The Memory Police

No, don’t worry. It doesn’t hurt, and you won’t even be particularly sad. One morning you’ll simply wake up and it will be over, before you’ve even realized.

‘Men who start by burning books end by burning other men,’

I would have been about seven or eight years old, dressed in a pink lace skirt my mother had made for me. It was by then much too short, even when I pulled on the lace, and I remember being terribly worried that my cousin, coming up behind me on the stairs, would be able to see my underwear.

Though I’ve tried, I’ve found no way to fill in the voids left by the Memory Police.

‘Men who start by burning books end by burning other men,’

“I thought I could hear the sound of my memory burning that night.”

“I remember hearing a saying long ago: ‘Men who start by burning books end by burning other men,’ ” I said.

There, behind your heartbeat, have you stored up all my lost memories?

In the end, however, it was the old woman’s prediction that turned out to be accurate. No matter how long we waited, spring never came, and we lay buried under the snow along with the ashes of the calendars.

“What can the people on this island create?” I went on. “A few kinds of vegetables, cars that constantly break down, heavy, bulky stoves, some half-starved stock animals, oily cosmetics, babies, the occasional simple play, books no one reads…Poor, unreliable things that will never make up for those that are disappearing—and the energy that goes along with them. It’s subtle but it seems to be speeding up, and we have to watch out. If it goes on like this and we can’t compensate for the things that get lost, the island will soon be nothing but absences and holes, and when it’s completely hollowed out, we’ll all disappear without a trace. Don’t you ever feel that way?”