by Cobo Abe
«I could… if we were just to start working…»
«Don't be funny! Where do those fellows get the right to strike such an absurd bargain? Just tell me that! You can't, can you? They don't have the right, and you know it!»
The woman lowered her eyes and was silent. What a situation. The sky, visible above the door, had changed from blue to a glaring white, like the underside of a seashell. Granted that obligation is a man's passport among his fellow men, why did he have to get a permit from the villagers? Human life shouldn't be so many bits of paper scattered about. Life is a bound diary, and one first page is plenty for one book. There is no need to do one's duty for a page that is unrelated to the preceding ones. One can't get involved every time someone else is on the point of starvation. Damn it! He wanted water. But no matter how much he wanted water, he still did not have enough bodies to go around to all the funeral services of people who were of no consequence to him.
A second sand slide began.
The woman stood up and took down a broom from the wall. «You can't work! You promised, didn't you?» «No, no. It's for the mattresses…» «The mattresses?»
«If you don't get some sleep pretty soon…» «If I get sleepy, I'll take care of them myself.»
He felt an earth-shaking shock and stood rooted to the ground. For a moment everything seemed misty with sand that fell from the ceiling. The consequences of having stopped the shoveling were at last apparent. The sand, having no way out, was bearing down. The joints of the beams and uprights groaned in agony. But the woman, staring fixedly at an inner lintel, did not appear particularly concerned. The pressure still seemed to be only around the base of the house.
«Damn them! Do they really intend going on like this forever?»
His racing heart! It was hopping about like a frightened rabbit, as if unable to stay in its own hole. It seemed ready to crawl in anywhere — his mouth, his ears, or even into his bowel. His spittle had become much more viscid. And the dryness in his throat was as bad. Perhaps it was because his thirst had not been adequately slaked by the cheap _sake_. As soon as the alcohol was dissipated, it would flare up again, and the flames would reduce him to ashes.
«They must feel fine… doing such things. They don't have the brains of a mouse. Just what would they do if I died?»
The woman raised her face as if to say something but, suddenly thinking better of it, maintained her unbroken silence. She apparently did not think it worthwhile to answer at all.
All right. If there was to be only one inevitable ending anyway, why didn't he try whatever he could?
He gulped down another mouthful from the bottle of _sake_ and, bracing himself, hurried outside. He reeled back as if molten lead had struck his eyes. The sand, which spilled over into the hollows left by his feet, eddied in whirlpools. Over there was surely the place he had attacked the woman and tied her up the night before. The shovel must surely be buried nearby. The sand slide had mostly stopped for a while, but even so, on the cliff toward the sea, the sand continued its ceaseless flow. From time to time, blown by the wind, it would drop from the face of the cliff, fluttering like a piece of cloth. Taking care not to start a slide, he fished around with the toes of one foot.
Although he probed deeply, his foot met no resistance at all. The direct rays of the sun soon became unbearable. The pupils of his eyes were compressed to pin points, and his belly began to throb like a jellyfish. A violent pain pierced his forehead. He must not lose any more perspiration. This was the limit. He wondered what he could have done with the shovel. He had taken it out with the intention of using it as a weapon; that was certain. So it must be around. Peering closely at the surface of the ground, he was suddenly aware that at one point the sand was standing out in a ridge in the form of the shovel.
He began to spit but hastily stopped himself. He must retain in his body even the slightest bit of moisture. He separated the spittle from the sand between his teeth and his lips and with the end of his finger scraped off only the portion that remained clinging to his teeth.
The woman, facing the other way in a corner of the room, was doing something with the front of her kimono. Perhaps she was unloosening her waistband or brushing off the sand which had accumulated. He grasped the shovel halfway down the handle and brought it up to the level of his shoulders. Aiming at the wall that surrounded the earthen floor, near the doorway, he heaved to with the cutting edge.
