Sofia Samatar - A Stranger in Olondria

“Welcome,” said Lunre, cracking his slim knuckles in the old manner but with an overattentive air, a suppressed agitation, and I knew that he was nervous and sought my approval, that for him this visit of mine was of the most profound importance. The brilliant green of his eyes was flecked with shadows of uncertainty, bits of flotsam dulling the flashing waters. And his gaze was no longer quiet and direct: it moved, glancing here and there, at the bare walls or the attenuate streaks of light.

“Ah, Niahet,” he said abruptly. His voice was unusually loud. She came in, pushing the curtain aside with her shoulder, holding a wooden tray. She was not beautiful, nor very young, though she was twenty years younger than he. She knelt before me with practiced grace.

“Hot date juice in the morning,” Lunre said, still in that strange loud voice, and switching into his accented Kideti. “I know it’s unusual, but I find it so—I like it so much.”

I kept my eyes lowered. My face was hot.

“Ah, thank you,” he said as the woman turned and knelt before him and he took his cup of date juice from the tray. I sat holding mine: its smell was heavy, dark, nostalgic, it reminded me of childhood fevers and sleep. The woman rose. I realized that I knew her, only by sight, as one knows almost everyone in Tyom: she was the daughter of small farmers, the pudgy one, the quiet one. Her brother worked as steward on a neighboring estate. She did not speak to me, of course, though Lunre gazed at her hopefully, and also, I noticed, with a mild affection. She went out with her back erect, planting her solid, bare feet on the floor, her heels glowing like yellow soapstone.

“A wonderful,” Lunre said. His voice was hoarse and would not rise. He cleared his throat. “A wonderful woman,” he said.

I sipped the sticky drink. My courage almost failed me; like Lunre, I did not know where to look. Here he was, married to an illiterate islander, having discovered a richness in the soil of Tyom. Once you have built something—something that takes all your passion and will—it becomes more precious to you than your own happiness . There was no way to begin, so I began clumsily.

“Thank you for lending me books for the journey,” I said. “But you might have suggested Leiya’s autobiography.”

He raised an eyebrow, maintaining his smile though his gaze was very still. “Ah?”

My laugh clattered. “A joke. Of course you wouldn’t have sent it with me. You knew it was banned, like her other books. The Handbook of Mercies , for example. I had a chance to read that one, while I was away.”

He set his cup down on the tray and sat with his head bowed, frowning at it. When he raised his eyes, the pain in them went straight into my heart.

“I gathered from Sten that something had happened to you,” he said quietly. “Something I may not have prepared you for. I am very sorry.”

“Don’t,” I said. “I didn’t mean—I didn’t want to complain. I just didn’t know how to say—I met someone. She gave me something for you.” I clawed at the satchel, tore it open, and pulled out the two pink packages tied with string. “She gave me these. She asked me to bring them.”

Lunre looked at the packages. He blinked at them. He touched them. For a moment he seemed not to understand their significance. More than this: it appeared that he did not know what the letters were, what writing was, that he had forgotten how to read. Then, without warning, his breath caught and his face went pale to the lips. He grasped at the packages with feeble fingers. And as I stared, my heart pounding, I heard him groan: a low and terrible sound, ghastly and grating, a sound to chill the blood.

He groaned. He clutched his side as if I had stabbed him, crumpling so that his head lay on the mat beside the fatal letters. His cries desecrated the homely innocence of the little house, profaned the green tranquility of the hill. They were ugly, bestial, appalling, their anguish obliterating all kindness, all decency. His hair was against the letters, his hands covering his face. When I crawled to him and took his shoulders, he fought me. “No. You have done enough,” he shouted, thrashing in my arms.

“Hush. Hush,” I said. I did not release him until his first torment had passed. Then I lowered him gently to the earthen floor. The woman, Niahet, did not emerge; I imagined her pacing her humble kitchen in an agony of fear.

“Hush,” I said. He lay on the floor, still shaking, and I placed my hand between his shoulder blades in quiet authority. I willed him to endure the pain with a wisdom born of the desert, of the winter, of the evenings of the dead. Yet tears rolled down my cheeks, and my heart struggled. It seemed to me that I was a servant of death, that desolation followed wherever I passed. I remembered Tialon’s brave despair, the bodies burning in the Night Market, Olondria lying under the threat of war. I had drawn that line of destruction across the north, and now I had brought it home with me to Tyom, to Lunre’s house. A curse, I thought. A curse. And then I seemed to hear the angel’s voice. Stop, Jevick. It’s over now. It’s finished.

“I shall never be able to speak of it,” Lunre whispered.

“I know.” The glinting screens on the windows wavered; I blinked to clear my vision. “You do not need to speak of it. But you will read the letters.”

“I can’t. I can’t go back.”

“I know. But you will read.”

Then he sat up slowly like an old man and drew his knees in close. A superstitious terror in his face. He stared at the letters before him on the ground. “I never thought this would happen to me. It’s like looking at a noose…”

“No,” I said. “A door.”

“A door,” he repeated. New tears slipped from his lashes and down his cheeks, but I think he did not know that he was weeping. Where was he looking now with his bright eyes, devoid of color in the gloom, shot with a hard, abstract brilliance? Into his old world. Where in the days of triumph and certainty he had walked in a dark robe through the gleaming halls, carrying his writing box, and rain had fallen among the trees of the roof gardens, melting the light of the lamps. There he had walked with an angel at his side. And now he looked at me. “ Tchavi! ” he said. One word, half a whisper and half a cry. It carried wonder and an anguished plea. He took my hand, bent over it, pressed it to his brow. “ Tchavi. Tchavi .”

I imagine his departure from the palace. He’s in a room, one of those small clean rooms of the Tower of Myrrh, a pallet on the floor, a few gnarled, half-melted candles, the open windows showing the sleeping fields. The first birds have begun to sing, and the fields are blue with mist, but he still has a candle lighted, on a chair, and by its light he is carefully turning books over in his hands and then packing them in tall, scuffed leather bags. He has not yet acquired the legendary sea chest he will purchase in Bain, perhaps in the Chandler’s Market. The candlelight caresses his silver hair, then sinks and loses its way in the folds of his voluminous dark robe.

It is the same robe that filled with rain under the trees when the priest’s daughter watched him from a high window, and now he reaches behind him and clutches its fabric in two handfuls and pulls it smoothly off over his head. It lies on the pallet, crumpled like a skin. It smells of the earth, of the wild roots he used to make its dye, of the winter rain that fell while he wove its cloth, of the wicks of lamps, of the dusty curtains in the shrine of the Stone. He stands naked, his ribs lit by the flicker of candlelight, and looks outside at the fields where the shadows are deepening. Then he bends to untie the knot of the limp cloth traveling bag which has gathered dust in the corner for nine years.