…And then it finally dawned on me: around me was utter darkness. No glimmer of light. The elevator doors shut silently behind me, and this darkness became as black as bitumen varnish. I couldn’t even make out my own hands. The music also disappeared. In the cold air there reeked of some kind of quinine.
And in this pitch-blackness I stood, not breathing, completely alone.
“Dance, dance, dance” (1988) — the concluding novel of Haruki Murakami’s cult “Rat Trilogy” of modern Japanese literature, begun with the novels “Listen to the Wind” “Pinball, 1973” and “A Wild Sheep Chase.”