The Woman in the Dunes

by Cobo Abe

  He pulled his straw sun hat far down over his eyes and hastened outside. His judgment and ability to think were no more than a snowflake on his feverish brow when he was faced with the threat of thirst. Ten buckets of water would have been candy, but a single one was merely a goad.

  «Where's that shovel?»

  The woman smiled wearily, pointing to a spot under the eaves as she wiped the perspiration from her forehead with her sleeve. Although she had been overpowered, she did not appear for a moment to have forgotten the arrangement of the tools. It must be a mental attitude that people who lived in the sands learned naturally.

  No sooner did he have the shovel in his hands than his exhausted limbs collapsed like a folding tripod. As a matter of fact, he had not slept a wink since the night before. Under any circumstances, it would probably be necessary to arrange in advance with the woman the minimal amount of work that had to be done. But he was already too tired to talk with her about it. His vocal cords were shredded like strands of dried squid — perhaps because he had strained them too much talking with the old man. Mechanically he took his place next to the woman and began to shovel.

  The two, as if bound together, moved on with their digging between the cliff and the building. The board wall of the house was as soft as a rice cake that has not fully dried; it looked like a seedbed for mushrooms. Finally they piled the sand up in one place. They put it into the kerosene cans and transferred them to the clearing. When they had finished, they resumed the digging.

  The man's movements were almost automatic, involuntary. A frothy saliva that tasted like egg white filled his mouth. It ran over his chin and dribbled down on his chest, but he paid no attention.

  «You know, you would do better to hold the shovel with your left hand further down… like this,» the woman remarked quietly. «If you hold your left hand still and use the right like a lever you won't get half so tired.»

  A crow cawed. Suddenly the light changed from yellow to blue, and the pain, which had become magnified, softly withdrew into the surrounding landscape. Four crows glided low, parallel with the coast. The tips of their outspread wings glittered dark green, and the man for some reason was reminded of the potassium cyanide in his insect bottles. Oh, yes. Before he forgot, he must transfer his speciments to another container and wrap them in plastic. They would dissolve into a mushy mess in no time if the dampness got to them.

  «Shall we call it a day now?»

  The woman looked up at the wall as she spoke. He realized that her face was dry too; she was pale through the layer of sand that clung to her. Suddenly everything around him grew dark, daubed with a rust color, and he realized his blood had lost its vital force. Groping through the tunnel of his dimming consciousness, he barely managed to struggle to his messed and grease-smudged bed. He had no memory of when the woman came in.

  22

  He would have felt exactly like this if plaster of Paris had been poured between his muscles. His eyes were wide open, but why was it so dark? he wondered. Somewhere a mouse seemed to be dragging along the makings of a nest. His throat smarted painfully as though a file had been passed through it. Gas rose in belches from his intestines as if from some cesspool. He wanted a smoke. No, before that, he wanted a drink of water. Water! At once he was drawn back to reality. Then it hadn't been a mouse, but the woman, who had begun working. My God, how long had he been asleep? He tried to get up, but a terrible weight forced him back on the mattress. Remembering, he snatched the towel from his face. From the open doorway a wan, cool moonlight was streaming in, as if through gelatin. Suddenly it was night again.

  The kettle, lamp, and bottle of cheap _sake_ stood beside his pillow. He raised himself at once on one elbow and rinsed out his mouth, spitting the water into the sunken fireplace. Slowly, relishing the feeling, he moistened his throat. He felt around the lamp, and his hand touched a soft package and some cigarettes and matches. He lit the lamp and put a match to a cigarette; then cautiously he tried a mouthful of cheap _sake_. His scattered faculties slowly began to arrange themselves.

  The contents of the package consisted of a boxed lunch: three balls of rice mixed with wheat, which were still warm; two skewers of dried sardines; some dry, wrinkled radish pickle; and some boiled vegetable that had a bitter taste. The vegetable seemed to be dried radish leaves. He could eat only one of the skewers of sardines and one rice ball. His stomach felt like a cold rubber glove.

