It was normal for it to rain, but in October- who could forget the rains of October?- now this disturbingly silent rain was falling. That was so nebulous that it was pretty; that, if it had not been wet, no one would have believed it was raining; that was so slow that it was possible to follow its fall with one's eyes. That which villagers called 'the rains of October' was the accumulation of the serenity of such a life. Eyes almost broke into tears on looking at the sun subdividing itself, at the end of the afternoon, in each drop of that snail's-pace precipitation, as if the great star had dissolved each day an infinitesimal bit more.

Ondjaki