The woman cried out behind him. He lunged with the shovel, bearing on it with all his weight. Disappointingly, it passed through the wall boards. They had the resistance of a wet cracker. Washed by the sand, they had seemed quite new from the outside, but it was apparent they had already begun to disintegrate.
«What are you doing?»
«I'm stripping this stuff off to make some material for a ladder.»
He experimented again at another spot. It was the same. Apparently the woman had been right when she said that the sand rotted the wood. If the part of the wall that was most exposed to the sun was like this, he could imagine what the rest would be like. It was remarkable that such a flabby house could be standing at all. It was bent and warped as if paralyzed on one side. Maybe such flimsy structures were dynamically possible, since they seemed to be making houses out of plastic and paper these days, but… If that was the way it was with the boards, then he would try the cross-beams.
«You can't do that! Stop! Please!»
«After all, we're going to be crushed by the sand anyway.»
Without paying any attention, he poised his arm to strike, but the woman, screaming, rushed violently at him. He put out his elbow and twisted his body in an effort to ward her off. But he had miscalculated, and instead of the woman he himself was swung around. Instantly he tried to counter, but she held on as if chained to the shovel. He did not understand. At least he could not be defeated by force. They rolled over two or three times, threshing about on the earthen floor, and for a brief moment he thought he had pinned her down, but with the handle of the shovel as a shield she deftly flipped him over. Something was wrong with him; maybe it was the _sake_ he had drunk. Anyway, he no longer cared that his opponent was a woman. He jabbed his bended knee into her stomach.
The woman cried out, and suddenly her strength ebbed. At once he rolled over on her and held her down. Her breasts were bare, and his hands slipped on skin that was slippery with sweat.
Suddenly the two of them froze, as in a movie when the projector breaks down. It was a petrified moment that would go on and on, if one of them did not do something. He could sense vividly the structure of her breasts outlined against his stomach, and his penis seemed like a living thing completely independent of him. He held his breath. With a slight turn of his body the scramble for the shovel would turn into something very different.
The woman's gorge rose as she tried to swallow the saliva in her mouth. His penis received this as a signal to stir, but she interrupted in a husky voice.
«City women are all pretty, aren't they?»
«City women?» He was suddenly ashamed. The fever in his swollen member was abating. They seemed to have skirted the danger with good grace. He had not realized that soap opera could survive even in the midst of sand.
Yet the average woman was firmly convinced, it seemed, that she could not make a man recognize her worth unless every time she opened her legs she did so as if it were a scene in a soap opera. But this very pathetic and innocent illusion in fact made women the victims of a one-sided, spiritual rape.
With his other woman, he had decided he would always use a condom. Even now he was not convinced that he had been completely cured of the venereal disease he had once had. The results of the tests always came out negative, but after urinating his urethra would suddenly begin to hurt; and when he checked a sample in a test tube, there would be, just as he had feared, something floating around in it, something resembling a piece of waste thread. The doctor had diagnosed it as a nervous disturbance, but he could not get rid of the suspicion that it was sti
ll the same old trouble.
«Well, a rubber suits us pretty well, doesn't it?» Her small jaws and lips were covered with a thin skin, through which the blood seemed to be visible. She spoke with a certain calculated spite: «Between us it's like buying at a department store, isn't it? If you don't like it, you can take it back any time. You make your mind up, looking at something wrapped up in plastic — you can look without breaking the seal. You wonder what's inside. You wonder if you can trust it. You wonder if you won't be sorry later if you buy the wrong thing now.»
But in her heart she was probably not satisfied with such a commercial-sample type of relationship… He remembered the brothel smell of disinfectant as he had begun buttoning up his trousers, already feeling he was being hurried out… and the woman still naked on the bed with the towel stuck between her legs.
«But it's all right if once in a while you feel like forcing a sale, isn't it?»
«No, it isn't. Any forcing…»
«But you're cured by now, aren't you?»
«If you really think that, then why don't we agree to go on without protection?»
