The Woman in the Dunes

The man has a dream wherein he rides a chopstick into a room where 10 people are playing a card game. He is dealt a card that turns out to be a letter from which blood spurts. He wakes up to find the day’s newspaper on his face. He wonders if the woman went out to get it and how she communicated his request. He wakes her, and she says she asked the men when they delivered wood preservative. He asks why she doesn’t go out, even for a walk, and she says that she can, but she doesn’t enjoy walking without a purpose, finding it tiresome. She asks how he’s feeling, checks his spine, and then tickles him. He thinks she might want to provoke a scandal as a way to blackmail him.

The man’s efforts to keep the woman awake during the day are unsuccessful because he keeps falling asleep. He feels the newspaper is just the same old, unimportant stuff, but he sees an article about a man killed by sand in a construction accident when digging out the bottom of a hill. He believes the villagers wanted him to read it. He realizes that sand is more dangerous than water.

The man needs a new strategy. He plans on attacking the woman as she digs. He wonders if the government inspector will come by and if anyone will search for him. On one hand, he lives under a “constitutional government, and therefore it [is] natural that he should expect help” (96). On the other hand, a person has the freedom to disappear if they so choose. He believes that what he left in his boardinghouse room would suggest someone who was planning to keep on living, not someone with thoughts of suicide or running away. But then he remembers that he had been mysterious about his vacation when talking to his colleagues. There was a woman with whom he was in a relationship, and he wrote her a letter about going off alone, but he threw the letter on his desk. If someone found it, they could assume he wanted to disappear. He recalls a conversation he had with a colleague called the “Möbius man” wherein he disclosed his doubts about the educational system and talked about the hydrodynamic properties of sand and how it is a metaphor for life (97). He was disappointed, however, that the Möbius man still seemed envious of his vacation. In the sand hut, he hesitates to act on his new strategy of attacking the woman while she digs, but then he rushes outside anyway.

Though the man doesn’t have the energy to attack the woman as he planned, his sudden movement stuns the woman, and she doesn’t resist being bound and gagged by him. The man accuses her of artifice, of trapping him. While she lies bound on the floor matting, her wrists bruising, he tells her that they’re even now and that she started it. He awaits the other men who run the lift baskets.

The men lower the basket by a rope, which the man grabs. He tells them his whole plan: He’ll hold the woman hostage until they let him out. Once he’s out, he promises he won’t tell the authorities, even though illegal detention is a serious crime. They start to pull up the basket with the man but then let it go slack, which causes him to fall back onto the sand. The men pull up the rope and leave. The man returns to the woman and undoes her gag. She asks if the stars are out. At first, he thinks she’s being silly or superstitious, but she explains that if the mist obscures the stars, then the wind isn’t strong and the men will feel no particular urgency to clear the sand around her house. He imagines writing about this experience and having a debate over the difference between writing and being a writer.

Someone throws down a package, but it only contains sake and some cigarettes. The man assumes it’s a prelude to an agreement for release, but the woman explains that they deliver such things every week to the places men are working. He asks if other people have been caught and if any have escaped. She tells him about a postcard dealer the previous year who had been caught, but he died as the work was very hard during the typhoon season. There is also a student, still working in the village, who had come around to sell books. An entire family left one night, but no visitors have ever escaped. The woman’s wrists ache from being bound, so the man scratches an itch she has behind one ear.

The woman asks for water, and she drinks. The kettle is empty after three gulps. The man thinks about the idea that skin’s cleanliness indicates civilization. The men did not deliver water as expected, which the man now realizes is their leverage. He believes they’re willing to sacrifice the woman to keep their society secret. He releases her after a promise that she won’t retaliate. She goes out to urinate.

