Cobo Abe - The Woman in the Dunes

A thin light played in a circle about a yard from the upper lip of the hole. It must be between six-thirty and twenty of seven. The time was just right. He forced both arms back with all his strength and turned his neck to and fro, stretching the kinks out of his shoulder muscles.

First he had to climb to the top of the roof. In grappling, the chances of success are greater the closer the angle of elevation is to forty-five degrees. He would have liked to climb up on the roof using the rope, but he was afraid the woman might be awakened by the sound of the shears striking the shingles. He decided to eliminate the testing and to circle around back of the house and climb up on the roof using as footholds the vestiges of a rain shelter that seemed once to have been used as a place for drying clothes.

The squared timbers were thin and half rotten, and they worried him. But what came next was even worse. The flying sand had polished the straight white grain of the roof, making it appear like new. But when he climbed up on it, it was as soft as a soaked cracker. If he were to put his foot through it, he would be in real trouble. He dispersed his weight, crawling slowly forward. Finally he reached the ridgepole and, straddling it, raised himself on his knees. The top of the roof was already in the shadows, and the faint honey-colored granulations on the west edge of the hole were signs that the mist was gradually beginning to come in. He no longer need concern himself with the lookout in the tower.

He tied the rope into a lasso and, holding it in his right hand about a yard below the shears, swung it in a circle around his head. His target was one of the sandbags that were used instead of a pulley when they raised and lowered the baskets. Since the bags could hold the rope ladder, they must surely be quite firmly buried. Gradually he increased the speed of the revolutions and, taking aim, let fly with the loop. It sailed off in a completely unexpected direction. His idea of casting was wrong. The shears had to fly in a tangent to the circumference of the hole, and so he would have to let go at the very instant the rope was at right angles with the target, or maybe a bare instant before. Yes, that was it! But the next time the shears unfortunately struck the middle of the cliff and fell to the ground. It would seem that the speed of the revolutions and the angle of elevation as he held the rope were not right.

After repeated tries, he managed to establish both the distance and the angle pretty well. But still there was a long way to go before a real strike. He would have been happy at any sign of progress, but still there was no evidence that the margin of error was lessening — indeed, to the contrary, his aim was becoming terribly erratic with fatigue and impatience. Perhaps he had oversimplified. He felt unreasonably angry and close to tears, as though someone had actually deceived him.

Yet there seemed to be some truth in the law of probability, according to which the chance of success is directly proportionate to the number of repetitions.

With something like the thirtieth try, when in despair he had given up hope, the rope flew straight over the bags. The inside of his mouth felt prickly, and even though he kept swallowing, the saliva kept welling up. But it was still too soon to be pleased with himself. He had simply got hold of money with which to buy a lottery ticket. He would see now whether he would win or lose. All his nerves strained toward the rope as he drew it gently toward him, as if he were pulling on stars with a strand of spider's web.

It resisted.

At first he could not believe it, but the rope actually did not move. He tried exerting more pressure. His body was poised, waiting for the moment of disillusion… was it to be now?… or now? But there was no longer any room for doubt. The hook improvised from the shears had bitten firmly into the bags. What luck! What unbelievable luck! From this minute on, things would really go in his favor. With a giddy heart, he got down from the roof and walked to where the end of the rope, now hanging perpendicular, was gently shaving away at the sand cliff. Ground level was right there… so near he could scarcely believe it. His face was stiff and his lips trembled. Columbus's egg must have been hard-boiled. Keep it hot too long, though, and it would spoil.

He grasped the rope and slowly began hoisting himself.

Suddenly it began to stretch as if it were rubber. He was startled, and the perspiration gushed from his pores. Fortunately the stretching stopped after about a foot. He tried bringing all his weight to bear, and this time there seemed to be no further cause for worry. He spit on his hands, fitted the rope between his legs, and began to climb hand over hand. He rose like a toy monkey climbing a toy coconut tree. Perhaps it was his excitement, but the perspiration on his forehead felt strangely cold. In an effort to keep the sand from falling on him, he avoided brushing against it and depended solely on the rope. But he felt uneasy as his body turned round and round in the air. The dead weight of his torso was more than he had anticipated, and his progress was slow. And whatever was this trembling? His arms had begun to jerk in spite of him, and he felt almost as if he were snapping himself like a whip. Perhaps it was a natural reaction, in view of those forty-six horrible days. When he had climbed a yard the hole seemed a hundred yards deep… two yards, two hundred yards deep. Gradually, as the depth of the hole increased, he began to be dizzy. He was too tired. He mustn't look down! But there! There was the surface! The surface where, no matter which way he went, he would walk to freedom… to the very ends of the earth. When he got to the surface, this endless moment would become a small flower pressed between the pages of his diary… poisonous herb or carnivorous plant, it would be no more than a bit of half-transparent colored paper, and as he sipped his tea in the parlor he would hold it up to the light and take pleasure in telling its story.

And now, he hadn't the slightest intention of accusing the woman any more. He could definitely guarantee that if she wasn't exactly a lady she was also not a prostitute. If she needed any backing later he would gladly guarantee it… as much as she wanted. She was a stupid creature whose only merit was that she clung to her round-trip ticket… like him. But even with the same round-trip ticket, if the point of departure was different, the destination was naturally different too. It would not be particularly strange, in fact, if his return ticket were to be her ticket out.

Even suppose, for the time being, that she had made a mistake… after all, a mistake was a mistake.

Don't look down. He mustn't look down!

A mountain climber, a window cleaner on some skyscraper, an electrician atop a television tower, a trapeze artist in a circus, a chimney sweep on a factory smokestack — the instant of his destruction was the instant he looked down.

He had made it!

His fingernails struck the sandbags and, not caring if his hands were stripped of their skin, he frantically scrambled up. There! He was on top! He no longer had to worry about slipping back even if he relaxed his grip. Yet it was impossible for him to straighten his arms and for minutes he remained as he was, clutching the bags tightly to him.

On this day of his liberation, the forty-sixth he had been in the pit, a violent wind was raging. As he began to crawl along, his face and neck were struck by stinging grains of sand. He had not counted on such a savage wind. In the hole he had just felt that the sound of the sea was closer than usual, and right now should be the moment of the evening calm. Yet if it was blowing this much, surely he could not hope for any mist. Maybe the sky had looked muddy only from within the hole. He might well have mistaken the wind-blown sand for mist. Whichever way it was, the situation was delicate.