The Woman in the Dunes

The man arrives at S___, the seaside village where he intends to search for a rare beetle. He can’t see the sea from the village, which seems rather poor. He is struck by how the road rises toward the sea instead of sloping downward toward it. As he walks along, he is surprised to see that the houses remain at the same low level instead of rising along with the road. In fact, the houses rest in great depressions of sand, giving the impression that they are cells in a vast beehive, which seems to the man like a “disturbing and unsettling landscape” (10). The man wants to find an unknown species of beetle in the area in order to earn the right to name it for himself. In the course of his amateur insect studies, he’s also become interested in sand, a somewhat inhospitable environment for many insects. An unusual beetle he once saw eluded him with an odd flight pattern, which he realized was the beetle’s way of luring prey away from their nests. He reflects on the nature of sand, the particles of which have an average size of one eighth of a millimeter. Sand is everywhere, unavoidable, and itself created by movement. He wonders how humans would fare if they shifted about more like sand rather than being so stationary.

The man continues walking around the dunes, hunting for beetles. He stops to smoke and sees a spider. He notices a depression in the dunes in which there is a small house. He is about to take a picture of it when he starts sliding down the slope. After catching himself, he notices an old man watching him. The old man asks whether the man is an inspector and ascertains that he does not work for the government. Three other men wait nearby. When the man explains that he is a schoolteacher searching for insects, the old man points out that he has missed the last bus away from the village. The man says he likes to stay in village houses, but if it’s an inconvenience, he will walk to the next village. The old man, now relieved that he is not talking to a government inspector, says they can find him some humble accommodation in their village.

After the sun sets, the man leaves the dune without having found any beetles. He finds the old man with the others in the offices of the village cooperative. He leads the man to one end of the village where there’s a house in the cavity of the dune. The men, calling for “Granny,” indicate a rope ladder on one of the cliffs, which is three times higher than the house. The woman of about 30 appears, pale with a strange white cast to her face, and meets him at the bottom of the ladder. She greets him cheerfully, though the house is in rough condition. She offers to make him dinner, but he replies that he would rather bathe. She asks if he can put that off until the day after tomorrow. He laughs, as he doesn’t plan to be there that long. Though she can’t offer him water for bathing—the water bucket is low and the well is far—she holds an umbrella over him as he eats in order to protect his food from falling sand. She explains that the sand gets through even new roof thatching, so she has to sweep it out every day or it will pile up and rot the wood. The man takes exception to the idea of sand rotting anything since it is dry. She prepares a bed for him in the corner of the room; hers is in the inner area behind a curtain. When asked where her husband is, the woman explains that the previous year, he and their daughter were crushed by sand and killed during a typhoon when they went out to check the chicken houses. As she extinguishes the lamp, she smiles oddly, which makes the man think that she is subtly, and inappropriately, flirting with him.

A voice from outside the house yells that they are dropping down a shovel and tin cans “for the other one” (30). The man assumes they are referring to someone else who lives there, but the woman explains that they mean him. This confuses the man, as he has no need for a shovel and cans. The woman goes outside to do some work, even though it is already eight o’clock in the evening. The man peeks behind the matting and sees that there is no bed there, just a soft sweep of sand. He feels suspicious. He hears a three-wheeled truck and more activity up above than he had witnessed during the day. When he goes outside with the lamp, he sees that the woman is shoveling sand into a large can and dumping it over by the rope ladder. She pokes him playfully as she passes, but when he approaches her, she demurs, saying that she still has six more cans to fill and dump until the lift basket arrives. When he asks if he should help, she says that he can take it easy on his first day. He reminds her that he is only there for the night, but he helps shovel anyway. She explains that sand is easier to work with at night after it is damp. The sand absorbs fog and releases it in the evening as a mist. While the man doesn’t find her conversation very interesting, he does start to consider her body.

