The Woman Who Borrowed Memories: Selected Stories Read online

  She turned to Mr. Shimomura and said, “Please.” They climbed down into the motor launch.

  “This man is a foreigner,” the driver said. “We only take staff. It’s closed in the winter.”

  She was suddenly upset at the thought that Mr. Shimomura wouldn’t get to see his wolf. “But he’s leaving tomorrow. You see, he’s going to Japan tomorrow and then it will be too late. This is very important to him!”

  “Fine, fine,” the driver said. “But I don’t have any tickets.” He went into the cabin.

  They were the only passengers. The launch drove them out to the island, which stood tall in the water, black and white with rock and snow. She tried to remember where the cages were, but it had been a long time. She remembered a llama that had spit on her, and that she liked the monkeys because they didn’t appear to be caged.

  Mr. Shimomura said nothing until they had gone ashore. Then he ignited his smile again, stepped aside to make space for her, and said, “Please, please.” He waited for her to show him the savage animals.

  She went first, up onto the island. The snow was deep and wet and there weren’t many paths. They passed locked buildings and empty cages. Almost all the signs had been removed.

  In the middle of the island she got her bearings. Here was the old-fashioned pavilion with fretwork gables and an intricate pattern of very small windowpanes. It was here one drank lemonade and listened to the orchestra. Through the window she could see a sea of chairs turned upside down. The snow lay untouched on the steps. Naturally there was no place to have a cup of coffee at this time of year, and no bench to rest your legs on and nowhere to get warm. She was suddenly annoyed and turned abruptly and walked toward the birdcages where the birds sat at the tops of their trees like dark fruit. And the bears are no doubt hibernating, she thought. And it will be several hours before we can go home.

  Mr. Shimomura followed her footsteps in the snow. His feet were much smaller than hers. Immobile flocks of goats observed them as they walked across the island. The animals didn’t turn their heads to watch them, they moved their whole bodies, all of them at the same time, with great precision, and then the forest of thick, twisted horns was absolutely motionless again. The whole area lay in silence, not a soul moved among the cages. Melting snow dropped and streamed around them. She stopped and read a sign that said, “The wild ass that came from Rostock on April 5, 1970, shares its pen with kaisa (gray), an elderly domesticated ass.” It struck her as peculiar, especially since there were no asses at all in the enclosure. She wondered where the polar bears lived.

  They came down toward the shore in an area called Feline Valley. The snow leopard looked past her, uninterested. It was grayish yellow and had a very long tail. She turned around to check on Mr. Shimomura, and saw that he had gone straight down to the water’s edge. He was not interested in cats. She caught a glimpse of his black coat among the birch trees, moving quickly. Now he was into the yellow reeds. Maybe he’s on a private errand, she thought, and looked at the snow leopard again. After a bit, she moved slowly on, stopping occasionally to wait, but Mr. Shimomura did not come back. So she made her way laboriously down the bank to the shore. She didn’t dare shout. The island was quiet, and maybe all the animals would start howling at once, and anyway she had no right to be there.

  Mr. Shimomura was walking along the water’s edge, through the harbor’s deposits of plastic and paper and fruit peels. He was collecting bits of wood that the waves had washed ashore. Of course, she thought, with the relief that comes with recognition, he’s collecting oddly shaped twigs. I’ve read that they do that.

  They hadn’t spoken for a long time. They were taking a break. He didn’t show her his twigs, and she didn’t comment. Their solitary wanderings through a closed landscape had simplified something. By and by they walked back to the empty cages.

  And now the bears came. She glanced quickly at Mr. Shimomura. Yes, now he was interested. Not in the brown bears but in the polar bear. It lay on its back with its paws in the air, large and shapeless and dirty yellow against the snow. Its muzzle and eyes were coal black. It looked at Mr. Shimomura over its shoulder, raised itself heavily, with the same motions as a sleepy person getting out of bed, and sat down, staring at the snow between its paws. Mr. Shimomura did not take out his sketch pad. He just looked at the bear.

