The Year of Rice and Salt

But this time she read one called 'The Windy Ramadan', and it turned out to be about a time long before, in the age of sail, when contrary winds had held the grain fleet out of the harbour, so that they had had to anchor offshore in the roads as darkness fell, and then in the night the wind shifted around and a great storm came roaring in from the Atlantic, and there was no way for those out on the ships to get safely to shore, and nothing those on shore could do but walk the shore through the night. The author of the account had a wife who was taking care of three motherless children whose father was one of the sea captains out in the fleet, and, unable to watch the children at their nervous play, the author had gone out to walk the strand with the rest, braving the howling winds of the tempest. At dawn they had all seen the fringe of soaked grain lining the high water mark, and knew the worst had come. 'Not a single ship survived the gale, and all up and down the beach the bodies washed ashore. And as it had dawned a Friday, at the appointed hour the muezzin went to the minaret to ascend and make the call for prayer, and the town idiot in a rage detained him, crying 'Who in such an hour can praise the Lord?"'

Budur stopped reading. A deep silence filled the room. Some of the men nodded their heads, as if to say, Yes, that's the way it happens; I've had that very thought for years; still others reached out as if to snatch the book from her hands, or gestured as if waving her away, telling her to leave. If they had had their sight they would have walked her to the door, or done something; but as it was no one knew what to do.

She said something and got up and left, and walked downriver through the city, out onto the docks, then out on the big jetty, out to its end. The beautiful blue sea sloshed against the boulders, hissing its clean salt mist into the air. Budur sat on the last sun warmed rock and watched the clouds fly in over Nsara. She was as full of grief as the ocean was of water, but still, something in the sight of the noisy city was heartening to her; she thought, Nsara, now you are my only living relative. Now you will be my Aunt Nsara.

TWENTY

And now she had to get to know Piali.

He was a small, self absorbed man, dreamy and uncommunicative, seemingly full of himself. Budur had thought that his abilities in physics were compensated for by an exceptional lack of gracefulness.

But now she was impressed by the depth of his grief at Idelba's death. In life he had treated her, Budur often thought, as an embarrassing appurtenance, a needed but unwanted collaborator in his work. Now that she was gone, he sat on a jetty fishermen's bench where they had occasionally sat with Idelba when the weather was good, and sighed, saying, 'She was such a joy to talk things over with, wasn't she? Our Idelba was a truly brilliant physicist, let me tell you. If she had been born a man, there would have been no end to it she would have changed the world. Of course there were things she wasn't so good at, but she had such insight into the way things might work. And when we got stuck, Idelba would keep hammering away for ever at the problem, forehead pounding the brick wall, you know, and I would stop, but she was persistent, and so clever at finding new ways to come at the thing, turning the flank if the wall wouldn't give. Lovely. She was a most lovely person,' deadly serious now, and emphasizing 'person' rather than I woman', as if Idelba had taught him some things about what women might be that he was not so stupid as to have missed. Nor would he fall into the error of exceptionalism, no physicist tended to think of exceptions as a valid category; and so now he spoke to Budur almost as he would have to Idelba or his male colleagues, only more intently, concentrating to achieve some semblance of normal humanity, perhaps – and yet achieving it. Almost. He was still a very distracted and graceless man. But Budur began to like him better.