Stephen Snyder

Though I’ve tried, I’ve found no way to fill in the voids left by the Memory Police.

I would have been about seven or eight years old, dressed in a pink lace skirt my mother had made for me. It was by then much too short, even when I pulled on the lace, and I remember being terribly worried that my cousin, coming up behind me on the stairs, would be able to see my underwear.

‘Men who start by burning books end by burning other men,’

If you read a novel to the end, then it’s over. I would never want to do something as wasteful as that. I’d much rather keep it here with me, safe and sound, forever.”

As we enjoyed our snack, we talked about all sorts of things—but most often we spoke of our memories. Of my mother and father, my old nurse, the observatory, sculptures, and the distant past when one could still take a boat to other places. But our memories were diminishing day by day, for when something disappeared from the island, all memory of it vanished, too. We divided the last bit of peach and repeated the same stories to each other, allowing the fruit to dissolve, ever so slowly, on our tongues.

At any rate, I was ready to give up for today and go to bed.

“What can the people on this island create?” I went on. “A few kinds of vegetables, cars that constantly break down, heavy, bulky stoves, some half-starved stock animals, oily cosmetics, babies, the occasional simple play, books no one reads…Poor, unreliable things that will never make up for those that are disappearing—and the energy that goes along with them. It’s subtle but it seems to be speeding up, and we have to watch out. If it goes on like this and we can’t compensate for the things that get lost, the island will soon be nothing but absences and holes, and when it’s completely hollowed out, we’ll all disappear without a trace. Don’t you ever feel that way?”

In the end, however, it was the old woman’s prediction that turned out to be accurate. No matter how long we waited, spring never came, and we lay buried under the snow along with the ashes of the calendars.

There, behind your heartbeat, have you stored up all my lost memories?

“I remember hearing a saying long ago: ‘Men who start by burning books end by burning other men,’ ” I said.