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By Root 752 0

bus accelerated and moved away. Again the window became a dark mirror. The woman’s figure was reflected just where the headlights had been. Since a part of the street light covered the reflection of her face I could not be sure, but somehow she seemed to be observing me. When I thought about it, it was not unreasonable. It was natural that she should want to observe me. An awkward scatterbrain emptying his pockets on the table. Of course, it was another question as to how much she was aware of the gravity of the situation. Surely it was some lost article, she would think; never in her wildest dreams would she believe I had lost myself. No, perhaps I was not the one who had lost himself but the one who had been lost. I had experienced a moment’s pain as if I had been thrown off the bus when it had started off a while ago. If that were true, the I here was not the lost I but the I that had suffered the loss. In other words, rather than saying that the town on the plateau beyond the curve had disappeared from my path, the other world had disappeared, leaving only me between the point just before the curve and this coffee house. Actually, when I thought back on it, I felt more strongly that midway up the slope my memory had begun rather than having been taken away. Surprisingly, the missing town was not the problem, but this very portion that remained and had not disappeared might well be. For me, this coffee house might indeed have more significance than I imagined. The woman who had summoned back to the streets the pedestrians and inhabitants who had vanished …

Not to be outdone, I returned the woman’s gaze. As the mirror of the window was too dark and the headlights of the constantly passing cars hindered my view, I looked directly at her. Indeed, she was quite aware of my gaze. But she merely continued her observation in the glass, not at all perturbed, a strangely self-possessed figure. Perhaps she was the one who held the key. Perhaps she was a far more important clue than the things on the table that I had taken from my pockets.

New customers entered, a young boy and girl. I had the feeling that the boy was a clerk in a nearby store. The girl was his friend, a younger sister, or maybe a cousin from the country. They sat down at the second table from mine and the boy, holding up two fingers, ordered coffee in a loud voice. At once they were absorbed in a muted conversation, their expressions tragic, as if they were discussing the medical expenses of a dying parent. Since the woman had left her stool, I too ordered another cup of coffee for myself. I hardly thought that that gave me a real excuse for still being here, but it had been almost forty or fifty minutes and I was beginning to feel uneasy about the man behind the wall. Of course, the man behind the wall was merely my imagination. But it would seem that this imaginary person shared the same fate as I. Since he was imaginary I must not make fun of him. If I assumed that there was a law and logic about loss of memory, then this imaginary person was also, naturally, a crucial element and it was fitting that he be assigned a place equal to the woman’s.

I stared at the woman. I kept on staring. I persisted, trying by sheer force to draw her gaze through the part in the hair which fell over her face. I secretly adjusted my breathing to the hollows that formed behind her knees, extending and contracting smoothly in harmony with the movement of her legs under the very short skirt. At the same time I kept my ears pricked to the wall. I was in a dither at the thought that, deranged by jealousy, he would drop a kettle of boiling water. But wait as I did, I could hear not a single click of the tongue, to say nothing of the sound of breaking china. Instead the same white hand reached out. I could not see any trembling of the glass on the tray. Rather, I was the one who was trembling. The thumb I placed on the edge of the table to steady myself continued to tremble like the wrist of a drummer concentratedly thinning his strokes, trying to leave a melancholy afterbeat. Unbelievable!