Increased Agenda for the Joint Japan-America Committee?
How in heaven's name had the woman managed to get her hands on
this paper? Could it be true that the villagers were beginning to feel
they owed him something? Even so, judging from how things had gone
till now, all contact with the outside ceased after breakfast. Did the
woman have some special way of communicating with the outside that
he did not yet know of? Or, failing that, did she herself get out and buy
the paper? It must certainly be one or the other.
Drastic Measures Against Traffic Jams
But just a minute. Supposing the woman had gone out—it was
inconceivable that she could have done it without the rope ladder. He
didn't know how she had managed it, but one thing was certain—a
rope ladder had been used. A prisoner dreaming of escape was one
thing, but how could the woman, a resident of the village, put up with
losing her freedom of movement? The removal of the rope ladder must
be a temporary measure to keep him imprisoned. If that were so, and if
he could keep them off guard, someday the same opportunity would
occur again.
Ingredient in Onions Found Effective in Treatment of Radiation Injuries
His strategy of pretended illness seemed to have produced an
unexpected return. Everything comes in time to him who waits—they
put it well in the old days. But somehow he did not react to the idea.
Something in him was still unsatisfied. Perhaps it was the fault of that
weird, terribly upsetting dream. He felt strangely uneasy about the
dangerous letter. But was it dangerous? Whatever could it mean?
However, there was no use worrying every time he dreamt something.
In any event, he had to carry through what he had begun.
The woman was asleep beside the sill of the raised portion of the floor
around the hearth. She was breathing gently and lay curled in a ball,
holding her knees as she always did; she had thrown an unironed
summer kimono over herself. After that first day she had stopped
appear ing naked before him, but under the summer kimono she was
probably as bare as ever.
He glanced quickly at the society page and the local columns. Of
course, there was no article on his disappearance, no missing-person
notice. But he had expected as much and so was not particularly
discouraged. He quietly arose and stepped down on the earthen floor.
He was wearing only baggy, half-length drawers made of synthetic silk,
and the upper half of his body was completely bare. It was definitely
the most comfortable way to be. Sand had accumulated around his
waist where he had tied the drawstring and the skin there was inflamed
and itchy.
He stood in the doorway and looked up at the walls of sand. The light
thrust into his eyes, and the surroundings began to burn yellow. There
was not a sign of man or rope ladder: that seemed natural. He checked,
nonetheless, just to make sure. There was not even a sign that the rope
ladder had been let down. Of course, with a wind like this, it wouldn't
have taken five minutes for any trace to disappear. Just outside the
doorway the surface of the sand was continually being turned under as
though there were some current.
He came back in and lay down. A fly was flitting about. It was a tiny
light-pink fruit fly. Perhaps something was spoiling somewhere. After he
had moistened his throat with water in the plastic-wrapped kettle by his
pillow, he addressed the woman: "Would you mind getting up a
minute?"
She jumped up trembling, letting the summer kimono fall open to her
waist. The veins stood out blue in the sagging, but still full, breasts.
Flustered, she adjusted her kimono. There was a vague look in her
eyes, and she did not seem fully awake yet. He hesitated. Should he
question her now about the ladder? Should he raise his voice in anger?
Or should he adopt a mild, inquiring tone, at the same time thanking
her for the newspaper? If his goal were simply to prevent her from
sleeping, then it would be best to go at it rather aggressively. He had
missed the mark with his feigned illness, for his behavior was scarcely
that of a man who had dislocated his spine. What he had to do was
make them recognize that he was no longer of any use for work—at all
events, get them to relax their vigilance. They had softened to the
extent of giving him a newspaper; he had to break down their
resistance even more.
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 stupidl 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.
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