The Years of Rice and Salt

by Kim Stanley Robinson

  “In Iran too they don’t seem to care.” Kirana appeared to be trying to cheer him up. “They are making very great strides there, leading the way in all kinds of fields. Linguistics, archaeology, the physical sciences, they have all the leading people.”

  Naser nodded, looking inwards. Budur had gathered that his fortune had gone to fund many of these efforts, from an exile of some unexplained sort. Another complicated life.

  Another downpour struck. The weather seemed to enunciate their situation, wind and rain slapping the Cafe Sultana’s big windows and running across the plate glass wildly, pushed this way and that by gusts of wind. The old soldier watched his smoke rise, twined threads of brown and grey, ox bowing more and more as they rose. Piali had once described the dynamics of this lazy ascent, as he had the rain’s deltas down the windowpanes. Storm sunlight cast a silver sheen on the wet street. Budur felt happy. The world was beautiful. She was so hungry that the milk in her coffee was like a meal inside her. The storm’s light was a meal. She thought: now is beautiful. These old Persians are beautiful; their Persian accents are beautiful. Kirana’s rare serenity is beautiful. Throw away the past and the future. The old Persians’ Khayyarn had understood this, one reason among many that the mullahs had never liked him:

  Come fill the cup and in the blaze of spring

  The winter garment of repentance fling:

  The bird of time has but a little way

  To fly — and hey! The bird is on the wing!

  The others left, and Budur sat with Kirana, watching her write something down in her brown-backed notebook. She looked up, happy to see Budur watching her. She stopped for a cigarette, and they talked for a while, about Yingzhou and the Hodenosaunee. As usual, Kirana’s thoughts took interesting turns. She thought the very early stage of civilization that the Hodenosaunee had been in when discovered by the Old World was what had allowed them to survive, counterintuitive though that was. They had been canny hunter-gatherers, more intelligent as individuals than the people of more developed cultures, and much more flexible than the Inka, who were shackled by a very rigid theocracy. If it weren’t for their susceptibility to Old World diseases, the Hodenosaunee no doubt would have conquered the Old World already. Now they were making up for lost time.

  They talked about Nsara, the army and the clerics, the madressa and the monastery. Budur’s girlhood. Kirana’s time in Africa.

  When the cafe closed Budur went with her to Kirana’s zawiyya, which had a little study garret with a door that was often closed, and on a couch in there they lay on each other kissing, rolling from one embrace to the next, Kirana clasping her so hard that Budur thought her ribs might break; and they were tested again when her stomach clamped down on a violent orgasm.

  Afterwards Kirana held her with her usual sly smile, calmer than ever.

  “Your turn.”

  “I already came, I was rubbing myself on your shin.”

  “There are softer ways than that.”

  “No really, I’m fine. I’m already done for.” And Budur realized with a shock she could not keep out of her eyes that Kirana was not going to let her touch her.

  FIFTEEN

  After that Budur went to class feeling strange. In class and in the cafes afterwards, Kirana acted towards her just as she always had, a matter of propriety no doubt; but Budur found it off-putting, also sad. In the cafes she sat on the other side of the table from Kirana, not often meeting her eye. Kirana accepted this, and joined the flow of conversation on her side of the table, discoursing in her usual manner, which now struck Budur as a bit forced, even overbearing, although it was no more verbose than ever.

  Budur turned to Hasan, who was describing a trip to the Sugar Islands, between Yingzhou and Inka, where he planned to smoke opium every day and lie on white beaches or in the turquoise water off their shores, warm as a bath. “Wouldn’t that be grand?” Hasan asked.

  “In my next life,” Budur suggested.

  “Your next life.” Hasan snorted, bloodshot eye regarding her sardonically. “So pretty to think so.”

  “You never know,” Budur said.