  When he stood up, his joints creaked like the wind howling over the zinc roof. Nervously he peered into the water jar. It had been replenished and was brimming full. He dampened the towel and wiped his face. A shiver went through his whole body like a flourescent light. He washed his neck and flanks and shook the sand from between his fingers. Maybe he should be satisfied with creature comforts and let the rest go.

  «Shall I fix you some tea?» The woman was standing in the doorway. «No, thanks. My stomach is too queasy as it is.» «Did you sleep well?»

  «You should have got me up when you got up.»

  The woman bent her head giggling. «Actually, I got up three times during the night and fixed the towel over your face.»

  She had the coquetry of a three-year-old who has just learned to use an adult's laugh. It was obvious she did not know how best to express her cheerful feelings or her embarrassment. He felt depressed and turned his eyes away.

  «Shall I help you with the digging? Or would it be better if I did the carrying?»

  «Well… It's about time for the next basket lift to come.»

  When he actually began working, for some reason he did not resist it as much as he thought he would. What could be the cause of this change? he wondered. Was it the fear that the water would be discontinued? Was it because of his indebtedness to the woman, or something about the character of the work itself? Work seemed something fundamental for man, something which enabled him to endure the aimless flight of time.

  Once he had been taken along — when was it? — by the Mobius man to a lecture-meeting. The meeting place was completely surrounded by a low, rusty fence, and within the enclosure the surface of the ground was almost invisible beneath paper refuse, empty boxes, and rags of indiscriminate origin. What had ever put it into the designer's head to place such a fence around the site? Whereupon, as though his thoughts had materialized, a man in a tired suit of clothes appeared, leaning over the iron fence, earnestly trying to scrape it with his fingertips. His Mobius friend had informed him that it was a plain-clothes man. Then on the ceiling of the meeting place there was a huge coffee-colored leaky spot the like of which he had never seen before. In the midst of all this, the lecturer was speaking: «The only way to go beyond work is through work. It is not that work itself is valuable; we surmount work by work. The real value of work lies in the strength of self-denial.»

  He heard the sharp signal of someone whistling through his fingers. Then there were carefree shouts and people running up, dragging the baskets. As usual, as they drew nearer they became quiet, and the basket was lowered in silence. He could feel that he was under close observation, but it would be of no use now to yell at the cliff. When the specified amount of sand had been safely hoisted the tension relaxed, and even the feel of the air seemed to change. No one said anything, but it seemed that for the moment they had come to an agreement.

  He could see a very definite change in the woman's attitude too.

  «Let's have a break. I'll bring some tea.»

  Her voice and her behavior too were more cheerful. She was brimming over with an unobtainable zest. The man felt sated, as if he had eaten too much sugar. As she passed him he brought himself to pat her buttocks from behind. If the voltage is too high the filament burns out. Never had he intended to deceive her like this. Sometime he would tell her the story of the guard who protected the imaginary castle.

  There was a castle. No. It wasn't necessarily a castle, it could be anything: a factory, a bank, a gambling house. So the guard could be either a watchman or a bodyguard. Now the g
uard, always prepared for the enemy attack, never failed in his vigilance. One day the long-expected enemy finally came. This was the moment, and he rang the alarm signal. Strangely enough, however, there was no response from the troops. Needless to say, the enemy easily overpowered the guard in one fell swoop. In his fading consciousness he saw the enemy sweeping like the wind through the gates, over the walls, and into the buildings unhindered by anyone. No, it was the castle, not the enemy, that was really like the wind. The single guard, like a withered tree in the wilderness, had stood guarding an illusion.

  He sat down on the shovel and lit a cigarette. The flame caught at last with the third match. His fatigue spread out into a sluggish circle, like India ink dropped in water — it was a jellyfish, a scent bag, a diagram of an atomic nucleus. Some night bird had found a field mouse and was calling to its mate with a weird cry. An uneasy dog bayed deeply. High in the night sky there was a continuous, discordant sound of wind blowing at a different velocity. And on the ground the wind was a knife continually shaving off thin layers of sand. He wiped away the perspiration, blew his nose with his fingers, and brushed the sand from his head. The ripples of sand at his feet suddenly looked like the motionless crests of waves.

