Forty Signs of Rain Read online

“Yeah.”

  “Unrelenting eh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But you are the man, you are the greatest Mr. Mom inside the Beltway!”

  Charlie laughed. “And all that competition.”

  Roy laughed too, pleased to be able to cheer Charlie up. “Well it’s an accomplishment anyway.”

  “That’s nice of you to say. Most people don’t notice. It’s just something weird that I do.”

  “Well that’s true too. But people don’t know what it entails.”

  “No they don’t. The only ones who know are real moms, but they don’t think I count.”

  “You’d think they’d be the ones who would.”

  “Well, in a way they’re right. There’s no reason me doing it should be anything special. It may just be me wanting some strokes. It’s turned out to be harder than I thought it would be. A real psychic shock.”

  “Because …”

  “Well, I was thirty-eight when Nick arrived, and I had been doing exactly what I wanted ever since I was eighteen. Twenty years of white male American freedom, just like what you have, young man, and then Nick arrived and suddenly I was at the command of a speechless mad tyrant. I mean, think about it. Tonight you can go wherever you want to, go out and have some fun, right?”

  “That’s right, I’m going to go to a party for some new folks at Brookings, supposed to be wild.”

  “All right, don’t rub it in. Because I’m going to be in the same room I’ve been in every night for the past seven years, more or less.”

  “So by now you’re used to it, right?”

  “Well, yes. That’s true. It was harder with Nick, when I could remember what freedom was.”

  “You have morphed into momhood.”

  “Yeah. But morphing hurts, baby, just like in X-Men. I remember the first Mother’s Day after Nick was born, I was most deep into the shock of it, and Anna had to be away that day, maybe to visit her mom, I can’t remember, and I was trying to get Nick to take a bottle and he was refusing it as usual. And I suddenly realized I would never be free again for the whole rest of my life, but that as a non-mom I was never going to get a day to honor my efforts, because Father’s Day is not what this stuff is about, and Nick was whipping his head around even though he was in desperate need of a bottle, and I freaked out, Roy. I freaked out and threw that bottle down.”

  “You threw it?”

  “Yeah I slung it down and it hit at the wrong angle or something and just exploded. The baggie broke and the milk shot up and sprayed all over the room. I couldn’t believe one bottle could hold that much. Even now when I’m cleaning the living room I come across little white dots of dried milk here and there, like on the mantelpiece or the windowsill. Another little reminder of my Mother’s Day freak-out.”

  “Ha. The morph moment. Well Charlie you are indeed a pathetic specimen of American manhood, yearning for your own Mother’s Day card, but just hang in there—only seventeen more years and you’ll be free again!”

  “Oh fuckyouverymuch! By then I won’t want to be.”

  “Even now you don’t wanna be. You love it, you know you do. But listen I gotta go Phil’s here bye.”

  “Bye.”

  AFTER TALKING with Charlie, Anna got absorbed in work in her usual manner, and might well have forgotten her lunch date with the people from Khembalung; but because this was a perpetual problem of hers, she had set her watch alarm for one o’clock, and when it beeped she saved and went downstairs. She could see through the front window that the new embassy’s staff was still unpacking, releasing visible clouds of dust or incense smoke into the air. The young monk she had spoken to and his most elderly companion sat on the floor inspecting a box containing necklaces and the like.

  They noticed her and looked up curiously, then the younger one nodded, remembering her from the morning conversation after their ceremony.

  “Still interested in some pizza?” Anna asked. “If pizza is okay?”

  “Oh yes,” the young one said. The two men got to their feet, the old man in several distinct moves; one leg was stiff. “We love pizza.” The old man nodded politely, glancing at his young assistant, who said something to him rapidly, in a language that while not guttural did seem mostly to be generated at the back of the mouth.

  As they crossed the atrium to Pizzeria Uno Anna said uncertainly, “Do you eat pizza where you come from?”

  The younger man smiled. “No. But in Nepal I have eaten pizza in teahouses.”

  “Are you vegetarian?”

  “No. Tibetan Buddhism has never been vegetarian. There were not enough vegetables.”

