The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [185]
That this mysterious activity was hard physical labor for the foreigners made the whole business funnier. George would pause to wipe his brow, and the Runa would quake with laughter. Marc would sit a while to catch his breath, and the Runa would gasp with merriment. Jimmy worked doggedly on, beads of sweat sparkling on the ends of his coiling red hair, and Runa observers would comment helpfully, "Ah, the dirt is much better that way. Big improvement!" and wheeze in a transport of amusement. The Runa were capable of sarcasm.
Soon, Runa from other villages came to watch the gardeners while their children played on the waterslide, and George began to feel a retroactive sympathy for the Amish farmers of Ohio, unwilling tourist attractions subjected to stares and pointing fingers. But the initial hilarity tapered off as the garden took shape and the Runa began to perceive the geometric plan underlying the foreigners’ inexplicable work. The garden was a serious scientific experiment and careful records of germination and yield would be kept, but everything Marc Robichaux did was beautiful and he laid the garden out as a succession of interlocking diamond-shaped and circular beds, edged in herbs. George and Jimmy constructed trellises and adapted the Runa terrace parasols to shade the lettuces and peas and to control the downpours of rain. Manuzhai, intrigued now, joined them in this, and the resulting structures were lovely.
The "dry" season on Rakhat turned out to be reasonably well suited to the husbandry of Earth plants. As the season progressed, it could be seen that the rows and hills of vegetables were thoughtfully planned. Scarlet-stalked Swiss chard rose over beds of emerald spinach. Zucchini and corn and potatoes, tomatoes and cabbages and radishes, cucumbers and feathery carrots, red beets and purple turnips—all were incorporated into overflowing parterres, interplanted with edible flowers: pansies and sunflowers, calendula and Empress of India nasturtiums. It was glorious.
Supaari came back to Kashan periodically and dutifully admired the flourishing potager on his third visit. "We Jana’ata also have such gardens. The scents are different from yours," he said tactfully, for he was greatly offended by some of the foreign odors, "but this is more beautiful to the eye." He took no interest in it thereafter, considering it a harmless eccentricity.
Supaari, they noticed, brought his own food from the city with him and ate in privacy, in the cabin of his powerboat. Sometimes he also brought Runa with him from the city, memory specialists who were apparently like living textbooks, who could answer some of the more technical questions the foreigners asked. And there were written materials as well, in the K’San language and therefore completely incomprehensible except for the engineering drawings. George and Jimmy were particularly interested in radio, and they wanted to know about power generation, signal production, receiving equipment and so forth. Supaari found this understandable, since he knew in a somewhat foggy way that the foreigners had come to Rakhat because they’d overheard the Galatna concerts somehow, but he was unable to give them much information. He knew of radio only as a listener. This ignorance was frustrating to the technophiles.
"He’s a merchant, not an engineer," Anne said in Supaari’s defense. "Besides, the last human with a clear grasp of all the technology he used was probably Leonardo da Vinci." And she invited a disgruntled George to tell Supaari how aspirin works.
Supaari was, at least, able to explain why the Runa disliked music. "We Jana’ata use songs to organize activities," he told Anne and Emilio, as they sat outside in a hampiy equipped with cushions, unconcerned about the light drizzle falling. He seemed to have trouble finding the correct Ruanja phrasing for this. "It is something we do only among ourselves. The