In the dark passageway of the hall is a woman's back. Without switching on the light, she puts on an overcoat, hesitates, and puts her hand on the knob. She quietly opens the door and goes out. The knob turns softly and clicks as the door shuts.
The warm sun makes him drowsy. He closes his book, leans back in the chair, and puts on sunglasses: the two round lenses screen his eyes from the sunlight. Afterward, he covers his face with a broad-brimmed black hat, and he can hear nothing but the noisy waves of the sea.
The tide surges onto the beach, but before it can recede, the sand soaks it up with a long hiss, so that all that is left is a line of yellowish froth.
His arms, hanging down, start to itch. Ants – first one, then one after another – are crawling up his arms.
She says when she made love with two men in front of the fire, it was very exciting. She is lying across the bed with her head to one side, eyes closed, outside the circle of light. The light is shining only on her long hair, and on her underwear and panty hose on the floor.
He senses the tide swelling. The seawater surges around the legs of the chair, swirls around, then recedes. An old tune fills the air. Beautiful and sad, it is like the wailing of a peasant woman at a funeral, and yet like the sobbing of a reed pipe.
She moves her ankles to kick off her shoes and bends to put on a new pair. A shoe with the heel worn to the quick lies discarded at the side of the passageway near the door.
A poster with a black-and-white photograph shows just the lower half of a woman holding up her long skirt and revealing her beautiful legs. She is standing on her toes. This is another advertisement for shoes, posted on the wall of the platform in the subway station. An old woman with a big empty bag is standing on the platform, a middle-aged man sitting on a bench is reading a newspaper. The train comes; some doors open and some don't. The people getting off head for the exit, and no one so much as looks at the advertisement. With his back turned, he is the only person left on the platform, and as others start to arrive, that back departs.
The legs of the deck chair are already immersed in the lapping water and the sea keeps rising. That sad tune is still playing, but it has become somewhat vague and sounds more like a reed pipe.
She says she wants a man twice her weight to bear down on her. In the dark she is lying on the bed, her eyes wide open. He is sitting at the desk, bare-chested, and without turning he asks if she will cope. She says she loves being squashed until she can't breathe and, having said this, she laughs. Doo – it's the computer.
The tune becomes louder and louder, yet more vague as well. It sounds like the wind tearing the paper used for windows, but with the grating of grains of sand mixed in. The tune becomes more vague, yet still hurts the ears a little. The sea has risen to the seat of the deck chair and it is swaying.
He is sitting at the computer with a cigarette in his mouth. A long sentence appears on the screen. "What" is not to understand and "what" is to understand or not is not to understand that even when "what" is understood, it is not understood, for "what" is to understand and "what" is not to understand, "what" is "what" and "is not" is "is not," and so is not to understand not wanting to understand or simply not understanding why "what" needs to be understood or whether "what" can be understood, and also it is not understood whether "what" is really not understood or that it simply hasn't been rendered so that it can be understood or is really understood but that there is a pretense not to understand or a refusal to try to understand or is pretending to want to understand yet deliberately not understanding or actually trying unsuccessfully to understand, then so what if it's not understood and if it's not understood, then why go to all this trouble of wanting to understand it -
A white-nosed clown in a circus troupe is playing an accordion, pulling and squeezing, pulling and pulling, squeezing and squeezing. He pulls the accordion out fully, gives a hard jerk, breaks the sound box, and the music instantly stops.
In the air, there is only the sound of the wind, the noisy waves of the sea, and the brilliant sunlight.
The ash on the cigarette is about to drop and, flicking it into the ashtray, he deletes each of the words of the uncompleted sentence one at a time.
A pair of hands shuffles a pile of mah-jongg tiles, takes one, feels it; it's a "middle," then there's a "develop," and a "white," and these are put in the sequence "middle" "develop" "white." Next to be picked up are "develop" "middle" "white" "develop" "middle" "white" "east" "develop" "middle" "wind" "north" "east" "south" "wind" "west" "north" "bamboo no. 2" – he pushes over the tiles and starts shuffling them again.
"Tell me a story!" He turns around and the table lamp shines on the back of his head, and in the dark, on the bed, he sees her naked body curled up like a fish.
An empty chair is floating serenely on the water, as ripples of light are reflected on the waves. The sound of the tide can't be heard; only a long note vibrates in the air, sustained and monotonous.
A small boy is leaning on a wall, weeping and wailing, but there is no sound. The stone wall is covered with everlasting spring creeper and the sun is shining halfway up the wall.
On the clipped green lawn an elderly man wearing trousers with suspenders and a white shirt unbuttoned at the collar is pulling a length of rope. It is strenuous, but he is relaxed and unhurried.
He happens to stop in front of a glass advertising display on the street and then becomes absorbed with reading what is inside. The street is fairly deserted and only one or two pedestrians are out.
She is standing at the end of the street but there is an endless stream of cars. She is too impatient for the red light to change and starts weaving across the road. Another car speeds by and she quickly stops, retreating to the white line in the middle of the road. She looks in the direction of the approaching cars and runs across just after a small sedan has passed. On the footpath she goes up some steps, appears to stop to think for a while, then presses some numbers at the door. There's a buzz and she opens the door and goes inside. Before the door slowly closes, she turns around, but on that overcast day it is even more difficult to see her face clearly.
There is no chair in the water, only foam. The long-drawn-out sound is intermittent, yet remains suspended in the air, never completely cut off – there is only that bit of sound.
A fine drizzle is falling on the glass advertising display and he moves aside. The display is full of advertisements for houses on sale with prices attached, some with photographs, most are private residences in the country. Some of the houses are for rent, with already rented written prominently in red on the cheaper ones.
Another man comes along to pull the rope. He is dressed immaculately, wearing a tie, and he greets the old man wearing trousers with suspenders. Taking the rope and talking and laughing, he steadily sets about this chore. When a heavy thud comes from somewhere not far away, the second man scowls.
An empty mineral water bottle is floating on the sea, bobbing up and down upon the waves. All this time, the sunlight remains splendid and the sky is so clean, it looks unreal. Maybe because it is too clean, too bright, and too empty, and with the waves sparkling with sunlight, that the empty plastic bottle moving into the distance suddenly turns gray-black and looks like an aquatic bird or some other floating object. At some unknown time the intermittent, long-drawn-out sound has stopped and, like a thread of gossamer blown by the wind, has vanished without trace.
"A pair of swans came to this seaside, then only one of them was to be seen, the other must have been killed for a trophy. The one left behind flew away soon afterward." It is a woman's voice, and clearly for a man to hear. As she speaks, the floating object moving into the distance really looks like an aquatic bird.