  Supposing they were sound waves, what kind of music would they give? he wondered. Maybe even a human being could sing such a song… if tongs were driven into his nose and slimy blood stopped up his ears… if his teeth were broken one by one with hammer blows, and splinters jammed into his urethra… if a vulva were cut away and sewn onto his eyelids. It might resemble cruelty, and then again it might be a little different. Suddenly his eyes soared upward like a bird, and he felt as if he were looking down on himself. Certainly he must be the strangest of all… he who was musing on the strangeness of things here.

  23

  Got a one-way ticket to the blues, woo, woo,…

  If you want to sing it, sing it. These days people caught in the clutches of the one-way ticket never sing it like that. The soles of those who have only a one-way ticket are so thin that they scream when they step on a pebble. They have had their fill of walking. «The Round-Trip Ticket Blues» is what they want to sing. A one-way ticket is a disjointed life that misses the links between yesterday and today, today and tomorrow. Only the man who obstinately hangs on to a round-trip ticket can hum with real sorrow a song of a one-way ticket. For this very reason he grows desperate lest the return half of his ticket be lost or stolen; he buys stocks, signs up for life insurance, and talks out of different sides of his mouth to his union pals and his superiors. He hums «The One-Way Ticket Blues» with all his might and, choosing a channel at random, turns the television up to full volume in an attempt to drown out the peevish voices of those who have only a one-way ticket and who keep asking for help, voices that come up through the bathtub drain or the toilet hole. It would not be strange at all if «The Round-Trip Ticket Blues» were the song of mankind imprisoned.

  Whenever he could, he stealthily worked at making a rope. He tore his extra shirt into pieces, twisted them together, and then joined them to the kimono sash of the woman's dead husband; altogether his rope was now about five yards long. When the time came, he would fasten one end to a pair of rusty shears, which he would prop half open with a piece of wood. Of course, the rope was still not long enough. He could almost make the required length if he tied on the hemp clothesline and the rough straw rope, stretched over the earthen floor, on which she had hung some fish and corn to dry.

  The idea had come to him rather suddenly. But it was not necessarily true that only a time-tested plan would be successful. Such sudden inspiration had sufficient basis in itself, even though the process of its emergence had been unconscious. The chances of success were better in spontaneous cases than with plans that had been fussed over.

  Now the question was: When should he put his plan into action? He concluded that the best time for escape would be during the day, while the woman was asleep. But it would be risky to cross through the village unless it was dark. He would begin his actions systematically, leaving the place as long a time as possible before the woman awoke, hiding out in some convenient place, and waiting there until the sun had set. He would take advantage of the darkness before the moon rose, and it probably would not be too difficult to get out to a main highway where buses ran.

  In the meantime, he would use all his skill to get the woman to tell him about the topography and organization of the village. What were the economics of a place like this, which did not have a single fishing boat although it faced the sea? How long had it been in this condition? What was the population? Who cultivated the tulips, and where? What did the children do? Did they go to a school? If he were to gather together his vague memories of that first day when he had arrived, he could make an approximate map, even though it would be based on indirect information.

  Ideally nothing could be better than to escape by detouring around the village and not going through it at all, but the west wall was obstructed by a rather steep promontory which, although not very high, seemed to have become a sheer cliff, having been eroded away since early times by the waves. Even though there were footholds which the villagers used when they went to gather firewood, they were obstructed by thickets and hard to locate; and then it would be unfortunate to arouse the woman's suspicions by being over-inquisitive. On the opposite side, to the east, lay a very narrow creek, which was completely surrounded by uninhabited sand dunes rising and falling for more than five miles and which led ultimately right back again to the entrance of the village. In other words, the village was a bag of sand, cut off at the neck by the creek and the sheer cliffs. The margin of safety would seem to be greater if he attacked the center rather than spending precious minutes detouring, thus giving the villagers more time to rally themselves and catch him.

