The Woman in the Dunes - Machi Abe [57]
On this day of his liberation, the forty-sixth he had been in the pit, a violent wind was raging. As he began to crawl along, his face and neck were struck by stinging grains of sand. He had not counted on such a savage wind. In the hole he had just felt that the sound of the sea was closer than usual, and right now should be the moment of the evening calm. Yet if it was blowing this much, surely he could not hope for any mist. Maybe the sky had looked muddy only from within the hole. He might well have mistaken the wind-blown sand for mist. Whichever way it was, the situation was delicate.
He looked up nervously. In the fading light the fire tower seemed to be leaning unsteadily to one side. It was surprisingly slight and far away. But as the man in it would be watching him through binoculars, he couldn’t count on the distance to be in his favor. He wondered if they had already spotted him. No, if they had, they would have instantly rung the alarm bell.
On a stormy night almost a half year ago, the woman had told him, a bulwark had given way in a hole located on the western outskirts of the village, and the house in it had been half buried. And then it had rained. The water-soaked sand had doubled in weight and crushed the house like a matchbox. Fortunately no one was injured, but the next morning the whole family had tried to run away. In less than five minutes after the alarm was sounded, they could hear the wailing of the old woman being led along the road in back. The family seemed to have had hereditary mental trouble, the woman had added in a convinced tone.
No he could not waste any time. He raised his head resolutely and looked around. Long shadows fell along the hollows and rises of the dunes. The landscape was bathed in a murky reddishness, and the wisps of wind-blown sand streaming out from the shadows were swallowed up one after the other by other shadows. Could he escape detection behind his screen of blowing sand? Looking back over his shoulder to check on the effect of the light reflection, he stared in amazement. The wind-blown sand was not alone responsible for the pall of milky smoke that lay over the landscape, shading the sinking sun with crayon strokes of color. All at once a shredded and shifting mist was steadily rising from the surface of the ground. If it was blown away in one place, it rose in another; swept clear here, it billowed up there. From his experience in the hole, he was well aware that the sand attracted moisture, but he had had no idea that there was this much. It looked like the scene of a fire after the firemen have gone. Of course, it was a thin mist, not very conspicuous in the reflected light, but a good camouflage, enough to conceal him from the eyes of the lookout.
He put on his shoes, which he had thrust into his belt, and stuck the coiled rope into his pocket. With the shears attached, it would be a useful weapon in an emergency. The direction of his flight was toward the west, which was shielded by the refracted light. His first need was to find a place to hide until the sun went down.
Well, let’s get going. Keep your back down and run along where it’s low. Don’t lose your head now. Keep your eyes peeled and get a move on. There! There’s a hollow to hide in over there! What was that suspicious noise? An unlucky sign? Maybe not … up, and get going. Not too much to the right. The cliff on the right was so low that he might be seen.
A path had been worn in a straight line from one hole to another by the night basket crews. The right side of the path was a smooth slope with a number of indentations. The rooftops of a second row of houses were barely visible. They in turn were protected by the line of houses to the sea side. The walls of the holes all along there were low, and the brushwood fence built as protection against the