  The damp chill was beginning to creep up her legs. This island was really dreadful, unspeakably sad. It cut her off from everything real and alive. It scared her. Why wasn’t he drawing. Was he waiting for the bear to get up? She said nothing, just tied her scarf around her head and hat and waited

  Finally Mr. Shimomura turned to her, and, with a bow and a smile, let her know that now he had finished seeing the bear. They passed a bison ox and a mink. Behind one of the buildings there were buckets, shovels, and a pair of skis in the trampled snow. There were people who lived and worked out here. But they never saw a soul.

  When she finally found the wolves, the island had darkened in the early dusk.

  “Mr. Shimomura,” she said slowly. She smiled, almost shyly. And showed him the wolves. There were three big cages, with a wolf in each cage. All three walked back and forth along the bars, back and forth in a kind of gliding trot, without lifting their heads. Mr. Shimomura went closer and gazed at them.

  The wolves’ ceaseless pacing struck her as appalling. It was timeless. They loped back and forth behind their bars week after week and year after year, and if they hate us, she thought, it must be a gigantic hate! She felt cold, suddenly terribly cold, and she started to cry. Her legs hurt, and she wanted to go home. The wolves and Mr. Shimomura had simply nothing whatever to do with her.

  It was not certain how long Mr. Shimomura studied the wolves, but when he walked away the dusk had grown much deeper. She wiped her face with a glove and followed. As they passed the empty monkey house, he turned around and explained everything by laying his hand on his sketchbook, smiling, and nodding his head. He pointed to his forehead to indicate that he had captured the wolf. He had it. She needn’t be the least uneasy.

  They walked on up the hill. She followed after him in the resigned, irresponsible calm that follows tears, just walked through the snow and felt that now nothing more could be expected of her.

  The outlook tower was locked, but there was a round, open veranda at the bottom, its walls covered with names in pencil and ink. Mr. Shimomura brushed snow from the bench and sat down. He put the oddly shaped twigs beside him and sank into immobility. It was now clearly evening. The island below them was dark, but more and more lights were coming on along the half circle of the horizon, and she could hear the city’s continuous dull roar and an ambulance siren that grew steadily fainter and then vanished. Maybe lions don’t roar in the winter, she thought. They’re sitting there somewhere in one of those windowless buildings that maintain the proper temperature. Maybe all the animals are quiet in winter if they live in cages. Her thoughts grew vague. They lingered for a moment on the Japanese giant spider crab that lives so far down on the bottom of the sea that its ten legs aren’t bothered by the waves, and then she drifted into sleep.

  She was awakened by Mr. Shimomura touching her hand. It was time to go. She was very cold. They walked down the hill and past the pavilion. She didn’t look at the cages and didn’t try to say anything in English. After all, he had his wolf. One day, God knew in what remarkable place, Mr. Shimomura would sit down and, with a few obvious, long-considered lines, he would draw a wolf, brutally, sensitively, the most living, breathing wolf that had ever been drawn.

  The little motor launch was there to receive them. The driver said nothing.

  The only thing I’d like to know, she thought, is which wolf he’ll draw. The one he saw or the one he imagines.

  Translated by Thomas Teal

  THE SQUIRREL

  ON A WINDLESS day in November, shortly after sunrise, she saw a squirrel on the boat beach. It sat motionless near the water, hardly visible in the half-light, but she knew i
t was a living squirrel, and she hadn’t seen anything alive for a very long time. The gulls didn’t count, they were always flying away. They were like the wind across the waves and the grass.

  She put her coat on over her nightshirt and sat down at the window. It was cold, and in the square room with its four windows, the cold stood still. The squirrel didn’t move. She tried to remember everything she knew about squirrels. They sail from island to island on bits of lumber, with the wind at their backs. And then the wind dies, she thought, a bit sadistically. The wind dies, or it turns, and they drift out to sea, and it doesn’t turn out the way they’d imagined, not one bit. Why do squirrels go sailing? Are they curious or just hungry? Are they brave? No. Just plain stupid. She stood up and went for the binoculars. When she moved, the cold crept in under her coat. It was hard to get the binoculars focused properly, so she put them on the windowsill and went on waiting. The squirrel was still sitting on the boat beach doing nothing, just sitting. She stared at it intently. She found a comb in the pocket of her coat and combed her hair slowly while she waited.

