The Woman in the Dunes - Machi Abe [74]
“Well, maybe you don’t have to worry about other people,” he said, trying desperately to re-establish his position, “but someone is ultimately getting a lot of money out of this sneaky business, isn’t he? You don’t have to lend your support to people like that.…”
“Oh, no. Buying and selling the sand is done by the union.”
“I see. But even so, with the amount of investments or stock involved …”
“Anybody who was rich enough to have boats or anything got out of here a long time ago. You and I have been treated very well.… Really, they weren’t unfair to us. If you think I’m lying, get them to show you their records, and you’ll see right away.…”
The man stood rooted where he was in a vague confusion and malaise. For some reason he felt terribly downhearted. His military map, on which enemy and friendly forces were supposed to be clearly defined, was blurred with unknowns of intermediate colors like indeterminate blobs of ink. When he thought about it, he realized there was no need to get so upset over such an insignificant thing as a cartoon book. There was no one anywhere around who would have cared whether he laughed stupidly or not. His throat tightened, and he began to mutter disconnectedly.
“Well, yes.… Yes, of course. It’s true about other people’s business.…”
Then words which he did not expect came by themselves to his lips.
“Let’s buy a pot with a plant in it sometime, shall we?” He was astonished himself, but the woman’s expression was even more puzzled, and so he could not back down. “It’s so dreary not to have anything to rest your eyes on.…”
She answered in an uneasy voice: “Shall we have a pine?”
“A pine? I don’t like pines. Anything would be better than that—even weeds. There’s quite a bit of grass growing out toward the promontory. What do you call that?”
“It’s a kind of wheat or dune grass, I suppose. But a tree would be better, wouldn’t it?”
“If we get a tree, let’s get a maple or a paulownia, with thin branches and large leaves … something with leaves that will flutter in the wind.”
Ones that flutter … clusters of leaves, twisting and fluttering, trying in vain to escape from their branch.…
His breath, unrelated to his feeling, sounded shallow. Somehow he felt he was about to break out in tears. Quickly he bent down where the beads had spilled on the earthen floor and began to feel around over the surface of the sand with an awkward groping gesture.
The woman stood up hastily.
“Let it go. I’ll do it myself. It’ll be easy if I use a sieve.”
30
ONE day, as he stood urinating and gazing at the grayish moon, poised on the edge of the hole as if it wanted to be held in his arms, he was suddenly seized with a terrible chill. Had he caught a cold? he wondered. No, this chill seemed to be a different kind. Many times he had experienced the sort of chill that comes just before a fever, but this was something else. He had no gooseflesh, no sense of the pricking of the air. It was the marrow of his bones rather than the surface of his skin that was trembling. And it was like ripples of water, spreading in slowly widening circles out from the center. A dull and ceaseless ache echoed from bone to bone. It was as if a rusty tin can, clattering along in the wind, had gone through his body.
As he stood there, trembling, looking at the moon, a series of associated ideas occurred to him. The surface of the moon was like a grainy, powder-covered scar … cheap, dried-out soap … a rusty aluminum lunchbox. Then, as it came into focus, it assumed an unexpected form: a white skull—the universal symbol for poison … white, powder-covered tablets at the bottom of his insect bottle … an amazing resemblance between the texture of the moon’s surface and that of the efflorescent tablets