The Woman in the Dunes - Machi Abe [64]
Ah yes, and then there was one more thing.…
Wait! What was that noise? He could no longer hear it. Maybe it had been his imagination. By the way, wherever had the lights of the village gone? Even though the land was uneven, it was really too absurd that they were nowhere to be seen. He could easily conceive that he had tended to swing to the left and, having veered too far in the direction of the promontory, was screened from the village by some high ridges. He could waste no time. He would strike out boldly to the right.
… Finally, there was one more thing he did not want her to forget … she had never been able to answer his question. It had been raining for two days. When it rained, the force of the sand slides increased, but there was much less flying sand. Since they had done a little extra work on the first day of rain, they had been able to take it easy on the next. Taking advantage of the first period of leisure in some time, he had determined to push on tenaciously with a project. He had decided he would try to get at the reason that kept her in the hole, and he would go about it with the same patience one has in picking at a scab left from some skin disease. His perseverance had surprised even himself. At first she had cheerfully let the rain strike on her naked body, but at last she had been driven to the point of tears. Finally she began to say something to the effect that she couldn’t leave simply because of the remains of her child and her husband, who had been buried along with the chicken houses on the day of the typhoon. Well, that was understandable. It was quite rational of her, and he could even comprehend her reticence in not speaking to him about it until then. But anyway, he had decided to believe her; he at once determined on the following day to devote some of his sleeping time to looking for the remains.
He had continued digging for two days at the place she had indicated. But he had not found even a trace of the chicken houses, to say nothing of any bones. Then she had pointed out another place. He could not find anything there either. And then she indicated still another. He had dug vainly in this way for nine days, in five different places, and then she had begun to make excuses, looking as if she were about to begin crying again. She had said that the location of the house had evidently changed, shifted by the constant pressure of the sands. Or perhaps it might have been that the hole itself had shifted. She had also said that the chicken houses and the remains of her husband and child might well have been buried under the thick wall of sand that divided her house from her neighbor’s, and that they might have moved into the neighbor’s garden. It was theoretically possible, certainly. Her unhappy, beaten expression obviously showed that she hadn’t meant to lie, but that she had had no intention of telling him from the very beginning. The remains, after all, were no more than an excuse. He had not had the strength to get angry. And then he had decided to leave off trying to figure out who was indebted to whom. She would certainly understand this, he thought, but …
What’s that? He threw himself headlong to the ground. Everything had happened too quickly; he couldn’t grasp the situation. Suddenly the village lay before him. He had apparently been walking straight toward the sandy promontory that was adjacent to it. At the instant the prospect opened before him he found himself in the very center of the hamlet. Before he could collect his thoughts, a hostile barking sounded from a nearby brushwood fence and was picked up by one dog and then another. In the dark, a circle of white fangs pressed in upon him. He pulled out the rope with the shears, sprang up, and began to run. There was no choice. The only thing to do was to make a direct