The Woman in the Dunes

by Kōbō Abe

  But he was summarily disappointed in his expectations.

  “No, of course I don’t go out. The men from the farm coop happened to deliver some wood preservative I ordered a while back, and I had a chance to ask them. Only about four or five houses take newspapers in the village. They had to go all the way to the store in town to buy it.”

  It was not impossible that things had happened so. It was rather like being shut up in a cell with a lock that had no key. If even the people of the region themselves had to put up with imprisonment, then the precipitous wall of sand was no laughing matter for him. He became desperate and insistent.

  ‘This is amazing! This is your house, isn’t it? You’re not a dog. It should be nothing for you to come and go freely, should it? Or have you done something so bad you don’t dare show your face to the villagers?”

  Her eyes opened wide in surprise. The glare was so strong that they were bloodshot and red.

  “Certainly not! It’s nonsense to think I don’t dare show my face!”

  “Well, there’s no reason for you to be so timid.”

  “But there isn’t any reason to go out!”

  “You can at least take a walk.”

  “A walk?”

  “Yes. A walk. Wouldn’t it be enough just to walk around a little? I mean, you used to take walks when you wanted to, before I came, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but I get all tired out, walking for no particular reason.”

  “I’m not joking. Ask yourself. You ought to understand. Even a dog’ll go mad if you keep it shut up in a cage.”

  “But I have taken walks,” she said abruptly in her monotonous, withdrawn voice. “Really, they used to make me walk a lot. Until I came here. I used to carry a baby around for a long time. I was really tired out with all the walking.”

  The man was taken by surprise. Indeed, what a strange way of speaking! He was unable to answer when she turned on him like that.

  Yes, he remembered, when everything was in ruins some ten years ago, everybody desperately wanted not to have to walk. And now, were they glutted with this freedom from walking? he wondered. And yet, even the child who wanted so desperately to go picnicking cried when it got lost.

  The woman suddenly changed her tone and said: “Do you feel all right?”

  Stop looking so stupid! He was angry; he wanted to make her admit her guilt even if he had to force it out of her. At the very thought his hair bristled and his skin felt scratchy like dry paper. “Skin” seemed to establish an association of ideas with the word “force.” Suddenly she became a silhouette cut out from its background. A man of twenty is sexually aroused by a thought. A man of forty is sexually aroused on the surface of his skin. But for a man of thirty a woman who is only a silhouette is the most dangerous. He could embrace it as easily as embracing himself, couldn’t he? But behind her there were a million eyes. She was only a puppet controlled by threads of vision. If he were to embrace her, he would be the next to be controlled. The big lie that he had dislocated his spine would at once be revealed in its true light. He could not stand to have his life stop even in a place like this.

  The woman sidled up to him. Her knees pressed against his hips. A stagnant smell of sun-heated water, coming from her mouth, nose, ears, armpits, her whole body, began to pervade the room around him. Slowly, hesitantly, she began to run her searing fingers up and down his spine. His body stiffened.

  Suddenly the fingers circled around to his side. The man let out a shriek.

  “You’re tickling!”

  The woman laughed. She seemed to be teasing him, or else she was shy. It was too sudden; he could not pass judgment on the spur of the moment, What, really, was her intention? Had she done it on purpose or had her fingers slipped unintentionally? Until just a few minutes ago she had been blinking her eyes with all her might, trying to wake up. On the first night too, he recalled, she had laughed in that strange voice when she had jabbed him in the side as she passed by. He wondered whether she meant anything in particular by such conduct.

  Perhaps she did not really believe in his pretended illness and was testing her suspicions. That was a possibility. He couldn’t relax his guard. Her charms were like some meat-eating plant, purposely equipped with the smell of sweet honey. First she would sow the seeds of scandal by bringing him to an act of passion, and then the chains of blackmail would bind him hand and foot.

  13

  HE was melting away like wax. His pores were gorged with perspiration. Since his watch had stopped running, he was not sure of the hour. Outside this sixty-foot hole it might still be full daylight, but at the bottom it was already twilight.

  The woman was still lost in sleep. Perhaps she was dreaming, for her arms and legs twitched nervously. He had tried to disturb her sleep, but he had failed. As for himself, he had slept enough.

  He stood up and let the air strike his skin. The towel over his face had apparently fallen off when he turned in his sleep; so much sand had clung behind his ears, around his nostrils, and in the corners of his lips that he could scrape it off. He put some medicine in his eyes and covered them with the end of the towel; he repeated this several times and at length he was able to open them normally. But the eye medicine would be gone in two or three days. For that reason alone he wanted to bring things to a conclusion quickly. His body was as heavy as if he were lying on a magnetized bed in garments of iron. He made an effort to focus his eyes, and by the thin light that came through the door he wearily made out the newspaper print, like the legs of a dead fly.

  Actually, he should have got the woman to read the paper to him in the daytime. That also would have disturbed her sleep: two birds with one stone. Too bad he had fallen asleep first. He had tried, but instead he had made a mess of things.