  “So you are Tibetans! But I thought you said you were an island nation?”

  “We are. But originally we came from Tibet. The old ones, like Rudra Cakrin here, left when the Chinese took over. The rest of us were born in India, or on Khembalung itself.”

  “I see.”

  They entered the restaurant, where big booths were walled by high wooden partitions. The three of them sat in one, Anna across from the two men.

  “I am Drepung,” the young man said, “and the rimpoche here, our ambassador to America, is Gyatso Sonam Rudra Cakrin.”

  “I’m Anna Quibler,” Anna said, and shook hands with each of them. The men’s hands were heavily callused.

  Their waitress appeared. She did not appear to notice the unusual garb of the men, but took their orders with sublime indifference. After a quick muttered consultation, Drepung asked Anna for suggestions, and in the end they ordered a combination pizza with everything on it.

  Anna sipped her water. “Tell me more about Khembalung, and about your new embassy.”

  Drepung nodded. “I wish Rudra Cakrin himself could tell you, but he is still taking his English lessons, I’m afraid. Apparently they are going very badly. In any case, you know that China invaded Tibet in 1950, and that the Dalai Lama escaped to India in 1959?”

  “Yes, that sounds familiar.”

  “Yes. And during those years, and ever since then too, many Tibetans have moved to India to get away from the Chinese, and closer to the Dalai Lama. India took us in very hospitably, but when the Chinese and Indian governments had their disagreement over their border in 1960, the situation became very awkward for India. They were already in a bad way with Pakistan, and a serious controversy with China would have been …” He searched for the word, waggling a hand.

  “Too much?” Anna suggested.

  “Yes. Much too much. So, the support India had been giving to the Tibetans in exile—”

  Rudra Cakrin made a little hiss.

  “Small to begin with, although very helpful nevertheless,” Drepung added, “shrank even further. It was requested that the Tibetan community in Dharamsala make itself as small and inconspicuous as possible. The Dalai Lama and his government did their best, and many Tibetans were relocated to other places in India, mostly in the far south. But elsewhere as well. Then some more years passed, and there were some, how shall I say, arguments or splits within the Tibetan exile community, too complicated to go into, I assure you. I can hardly understand them myself. But in the end a group called the Yellow Hat School took the offer of this island of ours, and moved there. This was just before the India-Pakistan war of 1970, unfortunately, so the timing was bad, and everything was on the hush-hush for a time. But the island was ours from that point, as a kind of protectorate of India, like Sikkim, only not so formally arranged.”

  “Is Khembalung the island’s original name?”

  “No. I do not think it had a name before. Most of our sect lived at one time or another in the valley of Khembalung. So that name was kept, and we have shifted away from the Dalai Lama’s government in Dharamsala, to a certain extent.”

  At the sound of the words “Dalai Lama” the old monk made a face and said something in Tibetan.

  “The Dalai Lama is still number one with us,” Drepung clarified. “It is a matter of some religious controversies with his associates. A matter of how best
to support him.”

  Anna said, “I thought the mouth of the Ganges was in Bangladesh?”

  “Much of it is. But you must know that it is a very big delta, and the west side of it is in India. Part of Bengal. Many islands. The Sundarbans? You have not heard?”

  Their pizza arrived, and Drepung began talking between big bites. “Lightly populated islands, the Sundarbans. Some of them anyway. Ours was uninhabited.”

  “Did you say uninhabitable?”

  “No no. Inhabitable, obviously.”

  Another noise from Rudra Cakrin.

  “People with lots of choices might say they were uninhabitable,” Drepung went on. “And they may yet become so. They are best for tigers. But we have done well there. We have become like tigers. Over the years we have built a nice town. A little seaside potala for Gyatso Rudra and the other lamas. Schools, houses—hospital. All that. And sea walls. The whole island has been ringed by dikes. Lots of work. Hard labor.” He nodded as if personally acquainted with this work. “Dutch advisors helped us. Very nice. Our home, you know? Khembalung has moved from age to age. But now …” He waggled a hand again, took another slice of pizza, bit into it.

