The true entomologist’s pleasure is much simpler, more direct: that of discovering a new type. When this happens, the discoverer’s name appears in the illustrated encyclopedias of entomology appended to the technical Latin name of the newly found insect; and there, perhaps, it is preserved for something less than eternity.
Because winds and water currents flow over the land, the formation of sand is unavoidable. As long as the winds blew, the rivers flowed, and the seas stirred, sand would be born grain by grain from the earth, and like a living being it would creep everywhere. The sands never rested. Gently but surely they invaded and destroyed the surface of the earth.
This image of the flowing sand made an indescribably exciting impact on the man. The barrenness of sand, as it is usually pictured, was not caused by simple dryness, but apparently was due to the ceaseless movement that made it inhospitable to all living things. What a difference compared with the dreary way human beings clung together year in year out.
A sand-covered woman was perhaps attractive to look at but hardly to touch.
The woman’s actions and her silence took on an unexpected and terrible meaning. He refused to believe it, yet in his heart he knew his worst fears had come true. The ladder had probably been removed with her knowledge, and doubtless with her full consent. Unmistakably she was an accomplice. Of course her posture had nothing to do with embarrassment; it was the posture of a sacrificial victim, of a criminal willing to accept any punishment. He had been lured by the beetle into a desert from which there was no escape—like some famished mouse.
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!
But in his case the situation was completely different, and he was desperately reaching out for help. Anyone who saw his empty room would immediately understand what had happened, even if they hadn’t seen him or directly heard from him. The unfinished book that lay open to the page he had been reading when he put it down… the small change he had tossed into the pocket of his office clothes… his bankbook, which bore no trace of any recent withdrawals, despite the small amount in his account… his box of drying insects he had not yet finished arranging… the stamped envelope containing the order blank for a new collecting bottle, laid out ready for mailing—all this repudiated discontinuance, everything pointed to his intention to go on living. A visitor could not help but hear the plaintive voice from the room.
—No, take it easy. No matter how I try to write I’m not fit to be a writer.
—This unbecoming humility again. There’s no need for you to think of writers as something special. If you write, you’re a writer, aren’t you?
—Well, it’s generally considered that teachers are prone to write indiscriminately.
—But professionally they’re pretty close to writers.
—Is that what they call creative education?… In spite of the fact that they haven’t even made a pencil box by themselves?
—A pencil box… how impressive! Isn’t it good to be made to realize what sort of person one is?
—Thanks to this education, I have to experience a new sensation in order to appreciate new pain.
—There’s hope.
—But one is not responsible for whether the hope materializes or not —From that point on, one has to try to put one’s faith in one’s own power.
—All right, let’s stop the self-deception. Such a vice is impermissible in any teacher.
—Vice?
—That’s for writers. Saying you want to become a writer is no more than egotism; you want to distinguish between yourself and the puppets by making yourself a puppeteer.
What difference is there really between this and a woman’s using make-up?
—That’s severe. But if you use the term “writer” in such a sense, certainly you should be able to distinguish to a certain extent between being a writer and writing.
—Ah. You see! That’s the very reason I wanted to become a writer. If I couldn’t be a writer there would be no particular need to write!
“You behave like madmen. You’ve lost your senses. Even a monkey could shovel up the sand if it just had a little practice. I should be able to do a lot more than that. A man has the obligation to make full use of the abilities he has.”
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.
A mountain climber, a window cleaner on some skyscraper, an electrician atop a television tower, a trapeze artist in a circus, a chimney sweep on a factory smokestack—the instant of his destruction was the instant he looked down.
The slave holes were now situated in a line on the left of the road. Here and there were branching paths made by the basket crews, and beyond, threadbare sandbags buried in the sand told where the holes were. It pained him just to look at them. In some places no rope ladders were looped around the bags, but more places had them than not. Not a few of the slaves, he supposed, and already lost all will to escape.
He could easily understand how it was possible to live such a life. There were kitchens, there were stoves with fires burning in them, there were apple crates, in place of desks, piled full of books, there were kitchens, there were sunken hearths, there were lamps, there were stoves with fires burning in them, there were torn shoji, there were sooty ceilings, there were kitchens, there were clocks that were running and clocks that weren’t, there were blaring radios and broken radios, there were kitchens and stoves with fires in them… And in the midst of them all were scattered hundred-yen pieces, domestic animals, children, sex, promissory notes, adultery, incense burners, souvenir photos, and… It goes on, terrifyingly repetitive. One could not do without repetition in life, like the beating of the heart, but it was also true that the beating of the heart was not all there was to life.
Still, he couldn’t understand. He did not understand at all the reason why the woman had to be so attached to that River of Hades… Love of Home and obligation have meaning only if one stands to lose something by throwing them away. What in the world did she have to lose?
The pursuer, they often say, tires more quickly than the pursued.
“Help!”
The stock expression! Well, let it be a stock expression. What was the use of individuality when one was on the point of death? He wanted to go on living under any circumstances, even if his life had no more individuality than a pea in a pod. Soon he would be up to his chest, to his chin, to his nose… Stop! This was enough!
“Help! Please! I’ll promise anything! Please! Help! Please!”
—One out of every hundred, after all…
—What did you say?
—I am telling you that in Japan schizophrenia occurs at the rate of one out of every hundred persons.
—What in the name of…
—Kleptomania also seems to occur in about one out of every hundred.
—What in the name of heaven are you talking about?
—If there is one per cent of homosexuality among men, then naturally there must also be about one per cent of lesbianism among women. Incendiaries account for one per cent; those who tend to be vicious drinkers, for one per cent; mentally retarded, one per cent; sexual maniacs, one per cent; megalomaniacs, one per cent; habitual swindlers, one per cent; frigid women, one per cent; terrorists, one per cent; paranoiacs, one per cent…
—I wish you’d stop talking nonsense.
—Well, listen to me calmly. Acrophobes, heroin addicts, hysterics, homicidal maniacs, syphilitics, morons—suppose there were one per cent of each of these, the total would be twenty per cent. If you could enumerate eighty more abnormalities at this rate—and of course you could—there would be statistical proof that humanity is a hundred per cent abnormal.
The fish you don’t catch is always the biggest.
The fact that he was still just as much at the bottom of the hole as ever had not changed, but he felt quite as if he had climbed to the top of a high tower. Perhaps the world had been turned upside down and its projections and depressions reversed. Anyway, he had discovered water in this sand. As long as he had his device the villagers would not be able to interfere with him so easily. No matter how much they cut off his supply, he would be able to get along very well. Again laughter welled up in him at the very thought of the outcry the villagers would make. He was still in the hole, but it seemed as if he were already outside.
There was no particular need to hurry about escaping. On the two-way ticket he held in his hand now, the destination and time of departure were blanks for him to fill in as he wished. In addition, he realized that he was bursting with a desire to talk to someone about the water trap. And if he wanted to talk about it, there wouldn’t be better listeners than the villagers. He would end by telling someone—if not today, then tomorrow.
He might as well put off his escape until sometime after that.