“My body will go on disappearing bit by bit,” I said, shifting my gaze from my toes to my knees, from my hips to my chest.
“No, you mustn’t say that.”
“It doesn’t matter what I say, the disappearances will continue. There’s no escape. I wonder what will be next. Ears? Throat? Eyebrows? My other arm or leg? Or maybe my spine? And then what will be left? Or will nothing be left at all? I suppose that’s it, every last bit of me will disappear.”
“No, that’s impossible. Aren’t we here together, right now, in spite of everything?” He put his hand on my shoulder and drew me to him.
“But the arm and leg you see aren’t really mine. No matter how much you care for them, they’re just shells, empty skin. The real me is disappearing as we speak. Slowly but surely being sucked into thin air.”
“But I won’t let you go.”
“And I don’t want to go. I want to stay with you, but that won’t be possible. Your heart and mine are being pulled apart to such different, distant places. Yours is overflowing with warmth and life and sounds and smells, but mine is growing cold and hard at a terrifying pace. At some point it will break into a thousand pieces, shards of ice that will dissolve.”
“But you don’t have to go,” he said. “You just have to stay here. You’ll be safe here, where all the lost memories are preserved, hidden along with the emerald and the perfume, the photographs and the calendars…”
“Me?… Here?”
“Why not?” he said.
“Because it’s impossible,” I said, shaking my head in confusion at this unexpected idea. My arm slipped from the bed and struck his knee.
“But it isn’t. We’re protected here—you, me, all the things that were hidden in the sculptures. Even the Memory Police haven’t been able to find us.”