The Search by Geoff Dyer Read Free Book Online Page B

trying to shut out the silence of the room in order to decipher the silence of the tape. Doubly difficult since straining his ears like this
made him aware of the obtrusive sounds that composed the silence around him. The machine had come with a small set of headphones and with these he was able to cocoon himself inside the silence of
the tape. He could hear a faint rattle, like blinds shifting in a breeze, a bell chiming in the distance, the swish and murmur of traffic, the gurgle of pipes, maybe rain.
    He was so immersed in listening that the click of the tape coming to an end sounded like a door slamming.

CHAPTER FIVE
    In the morning, slightly hung-over, he caught a bus to Friendship. Having fulfilled his commitment to retracing Malory’s exact route – pointlessly – he bought
a ticket for the onward journey to Usfret.
    The bus did not leave for several hours. He wandered round the city and then ate lunch in a café run by identical twins, one cooking, the other serving, both smiling the whole time.
Someone had left a paper behind, folded inside out, exposing the crosswords and classifieds. The crossword had been completed and the ferry times to Ascension had been ringed in a small display ad.
Walker rearranged the pages and skimmed the main items while eating his food. The only article he read right through was about the reconstruction of a dead man’s face. Several people had died
in a fire at a railway station and one of the bodies had remained unidentified. From the remains a forensic expert had built an impression of what the dead man had probably looked like, right down
to his hair style. Six months later no one had come forward to identify him. He had vanished and it made no difference, no one noticed: a man who didn’t matter to anyone except himself, maybe
not even to himself. A man who owed nobody anything.
    Weighed down by eggs and grits, Walker left the café and headed back to the bus station. There was something strange about the city but he was unable to work out what. Then it came to
him. There were no trees or pigeons or gardens. Yet all around were the sounds of leaves rustling and the beating of wings, the cooing of departed birds. He was so shocked that he stood at a street
corner, listening. The effect was unsettling, less because it was so odd than because he was unable to decide whether it was depressing or uplifting: depressing because these things were absent or
uplifting because, though absent, their sound remained. Thinking of the tape he had listened to last night he set the dictaphone on a wall and inserted the blank cassette. Pressed Record and let
the machine soak up the sounds all around.
    He had time, just before the bus left, to buy a pack of five blank tapes.
    The bus station at Usfret was the size of a small city, a shanty town in its own right. Buses from all over the country converged and departed in a scene of relentless chaos.
Buses roared in and out continually, drivers jockeyed for position, horns blaring. Conductors called and joked to each other, children who had climbed on to sell drinks leapt down into the dust,
clutching crates of empty bottles.
    Signs warned of pickpockets and every few moments Walker felt a body shove suspiciously into him. He asked where you could get taxis and a white-haired man, lacking a hand, gestured vaguely with
his stump.
    Walker set off in the general direction, not properly understanding where he was supposed to be heading. He needed a piss and found a toilet that smelled like the source of all epidemics in
history. Over the years the city had sprawled further and further until it had ruined the surrounding land and this lavatory was a microcosm of the same process. The toilet had become progressively
more clogged with effluent until it had encroached on to the floor, spilling out of the door and eventually forming ghettos of excrement and toilet paper for yards around. Walker tried to avoid
looking but it was impossible to