Microsoft Word KoboAbe-WomanInTheDunes doc

Full name
: Niki Jumpei. 
Age
: thirty-one. 
Height
: 
five feet five inches. 
Weight
: a hundred and forty pounds. Hair: slightly 
thin, worn straight back; no hair oil. 
Eyesight
: right 20/30; left, 2O/ 20. 
Cofor 
of skin
: darkish. 
Features
: long face, a slight cast to the eyes, snub 
nose, square jaws; no other special characteristics except for a 
conspicuous mole under the left ear. 
Blood type
: AB. Speaks thickly 
with a stammer. Introverted, stubborn, but not especially inept socially. 
Clothing
: perhaps dressed for entomological work. The full-face 
photograph attached above was taken two months ago." 
Of course even the villagers must naturally have some countermeasure 
in mind, for they had dared involve themselves in such a mad venture. 
It would be easy to fool a couple of country policemen. They must have 

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taken some precautions to prevent them from coming around on trifling 
matters. But this kind of smoke screen was necessary and effective only 
so long as he was healthy and able to stand the work of shoveling sand. 
It was not worth the risk of hiding a seriously sick person who had 
been laid up a week as he had. If they decided he was useless, it would 
be advisable for them to dispose of him at once before it became too 
troublesome. At this point, they could cook up a story. They might say 
that he had been seized by strange hallucinations caused by the shock 
of having fallen by himself into the hole, and this explanation would be 
far more acceptable than his own fantastic complaints that he had been 
trapped and imprisoned. 
Somewhere a cock crowed and a bull lowed shrilly. But in the sand 
hollow there was neither distance nor direction. The ordinary normal 
world was outside, where children played, kicking stones along the 
roadside, and where roosters proclaimed the end of night at the proper 
time. The colors of dawn were beginning to mingle with the fragrance of 
cooking rice. 
And the woman was ardently scrubbing him. After a rough wiping with 
a wet towel, she scoured him as if she were polishing window glass, 
twisting the towel tightly until it was like a piece of wood. In addition to 
the sounds of morning, the rhythmical sensation of the rubbing brought 
him little by little to an irresistible drowsiness. 
"By the way…" He stifled a yawn which seemed to be forcibly wrenched 
from within him. "It's been such a long time… I would like to see a 
newspaper. What do you think…? Do you suppose there would be any 
way of getting one?" 
"Well… I'll ask… later." 
He realized very well that she was trying to show she was sincere. He 
was distinctly sensitive to her concern lest she hurt his feelings, which 
showed in the diffident tone of her voice. But it also irritated him 
profoundly. Would she really ask? Didn't he have the right to read a 
newspaper if he liked? He pushed her hands away, railing against her, 
carried away by an impulse to upset the washbasin and its contents. 

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But getting angry at this point would spoil things. A seriously ill person 
would hardly get so excited over a newspaper. Of course, he did want 
to see a paper. If there was no scenery to look at, it was only natural to 
want to see pictures of scenery at least. He had read in various books 
how landscape painting had developed in naturally spare country and 
how newspapers had come out of industrial areas where human 
relations were anonymous. Moreover, he might have the luck to find 
announcements of missing people; or, better yet, an article on his own 
disappearance might even grace a corner of the social columns. Of 
course, the villagers could not be expected to pass him willingly a 
newspaper which carried an article like that. In any case, patience was 
the most important thing now. 
Certainly, pretending to be ill was no fun. It was like holding a taut 
spring enclosed in your hand. You couldn't stand it indefinitely. He 
could not let things go on as they were. He must really make them 
realize how responsible they were for him. He would see to it, starting 
this very day, that one way or another the woman would not get a wink 
of sleep! 
(Don't sleep… I You mustn't go to sleep!) He stretched and gave a long, 
drawn-out groan. 
12
UNDER the umbrella that the woman had set up for him he sipped a 
tongue-burning soup containing bits of seaweed. A precipitate of sand 
remained in the bottom of the cup. 
His memory had completely stopped functioning. Then it had gotten 
confused with a long, oppressive dream. In the dream he was astride an 
old, used chopstick, floating down some unknown street. It was not 
bad on the chop-stick, rather like riding a scooter, but when he relaxed 
his attention he suddenly lost his buoyancy. The street was a dull red 
near at hand, and in the distance a hazy green. Something in the 
combination of colors disturbed him. At last he arrived at a long 
wooden building that looked like a barracks. The smell of cheap soap 
floated in the air. He mounted the stairs, hitching up his trousers, 
which seemed about to slip off, and came to an empty room containing 
only a long, narrow table. About ten men and women were seated 

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around the table enthusiastically playing some game. The player in the 
center was dealing cards from a deck. At the end of the deal, the dealer 
suddenly gave 
him
the last card and cried out. He took the card 
involuntarily and looked at it; it was not a card at all, but a letter. The 
letter had a strange, soft feel to it. When he exerted pressure with his 
fingers, blood came spurting up. He screamed out and awoke. 
His vision was obscured by a dingy, mistlike film. There was a crackling 
noise of dry paper as he moved his body. His face was covered with an 
open newspaper. Damn! He had fallen asleep again. A film of sand fell 
from the surface of the paper when he brushed it aside. From the 
quantity of sand it would seem that quite some time had gone by. The 
slant of the sun's rays piercing through the cracks in the wall told him it 
was about noon. But what was that smell? he wondered. New ink? 
Impossible, he thought, yet he glanced at the date line. Wednesday, the 
sixteenth. It really was today's paper! It was unbelievable, but it was 
true. Then the woman must have passed along his request. 
He propped himself up with an elbow on the mattress, which had 
become sodden and sticky with perspiration. All kinds of thoughts at 
once began to whirl around in his mind, and he tried in vain to follow 
the print on the long-awaited paper.