The woman had finished peeling the potatoes; she diced them and put them into a big iron pot over the hearth, along with a large sliced radish, leaves and all. She carefully took a match out of a plastic bag, and after using it she wrapped up the bag tightly again and fastened it with a rubber band. She put rice in a sieve and poured water over it, probably to wash away the sand. The pot began to make a bubbling sound, and the pungent smell of radish hung in the air.
«There's some water left over. Would you like to wash your face?»
«No, I'd rather drink it than wash my face in it.»
«Oh, I'm sorry, but I keep the drinking water separate.» From under the sink she took a large kettle which was swathed in plastic. «It's not very cold, but it's been boiled, so you don't have to be afraid…»
«By the way, if you don't leave a little water in the jar, you'll be up against it when it comes to washing up later, won't you?»
«Oh, no. I clean off the dishes just by rubbing them with sand.»
As she said this, she grabbed a handful of sand by the window and threw it into a plate she was holding. She swirled the sand around and covered the plate, to demonstrate the actual process. He wasn't sure whether the plate was really clean or not, but he had the feeling it probably was. The sand in this operation, at least, conformed very well with the idea he had had of it all along.
Again the meal was served under the umbrella. Lightly broiled fish and the cooked vegetables. Everything was slightly gritty with sand. They could eat together, he thought, if she would hang the umbrella from the ceiling, but he didn't want to make an express suggestion. The coarse, common tea was dark enough in color, but it had little taste.
When he had finished eating, the woman returned to the sink and, putting a piece of plastic over her head, quietly began to eat her own meal under it. She looked like some kind of insect, he thought. Did she intend to go on living like this forever? From the outside, this place seemed only a tiny spot of earth, but when you were at the bottom of the hole you could see nothing but limitless sand and sky. A monotonous existence enclosed in an eye. She had probably spent her whole life down here, without even the memory of a comforting word from anyone. Perhaps her heart was throbbing now like a girl's because they had trapped him and given him to her. It was too pitiful!
He was tempted to say something to her; for the time being, however, he decided to have a smoke, and he lit a cigarette. It would certainly appear that plastic was a necessity of life here. He got the match to light, but the cigarette had become unsmokable. He took strong drags on it sucking in his cheeks between his teeth. Yet no matter how he puffed he got only the taste of smoke, an extremely greasy smoke that irritated his tongue; the cigarette was worse than useless. The experience quite spoiled his frame of mind and took away any desire he might have had to speak to the woman.
She attended to the dirty dishes, placing them on the earthen floor and slowly heaping up sand on them. Then she said hesitantly: «I'm going to have to begin right away getting the sand down from the ceiling.»
«Getting the sand down? Oh. Well, that's all right with me.» He wondered indifferently why that should have anything to do with him now. It didn't concern him if the beams rotted and the roof fell in.
«If I'm in your way, do you want me to move somewhere else?»
«I'm sorry, but would you mind…?»
She needn't pretend! Why didn't she show even a little of her real feelings? In her heart she probably felt as if she had bitten into a spoiled onion. But she was expressionless as she swiftly, with an accustomed movement, wrapped a towel folded in two around the lower part of her face and tied it behind her head. She put a whisk broom and a small piece of wood under her arm, and climbed up on the partition of the closet, which had only half a door remaining.
Abruptly, he exclaimed: «Frankly, I'm convinced we'd both feel much better if this house fell to pieces!»
He was surprised himself at his peevish outburst, and the woman turned and looked at him with an even more startled look. Well, apparently she had not yet turned quite into an insect.
On he went: «No, I'm not particularly angry at you. It's the whole business. I don't like this scheming where you people think you can put a man in chains. Do you realize what I'm talking about? No, it doesn't make any difference whether you do or not. I'll tell you an amusing story. I used to keep a worthless mongrel at my boardinghouse. He had a terribly thick coat that scarcely shed even in summer. He was such a sorry sight that I finally decided to cut his hair. But just as I was about to throw away the hair that had been cut off, the dog — I wonder what could have been going on in his mind? — suddenly let out a pitiful howl, took a bunch of hair in his mouth, and ran into his house. He probably felt that the hair was a part of his own body and he didn't want to be separated from it.» He furtively observed the woman's expression. However, she made no attempt to move, remaining bent over in an unnatural position on top of the partition. «Well, let it go. Everyone has his own philosophy that doesn't hold good for anybody else. Go on working your fingers to the bone with your sand sweeping or whatever else you will. But I can't stand it. I've had enough! I could get out of here easily if I wanted to. And I've just run out of cigarettes.»
«Oh… I wanted to say… about the cigarettes…» she said, awkwardly and submissively, «when they deliver the water, later…»
«Cigarettes? Do they bring you cigarettes too?» He laughed in spite of himself. «That's not the question. I'm talking about the tufts of hair. Tufts of hair. Don't you understand? What I'm trying to say is that there's no sense in such futile concern over a tuft of hair.»
She was silent. She showed no sign of offering any explanation. She waited a moment, and when it was evident he had stopped speaking, she slowly turned as if nothing had happened and resumed her unfinished work. She slid back the cover over the top of the closet and crawled up, working the upper part of her body into the aperture with her elbows and wiggling her legs clumsily. The sand began to fall in thin rivulets here and there. He had the feeling that there was some strange insect inside the ceiling. Sand and rotted wood. No, thank you, he had had enough of strange things!
Then from one corner of the ceiling the sand began to pour out dizzily in numerous tapelike streams. The strange quietness was in eerie contrast to the violence of the flow of sand. The holes and cracks in the ceiling boards were quickly raised in exact relief on the straw matting. The sand burned in his nose and irritated his eyes. He fled out of the house.
Suddenly he felt as though he were melting away from his feet upward into a landscape of flame. But something like a perpetual shaft of ice remained in the center of his body. He felt ashamed in some way. An animal-like woman… thinking only in terms of today… no yesterday, no tomorrow… with a dot for a heart. A world where people were convinced that men could be erased like chalk marks from a blackboard. In his wildest dreams he could not have imagined that such barbarism still existed anywhere in the world. Well, anyway… if this was a sign that he was beginning to regain his composure and recover from his initial shock, his qualms of conscience were not a bad thing.
But he must not waste time. If possible, he would like to finish before it got dark. Squinting, he measured the height of the sand wall quivering behind a film of heat waves like molten glass. Every time he looked at it, it seemed to grow higher. It would be hard to go against nature and try to make a gentle slope abrupt — he only wanted to try to make a steep one more gentle. There was no reason to hang back.