In the shadow of memories

In the best traditions of speculative fiction, this novel uses the lens of improbable events to show us the inner workings of the soul.

What does it mean, when something is precious to us? Is it the object itself, or our memories and feelings about it? In her book, The Memory Police (first written in 1994, and newly translated to English by Stephen Snyder), Yoko Ogawa grapples with the duality of memory and loss.

On an unnamed island, the narrator, a young woman novelist, struggles to write her newest novel. Her mind wanders back to her mother, a sculptor, who was arrested and made to ‘disappear’. Her crime would be trivial in our world: collecting souvenirs of small items such as candies and perfumes.

But this island has a peculiar feature — every now and then, certain things are deleted from the islanders’ memories. There’s no real pattern or reason, and the thing could be anything from birds to boats. The objects themselves still exist, but all the feelings associated with them are gone. The islanders then dutifully destroy the remaining objects, burning them or throwing them into the sea. But sometimes, a few people — such as the narrator’s mother — remain unaffected by the memory removal operation, leaving them as fugitives of a sort. This is where the titular Memory Police come in, apprehending the aberrations and taking them away to some unknown place.

The island is isolated. Communications with the outside world, along with transport to the mainland, have been removed a long time ago. Life goes on, with a few new daily struggles added every time “it” happens again. The deletions continue: ribbons disappear one day, then roses…

A steady chipping away

Things go from bad to worse when the narrator’s editor, R, is revealed to be one of the aberrations — he too is able to remember the removed items and memories. Unwilling to let his life be destroyed like that of the others, the narrator builds a hiding place for him in her home and secrets him there. There is an understated love affair here, but it’s more than that: although our narrator cannot remember the deleted memories, she does feel the loss somewhere inside her, and sheltering R is a way of vicariously compensating. Every once in a while, a fragment of memory will return to her, but despite R’s urging, she cannot summon it all back.

The reader may be curious about the process, or indeed, the rationale behind this chipping away of memories that feature in the book’s summary. Ogawa is not. She cares more about the effects on the populace.

Her narrator doesn’t have the vocabulary to explain what she is losing. But we, the readers, know of it: how often have we, for one reason or another, lost a memory, whether in the shape of a photograph, or when a loved one goes away? What does the victim of a stroke feel about the loss of his mobility, or an aging man about his loss of agility? And in today’s age, what of the willful forgetting of the victims of injustice and of unsavoury incidents?

A collection of scars

Memories interconnect and form a greater whole. Single fragments of memory, ripped from one’s consciousness, heal over with other things, but as the scars accumulate, it is as if the very fabric of the psyche is at risk. It becomes harder and harder to make sense of the world as more of it goes away. Language itself becomes tenuous, with no words for the deepest emotions one feels. We see it happening, step by step, in the narrator’s voice here.

The connection with language is also explored in the brief segments of the novel that the narrator is currently writing. The story-within-the-story follows a typist who is having her own self diminished slowly in the same fashion — first her voice, then her sense of self, until her very existence is threatened, as she falls into a strange love affair. In the brief descriptions of the other books the narrator has written, we see the same themes repeated. The memory police have been active for years, after all.

The story arc of the book confounds us. One begins the book, expecting it to be a dystopian novel; you expect the usual underground movement against the oppressing state, the unwilling involvement of the protagonist in the resistance, the eventual explanation and emancipation of the populace. None of that happens. The narrator continues to struggle; her editor remains in place; the memory erasures continue. The book ends quietly, contemplatively, and leaves you with more questions than answers.

In the best traditions of speculative fiction, The Memory Police uses the lens of improbable events to show us the inner workings of the soul. The translation, as is expected of Stephen Snyder, is excellent and the sparse, yet effective style shines through. This is one of the best books of recent times, and especially relevant in these days when the past is being continuously edited to fit a narrative.