“Did you finish reading the book?” Your question sounded like a challenge.

“Yes,” I said, into the earth, feeling my jaw clench, continuing to work.

“Do you still want to lend it to me?”

I stopped digging. My heart was galloping. I looked up at you, and I don’t know what made me do it—maybe it was the sincerity with which you asked, which was drawn on your face, or maybe it was a sense of resignation—but I nodded. I decided I had nothing to lose. Our paths would never cross again, and I didn’t want to be like David, afraid of himself and devoured by regrets.

“I’ll bring it round to you at dinner,” I heard myself say.

That night I waited for you by the canteen exit, in the half-dark where people smoked and gossiped before they went to bed. I waited for you until late, until the streams of people leaving had dried up and I thought I had missed you. I was thinking about returning to my hut when finally you came through the door. The girl was right behind you. She looked poised. Her eyes, like her hair, were dark and intense, but her skin was light, pale even, as if she hadn’t been in the sun at all for all these weeks. You exchanged a look with her that I couldn’t see, and then she glanced at me with a vague smile and walked off into the dark.

“I read quickly,” you said, slipping the book into the back pocket of your trousers.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, feeling sadness wash over me. “You can keep it.”

You looked at me like I’d said something absurd. “What are you talking about? Of course I’ll give it back.” Then you put your hand on my shoulder again, just like you had done the second time we’d talked. And just like then, the knot at the bottom of my belly—home to both fear and desire—stirred like an incoming tide.

That last week did not, as it usually does, pass more quickly than all those before it. It crept to an end on all fours. All throughout the week, I wanted it to be over, wanted to be liberated from being around you in that state of uncertainty. I still avoided you, still never came to the river, even though it was hot and I longed to dip my feet in the coolness of the water. And yet I kept looking at you when I was sure our eyes wouldn’t meet, to see signs of any change in you. But you seemed the same. In the canteen you sat with the same group, and in the field you worked incessantly.