He woke up when the big clock at the station was striking nine. He could hear the rustling sound she was making in the room. Forcing his eyes open, he saw that she was pasting up the craft paper again. One of her long legs was planted on the table, the other on the windowsill. Her shoulders rose and fell. She was completely focused and meticulous. Without turning her head, she knew he had awakened. With one forceful jump, she sprang to the bed, then rolled over his body to the floor. She crawled to the door quietly, opened it, and disappeared into the darkness.
Waiting is unbearable, especially that kind of waiting for which there is no clear termination. In those protracted days he realized the full benefits of the craft paper. Sometimes he would not leave the apartment for a long time. In the darkness he completely forgot how many days had passed. In addition, once he closed the door and breathed only the air of the two of them, this made him calm down. With the craft paper on the window and the door, he imagined himself as a mole. Occasionally he would be lured by his fantasy, then he would open a tear in the craft paper to look at the bright whiteness outside the window. Every time he would be startled and his heart would thump.
He only went outside deep in the night when the station clock struck twelve and when there were scarcely any pedestrians on the street. As a result, it was almost natural that he should participate in the murder. This he did with a fruit knife in collaboration with a tall masked man. It was on the ground floor of his apartment building that this person struck an old man with a stick. As the victim was falling slowly, he dashed over and stabbed at the position of the old man’s heart in his chest. He couldn’t pull his knife out. With the knife in his chest, the old man mumbled something. Hurriedly, he turned back the old man’s ear. Without a doubt, under his left ear there was a mole. From it spurted a drop of blood. The big masked man shouted, pushed him aside, lifted the corpse, and walked toward the riverbank at a quick pace, leaving him standing there alone in a daze.
“This is your first time to do such a thing,” the masked man sneered at his back. “You are looking for some kind of proof. Somebody told you a certain method, yet it cannot bear any result. I’ve seen this kind of thing often. Don’t believe anybody’s method. You’ll get used to it if you do it more often.”
The whole matter drove him to distraction for a long time.
Whenever he returned to his apartment early in the morning and passed that long, pitch-dark corridor, he would hold his breath to listen closely, hoping she would jump out from her hiding place, yet every time he was disappointed. She hadn’t been to his apartment for three months. He knew she had very casual habits; therefore, this time maybe she had forgotten. He opened and closed the door, more and more carefully, attempting to keep her odor in the room for the longest time, although amidst that odor was the sweaty smell which had once aroused his unhappiness.
One night as soon as he lay down, someone knocked three times clearly on his windowpane. Jumping up he opened the window, yet there was only the wind blowing outside. He remembered that he was living on the tenth floor and a person couldn’t possibly hang outside the window. At that instant there flashed in his mind’s eye that triangle, now with red light along its edges. It was humming. Unexpectedly, she did not appear.
The last few days of waiting, he was full of hatred. He tore away all the craft paper, smashed the window glass, crumpled up the paper that bore her fingernail marks, and disassembled the bed in which he had slept with her. Then he left the apartment and wandered aimlessly along the river early in the morning.
All of a sudden he saw her standing in a boat filled with passengers, one long leg on top of the rail along the deck. Her torn clothing was streaming in the wind, and she was staring at the water. Afterward she saw him and smiled blankly. She pointed at her temple and then at the river. He didn’t understand her meaning, and he became extraordinarily annoyed by this lack of understanding, but all he could do was wave madly and fruitlessly at her while running breathlessly along the riverbank adjacent to the boat. He must have appeared to be overrating his physical abilities ridiculously. The boat was pulling away gradually. She had left the deck for the cabin. The whistle blew twice wickedly.
He stopped. Was this boat going back to the city or leaving it? Clutching his head, he pondered and pondered. Finally he felt he should clarify the matter at the dock. He had been to the dock several times, yet at this instant he couldn’t remember which direction he should go. Then he recalled that he had discussed this problem with her late at night. She had insisted that this was a permanently unsolvable puzzle. As she was saying that, she made a boat with her palms sailing back and forth in front of him and blowing the whistle with her mouth, a sound not unlike the two he had just heard. It seemed that he should not go to the dock but rather to any other place of his own choosing. Right. He should go to that park in which they had first met. It was by a fence on the lawn that he had discovered her sitting in the open air. At the moment he had been overjoyed by the discovery, but now when he thought about it he found there were some doubtful elements within the emotions of the time.
He walked all day except for stopping by the roadside to eat two pieces of bread and some ice cream. It was not until dusk fell that he entered the park. There were great changes in the park. He couldn’t recognize that section of lawn. Perhaps there had never been a lawn. Nor flowerbeds and gardeners. Everywhere there were low wooden houses resembling each other with their doors shut tight and people rattling the same thing inside each house. Between houses there were only very narrow walkways. Without care one might brush against the dirty, damp brick walls. He wandered back and forth among the houses, hearing those monotonous rattling voices rising up into the silent night sky forming a gigantic wave of voices rumbling over him.
Finally one door opened and there appeared a dark shadow. Quickly, he walked over and recognized the figure as the man who patrolled the park. He appeared much older now. He asked the old man the direction of the original lawn and how he could exit from this group of houses.
“You can never find it, nor can you exit because it is night now.” He guessed that the old man was laughing at him with a bit of contempt. “At night everything looks exactly the same, and you might feel that if you came more often. There haven’t been any tourists for quite a few years because it’s too monotonous. Perhaps you’re the only tourist who’s been here for many years. Yet that’s no use. You can’t stay on. I’m going in. I can’t stay outside for too long.” He closed the door sharply and snapped off the light inside. In one instant all the lights in all the wooden houses were turned off and the chattering stopped. It was dark all around except for the vague silhouettes of the houses. He felt his way along the brick walls. “It’s too monotonous here. It’s easy for your attention to drift. Please watch out,” the old patrolman said, although where he was standing could not be made out. Yet his words were reassuring. Standing for a while gazing over those vague, dark mushrooms in front of him, he realized it was time for him to return to his apartment.
This time she was waiting for him at the front gate of his building. In the glow of dawn her smile was as fresh as a new leaf.
“I went to the place where we met for the first time. It’s so strange that it turned out to be a stone pit, because what I remembered is so much richer,” he said, feeling bubbles rise in his lungs. “I hadn’t realized until now that this whole thing has had a decisive influence on me.”
“No individual thing has decisive significance for you,” she said.