  Suddenly it ran up the granite slope, very quickly, scampered up toward the cabin and suddenly stopped. She watched the animal, intensely, critically. The squirrel sat upright, its paws hanging. Now and then its body twitched nervously, an unplanned movement, a kind of crawling hop. It scurried behind the corner of the cottage. So she went to the next window, the one to the east, then on to the south. The rock face was empty. But she knew the squirrel was still there. There were no trees and no bushes, so she’d be able to survey the island from shore to shore. She could see everything that came and everything that went. Unhurriedly, she went to the stove to start the fire.

  First, two lengths of scrap lumber at an angle. Above them, crisscrossed bits of kindling; between them, birch bark; finally, larger pieces of wood that would burn for a long time. When the fire got going, she started to get dressed, slowly and methodically.

  She always got dressed as the sun came up, warmly and with foresight. Carefully, she buttoned her shirts and sweaters and her moleskin pants around her broad waist, and when she’d got her boots on and pulled down the earflaps, she liked to sit down in front of the stove in unapproachable contentment, without moving, without thinking, and let the fire warm her knees. She met each new day the same way. She waited grimly for winter.

  Autumn by the sea was not the autumn she had imagined. There were no storms. The island withered quietly. The grass rotted in the rain, the granite grew slippery and was covered with dark algae well above the high-water mark, and November progressed in shades of gray. Nothing had happened until the squirrel came ashore. She went to the mirror over the bureau and looked at herself. Her upper lip had a fine grillwork of small, vertical wrinkles that she hadn’t noticed before. Her face was an indefinable grayish brown, like the ground outside. Squirrels also turn grayish brown in winter, but they don’t lose their color, they simply acquire a new one. She put coffee on the fire and said, “In any case, they’re not artistic.” The thought amused her.

  Now she mustn’t act hastily. The animal needed to get used to the island and above all to the cottage, needed to realize that the cottage was nothing more than an immobile gray object. But a house, a room with four windows, is not immobile. The person moving around inside stands out in sharp and threatening silhouette. How does a squirrel perceive movement in a room? How is anyone supposed to interpret movement in an empty room? The only possibility was to move very slowly, without making a sound. Living an utterly silent life was tempting, especially doing it voluntarily and not just because the island was so quiet.

  On the table lay neat stacks of white paper. They always lay that way, with pencils alongside. Pages she’d written on were always turned facedown. If words lie facedown, they can change during the night. You see them afresh, quickly, maybe with sudden insight. It’s possible.

  It was possible that the squirrel would stay overnight. There was a chance it would stay over the winter.

  She walked very quietly across the floor to the cupboard in the corner and opened the doors. The sea was motionless today, everything was motionless. She stood still and held the cupboard doors while she thought about what she had come to get. And as usual she had to go back to the stove in order to remember. It was the sugar. And then she remembered that it wasn’t the sugar at all any longer, because sugar made her fat. These delayed recollections were depressing. She let go and allowed her thoughts to wander, and sugar led on to dogs, and she thought about what if it had been a dog that had come ashore on the boat beach, but she dismissed the thought and turned it off. It was a thought that diminished the importance of the squirrel.

  She started sweeping the floor, thoroughly and calmly. She liked sweeping. It was a peaceful day, a day without dialogue. There was nothing to defend or censure, everything was turned off, all the words that could have been other words or merely disowned, words that could easily have led to big changes. Now there was only a warm cottage full of morning light, full of herself, sweeping, and of the friendly noise of coffee starting to simmer. The room with its four windows was its own self-evident justification. It was safe. It was in no way the sort of place where people are closed in or left out. She drank her coffee and thought of nothing at all. She rested.

