The Woman in the Dunes (4 page)

7

HE was awakened by a cock’s crow, like the creaking of a rusty swing. It was a restless, hangnail awakening. He had the feeling that it was barely dawn, but the hands of his wrist watch had already turned to 11:16. So the color of the sunbeams was actually that of noon. It was gloomy here because he was at the bottom of a hole and the sun had not yet reached that far.

Quickly he jumped up. The sand that had accumulated on his face, head, and chest fell away with a rustling sound. Around his nose and lips sand was encrusted, hardened by perspiration. He scraped it off with the back of his hand and cautiously blinked his eyes. Tears welled up uncontrollably under his gritty, feverish eyelids. But the tears alone were not enough to wash away the sand that had become lodged in the moist corners of his eyes.

He started toward the container on the earthen floor for a little water. Suddenly he heard the breathing of the sleeping woman on the other side of the sunken hearth and looked over. He swallowed his breath, quite forgetting the aching of his eyelids.

She was stark naked.

She seemed to float like a blurred shadow before his tear-filled eyes. She lay face up on the matting, her whole body, except her head, exposed to view; she had placed her left hand lightly over her lower abdomen, which was smooth and full. The parts that one usually covered were completely bare, while the face, which anybody would show, was concealed under a towel. No doubt the towel was to protect her nose, mouth, and eyes from the sand, but the contrast seemed to make the naked body stand out even more.

The whole surface of her body was covered with a coat of fine sand, which hid the details and brought out the feminine lines; she seemed a statue gilded with sand. Suddenly a viscid saliva rose from under his tongue. But he could not possibly swallow it. Were he to swallow, the sand that had lodged between his lips and teeth would spread through his mouth. He turned toward the earthen floor and spat. Yet no matter how much he ejected he could not get rid of the gritty taste. No matter how he emptied his mouth the sand was still there. More sand seemed to issue constantly from between his teeth.

Fortunately the water jar had recently been replenished and was brimming full. When he had rinsed his mouth and washed his face he felt better. Never before had he been so keenly aware of the marvel of water. Water was an inorganic substance like sand, a simple, transparent, inorganic substance that adapted to the body more readily than any living thing. As he let the water trickle slowly down his throat, he imagined stone-eating animals.

Again he turned and looked toward the woman. But he had no desire to go any closer. A sand-covered woman was perhaps attractive to look at but hardly to touch.

With daylight, the exasperation and excitement of the preceding night seemed pure fantasy. Of course, the whole thing would be good material for conversation. The man again looked around, as if to fix what had already become a memory, and hurriedly began to get ready. His shirt and trousers were loaded with sand. However, there was no sense worrying about such things. It was more difficult to shake all the sand from the fibers of his clothes than to get the dandruff off his head. His shoes, too, were buried in the sand. He wondered if he should say something to the woman before he left. But, on the other hand, it would only embarrass her to be awakened. Anyway, what should he do about paying her for the night’s lodging? Perhaps it would be better to stop on the way back through the village and give the old man from the cooperative the money—the one who had brought him here the day before. Stealthily he went out.

The sun was boiling mercury, poised at the edge of the sand cliff. Little by little it was beginning to heat the bottom of the hole. He hastily turned his eyes away from the intense glare. In the next instant he had already forgotten it. He simply stared at the facade of the sand wall.

It was unbelievable! The rope ladder had vanished from the place it had been the night before. The marker bags, half buried by the sand, were perfectly visible. There was no mistake, he remembered the spot. He wondered: Had the ladder alone been swallowed up by the sand? He rushed to the wall and sank his arms into the sand, groping for it. The sand gave way, unresisting, and ran down. However, he wasn’t trying to find a needle in a haystack; if he did not succeed with the first try, he never would, no matter how much he searched. Stifling his rising apprehension, he looked again in blank amazement at the abruptness of the slope.