Men arrive at the top of the cliff and haul up the baskets of sand. The man is amazed by the process, and the woman tells him that their motto in the village is “Love your home” (37). When he suggests they take a rest, she turns him down because there is more sand to clear away from the house. The crews in the trucks come around all night as the people work. The man is angry that they involved him in such pointless exercises. The woman argues that if they didn’t clear the sand, the village would be completely buried within 10 days. He wonders why the village doesn’t put its money toward building a more permanent defense against the encroaching sand instead of paying the basket haulers, but she says it is cheaper to do it this way. Again, the man feels irritation—this time at the way the woman allows herself to be bound to that endless duty. He’s also peeved that she won’t stop working and come to his bed. He tries to sleep but can’t. He thinks of the flowing lines of sand dunes and how some of the great ancient cities could not stand against sand. He thinks of the similarities between the sea and the sand and muses whether one could build houses like boats to float on the sand like ships on the sea. He falls asleep.

The man makes to leave in the morning after he awakens to find himself covered in sand. The woman is asleep, totally naked with only a towel over her face. She’s lightly covered in sand. He tries climbing up to the rim after seeing that the rope ladder is gone. He falls and hurts his shoulder. He awakens the woman by tearing off her face towel, revealing that her face is red and blotchy from the sand and that she must have covered it with flour to appear white. When he confronts her, she just cowers in silence. He realizes that she knows the ladder was taken up. He understands that he is trapped and goes outside to yell at the villagers above them. The commotion disturbs a brow of sand, which collapses against the house. The man rails against the injustice, declaring that the villagers can’t force him to work against his will and saddle the woman with a dependent. He goes back into the house and feels like slapping the woman, but he believes that is the part the villagers want him to play. He feels the sudden need to empty his bladder.

The man pulls off his shirt and loosens his pants to help dissipate the heat and circulate the air. It occurs to him that while he initially thought the woman’s nakedness was a ploy to seduce him, he now realizes it is an accommodation to the irritating sand and heat. He slowly makes his way back to the hut, feeling calmer. Yelling and ranting at the woman will not get information from her, and she was probably too embarrassed at having been caught naked to respond to him.

Returning to the hut, he sees the woman is already dressed. He tries to act normal, swinging his shirt around and commenting on the heat. Cautiously, she agrees and explains that people can get a sand rash if they keep their clothes on when they sweat. He asks if he could get his shirt washed, but she informs him the water drum won’t come until tomorrow. Casually, he tells her that’s a problem for him because he’s a working man with limited time off and he’d really like to find a beetle on this vacation. When she doesn’t respond, he asks if there’s a way to get a hold of the villagers so he can get out of there. Her continued silence upsets him, and he starts yelling at her that she’s acting like one of his students who go silent and “pretend to take the blame themselves” (58). When he asks for an explanation, she says she thinks he already understands the situation. It’s too hard for a woman alone to do the work. He accuses her of baiting him into a trap and asks why they are illegally detaining him when they could get any number of unemployed people to help out. She responds that it would cause trouble for the village if people on the outside knew about how things are with them. He threatens to make trouble, too, especially since there will be an investigation into his disappearance. The woman still acts dejected and passive, which angers him. He suggests that if she contacts the villagers, he can have a friend who works at a newspaper write about the village from a “social angle” (58). The woman asks if she should start dinner.

The man briefly wrestles with whether he should accept the food, fearing that eating it will be taken as an acceptance of the situation or of being indebted to the woman. He mentally decides to repay the woman for the food later and have some dinner. As the woman prepares the food, she explains that she keeps the water for drinking separate from the water for washing. She uses sand to scrub the plates clean. As she tidies up, the man feels pity for her and her limited existence. He says that it would be better for them both if the sand wrecked the house. He explains that he doesn’t like the scheming of the villagers and relates a story about a mongrel with matted hair who grabbed the hair that was cut off so that it wouldn’t be taken from him, drawing parallels to the woman and the villagers with their endless labor to save the village from the sand. He goes outside and attempts to make the sand wall easier to climb by shoveling out the bottom. After digging for a while without success, he makes a model of the wall and realizes that the sand must be in a “superstable state” (68), making it much more difficult to change the incline. He keeps working in the hot sun, aware that the woman is watching from the doorway, as well as the three old men at the top. Suddenly, the sand flows violently, and the man feels chest pressure and vomits.