Ruined Map - Abe Kobo [4]
A tinkling noise came from beyond the curtain. It was not a chinaware sound but rather that of glass. It would certainly not be a cold drink at this time of year. Or I wondered if she were planning to serve something alcoholic. No, surely not. What was going to begin now was an unbearably tragic scene. If she were just preparing a cup of tea, she was certainly taking her time. A woman’s quiet way. The monotonous sound of water continuously flowing from the faucet. If she had felt some consolation in getting me to listen to her complaints, in continuing to talk, paying no attention to the curtain, jabbering on, begrudging even a moment, I would have played the unpleasant role I usually did, needling her by interrupting with talk of expenses, fully realizing she was sick, but she did not.
A woman I could not recall … a woman whose face vanished with a ripple of the curtain as if by sleight of hand. Was her face so impersonal? I wondered. Yet I could describe in detail over a hundred items of her clothing. Through them I could recall the contours of her body. She was on the slender side and had a subtle, well-balanced build. Her skin was fine-textured, but not too light in color; and instinctively one felt she had a down of hair on her back. Her spine was deeply arched and straight. It was obvious that for her years she was more mature, more womanly, than I had thought her when I had first seen her against the light. Yet her somehow childish body harmonized with the breasts that were neither too big nor too small, and she seemed quite suited to the latest style of dancing, with its violent body contortions. Since I could imagine this much, I might push my imagination a step further and propose a more fitting head for the body.
From imagination alone, it was a most striking face, large, sharply outlined, with a mobile expression. I tried in vain to sketch it, but I could not. There were spots on it, like pale, indistinct smudges on a wall—perhaps freckles. But the face aside, I could recall the appearance of the hair. It was rather fine, black and long. Softly masking the left half of her clear forehead it looked as if it would be difficult to comb. There was a metallic gleam to it. I had come thus far, without knowing how. Possibly she was consciously avoiding having her expression read. Or had she exhibited in the short time I had been here five or six quite different expressions at the same time? She may have taken some dislike to me. If she had, this affair was more than I had anticipated, insidious, wheels within wheels. It would soon be three minutes since she had gone into the kitchen. Suddenly fretful, I lit a second cigarette. Rising from my seat, I walked around the table and stood by the window.
Individually, the panes of glass were small, but the aluminum frame left the view unobstructed. Across the flagstone walkway, about ten yards wide, rose the north wall of East 2. There was only an emergency stairway along the smooth, dark, windowless surface. Immediately down to the left ran the main road I mentioned before, which permitted an unimpeded view for some distance. When I brought my face close to the glass I could see my own parked car. When I crowded as closely as possible up to the bookcases at the left edge of the window, the vista stretched to a point just before the slope beyond the road; this joined the corner line of the next building at about a thirty-degree angle, and thus the view of the walkway was delimited by the far end of East 2.
At a point about the middle of my car, on an angle with my line of vision, the street light suddenly and eerily went out. Perhaps an automatic cutoff switch, functioning with hypersensitivity, had gone out of order somewhere. But, perhaps, too, it was time for the light to go out. The number of passers-by had increased amazingly from what it had been—not only women coming back from their shopping, but men returning home from work. Perhaps a bus had pulled in. Looking down on them as I was, I realized very