The Woman in the Dunes - Machi Abe [58]
The slave holes were now situated in a line on the left of the road. Here and there were branching paths made by the basket crews, and beyond, threadbare sandbags buried in the sand told where the holes were. It pained him just to look at them. In some places no rope ladders were looped around the bags, but more places had them than not. Not a few of the slaves, he supposed, and already lost all will to escape.
He could easily understand how it was possible to live such a life. There were kitchens, there were stoves with fires burning in them, there were apple crates, in place of desks, piled full of books, there were kitchens, there were sunken hearths, there were lamps, there were stoves with fires burning in them, there were torn shoji, there were sooty ceilings, there were kitchens, there were clocks that were running and clocks that weren’t, there were blaring radios and broken radios, there were kitchens and stoves with fires in them.… And in the midst of them all were scattered hundred-yen pieces, domestic animals, children, sex, promissory notes, adultery, incense burners, souvenir photos, and … It goes on, terrifyingly repetitive. One could not do without repetition in life, like the beating of the heart, but it was also true that the beating of the heart was not all there was to life.
Down, quick! No, it was nothing, just a crow. There was, alas, no chance of catching it and stuffing it, but such things no longer made any difference. The craving for decorations, medals, tattoos, came only when one dreamed unbelievable dreams.
At last he seemed to be coming to the outskirts of the village, and the road lay atop the ridge of sand dunes; the view opened out, and to his left he could see the sea. The wind carried the pungent taste of surf, and his ears and nostrils hummed like a spinning top. The towel he had tied around his neck snapped in the wind and struck his cheek; as he had expected, the mist here seemed to lack the strength to rise. The leaden sea was overlaid with an aluminum sheet, gathered into wrinkles like the skin on boiled milk. The sun, squeezed by clouds that resembled frogs’ eggs, seemed to be stalling, unwilling to sink. The horizon was dotted with the motionless silhouettes of black ships, whose size and distance from him he was unable to guess.
Beyond were only the smooth sand dunes, undulating in countless ridges that stretched on to the promontory. Maybe it was dangerous to go on like this. Worried, he turned and looked behind him; fortunately, the fire tower was cut off from view by a slight rise in the sand. As he raised himself on his toes little by little, his eye was caught by a low-lying shack half buried in the slope immediately to his right. Because of the angle, it had not been visible in the shadows. To the leeward was a deep hollow that looked as if it had been scooped out with a spoon.
An ideal place to hide. The texture of the sand was as smooth as the underside of a shell, and there was not a sign of anyone’s having been there. But what was he to do about his own footprints? He retraced his steps and found that beyond about thirty yeards they were already completely effaced. Even where he was standing they were caving in, transforming before his very eyes. The wind was good for something.
As he was about to go round to the back of the shack, something dark came slinking out from the inside. It was a reddish dog, thick-set like a pig. He must not frighten it. Go on, get away! But the dog showed no sign of retreating