The Woman in the Dunes - Machi Abe [27]
He stood in the doorway and looked up at the walls of sand. The light thrust into his eyes, and the surroundings began to burn yellow. There was not a sign of man or rope ladder: that seemed natural. He checked, nonetheless, just to make sure. There was not even a sign that the rope ladder had been let down. Of course, with a wind like this, it wouldn’t have taken five minutes for any trace to disappear. Just outside the doorway the surface of the sand was continually being turned under as though there were some current.
He came back in and lay down. A fly was flitting about. It was a tiny light-pink fruit fly. Perhaps something was spoiling somewhere. After he had moistened his throat with water in the plastic-wrapped kettle by his pillow, he addressed the woman: “Would you mind getting up a minute?”
She jumped up trembling, letting the summer kimono fall open to her waist. The veins stood out blue in the sagging, but still full, breasts. Flustered, she adjusted her kimono. There was a vague look in her eyes, and she did not seem fully awake yet. He hesitated. Should he question her now about the ladder? Should he raise his voice in anger? Or should he adopt a mild, inquiring tone, at the same time thanking her for the newspaper? If his goal were simply to prevent her from sleeping, then it would be best to go at it rather aggressively. He had missed the mark with his feigned illness, for his behavior was scarcely that of a man who had dislocated his spine. What he had to do was make them recognize that he was no longer of any use for work—at all events, get them to relax their vigilance. They had softened to the extent of giving him a newspaper; he had to break down their resistance even more.
But he was summarily disappointed in his expectations.
“No, of course I don’t go out. The men from the farm co-op happened to deliver some wood preservative I ordered a while back, and I had a chance to ask them. Only about four or five houses take newspapers in the village. They had to go all the way to the store in town to buy it.”
It was not impossible that things had happened so. It was rather like being shut up in a cell with a lock that had no key. If even the people of the region themselves had to put up with imprisonment, then the precipitous wall of sand was no laughing matter for him. He became desperate and insistent.
“This is amazing! This is your house, isn’t it? You’re not a dog. It should be nothing for you to come and go freely, should it? Or have you done something so bad you don’t dare show your face to the villagers?”
Her eyes opened wide in surprise. The glare was so strong that they were bloodshot and red.
“Certainly not! It’s nonsense to think I don’t dare show my face!”
“Well, there’s no reason for you to be so timid.”
“But there isn’t any reason to go out!”
“You can at least take a walk.”
“A walk?”
“Yes. A walk. Wouldn’t it be enough just to walk around a little? I mean, you used to take walks when you wanted to, before I came, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but I get all tired out, walking for no particular reason.”
“I’m not joking. Ask yourself. You ought to understand. Even a dog’ll go mad if you keep it shut up in a cage.”
“But I have taken walks,” she said abruptly in her monotonous, withdrawn voice. “Really, they used to make me walk a lot. Until I came here. I used to carry a baby around for a long time. I was really tired out with all the walking.”
The man was taken by surprise. Indeed, what a strange way of speaking! He was unable to answer when she turned on him like that.
Yes, he remembered, when everything was in ruins some ten years ago, everybody desperately wanted not to have to walk. And now, were they glutted with this freedom from walking? he wondered. And yet, even the child who wanted so desperately to go picnicking cried when it got lost.
The woman suddenly changed her tone and said: “Do you feel all right?”
Stop