The Woman in the Dunes - Machi Abe [72]
Then a voice he remembered hearing before answered him from the mist. It sounded suddenly muffled, as if it were coming through a telephone.
—One out of every hundred, after all.…
—What did you say?
—I am telling you that in Japan schizophrenia occurs at the rate of one out of every hundred persons.
—What in the name of …
—Kleptomania also seems to occur in about one out of every hundred.
—What in the name of heaven are you talking about?
—If there is one per cent of homosexuality among men, then naturally there must also be about one per cent of lesbianism among women. Incendiaries account for one per cent; those who tend to be vicious drinkers, for one per cent; mentally retarded, one per cent; sexual maniacs, one per cent; megalomaniacs, one per cent; habitual swindlers, one per cent; frigid women, one per cent; terrorists, one per cent; paranoiacs, one per cent.…
—I wish you’d stop talking nonsense.
—Well, listen to me calmly. Acrophobes, heroin addicts, hysterics, homicidal maniacs, syphilitics, morons—suppose there were one per cent of each of these, the total would be twenty per cent. If you could enumerate eighty more abnormalities at this rate—and of course you could—there would be statistical proof that humanity is a hundred per cent abnormal.
—What nonsense! Abnormality would not come into being if there were no standard of normality!
—Come, come. I was just trying to defend you.…
—Defend me …?
—Even you will scarcely insist on your own guilt, I imagine.
—No, naturally!
—Then I wish you’d behave more obediently. No matter how exceptional your case is, there’s absolutely no cause for worry. Just as people have no obligation to save a strange bird like you, they also don’t have the right to judge you either.
—Strange bird? Why does resisting illegal detention make me a strange bird?
—Don’t pretend you’re so innocent. In Japan, a typical area of high humidity and heat, eighty-seven per cent of annual damage is by water; damage by wind-blown sand, as in your case, would hardly come to a thousandth of one per cent. Ridiculous! It would be like passing special laws against water damage in the Sahara Desert.
—I’m not talking about special laws. I’m talking about the suffering I went through. Illegal detention is illegal, whether it’s in a desert or a bog.
—Oh, illegal detention.… But there’s no end to human greed, don’t you see? You’re a valuable possession for the villagers.…
—Oh, balls! Even I have more of a reason for existence than that.
—You’re quite sure it’s all right to find fault with your beloved sand?
—Fault?
—I hear there are people in the world who, over a period of ten years, have calculated the value of pi to several hundred decimal places. All right, I suppose they have that much reason for existence. But you took the trouble of coming to such a place as this precisely because you rejected such a reason for existence.
—No, that’s not true. Even sand has a completely opposite face. You can use it to make casting molds. And it’s also an indispensable material for setting concrete. Research is being done on improved farming by taking advantage of the fact that sand easily eliminates weeds and fungus growths. They have even experimented with changing sand into soil by using soil-disintegrating enzymes. You can’t talk about sand so sweepingly.
—Come, come, now. What proselytism! If you change your point of view so much I won’t know what to believe, will I?
—I don’t want to die like a beggar!
—Well, it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other, isn’t it? The fish you don’t catch is always the biggest.
—Damn it, who are you?
But the mist billowed in and erased the other voice. Instead, a hundred sheaves of light, ruler straight, slid down. His head spun, and he smothered a feeling of exhaustion which welled up in him like smoke.
A crow cawed. Suddenly remembering the trap, he decided to go around in back of the house and take a look at “Hope.” There was no likelihood of success, but it would be better than the cartoon magazine.
The bait hung just as it