The Woman in the Dunes

by Cobo Abe

  «But there is the sand…»

  «The sand?» The man clamped his teeth together, rolling his head. «What good is sand? Outside of giving you a hard time it doesn't bring in a penny.» «Yes, it does. They sell it.» «You sell it? Who do you sell such stuff to?»

  «Well, to construction companies and places like that. They mix it with concrete…»

  «Don't joke! It would be a fine mess if you mixed this sand with cement — it's got too much salt in it. In the first place, it's probably against the law or at least against construction regulations…»

  «Of course, they sell it secretly. They cut the hauling charges in half too…»

  «That's too absurd! Even if half price were free, that won't make it right when buildings and dams start to fall to pieces, will it?»

  The woman suddenly interrupted him with accusing eyes. She spoke coldly, looking at his chest, and her attitude was completely different.

  «Why should we worry what happens to others?»

  He was stunned. The change was complete, as if a mask had dropped over her face. It seemed to be the face of the village, bared to him through her. Until then the village was supposed to be on the side of the executioner. Or maybe they were mindless man-eating plants, or avaricious sea anemones, and he was supposed to be a pitiful victim who happened to be in their clutches. But from the standpoint of the villagers, they themselves were the ones who had been abandoned. Naturally there was no reason why they should be under obligation to the outside world. So if it were he who caused injury, their fangs should accordingly be bared to him. It had never occurred to him to think of his relationship with the village in that light. It was natural that they should be confused and upset. But even if that were the case, and he conceded the point, it would be like throwing away his own justification.

  «Well, maybe you don't have to worry about other people,» he said, trying desperately to reestablish his position, «but someone is ultimately getting a lot of money out of this sneaky business, isn't he? You don't have to lend your support to people like that…»

  «Oh, no. Buying and selling the sand is done by the union.»

  «I see. But even so, with the amount of investments or stock involved…»

  «Anybody who was rich enough to have boats or anything got out of here a long time ago. You and I have been treated very well… Really, they weren't unfair to us. If you think I'm lying, get them to show you their records, and you'll see right away…»

  The man stood rooted where he was in a vague confusion and malaise. For some reason he felt terribly downhearted. His military map, on which enemy and friendly forces were supposed to be clearly defined, was blurred with unknowns of intermediate colors like indeterminate blobs of ink. When he thought about it, he realized there was no need to get so upset over such an insignificant thing as a cartoon book. There was no one anywhere around who would have cared whether he laughed stupidly or not. His throat tightened, and he began to mutter disconnectedly.

  «Well, yes… Yes, of course. It's true about other people's business…»

  Then words which he did not expect came by themselves to his lips.

  «Let's buy a pot with a plant in it sometime, shall we?» He was astonished himself, but the woman's expression was even more puzzled, and so he could not back down. «It's so dreary not to have anything to rest your eyes on…»

  She answered in an uneasy voice: «Shall we have a pine?»

  «A pine? I don't like pines. Anything would be better than that — even weeds. There's quite a bit of grass growing out toward the promontory. What do you call that?»

  «It's a kind of wheat or dune grass, I suppose. But a tree would be better, wouldn't it?»

  «If we get a tree, let's get a maple or a paulownia, with thin branches and large leaves… something with leaves that will flutter in the wind.»

  Ones that flutter… clusters of leaves, twisting and fluttering, trying in vain to escape from their branch… His breath, unrelated to his feeling, sounded shallow. Somehow he felt he was about to break out in tears. Quickly he bent down where the beads had spilled on the earthen floor and began to feel around over the surface of the sand with an awkward groping gesture.

  The woman stood up hastily.

  «Let it go. I'll do it myself. It'll be easy if I use a sieve.»

  30

  One day, as he stood urinating and gazing at the grayish moon, poised on the edge of the hole as if it wanted to be held in his arms, he was suddenly seized with a terrible chill. Had he caught a cold? he wondered. No, this chill seemed to be a different kind. Many times he had experienced the sort of chill that comes just before a fever, but this was something else. He had no gooseflesh, no sense of the pricking of the air. It was the marrow of his bones rather than the surface of his skin that was trembling. And it was like ripples of water, spreading in slowly widening circles out from the center. A dull and ceaseless ache echoed from bone to bone. It was as if a rusty tin can, clattering along in the wind, had gone through his body.

  As he stood there, trembling, looking at the moon, a series of associated ideas occurred to him. The surface of the moon was like a grainy, powder-covered scar… cheap, dried-out soap… a rusty aluminum lunchbox. Then, as it came into focus, it assumed an unexpected form: a white skull — the universal symbol for poison… white, powder-covered tablets at the bottom of his insect bottle… an amazing resemblance between the texture of the moon's surface and that of the efflorescent tablets of potassium cyanide. He wondered if the bottle were still hidden under the ledge that ran around the earthen floor, near the entrance, where he had left it.

