The contents of the package consisted of a boxed lunch: three balls of rice mixed with wheat, which were still warm; two skewers of dried sardines; some dry, wrinkled radish pickle; and some boiled vegetable that had a bitter taste. The vegetable seemed to be dried radish leaves. He could eat only one of the skewers of sardines and one rice ball. His stomach felt like a cold rubber glove.
When he stood up, his joints creaked like the wind howling over the zinc roof. Nervously he peered into the water jar. It had been replenished and was brimming full. He dampened the towel and wiped his face. A shiver went through his whole body like a flourescent light. He washed his neck and flanks and shook the sand from between his fingers. Maybe he should be satisfied with creature comforts and let the rest go.
«Shall I fix you some tea?» The woman was standing in the doorway. «No, thanks. My stomach is too queasy as it is.» «Did you sleep well?»
«You should have got me up when you got up.»
The woman bent her head giggling. «Actually, I got up three times during the night and fixed the towel over your face.»
She had the coquetry of a three-year-old who has just learned to use an adult's laugh. It was obvious she did not know how best to express her cheerful feelings or her embarrassment. He felt depressed and turned his eyes away.
«Shall I help you with the digging? Or would it be better if I did the carrying?»
«Well… It's about time for the next basket lift to come.»
When he actually began working, for some reason he did not resist it as much as he thought he would. What could be the cause of this change? he wondered. Was it the fear that the water would be discontinued? Was it because of his indebtedness to the woman, or something about the character of the work itself? Work seemed something fundamental for man, something which enabled him to endure the aimless flight of time.
Once he had been taken along — when was it? — by the Mobius man to a lecture-meeting. The meeting place was completely surrounded by a low, rusty fence, and within the enclosure the surface of the ground was almost invisible beneath paper refuse, empty boxes, and rags of indiscriminate origin. What had ever put it into the designer's head to place such a fence around the site? Whereupon, as though his thoughts had materialized, a man in a tired suit of clothes appeared, leaning over the iron fence, earnestly trying to scrape it with his fingertips. His Mobius friend had informed him that it was a plain-clothes man. Then on the ceiling of the meeting place there was a huge coffee-colored leaky spot the like of which he had never seen before. In the midst of all this, the lecturer was speaking: «The only way to go beyond work is through work. It is not that work itself is valuable; we surmount work by work. The real value of work lies in the strength of self-denial.»
He heard the sharp signal of someone whistling through his fingers. Then there were carefree shouts and people running up, dragging the baskets. As usual, as they drew nearer they became quiet, and the basket was lowered in silence. He could feel that he was under close observation, but it would be of no use now to yell at the cliff. When the specified amount of sand had been safely hoisted the tension relaxed, and even the feel of the air seemed to change. No one said anything, but it seemed that for the moment they had come to an agreement.
He could see a very definite change in the woman's attitude too.
«Let's have a break. I'll bring some tea.»
Her voice and her behavior too were more cheerful. She was brimming over with an unobtainable zest. The man felt sated, as if he had eaten too much sugar. As she passed him he brought himself to pat her buttocks from behind. If the voltage is too high the filament burns out. Never had he intended to deceive her like this. Sometime he would tell her the story of the guard who protected the imaginary castle.
There was a castle. No. It wasn't necessarily a castle, it could be anything: a factory, a bank, a gambling house. So the guard could be either a watchman or a bodyguard. Now the guard, always prepared for the enemy attack, never failed in his vigilance. One day the long-expected enemy finally came. This was the moment, and he rang the alarm signal. Strangely enough, however, there was no response from the troops. Needless to say, the enemy easily overpowered the guard in one fell swoop. In his fading consciousness he saw the enemy sweeping like the wind through the gates, over the walls, and into the buildings unhindered by anyone. No, it was the castle, not the enemy, that was really like the wind. The single guard, like a withered tree in the wilderness, had stood guarding an illusion.
He sat down on the shovel and lit a cigarette. The flame caught at last with the third match. His fatigue spread out into a sluggish circle, like India ink dropped in water — it was a jellyfish, a scent bag, a diagram of an atomic nucleus. Some night bird had found a field mouse and was calling to its mate with a weird cry. An uneasy dog bayed deeply. High in the night sky there was a continuous, discordant sound of wind blowing at a different velocity. And on the ground the wind was a knife continually shaving off thin layers of sand. He wiped away the perspiration, blew his nose with his fingers, and brushed the sand from his head. The ripples of sand at his feet suddenly looked like the motionless crests of waves.
Supposing they were sound waves, what kind of music would they give? he wondered. Maybe even a human being could sing such a song… if tongs were driven into his nose and slimy blood stopped up his ears… if his teeth were broken one by one with hammer blows, and splinters jammed into his urethra… if a vulva were cut away and sewn onto his eyelids. It might resemble cruelty, and then again it might be a little different. Suddenly his eyes soared upward like a bird, and he felt as if he were looking down on himself. Certainly he must be the strangest of all… he who was musing on the strangeness of things here.
23
Got a one-way ticket to the blues, woo, woo,…
If you want to sing it, sing it. These days people caught in the clutches of the one-way ticket never sing it like that. The soles of those who have only a one-way ticket are so thin that they scream when they step on a pebble. They have had their fill of walking. «The Round-Trip Ticket Blues» is what they want to sing. A one-way ticket is a disjointed life that misses the links between yesterday and today, today and tomorrow. Only the man who obstinately hangs on to a round-trip ticket can hum with real sorrow a song of a one-way ticket. For this very reason he grows desperate lest the return half of his ticket be lost or stolen; he buys stocks, signs up for life insurance, and talks out of different sides of his mouth to his union pals and his superiors. He hums «The One-Way Ticket Blues» with all his might and, choosing a channel at random, turns the television up to full volume in an attempt to drown out the peevish voices of those who have only a one-way ticket and who keep asking for help, voices that come up through the bathtub drain or the toilet hole. It would not be strange at all if «The Round-Trip Ticket Blues» were the song of mankind imprisoned.
Whenever he could, he stealthily worked at making a rope. He tore his extra shirt into pieces, twisted them together, and then joined them to the kimono sash of the woman's dead husband; altogether his rope was now about five yards long. When the time came, he would fasten one end to a pair of rusty shears, which he would prop half open with a piece of wood. Of course, the rope was still not long enough. He could almost make the required length if he tied on the hemp clothesline and the rough straw rope, stretched over the earthen floor, on which she had hung some fish and corn to dry.