Ruined Map - Abe Kobo [108]
SUDDENLY the road broadened out and led into a main thoroughfare with sidewalks. The lights at the foot of the slope were on, but scarcely ten yards from there the streets were still light. Yet in whatever direction I looked, it was deserted, and I was overcome by an unspeak able terror. It was as if I were trapped in a landscape where the painter had forgotten to put in the people. And since there were no people, naturally no cars were to be seen. All the same, there were signs of living beings right over there. For instance, the smoking butt of a cigarette lay by the edge of the sidewalk. From the length of the ash, it gave the impression of having been tossed away a few seconds before.
First I began running to the right. I could see the entrance to a subway and felt that the main part of town lay in that direction. Surely the intersection with its traffic light would seem to be the center; there were also an insurance building, a bookstore, and some small food shops. In every one the door was open and the goods spread out in apparent expectancy of customers, but neither customers nor clerks were to be seen. The traffic signal changed from green to yellow, from yellow to red, and from red back again to green, but there were neither moving cars nor stopped cars. However, the smell of exhaust gas in the air was almost the same as usual. Apparently people and cars had vanished but an instant before.
I looked into the subway entrance. The deadly silence had returned. Even the stirring of the air reverberating in the long tunnel was inaudible. There was a snack bar close by and I looked in through the half-open door. No one was there, but some uneaten curry stew on the table was still giving off steam. I began to run. I ran back toward the foot of the slope. Stopping, I looked up at the top, and when I had made sure that my memory of what lay beyond the curve would not return I called out, first in a quite weak voice and then somewhat louder. The sound melted into the deserted, blank scene and was absorbed by it; not even a deadened echo came back.
Again I passed by the foot of the slope and ran back into the town. I passed through the passage beneath the elevated tracks and turned left at the corner, beyond which one after the other stood a tobacconist’s, a plumbing store, and a cleaner’s. When, at the next intersection from the gas station, I saw a parking lot I thought I had reached the place that somehow fitted in with my own feelings of how things should be. Perhaps that was not my destination. But I had the feeling it was some kind of starting point. I stood in front of the entrance to the parking lot, looking in; the tall chimney of a public bath rose up at an angle beyond the street and before it stood a coffee house. It was a scene that had remained tucked in my memory, clear as a picture postcard. My heart beating in anticipation, I cut obliquely across the street and thrust open the door to the coffee house. Then, exactly as I had expected, I was at last able to come face to face with a living human being. Seated high on a stool at the front of the shop was a woman with a girlishly slender neck, her legs crossed. Apparently she had just turned on the radio as I was coming in, for suddenly a cacophonous sound welled up. When I looked back over my shoulder, I could see, through the black mesh curtain, people coming and going in the street and a solid stream of cars. The relief made me forget for a moment the lost town at the top of the slope. It was, of course, only a fraction of an instant. I had been unaware that outside the evening dusk was gathering; the sky was still lighter than the skyline of buildings, but the cars had already turned on their lights. I had no idea where time was going. When I thought about it, it seemed strange that my breathing was almost unaffected, although I had been running for so long.
I NOW took up my position by a window in the backmost seat in the shop. I scrutinized the woman on the stool as I grasped with two fingers of my right hand the wallet in my