Читать онлайн «The Ninth Circle»

My name is Gabriel. There — I have a name. So there’s no need to be afraid. But I wish I could remember… something more. Seven days ago I opened my eyes and stared at the kitchen floorboards stretching out before me — worn old floorboards that were stained with someone else’s blood. And when I tried to lift my head, I found that my face was glued to the floor where the blood had dried there, sticking to my skin.

I’m only writing this down now because I — ah — don’t want to forget it all again. If a man doesn’t know who he is, he might cease to be a person altogether. I mean, he might just sort of… fade. . right out of existence. So I’m making a record here in this journal. It’s the sensible thing to do. I’m being rational; you see that I am being calm about this. I am not afraid. What good would fear be?

When I at last managed to get to my feet, the room tilted and the air went thin. I staggered, almost fell back down again. My tongue felt like sandpaper in my mouth, my lips were dry and cracked and my head was throbbing. I stumbled from the kitchen, half in a daze, wandering from room to room trying to get my bearings.

The apartment was small and shabby: just a kitchen, bathroom, lounge and small bedroom. The carpets were worn and drab and the wallpaper was threadbare and virtually peeling from the walls. But the furnishings and other possessions were clearly of high quality.

I walked into the bedroom and sat down on the double bed. The sheets were crumpled as if they had been slept in, but the apartment was deserted. And completely silent. I sat there, staring at the wall, and it occurred to me that perhaps I was dead. It seemed a sensible explanation. This place couldn’t be real. Obviously, I wasn’t real either. Real people knew their names. This didn’t worry me at first. In fact, I felt I could sit there for ever on the bed, untroubled by this surreal experience, half expecting it to fade away like some vaguely worrying dream.

But slowly noise began to filter through to me. The noise of traffic passing by outside somewhere. I got up and crossed to the window, drew up the blind and looked out, flinching instinctively at the brightness of the sun and shielding my eyes with my hand. I was about six floors up in a large apartment block. There was a main road not far away, and the noise from it had clearly been there all along. Now that I was listening, I could also hear people on the pavement below and the odd door opening and closing within the building. There was life, after all. This was not what came afterwards. Craning my head and squinting against the light, I could see that I was on the top floor. A city glinted dully below and around me. From my window I could see the Danube and the Chain Link Bridge. I think it must have been these landmarks that made a name suddenly come into my mind — Budapest.