«Come on, now. Why are you trying to get out of your responsibilities?» «Well, didn't I say I don't like to force a sale?»
«It's very strange. What have I got to do with your venereal disease, for heaven's sake?»
«Maybe you do have something to do with it.» «Don't be silly!»
«Well, anyway, I withdraw the forced selling.»
«Well then, don't you ever intend to take off your hat in your whole life?»
«I wonder why you're so uncooperative. It would be natural for you to feel tender toward me if we slept together.»
«In other words, you've got a psychological veneral disease, haven't you? By the way, maybe I'll have to work tomorrow.»
Hmm. A psychological venereal disease, he thought, yawning. It's a pretty clever expression for her to think up. But she would never know just how much the expression had hurt him. In the first place, venereal disease was the exact opposite of soap opera. Venereal disease was the most desperate evidence that soap opera did not exist. Venereal disease… stealthily imported by Columbus in his tiny ships into tiny harbors… spread so diligently by everyone throughout the world. All men were equal before death and venereal disease. Venereal disease… the collective responsibility of mankind. Nevertheless, she absolutely refused to admit it. She had shut herself in her own Alice in Wonderland tale where she herself played the main role. And he was left alone on this side of the minor, suffering with his psychological venereal disease. And so his naked — hatless — member was paralyzed and useless. Her mirror made him impotent. Her woman's innocence had turned him into an enemy.
20
His face was as stiff as starch, his breathing like a storm. His saliva tasted of dry scorched sugar… and such a terrible loss of energy. At least one glassful of water must have evaporated in perspiration. The woman arose sluggishly, keeping her head bent. Her sand-streaked face came to about the height of his eyes. Suddenly she blew her nose with her fingers and rubbed her hands with sand that she scooped up. Her trousers slipped down over her bending hips.
Annoyed, he turned his eyes away. Yet it was not quite right to say he was only annoyed. A strange feeling, different from dryness, lingered on the tip of his tongue. His member had been pulsating and vibrant without the rubber, although only for a short time, until he had been put off by the woman's stupid expression. And now a lingering warmth remained in it. To call this a discovery would perhaps be exaggerating, but it was worth a moment's attention.
He did not feel that he was particularly degenerate. But he was not at all disposed only to spiritual rape. It was like eating unsweetened tapioca. Spiritual rape meant that before he could hurt her, he would have to hurt himself. And why should he contract even a psychological venereal disease? That would be adding insult to injury. Was it true that a woman's glands were so weak that they emitted blood just because a man looked at her?
He vaguely sensed that there were two kinds of sexual desire. For example, on the basis of the Mobius circle, when you courted a girl, you always began, it seemed, with lectures on nutrition and taste… that is, before you got around to sex. Food exists only in an abstract sense for anybody dying of hunger; there isn't any such thing as the taste of Kobe beef or Hiroshima oysters. But once one's belly is full, then one begins to discern differences in taste and textures. Sexual desire was the same. First came desire in general, and only after that did particular sexual tastes evolve. And sex couldn't be discussed in general; it depended on time and place… sometimes you needed a dose of vitamins… some time sabowlofeelsand rice. It was a well-thought-out theory, but regrettably not a single girl friend had offered herself to him in support of it, with a readiness to experience sexual desire in general or sex in particular. That was natural. No man or woman is wooed by theory alone. He knew this, but he naively observed the theory of the Mobius circle and kept repeatedly pushing the doorbell of an empty house, only because he did not want to commit spiritual rape.
