The Woman in the Dunes - Machi Abe [41]
The woman lowered her eyes and was silent. What a situation. The sky, visible above the door, had changed from blue to a glaring white, like the underside of a seashell. Granted that obligation is a man’s passport among his fellow men, why did he have to get a permit from the villagers? Human life shouldn’t be so many bits of paper scattered about. Life is a bound diary, and one first page is plenty for one book. There is no need to do one’s duty for a page that is unrelated to the preceding ones. One can’t get involved every time someone else is on the point of starvation. Damn it! He wanted water. But no matter how much he wanted water, he still did not have enough bodies to go around to all the funeral services of people who were of no consequence to him.
A second sand slide began.
The woman stood up and took down a broom from the wall.
“You can’t work! You promised, didn’t you?”
“No, no. It’s for the mattresses.…”
“The mattresses?”
“If you don’t get some sleep pretty soon …”
“If I get sleepy, I’ll take care of them myself.”
He felt an earth-shaking shock and stood rooted to the ground. For a moment everything seemed misty with sand that fell from the ceiling. The consequences of having stopped the shoveling were at last apparent. The sand, having no way out, was bearing down. The joints of the beams and uprights groaned in agony. But the woman, staring fixedly at an inner lintel, did not appear particularly concerned. The pressure still seemed to be only around the base of the house.
“Damn them! Do they really intend going on like this forever?”
His racing heart! It was hopping about like a frightened rabbit, as if unable to stay in its own hole. It seemed ready to crawl in anywhere—his mouth, his ears, or even into his bowel. His spittle had become much more viscid. And the dryness in his throat was as bad. Perhaps it was because his thirst had not been adequately slaked by the cheap saké. As soon as the alcohol was dissipated, it would flare up again, and the flames would reduce him to ashes.
“They must feel fine … doing such things. They don’t have the brains of a mouse. Just what would they do if I died?”
The woman raised her face as if to say something but, suddenly thinking better of it, maintained her unbroken silence. She apparently did not think it worthwhile to answer at all.
All right. If there was to be only one inevitable ending anyway, why didn’t he try whatever he could?
He gulped down another mouthful from the bottle of saké and, bracing himself, hurried outside. He reeled back as if molten lead had struck his eyes. The sand, which spilled over into the hollows left by his feet, eddied in whirlpools. Over there was surely the place he had attacked the woman and tied her up the night before. The shovel must surely be buried nearby. The sand slide had mostly stopped for a while, but even so, on the cliff toward the sea, the sand continued its ceaseless flow. From time to time, blown by the wind, it would drop from the face of the cliff, fluttering like a piece of cloth. Taking care not to start a slide, he fished around with the toes of one foot.
Although he probed deeply, his foot met no resistance at all. The direct rays of the sun soon became unbearable. The pupils of his eyes were compressed to pin points, and his belly began to throb like a jellyfish. A violent pain pierced his forehead. He must not lose any more perspiration. This was the limit. He wondered what he could have done with the shovel. He had taken it out with the intention of using it as a weapon; that was certain. So it must be around. Peering closely at the surface of the ground, he was suddenly aware that at one point the sand was standing out in a ridge in the form of the shovel.
He began to spit but hastily stopped himself. He must retain in his body even the slightest bit of moisture. He separated the spittle from the sand between his teeth and his lips and with the