A small sand slide begins around the house. The man drinks the sake and offers some to the woman, who refuses. When asked why she doesn’t just ask for more water, she implies that they need to work to earn it. The man is upset that he’s expected to help these strangers and that they feel they have the right to bargain in such a way. The sand has piled up on the house and onto the mattresses. He finds the shovel he had when he attacked the woman and uses it against the wall, which it passes right through, in order to get material for a ladder. The woman cries out and tries to stop him. They thrash around on the floor. He accidentally touches her bare breast. He thinks about “spiritual rape,” which he defines as the way woman think they have to enact a “soap opera” every time they consent to have sex, positioning themselves as victims (132). He thinks of the other woman he was seeing and how they used a condom because he had a venereal disease. She felt it was a “commercial-sample type of relationship” because he could just “sample” her like a product at a store without buying (133). She talked about “forcing a sale” (133)—not using any protection—but he refused, and she accused him of having a “psychological venereal disease” (134). Seeing himself through her eyes, he had felt impotent.

The man notes that here with the woman in the sand hut, his member is “pulsating and vibrant without the rubber, although only for a short time, until he [is] put off by the woman’s stupid expression” (135). After she gets up, he feels a warmth in it again. He reflects that he is not in favor of spiritual rape and that there are two kinds of sexual desire: general and specific. He draws a comparison to the idea that when one is hungry, food is an abstract notion, but once one is satiated, then one can start to refine their taste and discernment. He relates sexual intercourse to a “commutation ticket: it has to be punched every time you use it” (137). Now that there are condoms to prevent the dangerous consequences of sex (disease and unwanted pregnancy), he feels that sexual relations are more bureaucratic, making sex less free and thus less satisfying for both parties. Yet acting freely (without protection) creates incessant worry that can make a person mentally ill. As if sensing his thoughts, the woman stops doing up her trousers. Instead, she goes into her sleeping area and removes them. The man feels his excitement build again. As they grip one another, more sand slides into the house and onto them. His sexual relationship with his previous lover had been more removed, whereas with this woman, he feels a more primal passion. They take turns brushing sand from one another.

The man ejaculates and dozes off. His dreams are of overflowing toilets and being denied a drink of water from a man passing by with a canteen. When he awakes, his thirst overcomes him, and he searches the house for any possible water source. He digs into the earthen floor to where it is moist, but he can’t get water from it. He yells at the woman to do something, and again she suggests that they start working. He points out that they’re too parched to work and that she should notify the men in the village first. The woman explains that the village men will know when they start working because someone watches them with binoculars from the fire tower. The man goes out and waves his shovel toward the fire tower. Another sand avalanche begins, and he takes shelter under the eaves of the house. He hears the woman hail someone at the top. The old man lowers a bucket of water. The man pushes the woman aside and drinks heavily before giving her the water. He grabs the rope before the old man can haul up the bucket and begs him to listen to him for a moment. He explains that, as a teacher, there will be many people concerned about his whereabouts. The old man points out that it has been 10 days and there hasn’t been a missing persons notice. The man wants him to come down so they can talk, but the old man stays silent. The man suggests that people would be concerned about the welfare of the village if they knew of its plight and that there is a better way of getting the help they need than trapping and imprisoning visitors. The man says that people should be used strategically, according to their skill sets and talents, not stuck doing manual labor when they may contribute in other ways. At the suggestion that they work with the sand to make it a tourist destination, the old man replies that they would need a hot spring and that only certain types of people benefit from tourism. They talk of crops that could grow there or raising money to build a breastwork to protect against the sand. The old man points out that “damage from wind-blown sand doesn’t seem to be recognized under disaster compensation” (152). The man gives his final appeal for the old man to think of the obligations a teacher has to the children they teach. The old man suddenly pulls up the rope. The man reiterates that “a man has the obligation to make full use of the abilities he has” (152-53), to which the old man agrees, but he urges the man to do his best anyway. After the old man leaves, the man sees the woman working and suspects that she’s drunk all the water, but when he goes into the house to check, he sees that she hasn’t. He suspects that the villagers are using fear of thirst to goad him into action. He goes out to shovel, though he feels weak. The woman advises him on the proper way to hold the shovel so as not to get so tired. Eventually, he crawls back to his bed and collapses.

The man awakes to find sake, cigarettes, water, and some food. The woman had gotten up three times while he slept to fix his face towel. They go to work, and he finds he doesn’t mind it as much. He thinks of a meeting he went to with the Möbius man about work giving strength through acts of self-denial. The villagers come to take up the sand. He thinks they’re wary, but when the amount of sand is assessed, tensions ease. The woman is in good spirits, and he pats her bottom. He thinks of a story about a guard at a castle: The guard is constantly vigilant. When the enemy comes, no troops respond to his call, and he’s overcome. He realizes the castle had just been an illusion. The man starts to imagine the sounds of the sand waves and other images, odd and sometimes violent.

