Sofia Samatar - A Stranger in Olondria

The knot will not untie. He snatches at it with icy fingers. Finally he severs the string with his teeth. It leaves the taste of ash in his mouth, and he reaches into the bag at last and pulls out the clothes, the white shirt, the tapered trousers. He is still thin as he was years ago and the clothes fit him well enough, but he does not fit them: his body is awkward. From the bottom of the cloth bag he removes, and puts on with clumsy movements, the rings and the earrings set with veined blue stones.

By the time he reaches the southern pier the hills will be blazing with light, and his earlobes, unaccustomed to the jewelry, will be sore. But now as he touches the earrings tentatively they do not feel painful, only heavy, with the dull weight of any stone. Soon he will not notice them at all, as when he stands in our courtyard and the sun of the islands fills them with liquid radiance, and the boy who converses with birds reminds him suddenly of their presence by reaching out for them and crying “ Katchimta ”: Blue.

And I, too, I changed my clothes. I put away my Bainish suit and slipped into my Kideti trousers and vest. A cloak against the rains, though it was still bright and hot outside when I went to the altar room and reached out for my jut . A shiver of dread went through me in the instant before I touched it, and I laughed because I had never cared for my jut , that little claw-footed shape with the jade handles. I had never cleaned it, never oiled it, never prayed over it. “Come,” I told it, smiling, and hefted it in one hand. It was heavier than I had expected, as if its insides were solid clay. When I turned I saw my mother in the doorway, and she gasped and put her hands over her mouth, her eyes filling.

“Don’t go,” she cried.

I held the jut close to my side, my cloak falling over it. “I’m glad you’re here. I was going to look for you before I went. I knew you’d miss my jut , if no one else did.”

She was not listening, could not hear me. “Don’t.” She rubbed my shoulder, tears bright on her cheeks.

“I’ll come back,” I said. “Soon. In a fortnight, perhaps. I’ll always go, but I’ll always come back.”

“I shouldn’t have let you go.” She gripped my collar, her eyes fierce. “I know something happened to you there. I’m not a fool. When Sten came—he said you were ill. What kind of illness? He wouldn’t tell me—he didn’t know, he said…”

I put my arm around her and kissed her hair.

“And now you’re going. With your jut . And I should be proud… It’s a blessing, a tchavi in the family…”

Her tears soaked into my vest. I waited, knowing that at last she would raise her head, push back her hair and try to smile. And when she did I smiled down at her and told her again that I would come back when I could, soon, perhaps before the long rains. And I walked out with my jut under my cloak. I crossed the farm, greeting the laborers who waved to me from the fields. This happy land, I thought, this happy land. I passed the row of storage rooms, secluded under calamander trees, their doors chained shut. I went on walking, far from the village, out to the cliffs where I used to go with Lunre, the briny rocks like spines under my sandals. My jut fell soundlessly, the sea too far for the splash to reach me. About me mountains hung like palaces of cloud.

Tchavi , they call me now. Not Ekawi, never Ekawi. They follow me through the village when I come down from the mountain. Children, precious as water after my months among the peaks. Breathless women begging me to come into their homes for a meal. Tchavi, Tchavi . A ragged procession follows me down the road, and people glance at one another and say: “He is going to his jut .” And others say: “He has no jut .” But no one knows for certain. I stride toward the yellow house, leaning on my staff. There, for a short time, I will stay. At home. I sit with my family, I walk, I read. I exchange the books I took into the mountains for new ones. I visit Lunre and Niahet his wife. I talk with many people, whole and hotun . And I remember Jissavet.

No, she will not come again.

I look for her on the evening paths the color of mist, at the corner of the house where moisture trickles. At this corner, behind the bushes where direct sunlight never falls, this corner of permanent shadows, mildew, decay. I breathe the dense nocturnal odor of jasmine, the smell of the rain-soaked wall. “ Autumn comes with a whisper, smelling of stone… ” But there is no autumn here, and there is no angel, no dark butterfly on the roof, no glancing and inexplicable light.

I walk under the dripping trees. Across the sky the blood of my heart is spread in the shape of her fine, receding footprints. Like doors of fire, opening and closing. While in the courtyards of Tyom the braziers are lit and the old men wheeze with laughter.

I lean on the fences, looking for her. A lamp is lit in a nearby house and a dark shape moves from the grass to the little pathway of broken bricks: a clay jar in her arms, she passes, one leg and then another leg. Her queenly back, the oblique light on her heel. I am ready to cry out; I make a movement and she turns. Her face is surprised in the dusk, no more than eight or nine years old. Of course, I recognize the house, it’s Pavit’s youngest daughter. I have always known those windows smothered in leaves.

Afternoons of Tyom. Drunk with the heat I stagger up from the hour of rest, my head throbbing, my mouth dry. I stumble into the courtyard, already vaguely looking for her in the water jar, the cup held to my lips, the heavy light on the stones. Flies buzz around me, rumors of her in the shadow of the wall. I narrow my eyes, gazing into the sunlight, and the heat and sweat on my lashes make me believe I see her incipient form, radiating luster among the hibiscus. But she does not come, she never arrives. She is always on the point of being, never crossing over again into life. When the storms roll in from the sea, I sit in the doorway of the hall while the rain unleashes its demons in the darkened courtyard.

And now, how glad I am that I did not burn this stack of books, this poor vestige of her, pathetic as a stray hair! For I am like those lovers who keep obscure and grotesque charms, a maize-cob gnawed by the loved one, a tick scratched from her ankle. Such is the angel’s anadnedet . I kneel at the table in the schoolroom, reading in the oily gleam of my lamp, for the light that enters from the garden is not enough, only the faded light that penetrates the curtain of rain. In the resonance of the downpour I review her passionate language. “There’s thunder, darkness, a cold fog everywhere.” The poverty of the words does not deprive them of significance: sometimes I think they are almost, almost enough… almost enough to call her up again, real, before me, with her flashing eyes, her sumptuous, unreachable skin. So the lover invents his own religion, praying over his treasure of discarded fingernails. The anadnedet has no more power than these—perhaps less. Yet I adore it; to touch its pages gives me joy. There, at the corner, a stain of ink shows where I started when she suddenly spoke to me in the midst of my hurried writing. Wonderful stain, peaked like a star. And all these creased and dirty pages, dry and porous in the light of my lamp. I bend down close: they smell of smoke as they speak to me of a watery temple, maps “curled at the edges,” “immense fruit bats.” Jissavet does not live within these words, she is not contained by them. What would she say of this rainstorm, had she lived? No, I will never know how she would respond to this crash of thunder, if she would start, laugh, or run outside into the garden. Still, I read. When the rain stops I can hear the sound of the pages turning, a sensuous sound like a woman turning in bed. A whisper beneath the dropping of water from the wet leaves of the garden hedge and the echoing clamor of the disturbed cockatoos.