Adelma, The Afterlife?

Adelma, The Afterlife?
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino is a surreal novel that leaves the reader unsure if he/she is coming or going. Marco Polo converses in a garden with Kublai Khan on a daily basis and tells him of the travels that he has experienced. We are met with many different descriptions of cities, some light and some dark. The novel describes a world of constant uniformity. Although there is a wide sense of travel throughout the novel, there is also a sense of stagnation. We are taken on voyages to many different cities but at the same time all of the cities are hypothetical.
In Cities of the Dead 2, Polo describes the city of Adelma. Adelma is a city of depression and death. When Polo first arrived at Adelma he was
He sees the city how it is, grim and unhappy. He assumes that you arrive at Adelma as a dead person and you are on a quest to find the people that you knew throughout your life. Depending on personal beliefs, the afterlife is often seen as a place of paradise or bliss. At Adelma, Polo is met with the harsh realization that "the beyond is not happy" (95). Maybe Adelma is seen as hell. It could be an afterlife where all of Polo's fears are personified. Alike the other cities, the reader is faced with the question of: Is this real or is it a figment of Polo's imagination?
While describing the city Polo asks himself if he is dreaming. Maybe Adelma is a dream or in this case a nightmare that exemplifying Polo's vision of death. The reader gets a sense that Polo is afraid of death and what it holds for him. He then comes to the realization that if the city is real, all he has to do is stare at the people and the familiar faces will go away and be replaced by unfamiliar faces. This never happens. He continues to look at the faces and the faces look back as if they recognize him. Polo then believes that he is one of them, he is seeing them the same way that they are seeing