Passage I

PROSE FICTION: This passage is adapted from the novel Tropic of Orange: A Novel by Karen Tei Yamashita (©1997 by Karen Tei Yamashita).

This passage uses elements of a literary genre called magic realism to describe a mysterious thin line that is simultaneously real and imaginary.

The tree was a sorry one, and so was the orange. Rafaela knew it was an orange that should not have been. It was much too early. Everyone said the weather was changing. The rains came sooner this year. The tree had been fooled, and little pimples of budding flowers began to burst through its branches. And then came a sudden period of dry weather; the flowers withered away, except for this one. Perhaps it had been the industriousness of the African bees, their furry feet dusted heavily in yellow pollen, that had quickly mated the flower to its future, producing this aberrant orange—not to be picked, not expected, and probably not very sweet.

But from the very beginning Rafaela somehow felt this particular orange was special. Perhaps it was her desire to see a thing out of season struggle despite everything and become whole. As time went on, she found herself watching the orange, wandering out to the tree every day even in the rain, feeling great contentment in the transition of its small growing globe, first from green and then to its slow golden burnish.

But there was something else. Just where its tiny bud had broken through the tree's branch Rafaela noticed a line—finer than the thread of a spiderweb—pulled with delicate tautness. It was most visible in the dewy mornings as the sun rose from the east; at other times, it was barely visible. But she had always sensed its presence. If she could not reach out and touch it she sensed its peculiar, very supple strength. Rafaela knew that it ran across the property. In fact, she sensed that it continued farther in both directions, east and west, east across the highway and west toward the ocean and beyond.

In the days when the orange was a blossom of soft petals, its fragrance surprised her. She had passed beneath the orange several times, drawn to its sweet scent before she had discovered it. The perfume could only be emanating from that curious flower. She came often then to secure the whiff that tingled her deep memory. It was then that she noticed the line. And when the baby orange appeared, it seemed to grasp that line as its parent, if a line could be a parent. As expected, the orange did not grow to be very big or seem very succulent, but it did begin to hang rather heavily. And when the salty wind blew west from the sea rocking it back and forth like a small cradle the curious line—now running through the growing orange—rocked back and forth with it like a lullaby.

Rafaela and her son Sol walked hand in hand past the orange tree, careful not to disturb the lizards and beetles waiting breathlessly beneath scattered leaves and brush. For three days now, it had not rained. And yet any cool surface bled the air's moisture. Rafaela felt this wetness; it gathered in tiny molecules over her skin. It was a little before noon, and the sun was particularly bright and oppressive that day. If Rafaela had bothered to look at the calendar, she would have noticed that it was Monday, June 22. She might have also noticed the lunar signs in the corner of the calendar and the small print that said summer solstice.

She glanced briefly at the orange with some satisfaction and hurried toward the house. "Come on Sol. It's much too hot out here today." His little quick steps pattered behind, dancing around the young trees, and then ran forward. She followed Sol who seemed to be following a path of his own, but upon closer inspection, he was tracing the path of a very thin but distinct shadow stretched in a perfectly straight line along the dirt and sand. There were no telephone cables or electric lines above, nothing to cast such a shadow and yet it was clearly there. Rafaela glanced back toward the orange tree and the single orange, suddenly aware of the only possible and yet entirely impossible thing that could obstruct the intensity of the sun's light at this hour, slicing the heavy atmosphere with cruel precision. Indeed the sun was a great ball of fire directly above the orange tree . It seemed even to point at the tree, at the strange line, at the orange itself.

Rafaela ran after Sol into the cool shadows of the house. There was a sudden gust of tepid wind, and from the corner of her eye, she thought she saw the line's razor shadow dip away, south. Rafaela felt a dizzy nausea. She did not realize that the orange had fallen irresistibly from a height of two meters, rolling in dusty turbulence down a small slope, under the barbed-wire fence, and just beyond the frontiers of the property to a neutral place between ownership and the highway.