The Woman in the Dunes

by Cobo Abe

  In her sleep the woman breathed as if a paper wad had been stuck in her nose. Her respirations were deep and long; he tapped her heel lightly with his foot, but she showed almost no change. She was an old tube squeezed dry of all sex. He fixed the towel, which had almost slipped off her face, and pulled her kimono down around her knees, seeing that it had twisted like a rope around her waist. Fortunately he was completely occupied with the final arrangements of his plan and there was no time for sentimentality. When he had finished working on the device he had contrived with the old shears, it was just about the appointed moment. As he had expected, he felt a kind of lacerating pain as he looked at her for the last time.

  A thin light played in a circle about a yard from the upper lip of the hole. It must be between six-thirty and twenty of seven. The time was just right. He forced both arms back with all his strength and turned his neck to and fro, stretching the kinks out of his shoulder muscles.

  First he had to climb to the top of the roof. In grappling, the chances of success are greater the closer the angle of elevation is to forty-five degrees. He would have liked to climb up on the roof using the rope, but he was afraid the woman might be awakened by the sound of the shears striking the shingles. He decided to eliminate the testing and to circle around back of the house and climb up on the roof using as footholds the vestiges of a rain shelter that seemed once to have been used as a place for drying clothes.

  The squared timbers were thin and half rotten, and they worried him. But what came next was even worse. The flying sand had polished the straight white grain of the roof, making it appear like new. But when he climbed up on it, it was as soft as a soaked cracker. If he were to put his foot through it, he would be in real trouble. He dispersed his weight, crawling slowly forward. Finally he reached the ridgepole and, straddling it, raised himself on his knees. The top of the roof was already in the shadows, and the faint honey-colored granulations on the west edge of the hole were signs that the mist was gradually beginning to come in. He no longer need concern himself with the lookout in the tower.

  He tied the rope into a lasso and, holding it in his right hand about a yard below the shears, swung it in a circle around his head. His target was one of the sandbags that were used instead of a pulley when they raised and lowered the baskets. Since the bags could hold the rope ladder, they must surely be quite firmly buried. Gradually he increased the speed of the revolutions and, taking aim, let fly with the loop. It sailed off in a completely unexpected direction. His idea of casting was wrong. The shears had to fly in a tangent to the circumference of the hole, and so he would have to let go at the very instant the rope was at right angles with the target, or maybe a bare instant before. Yes, that was it! But the next time the shears unfortunately struck the middle of the cliff and fell to the ground. It would seem that the speed of the revolutions and the angle of elevation as he held the rope were not right.

  After repeated tries, he managed to establish both the distance and the angle pretty well. But still there was a long way to go before a real strike. He would have been happy at any sign of progress, but still there was no evidence that the margin of error was lessening — indeed, to the contrary, his aim was becoming terribly erratic with fatigue and impatience. Perhaps he had oversimplified. He felt unreasonably angry and close to tears, as though someone had actually deceived him.

  Yet there seemed to be some truth in the law of probability, according to which the chance of success is directly proportionate to the number of repetitions.

  With something like the thirtieth try, when in despair he had given up hope, the rope flew straight over the bags. The inside of his mouth felt prickly, and even though he kept swallowing, the saliva kept welling up. But it was still too soon to be pleased with himself. He had simply got hold of money with which to buy a lottery ticket. He would see now whether he would win or lose. All his nerves strained toward the rope as he drew it gently toward him, as if he were pulling on stars with a strand of spider's web.

  It resisted.

  At first he could not believe it, but the rope actually did not move. He tried exerting more pressure. His body was poised, waiting for the moment of disillusion… was it to be now?… or now? But there was no longer any room for doubt. The hook improvised from the shears had bitten firmly into the bags. What luck! What unbelievable luck! From this minute on, things would really go in his favor. With a giddy heart, he got down from the roof and walked to where the end of the rope, now hanging perpendicular, was gently shaving away at the sand cliff. Ground level was right there… so near he could scarcely believe it. His face was stiff and his lips trembled. Columbus's egg must have been hard-boiled. Keep it hot too long, though, and it would spoil.

