To the Back of Beyond(10)

Thomas felt his shoulder being shaken, and for an instant it was as though that was the only thing there was in the world, this mild motion that was spreading like a wave, eventually going through his entire body. When he opened his eyes, a young man was standing at his table. He had curly black hair and a wide contemptuous sneering expression. Tired? he asked. Just a bit, said Thomas. He must have been asleep because the bar was almost empty. You’d better go home then, said the man, come back to us when you’re feeling a bit more like it. Although the man’s tone wasn’t unpleasant, he made it sound like an order. Thomas went up to the bar and paid with his card. He had only had two bottles of beer, and yet he was staggering slightly. When he turned to leave, he saw the young man still had his eyes on him. In the cloakroom he hesitated briefly before taking a coat at random off the peg, it was a dark green waxed jacket, and quickly left the premises. Only now did he look at his watch, it was already past one. The rain had stopped, but the streets were still wet. There were no lights on in any of the village houses, just a couple of streetlamps giving a murky illumination. Thomas walked down the main street and quickly left the village behind him. After a few hundred yards, he stopped and went through the pockets of the jacket he had picked up. He found a lighter and a ballpoint, a packet of herbal sweets, a couple of receipts, some loose change, a pocket calendar, and an empty spectacle case. He held on to the calendar, the ballpoint, the money, and the lighter, and dumped the rest of the things.

After about half an hour he was on a wider road. Now he knew where he was. Once he had made his way through the little town he was on the edge of, he would enter sparsely inhabited woodland, where he would feel safe. From time to time a car came along, but it was so quiet that Thomas could hear the sound of the motor a long way off and was able to conceal himself behind a hedge or the corner of a building.

He followed the road into the town center, where there was a small pedestrian zone. He walked down a shopping street, looking for something to eat. Some time ago, he had come across an article in the newspaper about people who lived perfectly well from scavenging the trash containers of supermarkets, but all there was here were fashion and shoe shops, a jeweler’s, a sports and fitness store, and a bakery. When he finally saw a supermarket, he found the niche with the ramp where the containers stood locked behind a grate, like the entrance to a fortification.

The dead town had something ghostly about it. Thomas had a notion that all the inhabitants had hit the road as he had and left everything the way it happened to be. He was reminded of a book he had read as a child and never forgotten. In it, almost everyone on earth had been turned to stone, the only survivors a group of children, and they were traveling around the world in an airship. After some time they ran into another group of survivors and fought them to the death. Thomas remembered how the ending had disappointed him. If it had been up to him, then the journey around the deserted planet could have gone on forever and ever.

At the station, there was a vending machine, and Thomas bought himself candy bars, bags of chips, and sugary drinks until he had no more change. He bundled up his purchases in his sweater. Next to the machine was a display of a map of the town, plus a hiking map of the surrounding area. He memorized the way he needed to take as well as he could.

The road led him out of town through an industrial zone, over fields and meadows and through a couple of small villages that had almost grown together. His feet were hurting him by now, but Thomas carried on. The valley narrowed, and after a while he reached a group of buildings, a psychiatric clinic he knew of by name. Here too everything was dark and silent. In the middle of the buildings, there was a solitary light next to a small pavilion. He saw a plan of the institution, with all the various wards and workshops and dormitories marked in. But all the paths ended at the edge of the map, as though the clinic was on an island that no one could leave. Thomas remembered the road he had seen on the station hiking map, and walked through the institute and up a slope toward a wood, even though the little road was marked as a dead end. As he passed a multistory building, he saw a light on in a ground-floor window. A woman was sitting in front of a computer, presumably on night duty. She had her head lowered, maybe she was reading, in a world of her own. The first time Thomas met Astrid, in the bookstore, she had kept on recommending books to him that he read for her sake, but he was never really a reader, the artificial world of books had never really come alive for him. In fact, the older he got, the less he seemed to feel the need to be diverted or entertained.

At the edge of the wood, the asphalt road became an unpaved forest track that was wide enough for him to be able to follow it easily in the dark. Thomas had the sensation of entering a different sort of space. He could hear the pouring of water, which first grew louder, then, as the track started to climb, softer again. He heard an occasional cracking sound, otherwise there was silence. In the middle of the wood he discerned the outline of a massive concrete structure, presumably an army munitions dump. The terrain flattened out. Thomas felt relieved when he emerged from the wood; he had the sense of having escaped a danger. For some time already, he had heard cowbells. Now they were very close, and he saw the dark forms of cattle on the pasture. The sound came closer, the animals must have sensed him, and now they came bounding up to him in wild leaps. Thomas worried the clanging bells might wake the farmer, but when he passed the house, there was no light. Not even a dog barked at him.

Walking felt easier now, though his feet still hurt. The little track led slightly downhill through fenced-in pastures and then up toward a round knoll. Thomas decided to stop there and rest. The grass was cut short, but it was wet either from rain or early dewfall. He felt the moisture through his shoes. At the summit was a group of trees. He sat down in the grass and looked around. The stars were densely packed in the wide sky. Lights flickered in the distance. Only when Thomas made out mountain peaks at the edge of the horizon did he get his bearings. He ate two bags of potato chips and a candy bar. The mashed-up food made a disgusting pulp in his mouth. He swilled it down with a Coke. He pressed and carefully folded the packaging, and put it with the empty bottle back in the bundle with the rest of his provisions.