  But that did not mean that the problem was solved. For example, there was the lookout in the fire tower. He was also worried that the woman, upon noticing his disappearance, might set up a hue and cry and that the village gates would be closed before he could get out. Perhaps he could condense the two problems into one. The first basket gang usually came with the water and the regular deliveries a good while after the sun had set. If the woman tried to report his disappearance before then, she could certainly get through only to the fire lookout. The question came down to just what he should do about the fire guard.

  Fortunately, owing to the sudden fluctuation of temperature in the region, the surface of the land was shrouded in mist for thirty minutes to an hour before sunset. The reason was apparently that the silicic acid in the sand, which had little capacity to retain heat, suddenly released the warmth it had absorbed during the day. From the fire lookout, the whole area lay precisely at the angle of light reflection, and even with a slight mist a thick, milk-white curtain completely obstructed the view. He had made certain of this yesterday, just to be on the safe side. At the foot of the cliff toward the sea, he had tried sending a signal by waving his towel a number of times, but, just as he had anticipated, there had been no response.

  It was on the fourth day after he had conceived it that the plan was actually carried out. He had decided on Saturday evening, which was the usual time the bath water was delivered. The preceding night he had determined to get a full night's sleep by pretending to have a cold. For precaution's sake, he had insisted that they fetch him some aspirin. The tablets were discolored, apparently shop-worn from their sojourn in the local emporium. He took two along with some of the cheap _sake_; the results were immediate. Until the woman returned from her work, he had heard nothing except the sounds of the lift basket being raised and lowered.

  The woman, who had not had to work by herself for some time, understandably bore signs of great fatigue. As she busied herself with the preparation of the meal, he chatted idly about all sorts of things… the sink, which had been in bad condition for a long time, should be repaired… and so on. He could see that she was thinking that his selfishness was a sign that he
was putting down roots here, and she dared not register irritation lest she destroy his mood. Now, after work, anyone should feel like taking a bath. The sand that clung to the skin with the night's perspiration was especially annoying. Not only was it the day for the delivery of the bath water, but the woman especially liked to wash him and would surely not put up any objection.

  As he was being soaped he pretended to be aroused and pulled at her kimono. He would wash her in return. Caught between confusion and expectancy, she made a gesture of resistance, but it was not clear just what she was resisting. He quickly poured a bucket of warm water over her naked body and without a washcloth began to pass his soapy hands directly over her skin. He started with the earlobes and shifted down to the jaw, and as he passed over her shoulders he reached around and with one hand grasped her breast. She cried out and, sliding down his chest, crouched level with his stomach. Undoubtedly it was a posture of expectation. But the man was in no hurry. With measured cadence, his hands went on with their painstaking massaging from one part of her body to another.

  The woman's excitement naturally infected him too. He felt a strange sadness that was different from usual. The woman was glowing from within now, as if she were being washed by a wave of fireflies. To disappoint her now would be like suddenly shooting a freed criminal from behind. And so he reacted with even greater frenzy, spurring on his awakening senses.

  But there is a limit to perverted passion too. The woman, who had been entreating him at first, manifested obvious fright at this frenzy. He was seized by a feeling of prostration, as if he had ejaculated. Again he spurred his courage, forcing himself on by a series of helter-skelter lewd fantasies, arousing his passion by biting her breasts and striking her body, which, with the soap, sweat, and sand, felt like machine oil mixed with iron filings. He had intended to let this go on for at least two hours. But finally the woman gritted her teeth and, complaining of pain, crouched away from him. He mounted her from behind like a rabbit and finished up within seconds. Then he threw water over her to wash off the soap; he forced her to drink a teacupful of the cheap _sake_ along with three aspirin tablets. She would sleep straight on through without awakening until night… and, if things went well, until she was awakened by the cries from the basket gangs.