Paradise and Elsewhere Read Online Free

she shouted after her second drink, and her face cracked into a smile, which we, standing there returned: it is always good to see someone get her relief, whatever it may be. She made to get to her feet, sank down again and plunged her hands into the bucket, splashing the cool liquid over her arms and chest. The faded brown cloth she wore stuck to her flesh, making her seem even thinner than she was, but at the same time her eyes, scoured almost shut by the gritty desert wind, opened a fraction more and we could see that they were green.
    We carried her to the pool. She sat for a long time on the side with just her feet in the water, weeping. Then she slipped in by inches. We watched, bewildered and moved: none of us had ever been so dry, so desperate, so alone.
    How did she come to be there? Some guessed that she must be some kind of outcast: why else would a person, a bag of water, thinly skinned, wander in an endless burning waste? No one would choose it. Somewhere, to the West, since that was the way she had come, she must have done something terrible enough to be sent away from her people, whoever they were. Had we ourselves not considered exile as a punishment for the murder, but dismissed it as too cruel? But perhaps, others argued, she had simply set out on a journey, as other peoples evidently did, and somehow been left behind by her companions. Did she know we were here? Had she or they even sought us out? How could we know?
    It seemed to me that it was as important to be just, as to be careful. How would we ever know the traveller’s story, let alone whether or not she was telling the truth? And what would we do with her, seeing as it was surely not possible to throw her back where she came from, unless some kind of guilt could be established?
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    W hatever our speculations, the traveller certainly did not seem like any kind of threat. In a day or so the sore eyes widened further and brightened, the broken blood vessels healed. Her breath came more regularly. But health was exhausting and every half hour she would curl up and fall asleep. So there was no great urgency to our discussions and we soon grew to enjoy her delight in the abundance that was ordinary for us. We competed for turns at giving her drinks from our most beautiful bowls, and in flavouring the water with fruits and essences. We showered her with clothes and jewellery, and waited to see which she would wear. We studied her to know how to behave for the best, when for example, to leave her in peace, as she seemed easily worn with company and embarrassed by nakedness.
    Our suspicions melted. We felt the tug of something like love for the traveller, who had come so far to reach us, was like us, yet was not. We noticed, for instance, how firmly she knew what she wanted and was impossible to persuade, utterly immune to temptation or distraction. For many days she refused all solid food, taking only paps and gruels and that very slowly—so that we took to inventing new recipes with watered milk and pulverized grains and fruit. Just as we had accustomed ourselves to producing these and learned which ones she liked, the traveller began to ask instead for a share of what was on our plates. At this point we understood that she was truly recovered, and opinions began to divide again.
    I said that she must be taught our language. Then she could tell us why she was here, and we could decide whether she would stay or not, and if so she would have to be told our methods of cultivation and given a home and responsibilities. Others agreed that she should learn how to speak to us, but only so that we could find out where she had come from and send her back to it; there were limits to hospitality. However well-taught and well-loved she was, these people said, she would always feel slightly apart from us who had always been here. That could make her secretly vengeful, excessively ambitious, or craving of recognition, therefore dangerous.
    The truth would take