  One tiny thought drifted by: What a fuss for a squirrel. There are millions of them; they’re not especially interesting. One of them, one specimen, has by chance come here. I need to take care. I’m exaggerating everything at the moment, maybe I’ve been alone too long. But it was just a passing thought, a commonsense observation that anyone might have made. She put down her cup. Three gulls were sitting out on the point, all of them facing the same way. Now she was feeling a little sick again. It was too hot in front of the stove, and she felt ill after her morning coffee. She needed her little glass of Madeira, it was the only thing that helped.

  This is the way a day begins—build the fire, get dressed, sit in front of the fire. Sweep the floor, coffee, morning Madeira, wind the clock, brush teeth, see to the boat, check sea level. Chop wood, workday Madeira. Then comes the whole day. Only at sunset do the rituals resume: sunset Madeira, lower flag, bring in chamber pot, empty slops, light lamp, supper. Then the whole evening. Every day gets written up before it gets dark, along with the water level, wind direction, and temperature. List by the doorjamb of what she needed from town—batteries, socks that don’t itch, all sorts of vegetables, Mobilat ointment, extra lamp chimney, saw blade, Madeira, shear pins.

  She went to the closet to get her morning medicine. The Madeira was farthest in to get the chill from the porch. She liked it cold. A bottle needs to have its appointed place. The cellar stairs under the floor were too steep and difficult, and it seemed cowardly to keep bottles hidden outside the house. There weren’t many bottles left. Sherry didn’t count. It made you sad and wasn’t good for the stomach.

  The morning light had grown stronger; there was still no wind. She ought to go in and take the bus to town to get more Madeira. Not yet but soon, before it got too cold. The motor was acting up. She ought to try and fix it, but it wasn’t the spark plug this time. The only two things she understood about the motor were the spark plug and the shear pin. Sometimes she emptied out the gasoline and strained it through gauze. She’d stood the motor against the wall of the cottage and slipped a plastic bag over the top. It stood there now. Of course she could row. But the boat was heavy and wanted to head into the wind. It was too far. It was all too bothersome. She turned it off.

  She opened the screw top noiselessly, held the bottle between her knees, and pressed the top against the flat of her hand while she twisted the bottle, coughed just as the metal band broke, poured herself a glass of Madeira with the bottle at just the right angle—and remembered that this was all unnecessary. Anyway, this was her morning Madeira, which she had a right to because she felt a little ill.

  She carried the glass into the main room and put it on the table. The wine had a deep red colo
r against the light from the window. When the glass was empty, she hid it behind the tea canister. She went to the window and looked for the squirrel. Very quietly, she went from window to window, waiting for it to appear. She was warm from the wine, the fire burned in the stove, she turned and went counterclockwise instead of clockwise. She was very calm. There was still no wind, and the sea merged with the sky in a gray nothingness, but the granite was black from last night’s rain.

  Then she saw the squirrel. It came as a reward because she was calm and had managed to turn everything off. The little animal scampered across the rock in soft, S-shaped curves, right across the island and down to the water. Now it was back on the boat beach. It’s going away, she thought. There’s no place to live out here, nothing to eat, no other squirrels, storms come and then it’s too late. Carefully, she got down on her knees and pulled the bread box out from under the bed. Like ship’s rats, animals know when it’s time to leave. They swim or they sail but one way or another they get away from what is doomed. She crawled across the granite, moving as cautiously as she could, breaking off small bits of the hard bread and putting them in crevices in the granite. Now it had seen her and ran all the way down to the water’s edge and sat motionless. She saw it only as a smudge, a silhouette, but its contours expressed alertness and distrust. Now it will leave, now it’s afraid! She broke the bread as quickly as she could, faster and faster, crushing it with her fists and knees and throwing bits across the ground. She scurried into the cottage on all fours and over to the window. The boat beach was empty. She waited an hour, going from window to window. The ocean was streaked with squall stripes. It was hard to see if anything out there was moving — something floating, an animal swimming. Only the birds rested on the water, white specks that then flew up and glided out over the point. The breeze marks thickened and she could see nothing at all; her eyes were tired and started to tear. She was sick of the squirrel and of herself. She was behaving like a fool.