The man contemplates the “one-way ticket blues” versus the “round-trip ticket blues”: Those who are less fortunate have only one-way tickets; their paths are set. But those with round-trip tickets, or means and opportunity, have the stress of what to do with their return and whether they might lose it. The man secretly works at making a rope out of clothes and other materials. He plans to escape during the day while the woman sleeps but hide out somewhere up top until dark so he can run through the village unseen. In the meantime, he plans to ask the woman about the village so he can make a mental map of it. Bound by a steep sand cliff on one side and a creek on the other, he believes he will have to go through the center. He notices that just before sunset, the sand releases the warmth of the day, which causes a vapor that would obscure him from the fire tower guard. Four days later, he enacts his plan. He feigns illness, asking for aspirin, and sleeps through the night. It’s bath night, and the woman washes him. He returns the favor and washes her in a sexualized manner. They start to get intimate, but then she complains of pain and moves away. He enters her from behind anyway and finishes. Then he gives her some sake and aspirin so that she’ll sleep. He feels an odd fondness for her and a bit of sadness as he takes leave of her sleeping form. He climbs onto the roof by using an old rain shelter. The roof is very soft. He tries throwing a pair of shears like a lasso to the pully sandbags at the top of the dune but misses several times. He manages to hit it on the 30th try. He gets tired and dizzy as he climbs. He decides that when he is free, he won’t prosecute the woman.

The man makes it out of the pit without raising an alarm. He sees the town and realizes that more than 10 houses near the sea have had “to submit to a life of slavery” in order to protect the pathetic village from the encroaching sand (176). He sees a hollow by a little building where he intends to hide and stares down a dog that comes out of it. He imagines the deceased postcard dealer’s pitch to the villagers as he admires the stark beauty of the place. The sun sets and the mist rises, signaling his time to leave.

The sand mutes the man’s footsteps yet saps his strength. He stumbles on, but the village lights don’t seem to come closer. He wonders if the woman is awake and what she’ll think. She had praised his work and thought of asking the village association for more work to do at home so she could buy a radio or a mirror. He plans to buy her a radio when he gets home. He doesn’t understand why she feels so bound to the village that gives her so little in return. He believes home only has meaning if one has something to lose when it’s gone. He imagines taking revenge on the villagers, such as setting fire to the village or poisoning them, but then thinks he should just report them to the police. He realizes he can’t see the lights anymore. He thinks about a time he asked the woman why she stayed in the village and about a time he tried to find the remains of her husband and daughter but couldn’t. The woman kept saying they were somewhere else. Suddenly, the man finds himself in the hamlet. Dogs start barking, and he runs for the gates.

The man runs. A dog jumps on him, and he hits it with the shears. Other dogs circle in. He encounters two children whom he accidentally strikes in his run, and all three of them tumble into a ditch. The children start screaming. A flashlight shines on them, and an alarm sounds. The lights surround him once he crawls out of the ditch. He starts running back the way he came along the promontory. The pursuers lag behind. He realizes that they intend to push him toward the sea. Just when he thinks he’s evaded them, he sinks into something like quicksand, which was their aim all along. Though he’s aware that they could now just claim he was a “stupid outsider” who got lost and sank in the dunes, he calls for help (199). They give him a board to support himself until they can shovel him out. He submits to the rescue and their will.

The villagers lower the man by a rope into the hole with the woman. He falls asleep and dreams of running while the woman works. He watches a spider drawn to a lamp, which is not usual spider behavior. He then sees its prey, a moth, come to the lamp, so he helps the spider by touching the moth with his lit cigarette. He ponders how moths are drawn to lamplight but not moonlight. The woman’s cries wake him later. He feels miserable and bemoans his failed escape. She consoles him about failure by saying that no one has ever made it out successfully. He starts to resign himself to life in the sand, despite being unsure what purpose or value could be found in such an existence. The woman washes him.