Viet Dinh - After Disasters

The Future

The moment the earthquake hits, Ted has a premonition: a burning sensation on his feet. Not the pins and needles from sitting cross-legged for too long, but like the restlessness of the soles after standing on the subway for an hour. Like the blood wants to burst from his skin. No blinding vision, no sudden trance its not until weeks later that he realizes what the feeling was. But in the future, he wont tell the story this way. In his version, he knows the premonitions exact meaning when he feels it. The strange friction on his feet is a harbinger of subterranean plates, tectonic movements, earth grinding against earth, playing out on his skin, as if he were indistinguishable from the world, and the world from him. And if anyone challenges him about his predictive powers, he will simply say, But it happened. It really did.

For now, though, its the end of January, and the city outside is covered in a crystalline mist that fails to coalesce into snow. Soon, definitely, it will snow. But not tonight.

Though, why not? Take last year: the Y2K bug threatened to plunge the country maybe the global grid into darkness. Ted was still doing his USAID training in Washington, DC, and when he stopped into the CVS on Dupont Circle on December 31, 1999, the shelves were almost bare. Seeing its stripped-down state, he began to panic. Another man in the store, proud of his preparedness, asked him, Do you have medical supplies? A backup generator? And Ted realized he wasnt ready for anything! He hit every supermarket, pharmacy, and hardware store in a two-mile radius, and back in his apartment, he took stock of his supplies: canned food, bottled water, batteries, Band-Aids. He called John and asked if he and Dr. Mark were prepared, and John said, Yep, weve got everything we need. Champagne, vodka, and mixers. But the new millennium crept in without the lights so much as flickering, and Ted felt disappointed. You expect the end of the world, and: nothing. You expect nothing, and: the end of the world.

But thinking about John means that Ted wont be able to sleep. Any rest is fitful, even with blue pills that promise addiction-free slumber. He stretches on his couch, head propped with pillows, and when he dozes off, he breathes through his mouth, until the gumminess on his tongue wakes him. He never dreams during these minor instances of sleep; instead, the sounds filter through his consciousness into new forms: traffic whooshing past becomes a fast-flowing river; the horns of pissy drivers become gulls. Dogs yipping and straining against their leashes are children running by with heavy footsteps. He hears cattle in the street, with bells around their necks, lazy whips with a dried reed.

John is dead, Ted reminds himself. He died on a wet day early in November. Ted had always known that John would die first, and not just because of what was in his blood, but he never expected that John would die so soon, so ridiculously soon, simply from his inability to look both ways before riding out into the fucking street.

A few minutes later, Lorraine calls.

Are you ready? she asks. Weve gotten reports of an earthquake.

How big?

Big enough. Youve been to India before, right?

Yes, he has. That visit two years ago, in fact, brought him to USAID. He spent a year training in DC, then another six months in New York with Lorraine and Piotr. He knows how much food and water a person needs a day (1,500 kilocalories; one gallon) and how to bribe armed rebels with bottles of cologne to cross a border. He knows about rioters and bureaucrats and military generals. He knows the best way to help is to know things, and right now, he knows things because hes read Piotrs careful reports, official documents filed with the secretary of state, handwritten notes, pages warped and dirty with sweat. Hes as ready as hell ever be.

I want you on observer status, Lorraine says. Im arranging the flight now. Were going to scramble within the next few hours.

She will call back soon. Ted retrieves his go bag from beneath his bed. Its prepacked: a battery-powered tape recorder, some blank notebooks, a stack of pens bound with a rubber band that clack against each other like gnashing teeth. The rest of the bag is full of clothes he doesnt mind ruining: frayed jeans, faded underwear, socks that have lost elasticity. He finds room for a razor, floss, sample-size antiperspirants.

From the living room, the CNN anchorman announces: Weve just received word of a major earthquake in the Gujarat Province of India. Initial readings of 6.5 on the Richter scale. Reports of serious damage. Numerous injuries. Ted listens for more information, but none is forthcoming. In fact, it will be a year before he hears of Gujarat again, but not the Gujarat he remembers. Not the Gujarat he tried to save. A five-second video clip shows the smoke-streaked skyline of Ahmedabad, as if a storm has descended on it. The city burns: shops and houses and mosques and temples. Bodies too. Ted cant see the rioters in the blurred video feed, but theyre there, in plazas between the buildings, gathered around the charred metal of cars. In the neighborhoods just beyond the city, the rioters hold the addresses of Muslims from the voter rolls, and those houses will soon feed the charcoal haze above the city.

But at the present moment, he waits for Lorraine. Maybe he can shut his eyes until the phone rings, at which point hell make his voice alive and alert, as if hed been waiting for this moment, whatever this moment may be.

Here you go, he thinks. The start of your new life.

On the red-eye from New York to Heathrow, Piotr, pressed between him and Lorraine, spreads maps on the serving tray. He licks his fingertips to flip between them. With a metal compass, the type Ted hasnt used since geometry class, he draws concentric circles. He chews the tip of his horn-rim glasses until the earpieces are white from bite marks.

The luminous corona of New York fades into the darkness of the ocean. Ted tries to determine when the critical mass of electricity fails to penetrate across the water, but its like trying to pinpoint the exact moment day turns into night. He rests his head against the window, and the subzero temperatures outside push in on him. Lorraine, in the aisle seat, has her ear glued to the air phone, which disappears in the nimbus of her hair.

Theirs are the only lights on in the cabin. Even the flight attendants catch shut-eye. Lorraine becomes more and more agitated. She cant secure transport of the food supplies from Mumbai, and organizations are already hording medical supplies. We have at least ten tons already set aside, she says. I dont care, just find them. No, I will not call again. I will stay on the line until you have them. She sits back with a thud. The seat to which the phone is attached jerks, and a man peers over the headrest.

And tents, she says. I need tents and all the grain you can spare. From the Delhi warehouse.

Piotr jostles Teds elbow off the armrest. He wears a pink striped button-up shirt. The overhead beam makes it seem as if his chest is awash in blood. The fabric between his buttons buckles, and Ted can trace Piotrs body hair inching up from his stomach and across his chest. Ted should be doing something too, but doesnt know what.

Piotr places his hand on Teds left knee, holding it in place, and its only then that Ted understands that hes been jittering. Its a firm gesture how a father would calm a frantic child and Ted stares at Piotrs hand until he moves it.

We should already have everything, Piotr says. We were just in India last year.