The Woman in the Dunes - Machi Abe [79]
At the beginning of November he had recorded the daily intake of water at one gallon, but after that the quantity began to fall off every day. It was perhaps because of the temperature, and it appeared that he would have to await spring to try a full-scale experiment. The long, hard winter had at last come, and bits of ice were blown along with the sand. In the meantime, in order to get a somewhat better radio, he decided to give the woman a hand with her craft work. One good point was that the inside of the hole was protected from the wind, yet it was unbearable with the sun scarcely visible throughout the day. Even on days when the sand froze over, the amount that blew along in the wind did not decrease, and there was no respite from the work of shoveling. Many times the chilblains on his fingers broke and began to bleed.
In some way, winter passed and spring came. At the beginning of March they got the radio. On the roof they erected a high antenna. The woman joyfully and repeatedly voiced her wonder, turning the dial left and right for half a day. At the end of that month, she found herself pregnant. Two more months went by. Large white birds kept flying over from east to west for three days in succession, and on the following day the lower part of her body was covered with blood and she complained of violent pain. One of the villagers, who was said to have a veterinarian among her relatives, diagnosed it as an extra-uterine pregnancy, and it was decided to take her to the hospital in the city in the three-wheeled truck. The man sat with her as they waited for the truck to come, letting her hold one of his hands, while with the other he kept rubbing her belly.
Finally the three-wheeler stopped at the top of the cliff. A rope ladder was let down for the first time in a half year, and the woman, wrapped in her blankets as in a cocoon, was hauled up by rope. She looked at him beseechingly with eyes almost blinded by tears and mucus, until she could see him no longer. The man looked away as if he did not see her.
Even though she had been taken away, the rope ladder remained as it was. He hesitantly reached out and touched it with his fingertips. After making sure it would not vanish, he slowly began to climb up. The sky was a dirty yellow. His arms and legs felt heavy, as if he had just come out of water. This was the long-awaited rope ladder.
The wind seemed to snatch the breath from his mouth. Circling around the edge of the hole, he climbed to a spot where he could view the sea. The sea too was a dirty yellow. He breathed deeply, but the air only irritated his throat, and it did not taste as he had expected. He turned around. A cloud of sand rose on the outskirts of the village. It was probably the three-wheeler with the woman, he thought. Oh, yes … maybe he should have told her the real significance of the trap.
Something moved at the bottom of the hole. It was his own shadow. Just near it stood the water trap. One part of the framework had come loose. Perhaps someone had accidentally stepped on it when they had come to take the woman out. He hastened back down the ladder to repair it. The water, as his calculations had led him to expect, had risen to the fourth mark. The damage did not appear to be too great. In the house, someone was singing in a rasping voice on the radio. He tried to stifle the sobbing that seemed about to burst from him; he plunged his hands into the bucket. The water was piercingly cold. He sank down on his knees and remained inert, his hands still in the water.
There was no particular need to hurry about escaping. On the two-way ticket he held in his hand now, the destination