Ёко Огава - The Memory Police

“Strange, indeed,” I answered, and there were nods all around. The children took off running along the river, their backpacks rattling behind them.

“Get straight to school!” the former hatmaker called after them.

None of the petals were withered or brown. On the contrary, perhaps because the water was so cold, they seemed fresher and fuller than ever, and their fragrance, mixed with the morning mist from the river, was overpoweringly strong.

Petals covered the surface as far as the eye could see. My hands had cleared a patch of water for a brief moment, but petals soon came flooding in again to fill it, and then they flowed on, almost as if someone had hypnotized each one of them and was drawing them toward the sea.

I wiped my palms together, brushing the petals that had stuck to them back into the stream. Petals with frilled edges, pale ones, vivid ones, petals with the calyx still attached. They all clung for a moment to the bricks of the wash landing, but in no time at all they were caught up in the stream again and melted into the mass.

I washed my face and rubbed on a little cream. Deciding against spending the time to apply my makeup, I threw on a coat and went out. My plan was to follow the river upstream to the rose garden on the slope of the hill.

A crowd had gathered on the banks, gawking at this beautiful sight, and the Memory Police, too, were out in force, more so than usual. They stood as always, weapons on their hips, faces devoid of expression.

The children, apparently already bored, had begun throwing stones in the water and stirring it up with long poles they had found somewhere. But the current was undeterred by these small disturbances. A sandbar here or stump there proved no impediment to the overwhelming flow of petals. Were you to stretch out in the water, it looked as though the petals would cover you like a soft, comforting blanket.

“Who would have imagined this?” someone murmured.

“It’s the most beautiful disappearance ever.”

“We should take a picture.”

“Better not. What’s the use of a picture when something’s disappeared?”

“I suppose you’re right.”

The bystanders discussed the strange sight in low voices, taking care not to attract the attention of the Memory Police.

With the exception of the bakery, none of the stores had opened yet. It occurred to me to go and see what had happened to the roses at the florist, but the shop was still shuttered. The buses and trolleys were mostly empty. The sun was trying to break through the clouds, and the mist had begun to burn off, but the floral fragrance was as strong as ever.

Needless to say, not a single flower was left in the rose garden. The bare stalks, reduced to leaves and thorns, were thrust into the slope like brittle bones. From time to time, a breeze would blow down from the top of the hill—where the observatory had been—pick up the few remaining petals, and carry them away toward the river.

The garden was deserted. The woman with heavy makeup who was usually at the entrance, the caretakers, the visitors—not a soul to be seen. I wondered for a moment whether I still needed to pay the admission fee, but at last I pushed past the gate and walked along the sloping path, following the route marked out by the signs.

The few flowers in the garden other than roses had survived—bellflowers, a couple of spiny cacti, some gentians. They bloomed discreetly, as though embarrassed to have been spared. The breeze seemed to discriminate, choosing only the rose petals to scatter.

A rose garden without roses was a meaningless, desolate place, and it was terribly sad to see the trellises and other signs of all the care that had been lavished on the flowers. The murmur of the river did not reach me here and the rich, soft soil made a pleasant sound underfoot. With my hands thrust in my pockets, I wandered across the hill as though walking through a cemetery of unmarked graves.

In years past, I had carefully studied the stems, leaves, and branches and had read the tags that identified the different varieties, but I realized now that I was already unable to remember what this thing called a rose had looked like.

Already on the second day, people who had raised roses in their gardens came to the river to lay their petals to rest. They carefully dismantled the flowers, petal by petal, and slipped them quietly into the stream.

At the base of the bridge next to my laundry platform stood an elegantly dressed woman.

“What lovely roses,” I told her. Anything I had ever felt about these flowers had already vanished from my heart, but she was plucking the petals from her own blooms with such tenderness that I’d wanted to say something to her. This was the first thing that came to mind.

“Thank you. They won the gold medal at last year’s fair, you know.” My comment seemed to have pleased her. “They are the last and most beautiful memento I have of my late father.” But there was no regret in her voice as she tore apart the petals and sent them fluttering into the water. The polish on her fingernails was nearly the same shade as the flowers. Once her work was done, she turned and, without a glance at the stream, gave me the sort of graceful bow typical of people of her class and left.

In three days’ time, the river had returned to normal, with no visible change in the color or level of the water. The carp, too, were swimming again.

Every last petal washed downstream and out to sea. While they had covered the narrow river in impressive fashion, they vanished almost instantly in the vastness of the ocean, sucked under by the waves. The old man and I watched them go from the deck of the boat.

“I wonder how the wind could tell the roses from all the other flowers,” I said, as I rubbed my finger along the rail, dislodging some flakes of rust.

“There’s no way of knowing,” he said. “The only thing we can know for sure is that the roses are gone.” He was wearing the sweater I’d knitted for him and his work pants from his days as a mechanic.

“But what’s to become of the rose garden?” I wondered aloud.

“That’s nothing for you to worry yourself over. Maybe some other flower will bloom there, or they’ll plant fruit trees, or turn it into a graveyard. No one knows and no one needs to know. Time is a great healer. It just flows on all of its own accord.”

“The hill will be lonely now that the observatory and the rose garden are gone. There’s nothing left but the old library.”

“That’s true. When your father was alive, he often invited me to come to the observatory. If an unusual bird happened by, he would lend me his binoculars. And to thank him, I would make some minor repairs to the plumbing or wiring. I was also friendly with the gardener who looked after the roses, and when some new variety came into bloom, he would let me have the first peek. So you can see why I was constantly going up the hill. But a person like me doesn’t have much use for a library. Except when one of your books came out. Then I went to make sure they had put it on the shelf.”

“You actually went all the way there just to see my books?”

“And I’d have complained if one had been missing. But they were there.”

“I’m glad. Though I can’t imagine many people were borrowing them.”

“You’d be wrong then. Two people had checked one out: a middle-school girl and a man who worked in an office. I looked at the library card.” His nose was red from the cold sea breeze.

A whirlpool of rose petals had formed around the motionless propeller of the boat. They were wilted and wrinkled after traveling downstream to salt water. Their color and luster had faded, and they were now nearly indistinguishable from the seaweed and fish bones and trash. And their fragrance had dissipated.