  “Right. Maybe we should take a trip out to see Madam Sururi, and you can see who you were in your past lives. Talk to your loved ones in the bardo. Half the widows of Nsara are doing it, I’m sure it’s quite comforting. If you could believe it.” He gestured out through the plate glass, where people in black coats passed in the street, hunched under their umbrellas. “It’s silly though. Most people don’t even live the one life they’ve got.”

  One life. It was an idea Budur had trouble accepting, even though the sciences and everything else had made it clear that one life was all you had. As a girl her mother had said, Be good or you’ll come back as a snail. At funerals they said a prayer for the next existence of the deceased, asking Allah to give him or her a chance to improve. Now all that was dismissed, with all the rest of the afterlives, heaven and hell, God himself — all that claptrap, all the superstitions of earlier generations in their immense ignorance, concocting myths to make sense of things. Now they lived in a material world, evolved to what it was by chance and the laws of physics; they struggled through one life and died; that was what the scientists had revealed by their studies, and there was nothing Budur had ever seen or experienced that seemed to indicate otherwise. No doubt it was true. That was reality; they had to adjust to it, or live in a delusion. Adjust each to his or her own cosmic solitude, to nakba, to hunger and worry, coffee and opium, the knowledge of an end.

  “Did I hear you say we should visit Madam Sururi?” Kirana asked from across the table. “A good idea! Let’s do it. It would be like a historical field trip for the class — like visiting a place where people still live as they did for hundreds of years.”

  “From all I’ve heard she’s an entertaining old charlatan.”

  “A friend of mine visited her and said it was great fun.”

  They had spent too many hours sitting there, looking at the same ashtrays and coffee rings on the tabletops, the same rain deltas on the windows. So they gathered up their coats and umbrellas, and took the number four tram upriver to a meagre neighbourhood of apartments abutting the older shipyards, the buildings displaying small Maghribi shops at each corner. Between a seamstress’s workshop and a laundry hid a little walk-up to rooms over the shops below. The door opened to their knock, and they were invited in to an entryway, and then, farther in, to a dark room filled with couches and small tables, obviously the converted living room of a fairly large old apartment.

  Eight or ten women and three old men were sitting on chairs, facing a black-haired woman who was younger than Budur had expected but not all that young, a woman who wore Zotti clothing, heavy kohl and lipstick, and a great deal of cheap glass jewellery. She had been speaking to her devotees in a low intent voice, and now she paused, and gestured to empty chairs at the back of the room without saying anything to the new arrivals.

  “Each time the soul descends into a body,” she resumed when they were seated, “it is like a divine soldier, entering into the battlefield of life and fighting ignorance and evil-doing. It tries to reveal its own inner divinity and establish the divine truth on Earth, according to its capacity. Then at the end of its journey in that incarnation, it returns to its own region of the bardo. I can talk to that region when conditions are right.”

  “How long will a soul spend there before coming back again?” one of the women in her audience asked.

  “This varies depending on conditions,” Madam Sururi replied. “There is no single process for the evolution of higher souls. Some began from the mineral and some from the animal kingdom. Sometimes it starts from the other end, and cosmic gods take on human form directly.” She nodded as if personally familiar with this phenomenon. “There are many different ways.”

  “So it’s true that we may have been animals in a previous incarnation?”

  “Yes, it is possible. In the evolution of our souls we have been all things, including ro
cks and plants. It is not possible to change too much between any two incarnations, of course. But over many incarnations, great changes can be made. The Lord Buddha revealed that he had been a goat in a previous life, for instance. But because he had realized God, this was not important.”

  Kirana stifled a little snort, shifted on her chair to cover it.