  He grasped the rope and slowly began hoisting himself.

  Suddenly it began to stretch as if it were rubber. He was startled, and the perspiration gushed from his pores. Fortunately the stretching stopped after about a foot. He tried bringing all his weight to bear, and this time there seemed to be no further cause for worry. He spit on his hands, fitted the rope between his legs, and began to climb hand over hand. He rose like a toy monkey climbing a toy coconut tree. Perhaps it was his excitement, but the perspiration on his forehead felt strangely cold. In an effort to keep the sand from falling on him, he avoided brushing against it and depended solely on the rope. But he felt uneasy as his body turned round and round in the air. The dead weight of his torso was more than he had anticipated, and his progress was slow. And whatever was this trembling? His arms had begun to jerk in spite of him, and he felt almost as if he were snapping himself like a whip. Perhaps it was a natural reaction, in view of those forty-six horrible days. When he had climbed a yard the hole seemed a hundred yards deep… two yards, two hundred yards deep. Gradually, as the depth of the hole increased, he began to be dizzy. He was too tired. He mustn't look down! But there! There was the surface! The surface where, no matter which way he went, he would walk to freedom… to the very ends of the earth. When he got to the surface, this endless moment would become a small flower pressed between the pages of his diary… poisonous herb or carnivorous plant, it would be no more than a bit of half-transparent colored paper, and as he sipped his tea in the parlor he would hold it up to the light and take pleasure in telling its story.

  And now, he hadn't the slightest intention of accusing the woman any more. He could definitely guarantee that if she wasn't exactly a lady she was also not a prostitute. If she needed any backing later he would gladly guarantee it… as much as she wanted. She was a stupid creature whose only merit was that she clung to her round-trip ticket… like him. But even with the same round-trip ticket, if the point of departure was different, the destination was naturally different too. It would not be particularly strange, in fact, if his return ticket were to be her ticket out.

  Even suppose, for the time being, that she had made a mistake… after all, a mistake was a mistake.

  Don't look down. He mustn't look down!

  A mountain climber, a window cleaner on some skyscraper, an electrician atop a television tower, a trapeze artist in a circus, a chimney sweep on a factory smokestack — the instant of his destruction was the instant he looked down.

  24

  He had made it!

  His fingernails struck the sandbags and, not caring if his hands were stripped of their skin, he frantically scrambled up. There! He was on top! He no longer had to worry about slipping back even if he relaxed his grip. Yet it was impossible for him to straighten his arms and for minutes he remained as he was, clutching the bags tightly to him.

  On this day of his liberation, the forty-sixth he had been in the pit, a violent wind was raging. As he began to crawl along, his face and neck were struck by stinging grains of sand. He had not counted on such a savage wind. In the hole he had just felt that the sound of the sea was closer than usual, and right now should be the moment of the evening calm. Yet if it was blowing this much, surely he could not hope for any mist. Maybe the sky
had looked muddy only from within the hole. He might well have mistaken the wind-blown sand for mist. Whichever way it was, the situation was delicate.

  He looked up nervously. In the fading light the fire tower seemed to be leaning unsteadily to one side. It was surprisingly slight and far away. But as the man in it would be watching him through binoculars, he couldn't count on the distance to be in his favor. He wondered if they had already spotted him. No, if they had, they would have instantly rung the alarm bell.

  On a stormy night almost a half year ago, the woman had told him, a bulwark had given way in a hole located on the western outskirts of the village, and the house in it had been half buried. And then it had rained. The water-soaked sand had doubled in weight and crushed the house like a matchbox. Fortunately no one was injured, but the next morning the whole family had tried to run away. In less than five minutes after the alarm was sounded, they could hear the wailing of the old woman being led along the road in back. The family seemed to have had hereditary mental trouble, the woman had added in a convinced tone.

