Aki Anandam ’24
Several years had passed since he left the farm, but F. Ridley never forgot the sweet scent of grapes that floated across the land. The autumn winds would carry the scent throughout the plains, and if he closed his eyes now, he could almost taste it. He was a long way from the farm now, spending most of his time in his office or apartment poring through pages of financial documents. F. had always flourished in statistics, so when the farm didn’t work out, this seemed like the most logical choice.
Being an actuary is a stable and well-respected profession, he was told. After all, someone has to reduce all the risks that big institutions take.
He glanced out his apartment window toward downtown, where he could faintly make out the silhouettes of people in the glow of after-work parties buzzing from the windows of skyscrapers. No doubt some of his clients would be in those windows, chuckling over office drama and toasting with expensive wine. F. had tried to make wine once before. The grapes tasted a bit too bitter, and he figured after that he wouldn’t be able to make it like the French. The clock above his desk read eleven thirty. Best retire for the night, he thought. His eyes were sore, and he had an early morning. He always did.
The most recent downturn had hit his actuarial firm hard, and murmurs of layoffs circled the break rooms. The looming recession occupied much of his mind, yet somehow none of his clients who gambled billions in the markets every day seemed to care.
As he got into bed, images of the farm surfaced in his mind like a submerged buoy rising from the floor of deep water. He had purchased the land just after college in a remote part of the country with most of the savings he could gather. The first couple months he spent working in the fields, mainly planting vineyards of grapes. It was back-breaking work, but he never really noticed. In the evenings, F. would watch the orange glow of the sun gradually sink below the horizon. He admired how it never hesitated, never faltered. It moved steadily, self-assured. He would wake in the morning to that same confident glow and to the choir of magnolias rustling in the wind.
F. came to the farm because he wanted to make something with his own hands. It made him feel connected to his ancestors who had farmed and hunted. He admired their self-reliance and ability to face the dangers of nature without fear, though he knew they did not have much of a choice.
The summer months came and passed, and the sun stopped rising so high in the sky. Soon the winds grew sharper, and the trees stopped singing after they lost their leaves. F. had planned for the winter months. He studied charts of historical data and ecological reports of the land so that he would know exactly what would happen. And yet he couldn’t have foreseen the storm that came in the first week of November.
The winds were strong enough to uproot some of the plants. They even knocked down F., one day. As the days passed the weather cycles grew more unpredictable, more uncertain. The farm that once rejuvenated his soul now struck terror into F. It became clear to him, crystal clear, that the farm presented too much of a risk. It was a stupid idea, he realized. He was not cut out for that line of work.
He sold most of his equipment at a fraction of what he paid, only keeping his shovel, which now stood erect on his apartment floor as a totem of his failure. F. saw himself as lucky that one of his friends from college was able to connect him with his job as an actuary.
He turned over in his bed. Maybe it was the blare of nearby taxis and nighttime parties, but he couldn’t fall asleep. F retreated to his bathroom and washed his face with some water. There, on his sink counter, nestled just below his mirror, sat a photograph of his great-grandfather.
Private Ridley left home at the age of seventeen to start his automotive repair business before being called up for service. He made a name for himself as a daring soldier who died heroically in combat after saving four men wounded in battle. Sometimes F. compared himself to him.
Not taking many risks from the grave, he thought. F. looked back into the mirror; the streetlights outside made his skin look paler. He glanced back at the photograph, holding the image at a tilted angle to capture more of the light.
And that’s when it struck him. It touched some visceral organ deeply buried within him.
His heart’s pace began to quicken.
F. was always told that he looked like the old man, but only now did he see how both their eyes sat on their faces like great blue marbles, their pupils shimmering like crescent moons in evening light.
He saw the man in the photograph, and in him he saw himself. Suddenly, a waterfall of images rushed before him: of his grandmother who crossed the Atlantic as a stowaway on a cargo ship; of his great-uncle who joined the underground resistance in Paris.
And then he saw the first humans, how they roamed the plains living one day to the next, how they confronted mammoths and beasts every day just to survive. The hunters who hid inside caves never found food. They are not who he descended from. It was not their blood that was now coursing through his body.
As F. looked in the mirror once more, he no longer felt the familiar weight of trepidation that hung just below his neck. Of all the days in a year, he used to think, no day was more frightful than Tomorrow. Tomorrow: the burden of fear, the torturous witch holding every way in which things could go wrong.
As an actuary he was always working to tame the beast of Tomorrow. To do everything he could to eradicate any and all risks that it may bear.
But now F. understood the gift of uncertainty. That from it birthed the universe of innovation and exploration, the intoxicating promise that the future need not be like the past.
He glanced back at the shovel. F. was older now, his arms not as strong as they used to be, but the years he worked as an actuary meant he had enough money to buy a larger farm, on a better plot of land. A grin started to grow across his face.
He looked out the window to see the downtown parties he cursed five minutes ago for keeping him up. But now he welcomed them.
F. needed to stay awake. He would have a long night of packing ahead.