To the Back of Beyond(16)
After midnight Thomas woke up. He had a sense of having been woken by a noise, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He felt reasonably well-rested, only his feet hurt him still.
He walked out of the woods and headed down the slope through the village, first through a residential quarter, then the center, which was traversed by a wide street. Most of the shop windows were still lit, but there was no one around. He had the sense that this village was inhabited predominantly by the objects in the window displays, by kitchen equipment and bicycles, cell phones and fashion items: Everything looked more energetic than the stylized mannequins over whose bodies they were draped.
Now Thomas knew where he was and which way he wanted to go. He was sufficiently far enough away from his house; he felt less shy; he didn’t straightaway go into hiding when a car approached, he merely lowered his head and averted his gaze, without slowing his step.
Next door to the station was a snack bar. Inside, an elderly gray-haired woman was just clearing things off the counter and wiping it down. Thomas hesitated, then gave a knock. The woman jumped. She went up to the glass door, gave Thomas a quick once-over, and unlocked the door. We’re closed, she said. I’m hungry, said Thomas, his voice sounded cracked, it was two days since he had last spoken to anyone. Do you have any food left over? The woman looked in the glass case behind the counter. There’s some b?rek, she said. Great, said Thomas, you don’t need to warm it up. And a beer. Efes okay? asked the woman. She packed them into a white plastic bag and thanked him for the tip. Thomas had spent the last of his money on the meal, but the thought didn’t oppress him, on the contrary, he felt freer than before.
The last train had left several hours ago. Thomas sat down on a bench outside the station building and ate and drank the ice-cold beer. As he did so, he leafed through a newspaper that someone had left lying around, but the short news items about the rescue of four stranded sperm whales, a naked statue of Satan that someone had built in Vancouver, and the man with the longest tongue in the world merely depressed him, and he threw the paper into the bin. He took off his shoes and socks and examined his feet in the harsh neon street lighting. They were swollen, and the ankles had abrasions, but luckily he had no blisters.
The village went on seemingly forever. He walked along the road, past a soccer pitch. Opposite was a large factory. There was light behind the closed metal shutters. He could hear the humming of air conditioning, the blades in the opening of the air vent were fluttering gently in the breeze, a sound that somehow reminded Thomas of America. From the conservatory of a crummy restaurant he heard the voices of a couple of drunks, getting worked up about something or other. Next came a sector with new apartment buildings and a bus stop still in the process of construction. The orangey light of the streetlamps made the grass on the shoulders look gray, the crowns of newly planted trees black. Finally the pavement came to an end, and with it the streetlights. Thomas walked on in darkness. Even though there was no moon in the overcast sky, it wasn’t completely pitch-black, the clouds gave a pale reflection of the light pollution of civilization. The air was warm and damp.
It was very quiet; no cars had passed for some time. When Thomas crested a hill, he saw in the distance the lights this side of the lake, making a straight line in the expanse of nocturnal landscape. Above it there was a suggestion of mountains, and on the highest peaks the red signal lights used to warn pilots. From time to time a truck went by or a delivery van. A solitary walker on the road was surely more striking at night than by day, but Thomas was obliged to follow the roads; if he had gone cross-country he would have instantly lost his bearings. And to walk through inhabited areas in the daytime, that was something he didn’t dare to do.
Once he thought there was a creature padding after him, and he stopped in terror and turned around, but there were no more sounds and nothing to be seen.
The road divided. Almost at random he chose the downhill fork. For about an hour he walked among maize fields and meadows, and past isolated farmhouses. To the regular rhythm of his steps, he started softly singing walking songs that came to him out of his childhood. In our eyes the flashing of starlight and the flames of nightly fires, in our legs the indomitable rhythm and our spirits that never tire.
He passed a small village perched on a slope over the road that seemed to consist entirely of new buildings, identikit concrete cubes, surrounded by wire-mesh fences. Lights were on over some of the doorways, but Thomas had difficulty imagining people actually living behind these fa?ades, people lying in their beds, sleeping and dreaming, or waking up in the middle of the night, listening for sounds from the nursery, or thinking of the day ahead or just passed. Over a garage door hung a scarf in the colors of a soccer team, written on it in a spine-chilling font: Welcome to Hell.
Back out in the open again, Thomas heard soft rustling or fluttering sounds, as of dragonflies’ wings. Looking around, he saw for the first time the electricity wires that crossed the valley over his head. He walked down the middle of the road, thought he would keep his eyes closed for a hundred paces, and counted them too, but after ninety he couldn’t stand the suspense anymore and opened them again.
He was surprised not to have reached the lake long ago. He thought he must be heading in the wrong direction and decided to wait for it to get light and orient himself by the rising sun. He sat down on the shoulder and looked up into the paling sky, where there were barely any stars to be made out.