  No he could not waste any time. He raised his head resolutely and looked around. Long shadows fell along the hollows and rises of the dunes. The landscape was bathed in a murky reddishness, and the wisps of wind-blown sand streaming out from the shadows were swallowed up one after the other by other shadows. Could he escape detection behind his screen of blowing sand? Looking back over his shoulder to check on the effect of the light reflection, he stared in amazement. The wind-blown sand was not alone responsible for the pall of milky smoke that lay over the landscape, shading the sinking sun with crayon strokes of color. All at once a shredded and shifting mist was steadily rising from the surface of the ground. If it was blown away in one place, it rose in another; swept clear here, it billowed up there. From his experience in the hole, he was well aware that the sand attracted moisture, but he had had no idea that there was this much. It looked like the scene of a fire after the firemen have gone. Of course, it was a thin mist, not very conspicuous in the reflected light, but a good camouflage, enough to conceal him from the eyes of the lookout.

  He put on his shoes, which he had thrust into his belt, and stuck the coiled rope into his pocket. With the shears attached, it would be a useful weapon in an emergency. The direction of his flight was toward the west, which was shielded by the refracted light. His first need was to find a place to hide until the sun went down.

  Well, let's get going. Keep your back down and run along where it's low. Don't lose your head now. Keep your eyes peeled and get a move on. There! There's a hollow to hide in over there! What was that suspicious noise? An unlucky sign? Maybe not… up, and get going. Not too much to the right. The cliff on the right was so low that he might be seen.

  A path had been worn in a straight line from one hole to another by the night basket crews. The right side of the path was a smooth slope with a number of indentations. The rooftops of a second row of houses were barely visible.

  They in turn were protected by the line of houses to the sea side. The walls of the holes all along there were low, and the brushwood fence built as protection against the sand seemed to be still of some avail. From the village side of the wall they could apparently go in and out as they pleased. When he raised his head a little he could see all the way to the center of the town. Roofs of tile, zinc, and thatch clustered in black splotches in the center of the undulating terrain, which opened out like a fan before him. There was a straggling grove of pine, and he could see something that looked like a pond. And just to protect this pitiful bit of geography, more than ten households on the sea side had to submit to a life of slavery.

  The slave holes were now situated in a line on the left of the road. Here and there were branching paths made by the basket crews, and beyond, threadbare sandbags buried in the sand told where the holes were. It pained him just to look at them. In some places no rope ladders were looped around the bags, but more places had them than not. Not a few of the slaves, he supposed, and already lost all will to escape.

  He could easily understand how it was possible to live such a life. There were kitchens, there were stoves with fires burning in them, there were apple crates, in place of desks, piled full of books, there were kitchens, there were sunken hearths, there were lamps, there were stoves with fires burning in them, there were torn shoji, there were sooty ceilings, there were kitchens, there were clocks that were running and clocks that weren't, there were blaring radios and broken radios, there were kitchens and stoves with fires in them… And in the midst of them all were scattered hundred-yen pieces, domestic animals, children, sex, promissory notes, adultery, incense burners, souvenir photos, and… It goes on, terrifyingly repetitive. One could not do without repetition in life, like the beating of the heart, but it was also true that the beating of the heart was not all there was to life.

  Down, quick! No, it was nothing, just a crow. There was, alas, no chance of catching it and stuffing it, but such things no longer made any difference. The craving for decorations, medals, tattoos, came only when one dreamed unbelievable dreams.

  At last he seemed to be coming to the outskirts of the village, and the road lay atop the ridge of sand dunes; the view opened out, and to his left he could see the sea. The wind carried the pungent taste of surf, and his ears and nostrils hummed like a spinning top. The towel he had tied around his neck snapped in the wind and struck his cheek; as he had expected, the mist here seemed to lack the strength to rise. The leaden sea was overlaid with an aluminum sheet, gathered into wrinkles like the skin on boiled milk. The sun, squeezed by clouds that resembled frogs' eggs, seemed to be stalling, unwilling to sink. The horizon was dotted with the motionless silhouettes of black ships, whose size and distance from him he was unable to guess.