  “Global warming?” Anna ventured.

  He nodded, swallowed. “Our Dutch friends suggested that we establish an embassy here, to join their campaign to influence American policy in these matters.”

  Anna quickly bit into her pizza so that she would not reveal the thought that had struck her, that the Dutch must be desperate indeed if they had been reduced to help like this. She thought things over as she chewed. “So here you are,” she said. “Have you been to America before?”

  Drepung shook his head. “None of us have.”

  “It must be pretty overwhelming.”

  He frowned at this word. “I have been to Calcutta.”

  “Oh I see.”

  “This is very different, of course.”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  She liked him: his musical Indian English, his round face and big liquid eyes, his ready smile. The two men made quite a contrast: Drepung young and tall, round-faced, with a kind of baby-fat look; Rudra Cakrin old, small and wizened, his face lined with a million wrinkles, his cheekbones and narrow jaw prominent in an angular, nearly fleshless face.

  The wrinkles were laugh lines, however, combined with the lines of a wide-eyed expression of surprise that bunched up his forehead. Despite his noises and muttering under Drepung’s account, he still seemed cheerful enough. He certainly attacked his pizza with the same enthusiasm as his young assistant. With their shaved heads they shared a certain family resemblance.

  She said, “I suppose going from Tibet to a tropical island must have been a bigger shock than coming from the island to here.”

  “I suppose. I was born in Khembalung myself, so I don’t know for sure. But the old ones like Rudra here, who made that very move, seem to have adjusted quite well. Just to have any kind of home is a blessing, I think you will find.”

  Anna nodded. The two of them did project a certain calm. They sat in the booth as if there was no hurry to go anywhere else. Anna couldn’t imagine any such state of mind. She was always in a tearing hurry. She tried to match their air of being at ease. At ease in Arlington, Virginia, after a lifetime on an island in the Ganges. Well, the climate would be familiar. But everything else had to have changed quite stupendously.

  And, on closer examination, there was a certain guardedness to them. Drepung glanced surreptitiously at their waitress; he looked at the pedestrians passing by; he watched Anna herself, all with a slightly cautious look, reminding her of the pained expression she had seen earlier in the day.

  “How is it that you came to rent a space in this particular building?”

  Drepung paused and considered this question for a suprisingly long time. Rudra Cakrin asked him something and he replied, and Rudra said something more.

  “We had some advice there also,” Drepung said. “The Pew Center on Global Climate Change has been helping us, and their office is located on Wilson Boulevard, nearby.”

  “I didn’t know that. They’ve helped you to meet people?”

  “Yes, with the Dutch, and with some island nations, like Fiji and Tuvalu.”

  “Tuvalu?”

  “A very small country in the Pacific. They have perhaps been less than helpful to the cause, telling people that sea level has risen in their area of the Pacific but not elsewhere, and asking for financial compensation for this from Australia and other countries.”

  “In their area of the Pacific only?”

  “Measurements have not confirmed the claim.” Drepung smiled. “But I can assure you, if you are on a storm track and spring tides are upon you, it can seem like sea level has risen quite a great deal.”

  “I’m sure.”

  Anna thought it over while she ate. It was good to know that they hadn’t just rented the first office they found vacant. Nevertheless, their effort in Washington looked to her to be underpowered at this point. “You should meet my husband,” she said. “He works for a senator, one who is up on all these things, a very helpful guy, the chair of the Foreign Relations Committee.”

  “Ah—Senator Chase?”

  “Yes. You know about him?”

  “He has visited Khembalung.”

  “Has he? Well, I’m not surprised, he’s been every—He’s been a lot of places. Anyway, my husband Charlie works for him as an environmental policy advisor. It would be good for you to talk to Charlie and get his perspective on your situation. He’ll be full of suggestions for things you could do.”

  “That would be an honor.”

  “I don’t know if I’d go that far. But useful.”

  “Useful, yes. Perhaps we could have you to dinner at our residence.”

