for four days the sun scorches the fields, dries the well, and marks the trees with great strokes of copper. The water that filtered through the earth turns first to sludge, then to clods of black sand. When there is nothing left to drink, the two brothers break their daily routine to suck on the roots that poke out from the walls until their mouths taste of coal.

“I’m not well,” Small says.

“It will rain.”

They know this land well, the motions of the sky under which they’ve grown up, the cloud cycles. They know that a ferocious sun this month heralds an imminent downpour. It will rain because it always rains when their skin starts to peel, and because the land seems to be governed by a mechanism of suffering that works against every one of nature’s decrees. As such, the people here are tough in skin and character, and they meet the exigencies of the land with unbending patience, without demands or complaint. This, however, presupposes a rupture in their emotional communication, in their shows of affection and in the human contract of cohabitation. The brothers are living proof of it. They no longer look one another in the eyes or search for themselves in the other as they did in the early days. Displays of affection aren’t called for in a world dictated by the need to survive. Love is like a vow of silence, where cruelties befitting a reptile, a prehistoric crocodile, are meted out freely.

“Do you love me?” Small asks.

“It will rain.”