  His heart began to jump irregularly, like a broken ping-pong ball. Why did he have to think up such sinister things?… A pretty sad association of ideas. And even if he hadn't, the October wind carried an oppressive echo of regret, its reedy voice sounding through empty, seedless husks. As he looked up at the rim of the hole, faintly limned in the moonlight, he mused that this searing feeling of his was perhaps jealousy. Maybe it was a jealousy of all things that presented a form outside the hole: streets, trolley cars, traffic signals at intersections, advertisements on telephone poles, the corpse of a cat, the drugstore where they sold cigarettes. Just as the sand nibbled away at the insides of the wooden walls and the uprights, so his jealousy was gnawing holes in him, making him like an empty pot on a stove. But the temperature of an empty pot rises quickly. And it might happen that soon, unable to stand the heat any longer, he would give up. First came the problem of weathering this moment, before he could talk about hope.

  He wanted lighter air! At least fresh air, unmixed with his own breath. How wonderful it would be if once a day, even for a half hour, he could climb up the cliff and look out over the sea. He should be allowed to do that much. Their check on him was too strict for him to escape, and then too it would seem to be a very reasonable request, considering the faithful work he had performed for them over more than three months. Even a prisoner in confinement had the right to a period of exercise.

  «I really can't stand it! If I keep on like this, sticking my nose in the sand every day in the year, I'll turn into a human pickle! I wonder if I could get them to let me walk around once in a while?»

  The woman kept her mouth closed as if annoyed. She looked like someone who does not know what to do with a peevish child who has lost his candy.

  «I won't let them say I can't!» Suddenly the man became angry. He even mentioned the rope ladder, so hard for him to talk about because of the loathsome memories. «The other day, when I was running away, I saw it with my own eyes. Some houses in this row actually had rope ladders hanging down to them.»

  «Yes… but…» she said timidly as if apologizing, «most of those people have been living there for generations.»

  «Well, do you mean that there's no hope for us?»

  The woman bent her head with resignation, like a dejected dog. Even if he swallowed the potassium cyanide before her very eyes, she would probably let him go t
hrough with it without saying a word.

  «All right. I'll try to negotiate directly with them.»

  However, in his heart he did not expect that such negotiations would be successful. He was quite used to being disappointed. And so, when the old man at once brought back an answer with the second gang of basket bolsters, he was surprised and bewildered.

  But his surprise was unimportant compared with the contents of the answer.

  «Well, let's see…» the old man said slowly and falteringly, speaking as if he were arranging his old papers in his head. «It's, ah… not… ah… absolutely impossible to arrange… Well, this is just an example, but if the two of you came out front… with all of us watching you… and if you'd go to it… and let us see… Well, what you want is reasonable enough, so we've all decided… uh… that it's all right…»

  «What do you mean, let you see?»

  «Well… uh… the two of you… doing it together… that's what we mean.»

  Around him the gang of basket carriers suddenly broke out in a mad laughing. The man stood numbly, as if someone were strangling him, but slowly he began to understand exactly what they meant. And he began to understand that he understood. Once he had comprehended, their proposal didn't seem particularly surprising.

  The beam of a flashlight skimmed by his feet like some golden bird. As if it were a sign, seven or eight more shafts fused into a dish of light and began to creep around the bottom of the hole. Overpowered by the burning, resinous ardor of the men at the top of the cliff he was almost caught up in their madness before he could resist.

  Slowly he turned toward the woman. She had been wielding her shovel there until a moment ago, and now she had vanished. Had she fled into the house? He looked in at the door and called to her.

  «What shall we do?»

  The woman's muffled voice came from directly behind the wall. «Let them be!»

  «But I want to get out I really do…»

  «But how can you…»

  «You mustn't take it so seriously.»

  «Have you gone out of your mind?» the woman suddenly gasped. «You must have. You've left your senses. I couldn't do a thing like that. I'm not sex-mad.»

  Was it really true? he wondered. Had he gone out of his mind? He winced from the woman's vehemence, but inside him spread a kind of perverse blankness. He had been trampled this much… what difference could appearances make now? If there was something wrong from the standpoint of the one who was being watched, then there was just as much wrong from that of the ones who were watching. There was no need to distinguish between watcher and watched. There might still be some difference between them, but this little ceremony would be enough to make it vanish. And just think what he could get as a prize… ground on which he could walk where he wished. He wanted to take a deep breath with his face above the surface of this stagnant water!

  Sensing where the woman was, he suddenly threw his whole body upon her. Her cries and the sound of the two of them, entangled, falling against the sand wall, roused an animal-like excitement and frenzy at the top of the cliff. Whistling, clapping… obscene, wordless screams… The number of watchers had grown and now included some young women among the men. And the number of flashlights whose light flooded over the doorway had increased at least three times.

  He had been successful, perhaps because he had taken her by surprise. Somehow he was able to drag her outside, holding her by the collar. She was a dead, baglike weight. The lights, in a tight semicircle around three sides of the hole, were like the bonfires of some nocturnal festival. Although it was not really that hot, perspiration like a layer of flayed skin poured from his armpits, and his hair was soaked as if he had poured water over it. The cries of the onlookers were like compressed reverberations, filling the sky over his head with great black wings. He felt as if the wings were his own. He could feel the breathless villagers looking down from the top of the cliff, so clearly they could have been himself. They were a part of him, their viscid, drooling saliva was his own desire. In his mind he was the executioner's representative rather than the victim.

