The Woman in the Dunes - Machi Abe [56]
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