"The Magic Chalk" by Kobo Abe

He was able to distinguish the colors and proximity of the complex aromas entering his room.

Wafting from the bakery: stimulating chrome yellow.

Next, swallowing hard as baking smells curled through the hallway and window to permeate his room, he drew bread.

He envisioned glossy browned spots on the bread.

Beyond the windowpane was a bread and pastry jungle, a mountain of canned goods, a sea of milk, a beach of sugar, a beef and cheese orchard— he scampered about until, fatigued, he fell asleep.

Nothing fake about smothering aroma of this coffee.

The knife gleamed, reflecting his face.

He took the chalk in his fingers and stared at it intently.

No matter how much he scrutinized it, he couldn’t understand what he didn’t understand.

Then, abruptly, the tension eased, and sitting down on the floor, he burst out laughing like a panting goldfish.

This chalk has became as precious as life itself, but a bed is sometimes you always need after eating your fill, and it never really wears out, so no need to be miserly about it.

With eyes working out of sync he dreamed mottled dreams throughout the night.

His hunger pangs attacked him fivefold.

When he had gulped from his cupped hands a pint or so of water from the communal sink, he set out toward the lonely city, enveloped in the mist of early dawn.

When he had gulped from his cupped hands a pint or so of water from the communal sink, he set out toward the lonely city, enveloped in the mist of early dawn.

Leaning over an open drain that ran from the kitchen of a restaurant about a hundred yards ahead, he thrust his hands into the viscous, tarlike sewage and pulled something out.

The friend smiled wryly and asked, “My turn today?”

Perplexed for a moment, he then realized that the window could not acquire any substance because it did not have an outside; it was not equipped with all the conditions necessary to make it a window.

The first week passed in discontent as he pondered a design for a world of infinitude.

And if he merely captured the inevitably of partial reality, the contradictions inherent in that reality would pull him back into the past, perhaps trapping him again in starvation.

In the fourth week Argon finally made up his mind, a result of nearly total desperation.

It was a ceremony in honor of the establishment of the world, so one couldn’t say he was being extravagant.

Half an hour later Eve was standing before him, stark naked.

She slammed the door shut and glared at him.

The abrupt, violent tone of Argon’s voice startled her, and she looked into his face.

But something stronger than death was summoning him, compelling him—the wall.

After everyone left, there came a murmuring from the wall.