  And tonight again he would curse that unbearable insomnia. He tried counting backwards from a hundred in rhythm with his breathing. Painstakingly he traced the road he was accustomed to walk from his boardinghouse to the school. He tried enumerating the names of all the insects he knew, grouping them by family and order. He was in far worse straits when he realized that all these devices had no effect at all. He could hear the sound of the wind sweeping over the edge of the hole… the lisp of the shovel cutting into the bed of wet sand… the distant barking of dogs… the faraway hum of voices, trembling like the flame of a candle. The ceaselessly pouring sand was like a file on the tips of his nerves. And yet, he must have the patience to endure it.

  Well, somehow he would stand it. No sooner had the cooling blue light slipped down from the edge of the hole than everything was reversed, and he engaged in combat with sleep that sucked at him as a sponge sucks water. As long as this vicious circle was not broken somewhere, not only his watch but time itself would be immobilized, he feared, by the grains of sand.

  The newspaper was the same as usual. He wondered if there had been a gap of a week, for there was almost nothing new to be found. If this was a window on the world outside, the glass was frosted.

  Corporation Tax Bribery Spreads to City Officials. College Towns Become Industrial Meccas. Operations Suspended; General Labor Union Council to Meet Soon—Opinion to Be Published. Mother Strangles Two Children: Takes Poison. Do Frequent Auto Thefts Mean New Mode of Life Breeds New Crime? Unknown Girl Brings Flowers to Police Box for Three Years. Tokyo Olympics Budget Trouble. Phantom Stabs Two Girls Again Today. College Youths Poisoned by Sleeping PHI Spree. Stock Prices Feel Autumn Winds. Famous Tenor Sax, Blues Jackson, Arrives in Japan. Rioting Again in Union of South Africa—280 Fatalities. Coed Thieves School Has No Tuition Fees—Graduation Certificate Issued on Successful Completion of Examination.

  There wasn’t a single item of importance. A tower of illusion, all of it, made of illusory bricks and full of holes. If life were made up only of important things, it really would be a dangerous house of glass, scarcely to be handled carelessly. But everyday life was exactly like the headlines. And so everybody, knowing the meaninglessness of existence, sets the center o
f his compass at his own home.

  Suddenly his eyes fell on a surprising article.

  About 8:00 A.M. on the fourteenth, at the East Asia Housing construction site, 30 Yokokawa-ch6, a scoop-truck driver for the Hinohara Co., Mr. Tashiro Tsutomu (aged 28), received serious injuries when he was buried under a sand slide. He was taken to a nearby hospital but died shortly after arrival. According to the investigation carried out by the Yokokawa police, the cause of the accident appears to be that too much sand was removed from the lower part of a thirty-foot pile that was being leveled.

  Aha! Doubtless this was the article that the villagers had intended him to see. They had not responded to his request for nothing. It was commendable that they had not circled the section in red ink. He was reminded of the dangerous weapon they called a blackjack. A blackjack is made by packing sand into a leather sack. It is said to have a striking power comparable to that of an iron or lead bar. No matter how sand flowed, it was still different from water. One could swim in water, but sand would enfold a man and crush him to death.

  It looked as though he had misjudged the situation.

  14

  HE needed some time for thought before deciding on a new strategy. Four hours must have passed since the woman had gone out to clear away the sand. The second group of basket carriers had finished their appointed work and were returning in the direction of the three-wheeled truck. After he had made certain, straining his ears, that the men were not coming back, he quietly arose and put on his clothes. Since the woman had taken the lamp away with her, he had to do everything by touch. His shoes were brimful of sand. He tucked the cuffs of his trousers into his socks, then took out his leggings and thrust them into his pocket. He decided to gather his insect-collecting equipment together near the door so that he could find it easily. Thanks to the thick carpet of sand on the earthen floor, there was no need to be cautious about his footsteps.

  The woman was completely preoccupied with her work. Her movements were smooth as she cut into the sand; her breathing was strong and regular. Her elongated shadow danced around the lamp at her feet. The man, concealing himself at the corner of the building, forced himself to breathe softly. In his hands he grasped the two ends of a towel and stretched it taut; after counting ten he would make a dash for it. His attack had to come at the instant she leaned forward to shovel up the heap of sand.

  Of course, he could not pretend there was absolutely no danger. There was no telling—their attitude might suddenly change in a half hour. For instance, there was that government man. The old man from the village had at first mistaken him for the government man and shown signs of extreme caution. They must have expected the government man to make an inspection in the near future. If that were so, village opinion would split over him, and they might possibly give up keeping him prisoner and concealing his existence. But by the same token there was no guarantee that a half hour would not stretch into a half year, a year, or even more. It was a fifty-fifty chance whether it would be a year or a half hour, and he was certainly not ready to lay a wager.

  When he considered that relief might be at hand, he realized that things would go better for him if he were to continue with his pretext of illness. But this was indeed the point that perplexed him. He lived under a constitutional government, and therefore it was natural that he should expect help. People who vanished in a fog of mystery and remained incommunicado frequently wanted to do just that. As long as the case didn’t seem to be of a criminal nature, it would be entrusted to the civil rather than the criminal authorities, and thus even the police could not go too far into the matter.

