Exit West(38)

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SAEED AND NADIA WERE LOYAL, and whatever name they gave their bond they each in their own way believed it required them to protect the other, and so neither talked much of drifting apart, not wanting to inflict a fear of abandonment, while also themselves quietly feeling that fear, the fear of the severing of their tie, the end of the world they had built together, a world of shared experiences in which no one else would share, and a shared intimate language that was unique to them, and a sense that what they might break was special and likely irreplaceable. But while fear was part of what kept them together for those first few months in Marin, more powerful than fear was the desire that each see the other find firmer footing before they let go, and thus in the end their relationship did in some senses come to resemble that of siblings, in that friendship was its strongest element, and unlike many passions, theirs managed to cool slowly, without curdling into its reverse, anger, except intermittently. Of this, in later years, both were glad, and both would also wonder if this meant that they had made a mistake, that if they had but waited and watched their relationship would have flowered again, and so their memories took on potential, which is of course how our greatest nostalgias are born.

Jealousy did rear itself in their shanty from time to time, and the couple that was uncoupling did argue, but mostly they granted each other more space, a process that had been ongoing for quite a while, and if there was sorrow and alarm in this, there was relief too, and the relief was stronger.

There was also closeness, for the end of a couple is like a death, and the notion of death, of temporariness, can remind us of the value of things, which it did for Saeed and Nadia, and so even though they spoke less and did less together, they saw each other more, although not more often.

One night one of the tiny drones that kept a watch on their district, part of a swarm, and not larger than a hummingbird, crashed into the transparent plastic flap that served as both door and window of their shanty, and Saeed gathered its motionless iridescent body and showed it to Nadia, and she smiled and said they ought to give it a burial, and they dug a small hole right there, in the hilly soil where it had fallen, using a spade, and then covered this grave again, pressed it flat, and Nadia asked if Saeed was planning on offering a prayer for the departed automaton, and he laughed and said maybe he would.

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SOMETIMES THEY LIKED to sit outside their shanty in the open air, where they could hear all the sounds of the new settlement, sounds like a festival, music and voices and a motorcycle and the wind, and they wondered what Marin had been like before. People said it had been beautiful, but in a different way, and empty.

The winter that year was a season that had splashes of autumn and spring mixed up in it, even an occasional day of summer. Once as they sat it was so warm that they did not need sweaters, and they watched as the sunlight poured down in angled bursts through gaps in the bright, roiling clouds, and lit up bits of San Francisco and Oakland and the otherwise dark waters of the bay.

“What’s that?” Nadia asked Saeed, pointing to a flat and geometric shape.

“They call it Treasure Island,” Saeed said.

She smiled. “What an interesting name.”

“Yes.”

“The one behind it should be called Treasure Island. It’s more mysterious.”

Saeed nodded. “And that bridge, Treasure Bridge.”

Someone was cooking over an open fire nearby, beyond the next ridge of shanties. They could see a thin trail of smoke and smell something. Not meat. Sweet potatoes maybe. Or maybe plantains.

Saeed hesitated, then took Nadia’s hand, his palm covering her knuckles. She curved her fingers, furling the tips of his around hers. She thought she felt his pulse. They sat like that for a long while.

“I’m hungry,” she said.

“So am I.”

She almost kissed him on his prickly cheek. “Well, somewhere down there is everything in the world anyone could want to eat.”

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NOT FAR TO THE SOUTH, in the town of Palo Alto, lived an old woman who had lived in the same house her entire life. Her parents had brought her to this house when she was born, and her mother had passed on there when she was a teenager, and her father when she was in her twenties, and her husband had joined her there, and her two children had grown up in this house, and she had lived alone with them when she divorced, and later with her second husband, their stepfather, and her children had moved off to college and not returned, and her second husband had died two years ago, and throughout this time she had never moved, traveled, yes, but never moved, and yet it seemed the world had moved, and she barely recognized the town that existed outside her property.

The old woman had become a rich woman on paper, the house now worth a fortune, and her children were always pestering her to sell it, saying she didn’t need all that space. But she told them to be patient, it would be theirs when she died, which wouldn’t be long now, and she said this kindly, to sharpen the bite of it, and to remind them how much they were motivated by money, money they spent without having, which she had never done, always saving for a rainy day, even if only a little.

One of her granddaughters went to the great university nearby, a university that had gone from being a local secret to among the world’s most famous in the space of the old woman’s lifetime. This granddaughter came to see her, often as much as once a week. She was the only one of the old woman’s descendants who did this, and the old woman adored her, and also sometimes felt baffled by her: looking at her granddaughter she thought she saw what she would have looked like had she been born in China, for the granddaughter had features of the old woman, and yet looked to the old woman, overall, more or less, but mostly more, Chinese.