  Madam Sururi ignored her: “It was easy for him to see what he had been in the past. Some of us are given that kind of vision. But he knew that the past was not important. Our goal is not behind us, it is ahead of us. To a spiritual person I always say, the past is dust. I say this because the past has not given us what we want. What we want is God-realization, and contact with our loved ones, and that depends entirely on our inner cry. We must say, ‘I have no past. I am beginning here and now, with God’s grace and my own aspiration.’ ”

  There was not much to object to in that, Budur thought; it cut strangely to the heart, given the source; but she could feel scepticism emanating from Kirana like heat, indeed the room seemed to be warming with it, as if a qi-burning heater had been placed on the floor and turned on high. Perhaps it was a function of Budur’s embarrassment. She reached over and squeezed Kirana’s hand. It seemed to her that the seer was more interesting than Kirana’s fidgets were allowing.

  An elderly widow, still wearing one of the pins given to them in the middle decades of the war, said, “When a soul picks a new body to enter, does it already know what kind of life it will have?”

  “It can only see possibilities. God knows everything, but He covers up the future. Even God does not use his ultimate vision all the time. Otherwise, there would be no game.”

  Kirana’s mouth opened round as a zero, almost as if she were going to speak, and Budur elbowed her.

  “Does the soul lose the details of its previous experiences, or does it remember?”

  “The soul doesn’t need to remember those things. It would be like remembering what you ate today, or what a disciple’s cooking was like. If I know that the disciple was very kind to me, that she brought me food, then that is enough. I don’t need to know the details of the meals. Just the impression of the service. This is what the soul remembers.”

  “Sometimes, my — my friend and I meditate by looking into each other’s eyes, and when we do, sometimes we see each other’s faces change. Even our hair changes colour. I was wondering what this means.”

  “It means you are seeing past incarnations. But this is not at all advisable. Suppose you see that three or four incarnations ago you were a fierce tiger? What good would this do you? The past is dust, I tell you.”

  “Did any of your disciples — did any of us know each other in our past incarnations?”

  “Yes. We travel in groups, we keep running into each other. There are two disciples here, for instance, who are close friends in this incarnation. When I was meditating on them, I saw that they were physical sisters in their previous incarnation, and very close to each other. And in the incarnation before that, they were mother and son. This is how it happens. Nothing can eclipse my third eye’s vision. When you have established a true spiritual bond, then that feeling can never truly disappear.”

  “Can you tell us — can you tell us who we were before? Or who among us had this bond?”

  “Outwardly I have not personally told these two, but those who are my real disciples I have told inwardly, and so they know it inside themselves already. My real disciples — those who I have taken as my very own, and who have taken me — they are going to be fulfilled and realized in this incarnation, or in their next incarnation, or in very few incarnations. Some disciples may take twenty incarnations or more, because of their very poor start. Some who have come to me in their first or second human incarnation may take hundreds of incarnations more to reach their goal. The first or second incarnation is still a half-animal incarnation, most of the time. The animal is still there as a predominating factor, so how can they achieve God-realization? Even in the Nsara Centre for Spiritual Development, right here among us, there are many disciples who have had only six or seven incarnations, and on the streets of the city I see Africans, or other people from across the sea, who are very clearly more animal than human. What can a guru do with such souls? With these people a guru can only do so much.”

  “Can you . . . can you put us in communication with souls who have passed over? Now? Is it time yet?”

  Madam Sururi returned her questioner’s gaze, level and calm. “They are speaking to you already, are they not? We cannot bring them forth in front of everyone tonight. The spirits do not like to be so exposed. And we have guests that they are not yet used to. And I am tired. You have seen how draining it is to speak aloud in this world the things they are saying in our minds. Let’s retire to the dining room now, and enjoy the offerings you have brought. We will eat knowing that our loved ones speak to us in our minds.”

  The visitors from the cafe decided by glance to leave while the others were retiring to the next room, before they began to commit the crime of taking others’ food without believing in their religion. They made small coin offerings to the seer, who accepted them with dignity, ignoring the tenor of Kirana’s look, staring back at Kirana without guilt or complicity.

  The next tram wasn’t due for another half watch, and so the group walked back through the industrial district and down the riverside, reenacting choice bits of the interview and staggering with laughter. Kirana for one could not stop laughing, howling it out over the river: ‘My third eye sees all! But I can’t tell you right now!’ What unbelievable crap!”