Wasn’t there some spot where it could be scaled? he wondered. He circled the house two or three times, looking. If he climbed up on the roof of the house, the distance to the rim of the hole would be shortest on the north side, toward the sea, but it would still be over thirty feet. And, what was more, the wall there was steeper than anywhere else. The massive brow of sand which hung down seemed exceedingly dangerous.

The west wall seemed to be a comparatively gentle incline, having a curved surface like the inside of a cone. At an optimistic estimate it was probably around fifty or even forty-five degrees. Cautiously he took a probing step. With each step forward he slid back a half step. Even so, it looked as though he could make it with a very great effort.

Things went as he had expected for the first five or six steps. And then his feet began to sink into the sand. Before he knew whether he was making progress or not, he was buried up to his knees and seemed to have lost all power of movement. Then he attempted frantically to scramble up on all fours. The burning sand scorched his palms. Sweat poured from his whole body. Sand and sweat blinded him. Soon he had cramps in his legs and was unable to move them at all.

He stopped struggling and caught his breath, assuming he had already covered a considerable distance, but when he opened his eyes, squinting, he was amazed to find that he had come not even five yards. What exactly had he accomplished by all this effort? he wondered. Moreover, the incline he had climbed seemed to be far steeper than when he had looked at it from below. And above where he stood, it looked even worse. Although he had wanted to climb up, he seemed to have spent all his energy simply burrowing into the sand wall. The brow of sand just above his face blocked his path. In desperation he tried to struggle on a little further, but the instant he reached out for the sand over his head his footing gave way.

He was spewed out from the sand and flung to the bottom of the hole. His left shoulder made a sound like the splitting of chopsticks. But he did not notice any pain. For some time fine sand rustled gently down the face of the cliff as if to ease the hurt he had received; then it stopped. Anyway, his injury was an exceedingly small one.

It was still too soon to be frightened.

He stifled a desire to scream and slowly crept back to the hut. The woman was still sleeping in the same position. He called her, gently at first and then in a louder and louder voice. Instead of answering, she turned over as though annoyed.

The sand ran from her body, revealing her bare arms and shoulders, the nakedness of her flanks and loins. But there were more important things to think of. Going to her, he tore the towel from her head. Her face was covered with blotches, and, compared with her body, which had been encased in sand, it was gruesomely raw. The strange whiteness of her face the night before in the lamplight must surely have been produced by a powder. Now the white stuff had rubbed away, leaving bald patches that gave the impression of a cheap cutlet not cooked in batter. With surprise he realized that the white stuff was perhaps real wheat flour.

Finally she half opened her eyes, seeming to be dazzled by the light. Seizing her shoulders and shaking her, the man spoke rapidly and imploringly.

“Say, the ladder’s gone! Where’s the best place to climb out of here, for heaven’s sake? You can’t get out of a place like this without a ladder.”

She gathered up the towel with a nervous gesture, and with unexpected energy slapped her face with it two or three times and then, completely turning her back to him, crouched with her knees doubled beneath her and her face to the floor. Was it a bashful movement? This was hardly the place. The man let out a shout as if a dam had given way.

“This is no joking matter! I don’t know what I’ll do if you don’t get that ladder out. I’m in a hurry! Where in God’s name did you hide it? I’ve had enough of your pranks. Give it here. At once!”

But she did not answer. She remained in the same position, simply shaking her head left and right.

He stiffened. His vision blurred, his breathing faltered and almost stopped; he abruptly realized the pointlessness of his questioning. The ladder was of rope. A rope ladder couldn’t stand up by itself. Even if he got his hands on it there was no possibility of setting it up from below—which meant that the woman had not taken it down, but someone else had taken it away from the road above. His unshaven face, smudged with sand, suddenly looked miserable.

The woman’s actions and her silence took on an unexpected and terrible meaning. He refused to believe it, yet in his heart he knew his worst fears had come true. The ladder had probably been removed with her knowledge, and doubtless with her full consent. Unmistakably she was an accomplice. Of course her posture had nothing to do with embarrassment; it was the posture of a sacrificial victim, of a criminal willing to accept any punishment. He had been lured by the beetle into a desert from which there was no escape—like some famished mouse.

