Lurking Everywhere
Last time, we began looking at The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa. Let’s continue.
It is of note that the first page or so—the section I quoted last time—tells the whole story. In that way, it is a sort of mise en abyme, an embedded story, although I believe, strictly speaking, mise en abymes don’t usually appear straight off. It’s more of a prologue that introduces the story. Anyhow, the narrator/protagonist remembers her now deceased mother telling her that, on the island, things are disappeared—not only literally but also from people’s memory. The people, her mother said, are sad and confused when something is disappeared but they get used to it and go on with their lives. Of course, what is not mentioned by her mother is how some people on the island retain memories of things disappeared, while others resist the whole system, and this resistance becomes a central part of the plot, raising the story’s central question: as the protagonist gets increasingly involved in this resistance, what happens to her? Is the ending foreshadowed by her mother’s story, that is, does she eventually accept the losses and go on with a diminished life?
Yup. But not in a very happy way. We’ll get to that.
“Foreshadowing devices have the effect of enhancing the inevitability of the action, usually without destroying suspense or tension…What foreshadowing does is prepare in advance for events that will follow later in the story, often in ways that will not be fully understood by the reader until the story is completed.”
In The Memory Police, we actually do get the whole thing laid out on the first page but it’s subtle. Most readers probably will not go through the book thinking Huh, when are people going to be sad and confused and then go on with their lives? But the seeds for this are there.
They’re sown, my bro.
We soon learn that the protagonist is a writer of fiction, which, of course, sets up a potential recursion as Ms. Ogawa, through the implied author, is writing a work of fiction wherein the central character is a writer. But not too much is done directly with this potential; it lurks in the background and in the reader’s mind.
According to the narrator: “I’ve published three novels. The first is about a piano tuner who wanders through music shops and concert halls searching for her lover, a pianist, who has vanished. She relies solely on the sound of his music that lingers in her ears. The second was about a ballerina who lost her right leg in an accident and lives in a greenhouse with her boyfriend, who is a botanist. And the third was about a young woman nursing her younger brother, who suffers from a disease that is destroying his chromosomes.” We will see that there is considerable foreshadowing here. What the narrator describes about each of her books represents a theme that is developed later in the story. There are no coincidences, my friends.
The narrator continues: “Each one (her books) told the story of something that had been disappeared.”
Yup again.
The narrator introduces two other characters, an old man, unnamed as well, who is supportive and kindly, and the narrator’s editor, identified as R. The narrator witnesses the Memory Police arresting people who are evidently able to remember what’s been disappeared and taking them away. She recounts this disturbing scene to R, wondering how the Memory Police identify those who can remember.
R responds: “’It’s just a rumor, but I’ve heard they’re learning to analyze our genes to find out who has this trait (being able to remember what’s been disappeared). They’re assembling technicians in a secret facility at the university’…’But how do they access our genes?’ I asked. ‘You just drank from this cup, didn’t you?’ R said, stubbing out his cigarette and lifting my coffee cup to eye level. I nodded. ‘They could take this and isolate your genetic material from your saliva. Nothing could be simpler for the Memory Police. They’re lurking everywhere…’”
There’s some possible exposition here as well as characterization of the devilishness of the Memory Police. However, in keeping with the style of the book, R’s theory is never confirmed or disconfirmed.
R examines the narrator’ manuscript and says: “’It seems strange that you can still create something totally new like this—just from words—on an island where everything else is disappearing.’”
It is interesting that the narrator/protagonist is shown doing something that defies the system maintained by the Memory Police. She is from the beginning, a resistor.
The narrator muses: “’And what will happen if words disappear?’” thereby introducing more foreshadowing.
The next chapter presents two important elements to the story. The narrator discovers that a neighboring family is at risk of being arrested by the Memory Police, and she shelters them overnight. Their stay helps the narrator remember (!) the fate of her mother of who, previously, it was written just that she had died.
“I recalled when my mother was taken away…The order (that she be arrested) had come in a coarse pale purple envelope (the same kind the neighbor family received). At that point no one had heard of the Memory Police…I remembered the quiet sound of my mother’s voice as she told me stories about the secret objects—and the troubled look on her face when I asked her why she remembered these stories and not forgotten them like everyone else.
“The car sent the next morning by the Memory Police was terribly elegant. Jet black and polished to a brilliant shine, it seemed as large as a house…Mother sank down into the feather-soft seat, and we waved as if she were headed off to receive a prize…But that was the last time we ever saw her alive. Her body came back to us a week later, along with her death certificate.
“It listed the cause of death as a heart attack…A sudden illness struck her as she was helping with our classified research…We would like to offer our sincere condolences in your time of grief.”
Indeed, the family the narrator shelters disappears the next morning. We see here a major theme of the story, that memory is triggered by objects—in this case, the arrest warrant the neighbors receive. So, for the narrator, the stakes are raised to an even more personal level. The Memory Police are shown as being lethal and pitiless—they killed the narrator’s mother because she could remember. What will they do to the narrator?
Let’s stop there.
Till next time.
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