  But in his case the situation was completely different, and he was desperately reaching out for help. Anyone who saw his empty room would immediately understand what had happened, even if they hadn’t seen him or directly heard from him. The unfinished book that lay open to the page he had been reading when he put it down… the small change he had tossed into the pocket of his office clothes… his bankbook, which bore no trace of any recent withdrawals, despite the small amount in his account… his box of drying insects he had not yet finished arranging… the stamped envelope containing the order blank for a new collecting bottle, laid out ready for mailing—all this repudiated discontinuance, everything pointed to his intention to go on living. A visitor could not help but hear the plaintive voice from the room.

  Well… if it hadn’t been for that letter… if it just hadn’t been for that stupid letter. Yet that was the point, it had been. In his dream he had told the truth, but now he was quibbling with himself. Why? He had made enough excuses. Lost articles no longer existed. And he had long since cut his throat with his own hands.

  He had assumed an unreasonably mysterious attitude about this holiday, saying nothing to any of his colleagues about his intended destination. Not only had he left without saying a word, but he had deliberately made a point of the mystery. There couldn’t be a more efficient way of teasing his colleagues, glum and gray with their daily gray routine. He sank into an unbearable self-aversion with the thought that among the glum and gray, people other than he had colors other than gray—red, blue, green.

  It only happened in novels or movies that summer was filled with dazzling sun. What existed in reality were humble, small-town Sundays… a man taking his snooze under the political columns of a newspaper, enveloped in gunsmoke… canned juices and thermos jugs with magnetized caps… boats for hire, fifty cents an hour—queue up here… foaming beaches with the leaden scum of dead fish… and then, at the end, a jam-packed trolley rickety with fatigue. Everyone knows this is fact, but no one wants to make a fool of himself and be taken in; so, on the gray canvas of reality, he zestfully sketches the mere form of this illusory festival. Miserable, unshaven fathers, shaking their complaining children by the shoulder trying to make them say it has been a pleasant Sunday… little scenes everyone has seen in the corner of some trolley… people’s pathetic jealousy and impatience with others’ happiness.

  Well, if that were all, it was nothing to get so serious about. If the Mobius man had not had the same reaction as his other colleagues, it was doubtful whether he would have been so obstinate.

  He had tentatively trusted the man, a pop-eyed fellow, who always looked as if he had just washed his face and who was enthusiastic about unions. He had once sincerely tried revealing his inner thoughts, which he seldom disclosed to anyone.

  “What do you think? I have considerable doubt about a system of education that imputes meaning to life.”

  “What do you mean by ‘meaning’?”

  “In other words, an illusory education that makes one believe that something is when it really isn’t. Therefore I’m very interested in sand in this instance, because, even though it’s a solid, it has definite hydrodynamic properties.”

  The other, perplexed, had bent forward, arching his back like a cat. But his expression, as before, had remained open. He had not appeared to find the idea particularly unpleasant. Someone had once commented that the man resembled a Mobius strip. A Mobius strip is a length of paper, twisted once, the two ends of which are pasted together, thus forming a surface that has neither front nor back. Had they meant that this man’s union life and his private life formed a Mobius circle? He remembered feeling a certain admiration for the man, and at the same time cynicism.

  “In other words, do you mean realistic education?”

  “No. The reason I brought up the example of sand was because in the final analysis I rather think the world is like sand. The fundamental nature of sand is very difficult to grasp when you think of it in its stationary state. Sand not only flows, but this very flow is the sand. I’m sorry I can’t express it better.”

  “But I understand what you mean. Because in practical education you can’t avoid getting involved in relativism, can you?”

  “No, that’s not it. You yourself become sand. You see with the eyes of sand. Once you’re dead you don’t have to worry about dying any more.”

  �
�You must be an idealist. I think you must be afraid of your students—aren’t you?”

  “I am, because I think my students are something like sand.”

  The man had laughed heartily, showing his white teeth, but not once had he appeared disturbed by the discordant exchange. His pop-eyes had quite disappeared between the folds of skin. Jumpei had not been able to repress a vague smile. The other was really quite like a Mobius circle. He was indeed a Mobius circle—in both a good and a bad sense. On the good face of it, he really deserved praise.

  But, speaking of a Mobius circle, the other had frankly shown the same gray envy of his holiday as his colleagues had. It seemed a far cry from a Mobius circle. He was disappointed, but at the same time pleased. Anyone was apt to be ill-natured with virtue. And so, he had come to take increasing pleasure in his teasing.

  And then the letter… the irretrievable card that had already been delivered. The obsession in his dream the night before had had a very definite cause.

  It would be false to claim that there was absolutely no love between him and the other woman. It was simply that theirs was a somewhat obscure relationship in which, mutually at odds as they were, he could never be sure of her. If, for example, he were to say that marriage was, in the final analysis, like cultivating undeveloped land, she would retort, angrily and unreasonably, that it meant having to make a cramped house bigger. Or, if he were to say the opposite, she would still take the contrary stand. It was a seesaw game that had been tirelessly repeated for a full two years and four months. Perhaps it would be better to say that, rather than losing their passion, they had frozen it by over-idealizing it.