The Ruined Map Read Online Free PDF Page A

both hands, she stood up soundlessly and passed round in back of the narrow chair, making a shallow billow in the lemon-yellow curtains. She was a girl that black suited. A slender waist that defied gravity. Taking up the receiver, she dialed without consulting an address book, and, using the same finger she had used for dialing, she pinched a pleat in the curtain. A slender finger that seemed quite without articulations. She was apparently in the habit of pinching anything—perhaps some newly formed propensity to avoidbiting her nails. The pinched curtain moved gently. I wondered if she weren’t a little drunk. But black and yellow were signs of “Danger, beware!”
    “It’s true,” she murmured in a low, rasping voice, as if she were beginning to talk to someone in front of her. “I’m always too inclined to let things take care of themselves by talking to myself. Of course, the best thing is to hear directly from the person in question. Even I couldn’t believe it at once … just after that casual whistling … he said he rather had the feeling my brother was surprised. Hmm … strange, isn’t it … no one answers … could he be out? I wonder.”
    “Where are you phoning to?”
    “To someone who lives in the back of the house.”
    “A last eyewitness? Oh, let it go. Surely, he’s already sick of your telephone calls. Anyway, that’s not the telephoning I’m asking for.”
    Surprised, she replaced the receiver on its hook as if she were holding a caterpillar.
    “Well, then, where should I call?”
    “To your brother, of course.”
    “That’s impossible. Because …”
    “As for me, I need maps, ten or twenty of them. What in heaven’s name do you expect me to do with an old matchbox and a photograph like this? I’m different from you; it’s my business to go around snooping in dangerous places. It’s written right here in the request application I showed you. I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable of me to ask you to provide any and all evidence you can.”
    “My brother knows there’s nothing of any use. He’s done some investigating on his own.”
    “He’s got a lot of confidence. For god’s sake, why did you hire me then?”
    “Because I couldn’t stand waiting any longer.”
    Of course, it was hard to wait. Even so, I would keep on waiting. Slowly I walked along, paused, turned around, and walked back again. At intervals, a bus pulled up and stopped. Then came the straggling sounds of footsteps … invisible figures. It was not only the figures I did not see, I also could not distinguish a single trace of anything resembling a fault, a fissure, a magic circle, a secret subway entrance. There was only the black and empty perspective I had grown weary of waiting for. That, and the biting wind of a February night.
    To say nothing of seven thirty of an early morning, that most cheerless of all hours … an hour like distilled water when nothing strange ever happens. What in heaven’s name could be the worst imaginable mishap in the life of a section head for a fuel wholesaler? They had tried to make a fool of me, or maybe I had chanced on a half-witted client. It made no difference which; in either case, invisible was invisible. There was no reason why one should be able to see, nor did I intend to look.
    Something I wanted to see was already visible. I would continue to concentrate on the single point I could see. That faint rectangle of light … the lemon-yellow window … the window of the room I had taken leave of only a moment ago. The lemon-yellow curtains mocked me derisively—I who was frozen in the dark, who, for her sake, resolutely held in check the invasion of darkness. Yet, one way or another, I was the one who would betray her. I would wait. I would keep on waiting until then.
    The sound of footsteps, as if someone were walking only on heels, drew hurriedly near, and for the first time I diverted my eyes from the lemon-yellow window. The