  “I’ve already told you what you want to know with my inner voice, now let’s eat!”

  “Some of my disciples were sisters in previous lives, sister goats in actual fact, but you can only ask so much of the past, ah, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

  “Oh be quiet,” Budur said sharply. “She’s only making a living.” To Kirana: “She tells people things and they pay her, how is that so different from what you do? She makes them feel better.”

  “Does she?”

  “She gives them something in exchange for food. She tells them what they want to hear. You tell people what they don’t want to hear for your food, is that any better?”

  “Why yes,” Kirana said, cackling again. “It’s a pretty damned good trick, now you put it that way. Here’s the deal!” she shouted over the river at the world. “I tell you want you don’t want to bear, you give me food!”

  Even Budur had to laugh.

  They walked across the last bridge arm in arm, laughing and talking, then into the city centre, trams squealing over tracks, people hurrying by. Budur looked at the passing faces curiously, remembering the worn visage of the fake guru, businesslike and hard. No doubt Kirana was right to laugh. All the old myths were just stories. The only reincarnation you got was the next day’s waking. No one else was you, not the you that existed a year before, not the you that might exist ten years from now, or even the next day. It was a matter of the moment, some unimaginable minim of time, always already gone. Memory was partial, a dim tawdry room in a run-down neighbourhood, illuminated by flashes of distant lightning. Once she had been a girl in a good merchant’s harem, but what did that matter now? Now she was a free woman in Nsara, crossing the city at night with a group of laughing intellectuals — that was all there was. It made her laugh too, a painful wild shout of a laugh, full of a joy akin to ferocity. That was what Kirana really gave in exchange for her food.

  SIXTEEN

  Three new women showed up in Budur’s zawiyya, quiet women who had arrived with typical stories, and mostly kept to themselves. They started work in the kitchen, as usual. Budur felt uncomfortable with the way they glanced at her, and did not look at each other. She still could not quite believe that young women like these would betray a young woman like her, and two of the three were actually very nice. She was stiffer with them than she would have wanted to be, without actually being hostile, which Idelba had warned might give away
her suspicions. It was a fine line in a game Budur was completely unused to playing or not completely — it reminded her of the various fronts she had put on for her father and mother, a very unpleasant memory. She wanted everything to be new now, she wanted to be herself straight up to everybody, chest to chest as the Iranians said. But it seemed life entailed putting on masks for much of the time. She must be casual in Kirana’s classes, and indifferent to Kirana in the cafes, even when they were leg to leg; and she must be civil to these spies.

  Meanwhile, across the plaza in the lab, Idelba and Piali were hard at work, staying late into the night almost every night; and Idelba became more and more serious about it, trying, Budur thought, to hide her worries behind an unconvincing dismissiveness. “Just physics,” she would say when asked. “Trying to work something out. You know how interesting theories can be, but they’re just theories. Not like real problems.” It seemed everyone put on a mask to the world, even Idelba, who was not good at it, even though she seemed to have a frequent need for masks. Budur could see very plainly now that she thought the stakes were somehow high.

  “Is it a bomb?” Budur asked once in a low voice, one night as they were closing up the emptied building.

  Idelba hesitated only a moment. “Possibly,” she whispered, looking around them. “The possibility is there. So, please — never speak of it again.”

  During these months Idelba worked such long hours, and, like everyone else in the zawiyya, ate so little that she fell sick, and had to rest in her bed. This was very frustrating to her, and along with the misery of illness, she struggled to get up before she was ready, and even tried to work on papers in her bed, pencil and logarithmic abacus scritching and clacking all the time she was awake.

  Then one day she got a phone call while Budur was there, and she dragged herself down the hall to take it, clutching her night robe to her. When she came off the phone she hurried to the kitchen and asked Budur to join her in her room.