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standing there? Have you gone to sleep?' she swung round as if terribly startled. 'Hurry up! The car's waiting.' He went close and touched her. He was smiling, but I detected a hint of a threat in his voice and behaviour. She hung back, seemed unwilling to go with him. He linked arms with her, apparently friendly, but really forcing her forward against her will, pulling her along with him through the bunched, staring people. She still did not look up, I could not see her expression, but I could imagine his iron grip on her thin wrist. They left the ship before anyone else, and were immediately driven off in a big black car.
    I had been standing there as if petrified. Suddenly now I made a decision. It seemed worth taking a chance. Though without having seen her face. ... I had no other clue to follow, in any case.
    I ran down to the cabin, sent for the purser, told him I had changed my plans. 'I'm going ashore here.' He looked at me as though I was out of my mind. 'Please yourself.' He shrugged his shoulders indifferently, but could not quite conceal an incipient grin. He had already received his money. Now he would be able to collect a second payment from somebody else for the remainder of the voyage.
    I hurriedly threw into my suitcase the few things I had unpacked.

THREE
    Carrying my suitcase, I walked into the town. Silence obtruded itself. Nothing moved. The devastation was even greater than it had seemed from the boat. Not a building intact. Wreckage heaped in blank spaces where houses had been. Walls had crumbled; steps ascended and stopped in mid-air; arches opened on to deep craters. Little had been done to repair this wholesale destruction. Only the main streets were clear of rubble, the rest obliterated. Faint tracks, like the tracks of animals, but made by human beings, twisted among the debris. I looked in vain for somebody to direct me. The whole place seemed deserted. A train whistle at last guided me to the station, a small makeshift building constructed with materials salvaged from ruins, which reminded me of a discarded film set. Even here there was no sign of life, though presumably a train had just left. It was hard to believe the place was really in use; that anything really functioned. I was aware of an uncertainty of the real, in my surroundings and in myself. What I saw had no solidity, it was all made of mist and nylon, with nothing behind.
    I went on to the platform. They must have dynamited some of the ruins to lay the track. I could see the single line running out of the town, crossing a strip of open ground before it entered the fir forest. This fragile link with the world did not inspire confidence. I had the feeling it stopped just beyond the first trees. The mountains rose close behind. I shouted, 'Is anyone here?' A man appeared from somewhere, made a threatening gesture. 'You're trespassing—get out!' I explained that I had just come off the boat and wanted to find a room. He stared, hostile, suspicious, uncouth, saying nothing. I asked the way to the main street. In a sulky voice I could hardly understand he muttered a few words, staring at me the whole time as if I had dropped from Mars.
    I walked on with my bag, came to an open square where people were going about. The men's black tunics were variations of those I had already seen, and most of the wearers carried knives or guns. The women also wore black, producing a gloomy effect. All the faces were blank and unsmiling. For the first time I saw signs that some buildings were occupied, a few even had glass in the windows. There were market stalls and small shops: wooden huts and lean-tos had been tacked on to some of the patched-up ruins. A café was open at the end of the square, and there was a cinema, shut, displaying a tattered advertisement of a year-old programme. This evidently was the living heart of the town; the rest was just the remains of the dead past.
    I invited the proprietor of the café to drink with me, hoping to