The Woman in the Dunes - Machi Abe [26]
His vision was obscured by a dingy, mistlike film. There was a crackling noise of dry paper as he moved his body. His face was covered with an open newspaper. Damn! He had fallen asleep again. A film of sand fell from the surface of the paper when he brushed it aside. From the quantity of sand it would seem that quite some time had gone by. The slant of the sun’s rays piercing through the cracks in the wall told him it was about noon. But what was that smell? he wondered. New ink? Impossible, he thought, yet he glanced at the date line. Wednesday, the sixteenth. It really was today’s paper! It was unbelievable, but it was true. Then the woman must have passed along his request.
He propped himself up with an elbow on the mattress, which had become sodden and sticky with perspiration. All kinds of thoughts at once began to whirl around in his mind, and he tried in vain to follow the print on the long-awaited paper.
Increased Agenda for the Joint Japan-America Committee?
How in heaven’s name had the woman managed to get her hands on this paper? Could it be true that the villagers were beginning to feel they owed him something? Even so, judging from how things had gone till now, all contact with the outside ceased after breakfast. Did the woman have some special way of communicating with the outside that he did not yet know of? Or, failing that, did she herself get out and buy the paper? It must certainly be one or the other.
Drastic Measures Against Traffic Jams
But just a minute. Supposing the woman had gone out—it was inconceivable that she could have done it without the rope ladder. He didn’t know how she had managed it, but one thing was certain—a rope ladder had been used. A prisoner dreaming of escape was one thing, but how could the woman, a resident of the village, put up with losing her freedom of movement? The removal of the rope ladder must be a temporary measure to keep him imprisoned. If that were so, and if he could keep them off guard, someday the same opportunity would occur again.
Ingredient in Onions Found Effective in Treatment of Radiation Injuries
His strategy of pretended illness seemed to have produced an unexpected return. Everything comes in time to him who waits—they put it well in the old days. But somehow he did not react to the idea. Something in him was still unsatisfied. Perhaps it was the fault of that weird, terribly upsetting dream. He felt strangely uneasy about the dangerous letter. But was it dangerous? Whatever could it mean?
However, there was no use worrying every time he dreamt something. In any event, he had to carry through what he had begun.
The woman was asleep beside the sill of the raised portion of the floor around the hearth. She was breathing gently and lay curled in a ball, holding her knees as she always did; she had thrown an unironed summer kimono over herself. After that first day she had stopped appearing naked before him, but under the summer kimono she was probably as bare as ever.
He glanced quickly at the society page and the local columns. Of course, there was no article on his disappearance, no missing-person notice. But he had expected as much and so was not particularly discouraged. He quietly arose and stepped down on the earthen floor. He was wearing only baggy, half-length drawers made of synthetic silk, and the upper half of his body was completely