  Beyond were only the smooth sand dunes, undulating in countless ridges that stretched on to the promontory. Maybe it was dangerous to go on like this. Worried, he turned and looked behind him; fortunately, the fire tower was cut off from view by a slight rise in the sand. As he raised himself on his toes little by little, his eye was caught by a low-lying shack half buried in the slope immediately to his right. Because of the angle, it had not been visible in the shadows. To the leeward was a deep hollow that looked as if it had been scooped out with a spoon.

  An ideal place to hide. The texture of the sand was as smooth as the underside of a shell, and there was not a sign of anyone's having been there. But what was he to do about his own footprints? He retraced his steps and found that beyond about thirty yeards they were already completely effaced. Even where he was standing they were caving in, transforming before his very eyes. The wind was good for something.

  As he was about to go round to the back of the shack, something dark came slinking out from the inside. It was a reddish dog, thick-set like a pig. He must not frighten it. Go on, get away! But the dog showed no sign of retreating and stood rooted, its eyes fixed on him. One ear was torn, and its small unbecoming eyes made it seem all the more shifty. It sniffed at him. Would it take it into its head to bark? he wondered. Just let it try. He gripped the shears in his pocket. Let it make a sound and he would put a hole in its brains with these! The dog stared back at him defiantly, but in silence, not even growling. Was it a wild dog? It had a seedy, lusterless coat, and its muzzle was covered with scabs. They say it's a dangerous dog that doesn't bark. Damn! He should have brought some food. And speaking of food, he had forgotten to bring along his potassium cyanide. Oh well, let it go. The woman would probably never find where he had hidden it anyway. He held out his hand and gave a low whistle to see if he could get the dog's attention. For an answer, the dog curled its thin lips, which were the color of smoked herring, and bared its yellow sand-incrusted fangs. The brute certainly couldn't have much appetite for him, he mused. It had a beastly large throat, though. He had better manage to get him on the first try, but… Abruptly the dog looked away, his scruff went down, and he ambled lazily off as if nothing had happened. It had apparently giv
en in to his unbending will. His mental power was not in bad shape if he could stare a wild dog down. He let himself slide into the hollow and lay as he was, against the slope. He was screened from the wind, and he gave a sigh of relief and contentment. The dog, staggering under the gusts, disappeared beyond the blowing sand. The fact that a wild dog had made the place its home was a guarantee that people did not come around. As long as the dog did not go tale-bearing to the office of the farm co-op, his safety here seemed assured. In spite of the sweat that began slowly and steadily to ooze out, he felt well. How quiet!.. Quite as if he were enveloped in gelatin. Although he was clutching a time bomb, set for moment X, it bothered him no more than the sound of the balance wheel of his alarm clock. His Mobius friend would have immediately analyzed the situation, so: — My friend, what you're doing is consoling yourself with the means of your escape and not keeping your eye on the goal.

  And he would have agreed easily: — Very true. But I wonder if you have to distinguish so precisely between means and end. Wouldn't it be all right to use the definitions as need dictates?

  — No, no, that wouldn't do at all. You can't spend time vertically. It's an accepted fact that time really goes horizontally.

  — What happens if you try spending it vertically? — You're a mummy if you do!

  He chuckled and took off his shoes. Indeed, time did seem to run horizontally. He could not stand the sand and sweat that had collected between his toes. He took off his shoes and socks and stretched his toes, letting the air in between them. Hmm, why did places where animals live have such an unpleasant smell? Wouldn't it be fine if there were animals that smelled like flowers! No. It was the smell of his own feet. A curious feeling of friendliness welled up in him when he realized this. He recalled that someone had said that there was nothing that tasted so good as one's own ear wax, that it was better than real cheese. Even if it weren't that bad, there were all kinds of fascinating things one never tired of smelling… like the stink of a decaying tooth.