Cobo Abe - The Woman in the Dunes

The cartoons were exceedingly stupid. They were meaningless, vulgar sketches that had been dashed off, and had he been asked, he would never have been able to explain why they were so amusing. One was so very funny only because of the expression on the face of a horse that had fallen down, its legs broken under the weight of the big bruiser who had mounted it. How could he laugh so when he was in such a position? Shame on him! There was a limit to how far he should accommodate himself to his present plight. He had intended this accommodation to be a means, never a goal. It sounded all right to talk of hibernating, but had he changed into a mole and lost all desire to show his face in the sunlight again for the rest of his life?

When he thought about it, he realized there was absolutely no way of knowing when and in what way an opportunity for escape would come. It was possible to conceive of simply becoming accustomed to waiting, with no particular goal in mind, and when his hibernation was at last over, he would be dazzled by the light, unable to come out. Three days a beggar, always a beggar, they say. Such internal rot apparently comes on unexpectedly fast. He was thinking seriously about this, but the moment he recalled the expression on the horse's face he was again seized with moronic laughter. In the lamplight the woman, concentrating as usual on the fine work of stringing beads, raised her head and smiled back at him innocently. He could not bear his own deception, and, tossing the magazine away, he went out.

A milky mist billowed and swirled above the cliff. Spaces of shadow, speckled with the remains of night… spaces that sparkled as if with glowing wire… spaces flowing with particles of shining vapor. The combination of shadows was filled with fantasies and stirred limitless reveries in him. He would never tire of looking at the sight. Every moment overflowed with new discoveries. Everything was there, actual shapes confounded with fantastic forms he had never seen before.

He turned toward the swirling mass and appealed to it involuntarily.

— Your Honor, I request to be told the substance of the prosecution. I request to be told the reason for my sentence. You see the defendant before you, awaiting your pleasure.

Then a voice he remembered hearing before answered him from the mist. It sounded suddenly muffled, as if it were coming through a telephone. — One out of every hundred, after all… — What did you say?

— I am telling you that in Japan schizophrenia occurs at the rate of one out of every hundred persons.

— What in the name of…

— Kleptomania also seems to occur in about one out of every hundred.

— What in the name of heaven are you talking about?

— If there is one per cent of homosexuality among men, then naturally there must also be about one per cent of lesbianism among women. Incendiaries account for one per cent; those who tend to be vicious drinkers, for one per cent; mentally retarded, one per cent; sexual maniacs, one per cent; megalomaniacs, one per cent; habitual swindlers, one per cent; frigid women, one per cent; terrorists, one per cent; paranoiacs, one per cent…

— I wish you'd stop talking nonsense.

— Well, listen to me calmly. Acrophobes, heroin addicts, hysterics, homicidal maniacs, syphilitics, morons — suppose there were one per cent of each of these, the total would be twenty per cent. If you could enumerate eighty more abnormalities at this rate — and of course you could — there would be statistical proof that humanity is a hundred per cent abnormal.

— What nonsense! Abnormality would not come into being if there were no standard of normality!

— Come, come. I was just trying to defend you…

— Defend me…?

— Even you will scarcely insist on your own guilt, I imagine. — No, naturally!

— Then I wish you'd behave more obediently. No matter how exceptional your case is, there's absolutely no cause for worry. Just as people have no obligation to save a strange bird like you, they also don't have the right to judge you either.

— Strange bird? Why does resisting illegal detention make me a strange bird?

— Don't pretend you're so innocent. In Japan, a typical area of high humidity and heat, eighty-seven per cent of annual damage is by water; damage by wind-blown sand, as in your case, would hardly come to a thousandth of one per cent. Ridiculous! It would be like passing special laws against water damage in the Sahara Desert.

— I'm not talking about special laws. I'm talking about the suffering I went through. Illegal detention is illegal, whether it's in a desert or a bog.

— Oh, illegal detention… But there's no end to human greed, don't you see? You're a valuable possession for the villagers…

— Oh, balls! Even I have more of a reason for existence than that.

— You're quite sure it's all right to find fault with your beloved sand?

— Fault?

— I hear there are people in the world who, over a period of ten years, have calculated the value of pi to several hundred decimal places. All right, I suppose they have that much reason for existence. But you took the trouble of coming to such a place as this precisely because you rejected such a reason for existence.

— No, that's not true. Even sand has a completely opposite face. You can use it to make casting molds. And it's also an indispensable material for setting concrete. Research is being done on improved farming by taking advantage of the fact that sand easily eliminates weeds and fungus growths. They have even experimented with changing sand into soil by using soil-disintegrating enzymes. You can't talk about sand so sweepingly.

— Come, come, now. What proselytism! If you change your point of view so much I won't know what to believe, will I?

— I don't want to die like a beggar!

— Well, it's six of one and half a dozen of the other, isn't it? The fish you don't catch is always the biggest.

— Damn it, who are you?

But the mist billowed in and erased the other voice. Instead, a hundred sheaves of light, ruler straight, slid down. His head spun, and he smothered a feeling of exhaustion which welled up in him like smoke.

A crow cawed. Suddenly remembering the trap, he decided to go around in back of the house and take a look at «Hope.» There was no likelihood of success, but it would be better than the cartoon magazine.

The bait hung just as it was when he had set the trap. The stink of rotten fish struck his nose. It had been over two weeks since he had set «Hope,» and nothing whatever had happened. What could the reason possibly be? He had confidence in the construction. If a crow would just take the bait, it would be nabbed. But he was completely helpless, since they paid no attention to it in the first place.

But what could be so displeasing to them about «Hope?» No matter from what angle he looked, he could find nothing suspicious about the trap. Crows were uncommonly cautious because they scavenged for human refuse around where people lived. Well then, it was a question of who would have the most patience… until they became completely accustomed to the rotten fish in the hole. Patience itself was not necessarily defeat. Rather, defeat really began when patience was thought to be defeat. He had named the contraption «Hope» originally with this in mind. The Cape of Good Hope was not Gibraltar, but Capetown.

He returned slowly to the house, dragging his feet. It was time to sleep again.

When the woman saw him, she blew out the lamp as if she had just remembered and changed her position to a lighter place near the door. Did she still mean to go on working? he wondered. Suddenly he felt an irresistible impulse. Standing in front of her, he struck the box of beads from her knees. Black grains, like grass seed, flew over the earthen floor, sinking at once into the sand. She stared at him with a startled look, but said nothing. All expression suddenly left the man's face. A weak groan came from his sagging lips… followed by some yellowish spittle.