To be sure, he himself wasn't so romantic as to dream of pure sexual relations. You could do that when you were looking death in the eye… like the bamboo grass that bears seeds just as it is beginning to wither… like starving mice that repeatedly and frantically copulate as they migrate… like tuberculosis patients who are all seized by a kind of sex madness… like the king or ruler who dwells in a tower and devotes himself to establishing a harem… like the soldier for whom every moment is precious as he awaits the enemy attack and who spends those final moments masturbating… Fortunately, however, man is not indiscriminately exposed to the dangers of death. Man no longer needs to fear, even in winter; he has been able to free himself of the seasonal sexual urge. Yet when the struggle is over, weapons become an encumbrance. Order has come about, and the power to control sex and brute force lies within man's grasp, in place of Nature's. Thus, sexual intercourse is like a commutation ticket: it has to be punched every time you use it. Of course, you must check to see that the ticket is genuine. But this checking is terribly onerous; it corresponds precisely to the complications of order. All kinds of certificates — contracts, licenses, I. D. cards, permits, certificates of title, authorizations, registrations, carrying permits, certificates of membership, letters of recommendation, notes, leases, temporary permits, agreements, income declarations, receipts, even certificates of ancestry… every conceivable type of paper must be mobilized into action.
Thanks to such checks, sex is completely buried under a mantle of certifications… like a basket worm. It would be all right, I suppose, if this were satisfying. But even so, would that be the end of certificates? Wouldn't there be something else we had forgotten to declare? Both men and women are captives of an oppressive jealousy, always suspicious that the other party has purposely left something out To demonstrate their honesty they are compelled to issue a new certificate. No one knows where it will ever stop In the last analysis, the certificate seems to be infinite.
(She blames me for being too argumentative. But I'm not the one who's argumentative. It's just the truth.)
«But isn't that the obligation of love?»
«Not at all. It's what's left after you have struck out the restrictions by a process of elimination. If you don't have that much confidence, you might just as well not have any at all.»
There's no obligation to go along with this to the extent — and the poor taste — of gift-wrapping sex. Let's be freshly pressed every morning in sex too. In sex, once the coat's been worn, it's already old. You press out the wrinkles and it's like new again. Once it's new, it's immediately old again… Is there any obligation to listen to such indecencies?
Of course, if he could feel that this regularization offered some guarantee for life, then there was still room for compromise. But what about reality? The thorn of death falls from heaven, and its myriad forms leave us no room to move. In sex, too, one seems to have a vague premonition, a feeling that
one has been left with a false promissory note. And so one begins to falsify the commutation ticket because one is sexually unsatisfied. Well, that's all right; it's good business. Or one admits of spiritual rape as a necessary evil. Anyway, without it there would be almost no marriages. Those who are in favor of free sex behave in much the same way. They are only giving a plausible rationalization to mutual rape. If you accept it as such, it can be enjoyed too. Freedom combined with constant worry — like a curtain that does not quite close — can only result in sexual psychopaths. There was no opportunity for his pitiable sex to doff its hat and relax.
The woman seemed to sense the workings of the man's emotions. She stopped in the midst of tying the string to her trousers, and the end of the loosened thong hung down from between her hands. She looked up at him with rabbit-like eyes. And it was not only because of their red eyelids that they resembled a rabbit's. The man answered her with eyes in which time had ceased to run. A strong smell like boiled gristle surrounded her.
Still grasping the thong, she slipped by him and went up to her room, where she began to take off her trousers. Her manner was so completely natural that she seemed to be continuing what she had been doing before. The man inwardly rubbed his hands in expectation: such a woman was a real woman. But he immediately reconsidered. Stupid! With such hesitancy he would surely botch the thing. Hastily he too put his hand to his belt. If this had been yesterday he would have perhaps assumed her behavior to be a woman's transparent play-acting… like her giggles and dimples. Actually that might be the case. But he did not want to think so. The stage at which he could bargain for her body had long passed. Now, force had decided the situation. There was ample basis for thinking that relations would be mutually agreeable, and bargaining for permission could be dismissed.
A little flow of sand, along with his trousers, slid over the base of his member and fell along his thighs. A stench like that of musty socles rose up. Slowly, but surely, with a pumping like that of a water pipe in which the water has been turned off, his member began to fill again. Hatless, his penis indicating the direction, he spread his wings and melted in behind the already naked woman.