  “Thank you, that would be nice. But we have two small boys and we’ve lost all our baby-sitters, so to tell the truth it would be easier if you and some of your colleagues came to our place. In fact I’ve already talked to Charlie about this, and he’s looking forward to meeting you. We live in Bethesda, just across the border from the District. It’s not far.”

  “Red Line.”

  “Yes, very good. Red Line, Bethesda stop. I can give you directions from there.”

  She got out her calendar, checked the coming weeks. Very full, as always. “How about a week from Friday? On a Friday we’ll be able to relax a little.”

  “Thank you,” Drepung said, ducking his head. He and Rudra Cakrin had an exchange in Tibetan. “That would be very kind. And on the full moon too.”

  “Is it? I’m afraid I don’t keep track.”

  “We do. The tides, you see.”

  Water flows through the oceans in steady recycling patterns, determined by the Coriolis force and the particular positions of the continents in our time. Surface currents can move in the opposite direction to bottom currents below them, and often do, forming systems like giant conveyor belts of water. The largest one is already famous, at least in part: the Gulf Stream is a segment of a warm surface current that flows north up the entire length of the Atlantic, all the way to Norway and Greenland. There the water cools and sinks, and begins a long journey south on the Atlantic Ocean floor, to the Cape of Good Hope and then east toward Australia, and even into the Pacific, where the water upwells and rejoins the surface flow, west to the Atlantic for the long haul north again. The round trip for any given water molecule takes about a thousand years.

  Cooling salty water sinks more easily than cooling fresh water. Trade winds sweep clouds generated in the Gulf of Mexico west over Central America to dump their rain in the Pacific, leaving the remaining water in the Atlantic that much saltier. So the cooling water in the North Atlantic sinks well, aiding the power of the Gulf Stream. If the surface of the North Atlantic were to become rapidly fresher, it would not sink so well when it cooled, and that could stall the conveyor belt. The Gulf Stream would have nowhere to go, and would slow down, and sink farther south. Weather everywh
ere would change, becoming windier and drier in the Northern Hemisphere, and colder in places, especially in Europe.

  The sudden desalination of the North Atlantic might seem an unlikely occurrence, but it has happened before. At the end of the last Ice Age, for instance, vast shallow lakes were created by the melting of the polar ice cap. Eventually these lakes broke through their ice dams and poured off into the oceans. The Canadian shield still sports the scars from three or four of these cataclysmic floods; one flowed down the Mississippi, one the Hudson, one the St. Lawrence.

  These flows apparently stalled the world ocean conveyor belt current, and the climate of the whole world changed as a result, sometimes in as little as three years.

  Now, would the Arctic sea ice, breaking into bergs and flowing south past Greenland, dump enough fresh water into the North Atlantic to stall the Gulf Stream again?

  FRANK VANDERWAL kept track of climate news as a sort of morbid hobby. His friend Kenzo Hayakawa, an old climbing partner and grad school housemate, had spent time at NOAA before coming to NSF to work with the weather crowd on the ninth floor, and so Frank occasionally checked in with him to say hi and find out the latest. Things were getting wild out there; extreme weather events were touching down all over the world, the violent, short-term ones almost daily, the chronic problem situations piling one on the next, so that never were they entirely clear of one or another of them. The Hyperniño, severe drought in India and Peru, perpetual lightning fires in Malaysia; then on the daily scale, a typhoon destroying most of Mindanao, a snap freeze killing crops and breaking pipes all over Texas, and so on. Something every day.

  Like a lot of climatologists and other weather people Frank had met, Kenzo presented all this news with a faintly proprietary air, as if he were curating the weather. He liked the wild stuff, and enjoyed sharing news of it, especially if it seemed to support his contention that the heat added anthropogenically to the atmosphere had been enough to change the Indian Ocean monsoon patterns for good, triggering global repercussions; this meant, in practice, almost everything that happened. This week for instance it was tornadoes, previously confined almost entirely to North America, as a kind of freak of that continent’s topography and latitude, but now appearing in East Africa and in Central Asia. Last week it had been the weakening of the Great World Ocean Current in the Indian Ocean rather than the Atlantic.