(Don't sleep…! 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 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.
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 appearing 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!»