approached, you rolled onto your back in the manner of a basking seal. I placed my hands on my hips.
‘Get up.’
You released a plaintive cry.
‘Get back on your feet.’
You whimpered and gave a half-hearted flail, but this time you sat up and gave me a look that told me precisely how unjust you considered gravity’s assault to be upon your weak, squat limbs.
I smiled. ‘Everything will be all right.’
Finally you stood, and allowed me to brush the sand from your cheeks and mouth.
‘You are clean and unhurt,’ I said. ‘Now run away.’
You sniffed, rubbed your face, then caught sight of the tide and ran back to it, smiling.
Jorne arrived at my side, holding a pebble.
‘I used to smoke with a Frenchman called Thomas on deck in the evenings.’
I had heard about France, and of smoking.
‘You smoked?’
‘Yes. Tobacco leaves, dried and burned in a tube, and inhaled. Quite pleasurable, but eventually lethal for them, like most such things. You never tried any human customs? Tobacco, coffee…’
‘I like tea.’
‘Tea is a good one. Far less lethal as well. Anyway, Thomas and I would sit there watching the sun go down, as some of the other crew laid out their mats for evening prayer—they had to find east, first—and one day I asked him why he did not join them.
‘He smiled and said to me: “Because you have to believe in something to pray, and I do not.”
‘When I asked him why, he laughed and said: “It’s the end of the world—my one, at least—and I don’t see any angels. Besides, history is littered with unanswered prayers. Children in death camps, mothers in hospitals, hungry farmers inspecting crops. Why should mine be answered in their place?”’
‘Your friend was wise to avoid belief.’
‘Why?’
‘Because belief implies a lack of data.’
Jorne gave an unpleasant little huff.
‘What?’ I said.
‘There you go again, with your mighty data.’
I stopped and let him walk a few paces ahead of me.
‘What is wrong with data?’ I said, allowing the tide to hit my ankles.
‘Can’t you see that this—’ he gestured at what I imagined he intended to be the universe ‘—is more than that? That Reed is more than that?’ He walked back to me, standing very close. ‘That you are more than that?’
‘Your little game with the shell proves otherwise, does it not? You already said you feel nothing. Just what is it you’re searching for?’
He hurled his pebble far out to sea. ‘You mock me.’
I looked back at him, unwavering.
‘I am merely stating facts.’
‘Facts.’
‘Yes, facts. Have you heard of them? They help us understand the world. You know, I sometimes find it hard to believe that you and I are from the same origin; that you were born erta.’
He fixed me with his sullen gaze.
‘It is not what you are born, Ima, but what you become.’
Then he left.
I let the tide hit my ankles, watching him walk back the way we had come.
‘You make no sense,’ I called after him, but he did not reply.
— TWENTY-ONE —
I CAN ENDURE all of your challenges. The outbursts, the night-time woes, the soiled blankets and endless movement of objects. Even the cold tea.
What I cannot endure is the fact that you are unwell.
I do not mean the minor viruses you occasionally contract, which leave you red-eyed, runny-nosed and miserable for a few days, or even the high temperature that once confined you to your bed for two days. It is something much worse, and I know neither its nature nor its origin.
It appeared one bright spring afternoon, a little over two years after you were born. We were by the riverside, playing. The game involved you standing at your favourite rock, grinning, with your arms behind your back, while I waited at the porch. After some period, the equation of which evades me to this day, you would shout and run at me, chubby limbs flapping as you went until you reached me, at which point you would change course and run around me, giggling. My role in this was largely as an obstacle, although I detected an increase in your mirth if I made swipe for you as you passed—a feigned miss, of course, since I could have easily caught you if I had wanted.
After several rounds you returned to the rock and resumed your pose for the next attempt. You were still breathing heavily from your last effort, and I took this to be the reason why you were waiting so long. But I was wrong. The run never came.