He sprang up and, hurrying to the door, looked out again. The wind had risen. The sun was almost directly over the hole. Heat waves, glistening as if alive, rose from the burning sand. The sand cliff towered higher and higher above him; its omniscient face seemed to tell his muscles and bones the meaninglessness of resistance. The hot air penetrated his skin. The temperature began to rise higher.

As if he had gone mad, he began to yell—he did not know what, his words were without meaning. He simply shouted with all the strength of his voice, as though he could make the bad dream come to its senses, excuse itself for its blundering, and whisk him from the bottom of the hole. But his voice, unaccustomed to shouting, was fragile and wan. Moreover, his words were absorbed by the sand and blown by the wind, and there was no way of knowing how far they reached.

Suddenly a horrible sound interrupted him. As the woman had predicted the night before, the brow of sand on the north side had lost its moisture and collapsed. The whole house seemed to let out a soulful shriek, as if mortally wounded, and a gray blood began to drop down with a rustling sound from the new gap between the eaves and the wall. The man began to tremble, his mouth full of saliva. It was as if his own body had been crushed.

This entire nightmare could not be happening. It was too outlandish. Was it permissible to snare, exactly like a mouse or an insect, a man who had his certificate of medical insurance, someone who had paid his taxes, who was employed, and whose family records were in order? He could not believe it. Perhaps there was some mistake; it was bound to be a mistake. There was nothing to do but assume that it was a mistake.

First of all, there was no point at all in doing what they had done to him. He was not a horse or a cow; they could not force him to work against his will. Since he was useless as manpower, there was no sense in shutting him up within these walls of sand. It simply inflicted a dependent on the woman.

But somehow he was not sure. Looking at the sand wall that encircled him as if to strangle him, he was unpleasantly reminded of his miserable failure to scale it. He had simply floundered about. A feeling of impotence paralyzed his whole body. The village was already corroded by the sand, common everyday conventions were not observed; perhaps it had become a world apart. For that matter, if he wanted to be suspicious, there was plenty to be suspicious about. For example, if it was true that the kerosene cans and the shovel had been prepared especially for him, it was also true that the rope ladder had been removed without his knowing it. Furthermore, the fact that the woman had not offered a word of explanation, that she had silently accepted everything with a strange submissiveness, lent substance to the danger in the situation. The woman’s remark the night before, intimating that his stay was to be a long one, had perhaps not been a mere slip of the tongue.

Then there was a small avalanche of sand.

Apprehensively, he returned to the hut. He went directly to the woman, who had remained crouching. He raised his left hand threateningly. His eyes glittered as he stood there agonizing. But halfway through the gesture, his arm, which he had raised with such purpose, suddenly collapsed. Perhaps he would feel better if he slapped the naked woman. But wouldn’t this be just the part he was expected to play? She was waiting for it. Punishment inflicted, in other words, would mean that the crime had been paid for.

He turned his back on her, sank down on the ramp around the raised part of the floor, and cradled his head in his arms. Without raising his voice he began to groan. He tried to swallow the saliva that had gathered in his mouth, but it stuck in his throat and he gagged. The mucous lining of his throat had become hypersensitive to the presence of the sand; he would never get used to it no matter how long he stayed there. His saliva had become a brownish scum that oozed from the corners of his mouth. When he had finished spitting he could feel the harshness of the sand even more. He tried to dislodge it, running the tip of his tongue over the inside of his mouth and repeatedly spitting, but there was no end to it. His mouth was parched and hot, as if some inflammation had set in.

It was no use. Anyway, he would talk to the woman and try to get her to explain things more precisely. If the situation were clarified, perhaps he could decide on an attack. He could not be without a plan of action. Such a stupid situation was unbearable. But what would he do if she would not answer? That, indeed, would be the most ominous response of all. And there was ample possibility of it. Her stubborn silence! The way she seemed like a defenseless victim, crouching there with her knees drawn up under her!