  The string of her trousers was unexpectedly troublesome. It was dark, and his trembling fingers seemed twice as clumsy as-usual. When at last he had torn them off, he grabbed her buttocks in his two hands and shifted his hips under her, but at that instant she twisted her body and wrenched away. He churned through the sand as he tried to catch her, but again he was pushed back with a steel-like resistance. He grabbed her violently, entreating: «Please! Please! I can't really do it anyway… just pretend…»

  However, there was no need to grasp at her any longer. She had already lost all desire to escape. He heard a noise of cloth tearing, and at the same instant he was struck a terrible blow in the belly by the point of her shoulder, which bore the weight and anger of her whole body. He simply grasped his knees and bent in two. The woman, leaning over him, struck his face again and again with her fists. At first her movements seemed slow, but each blow, delivered as though she were pounding salt, carried weight. Blood gushed from his nose. Sand clung to the blood; his face was a lump of earth.

  The excitement at the top of the cliff rapidly folded like an umbrella with broken ribs. Although they tried to join their voices of discontent and laughter and urging into one, they were already out of step and ragged. The obscene and drunken boos and hisses did nothing to arouse enthusiasm. Someone threw something, but he was at once reproved by someone else. The end was as abrupt as the beginning. Cries urging the men back to work trailed in the distance, and the line of lights disappeared as if they had been drawn in. All that remained was the dark north wind, blowing away the last traces of excitement.

  But the man, beaten and covered with sand, vaguely thought that everything, after all, had gone as it was written it should. The idea was in a corner ofhis consciousness, like a sodden undergarment, where only the beating of his heart was painfully clear. The woman's arms, hot as fire, were under his armpits, and the odor of her body was a thorn piercing his nose. He abandoned himself to her hands as if he were a smooth, flat stone in a river bed. It seemed that what remained of him had turned into a liquid and melted into her body.

  31

  Monotonous weeks of sand and night had gone by.

  «Hope,» as before, lay neglected by the crows. And the bait of dried fish had become not even that.

  Although spurned by the crows, it had not been spurned by the bacteria. One morning when he felt the end of the stick, he found that only the skin remained; the fish had turned into a black, almost liquid pulp. As he was changing the bait, he decided at the same time to check on the contraption. He scraped away the sand and opened the cover; he was thunderstruck. Water had collected at the bottom of the bucket. There were only about four inches, but it was more clear by far — indeed it was almost pure — than the water with the metallic film which was delivered to them daily. Had it rained some time recently? he wondered. No. Not for a half month at least. If that were true, then could it be the rain that was left from a half month ago? He would like to think so, but what puzzled him was that he knew the bucket leaked. And when he raised it up, as he had expected, water at once began to fall from the bottom. At that depth there could be no underground spring, and he was obliged to recognize that the escaping water was being constantly replenished from somewhere. At least, that must be theoretically so. But wherever could the replenishment come from in the midst of this parched sand?

  He could scarcely contain his gradually rising excitement There was only one answer he could think of. That was the capillary action of the sand. Because the surface sand had a high specific heat, it was invariably dry, but when you dug down a little the under part was always damp. It must be that the surface evaporation acted as a kind of pump, drawing up the subsurface water. When he thought about it, everything was easily explained — the enormous quantity of mist that came out of the dunes every morning and evening, the abnormal moisture which clung to the pillars and walls, rotting the wood.
In short, the dryness of the sand was not due simply to a lack of water, but rather, it would seem, to the fact that the suction caused by capillary attraction never matched the speed of evaporation. In other words, the water was being constantly replenished. But this water circulated at a speed unthinkable in ordinary soil. And it had happened that «Hope» had cut off the circulation some place. Probably the chance placing of the bucket and the crack around the lid had been enough to prevent evaporation of the water that had been sucked up in the bucket. He could not yet explain exactly the placing and its relationship to the other elements, but with study he would surely be able to repeat the experiment. Moreover, it should not be impossible to construct a more efficient device for storing the water.

  If he were successful in this experiment he would no longer have to give in to the villagers if they cut off his water. But more important, he had found that the sand was an immense pump. It was just as if he were sitting on a suction pump. He had to sit down for a moment and control his breathing in order to quiet the wild beating of his heart. Of course, there was no need yet to tell anyone about this. It would be his trump card in case of emergency.

  But he could not suppress the natural laughter that welled up in him. Even if he were able to keep silent about «Hope,» it was hard to conceal the elation in his heart. He suddenly let out a cry and put his arms around the woman's hips from behind as she was getting the bed ready. And when she dodged away he fell over on his back and lay kicking his legs and laughing all the while. It was as if his stomach were being tickled by a paper balloon filled with some special light gas. He felt that the hand he held to his face was floating free in the air.

  The woman laughed reluctantly, but it was probably only to be agreeable. He was thinking of the vast network of water veins creeping up through the sand, but the woman, on the contrary, was surely thinking that his actions were sexual advances. That was all right. Only a shipwrecked person who has just escaped drowning could understand the psychology of someone who breaks out in laughter just because he is able to breathe.