Two Forecasts
(A market garden outside Entebbe, six in the morning.)
Perpetua: We’re cutting the top field today.
Ottokar: No need to rush. It’s not going to rain until four.
Perpetua: The sky says it’ll rain before ten.
Ottokar: The sky isn’t a weather report, auntie. The phone says clear until four, then heavy.
Perpetua: I’ve worked this field for forty years. It’s too humid for a dry morning.
Ottokar: That’s not climate, that’s a feeling.
Perpetua: The rainy season is ending, and it isn’t ending the way it used to.
Ottokar: The forecast is right eight times out of ten.
Perpetua: And I’m right nine.
Ottokar: You can’t check that.
Perpetua: No. And you can’t check it either. So we cut the top field now. If it’s still dry at twelve, we take the low field after lunch.
Ottokar: That’s a morning of rushing for nothing if you’re wrong.
Perpetua: And a whole crop if I’m right.
(It rained at ten past twelve, on the low field. It rained again at four, much harder. The top field was already in the shed.)
Ottokar: It rained at four, exactly like the phone said.
Perpetua: And at ten past twelve, which the phone never mentioned.
Ottokar: You said ten.
Perpetua: I was early. You were late. The crop is dry.
Ottokar: So the answer was in the middle.
Perpetua: The answer is always in the middle. That’s the whole job.