The Memory Police: Chapter 25  Summary & Analysis

That night, the narrator gets a call from the hospital saying that the old man collapsed. She runs all the way to the hospital, but the old man is already gone—the hospital staff tell the narrator that they did all they could, but his heart stopped. The old man had an intracranial hemorrhage, and the narrator realizes that it must have been from the cabinet the day of the earthquake. The narrator looks at his hands, folded across his chest, which will never again make anything. She is in shock. The old man’s bag of groceries is there in the hospital.

R, of course, is unable to attend the old man’s funeral. The narrator finds that the old man’s death unnerves her. Unlike the deaths of her parents and nurse, which were sad but had softened with time, the old man’s death leaves the narrator feeling terribly anxious. She is now alone—R can sympathize with her, but he is locked away. Anyway, he does not have the same “void” in his heart as she does, whereas the old man did.

The narrator tries to keep it together by cooking elaborate meals for herself and R and by focusing hard at work. She takes to tasks around the house with gusto. Still, when she gets into bed, she is overcome by fatigue and anxiety. Unable to sleep, she stays up at night, staring at some of the disappeared objects and waiting to see if they change anything in her.

One night, the narrator is moved to write a few words on the pages of her manuscript on her desk. This has not happened since novels disappeared. She holds the pencil awkwardly, and her handwriting is messy, but she writes a full sentence. It exhausts her. The next day, she shows it to R, who is thrilled. He tells her that this is progress— “her soul is trying to bring back the things lost in the disappearances.” Night after night, she starts stringing together sentences—certainly not a story, but full lines, nonetheless. R continues encouraging her.

Later, the first disappearance since the old man’s death happens. The narrator wakes up and tries to think what it could be this time. She can’t quite figure it out, but since she doesn’t see many people outside of her window, she thinks it may not be something that important. When she moves to take her covers off, she sees that something strange is stuck to her hip. Baffled, she tries to move and twist the thing off, but it won’t move. She decides to get dressed. She swings her right leg to the floor, and the protrusion from her hip also hits the ground with a thud. The force knocks her onto the floor.

The narrator crawls to her dresser and takes out some clothes. When she goes to put on her pants, she sees that there are two openings. After she puts her right leg through one, she is perplexed about what to do next. She suddenly notices that the thing affixed to her body is exactly the same size as the second hole in her pants, so she decides it can’t hurt to slide it into the opening. After she does this, it hits her at last: it is her left leg that is now disappeared.

The narrator manages to drag herself downstairs and outside. Her neighbors are slowly gathering, wondering how they will deal with this disappearance. Some people are dumbfounded, but others say that this is how it is—it’s just the same as any other disappearance. An old woman makes a joke about losing half of the arthritis in her knees.

As the townspeople wonder how they will get rid of their left legs, the Memory Police suddenly come around the corner. Unlike the townspeople, they appear to be walking with perfect balance, as though they’ve been training for this to happen. The people on the street decide they won’t have to physically remove their disappeared legs, since the Memory Police still have theirs. They suggest the leg might one day fall off on its own, like the leaves of a tree.

Later that night, R massages the narrator’s disappeared leg. He tries to show her that her leg is still there, but the narrator hardly feels his hands. She feels like a new “cavity” exists in her body. R says he imagines the outside world must be so different than he remembers, but the narrator simply says that the changes aren’t as big as he thinks, and people are able to accept them with little fuss.

The narrator and R keep talking. She tells R that soon everything will “fall back into place,” meaning that in no time, a new hole will open up in her heart and mind—a hole where the idea of a left leg used to be. R bends down to kiss the narrator’s leg, and she thinks how nice it would be if she still had flesh there to be able to feel his lips kissing her. Instead, she registers only a dull pressure.