The Magus

by John Fowles

I could see chinks of light through the roof. There was a broken doorway fifteen feet away; outside, blinding sunlight. I was lying on an air-mattress with a rough brown blanket over me. I looked behind. There stood my suitcase, with a number of things on it: a Thermos, a brown-paper packet, cigarettes and matches, a black box like a jewellery case, an envelope. I sat up and shook my head. Then I threw the blanket aside and went unevenly over the uneven floor to the door. I was at the top of a hill. Before me stretched a vast downward slope of ruins. Hundreds of stone houses, all ruined, most of them no more than grey heaps of rubble, decayed fragments of grey wall. Here and there were slightly less dilapidated dwellings; the remnants of second floors, windows that framed sky, black doorways. But what was so extraordinary was that this whole tilted city of the dead seemed to be floating in midair, a thousand feet above the sea that surrounded it. I looked at my watch. It was still going; just before five. I clambered on top of a wall and looked round. In the direction in which the late-afternoon sun lay I could see a mountainous mainland stretching far to the south and north. I seemed to be on top of some gigantic promontory, absolutely alone, the last man on earth, between sea and sky in some medieval Hiroshima. And for a moment I did not know if hours had passed, or whole civilizations. A fierce wind blew out of the north.