The Memory Police

The narrator details how the old man died—an intracranial hemorrhage outside the butcher’s shop—and her experience collecting his body from the morgue. She thinks back on his post-quake injuries and his varying degrees of abilities after that. After the funeral, she struggles to cope with his death, because unlike R, who remembers everything, the old man was a victim of the disappearances like her.

During nights of insomnia, she takes out her manuscript and arranges disappeared objects on top of it even though she feels like “nothing was likely to interest my soul in its weakened state” (243). Occasionally, an object offers a glimmer of feeling, and she begins to write, starting with the line “I soaked my feet in water” and, after being encouraged by R, continuing with:

Not a speck of dust floated on the water.

I looked out on the grassy meadow.

When the wind blew, it made patterns in the grass.

Patterns like those in cheese nibbled by mice (244-45).

The next disappearance is left legs; they are attached, but without feeling or movement. The narrator struggles to stand, walk, and dress before realizing the words for her disappeared appendage. The neighbors stumble out into the street and discuss this unique disappearance.