疾虚妄

Ninth of January, 2037, a Friday, seven in the morning, Fresno. A blue sky without a cloud, the fog gone, the snow ridges to the east sharp and white. Rose at the end of the kitchen table with a very weak coffee: "This afternoon." Nora, looking at her phone: the forecast says ten per cent. "I know what the forecast says." After breakfast the box came up to the kitchen table and the seventy-one notebooks were laid end to end, down the table and back again in a second row.

From 1966 on. Thirty-odd lines a page, a line a day, each line in four parts ruled off by vertical strokes: the date; what Rose said; what the radio said; what the sky did. "12 September | rain tomorrow | no rain | it rained." "13 September | more | stops | rained all morning." Rose's part written the evening before; the sky's part filled in the next evening. Seventy-one years, not one day missing. Through the seventies the radio became television; after 2000, the computer; later, the phone. Rose's part stayed Rose.

The last page of each book is September: did it rain, how many days, how much of the fruit on the ground was lost. I copied out all seventy-one. In seventy-one years, rain fell while the trays were on the ground in thirteen. In four, a third or more was lost. In those four years the writing on the last page is heavier than in any other, heavy enough to tear the paper. One year the page has only two words, and under them a long line drawn across. I didn't ask which year.

At three, back from an hour of stacking trays with Martin, an old man at the kitchen table with his back to the door, turning Rose's pages so fast it looked like counting, not reading; a washed-out robe frayed at the cuffs; thin hair in a small knot. More than thirty books done, stacked in order. Without looking up: "Ants moving house, rain next day. She recorded it forty times. It rained three." He had found the table at the back of the 1981 book, headed in Rose's hand: What people say. Wang Chong, who stood at the bookstalls of Luoyang because he couldn't afford the books, and wrote that everything he had written came down to one phrase: I hate empty claims. — M.

Memo to file. Fresno, 9 January 2037. Seventy-one years of predictions, the wrong ones included; and what ten per cent means when the trays are down.

1. The ledger. One line a day since 1966, four parts: date; her call; the official forecast; the outcome. Her call written the night before, the outcome the next night; seventy-one years unbroken. The forecast's source changed from radio to television to computer to phone. Her column never changed.

2. Seventy-one Septembers. Rain with the trays on the ground: 13 years. A third or more lost: 4. The writing on those four last pages tears the paper.

3. What people say. Her own test of folk signs, sign by sign, times recorded and times it rained next day: ants moving, 40 and 3; cows lying down, 26 and 1; "it always rains fair week", 71 years and 8; a halo round the moon, 23, rain within two days 9; my knee aching, 30 and 14; wind turning south-west, 212 and 127. Her conclusions: ants, cows and the fair don't count. The moon, a little; not enough to bet the trays on. My knee beats the ants; the wind beats my knee.

4. Wang Chong's method. In his day people said thunder was heaven's anger striking the guilty. He said thunder is fire, and gave five proofs: the hair of those killed is scorched; their skin is burned; up close you smell fire; buildings and trees it strikes catch fire; lightning is fire in the sky. Five matches for fire; none for anger. "This old woman is doing my work. She doesn't say her knee is useless. She says it's better than the ants and worse than the wind. That is evidence: compare one by one and write down exactly what you find."

5. 2003. For about thirty years her calls beat the forecast; through the nineties they ran level; the last page of 2003 carries one extra line: "From this year the forecast is better than I am." Every year since, it has been. Her column never stopped. Wang Chong: "People of empty claims fear writing that sentence most. She wrote it and kept recording, because she wants to know on which days the better one is wrong."

6. The line. "Being right counts for little. Writing down the times you were wrong, the same as the times you were right, is what makes it evidence." Seven of Yiming's fifty-two cells he could not remember, recorded as such. Rose's knee, fourteen out of thirty, recorded. What is recorded wrong is recorded for those who come after.

7. Clouds are rain. After four the west changed: a thin white sheet from the sea, then thicker, greyer, heaped, pressing east toward the mountains. "When it first comes out it is cloud; when cloud grows thick it is rain. Rain isn't given by someone in the sky. It's water from the ground going up and coming down." He stacked the books with 2003 on top and left by the back door; the wind there was wet.

8. Ten per cent. Rain at six. "Grandma, right again." "This time it was luck." In the 2037 book, 9 January: I said rain | forecast ten per cent | it rained. Wind south-west, six in ten; this was one of the six. Why call rain against ten per cent? "I don't say it will rain. In September, with the trays down, if the forecast says ten per cent I have them brought in. Ten per cent of rain soaks a whole year. Nine times out of ten it doesn't rain and I've brought them in for nothing, a day's work. One time in ten it rains and I've lost the year. The question isn't whether it rains. It's whether I can afford it if it does." On Wall Street I did that sum every day, beautifully, and it had a long English name. She has seventy-one notebooks and four last pages torn by the pen.

9. He corrected himself. In his own book he had written: when it is about to rain, ants move house, earthworms come out, zither strings slacken, old ailments flare up, meaning that the weather moves creatures and people, not the reverse, and that he still holds. "But the ants: forty times, three rains. That half of my sentence has no evidence. The old ailments: her knee, fourteen in thirty, a little. I wrote half of it wrong." He looked pleased. "Wrong, and corrected with evidence, is good. Uncorrected, the sentence stays wrong. My ants were wrong for nearly two thousand years and today a woman who grows grapes put them right." The ant line was her mother's belief; Rose never showed her the forty-and-three, and wrote "doesn't count" under it only after her mother died.

10. A valley and a window. The forecast is thousands of people recording for years and machines doing the sums: "One old woman for seventy-one years can't beat ten thousand together; no shame in that. But ten thousand record the whole valley. She records her ground, her row of vines, the wind outside her window. Ten per cent is the valley's ten per cent. What it is on her ground only her notebooks know." Over the years she ordered some sixty early collections in September, forty-odd of them for nothing: "The forty I brought in for nothing paid for the dozen that were real." I call that a premium. She calls it bringing them in for nothing.

11. A page for the Essentials. Before I left she had Nora taste one of the vine-dried raisins in front of us. "Not the same as mine. Write in your column: not the same." Not better, not worse. Nora wrote it that night, first cell. And Rose sent the photo of her 2003 page: your book should have a page like this. On the plane, a draft: machines beat hands on moisture, sugar and room temperature (Lu Xiao's thermometer beats Chang Yushan's hand); hands beat machines on how fast a pinch comes back, whether the stem is half brown, whether a bunch sweats at night; and the day a machine beats a hand, write it on this page: from this year, on this, the machine is better than we are.

12. Next. 7:30 p.m., an unknown New Jersey number: the neighbour. My mother gave her the number, in case. Yesterday it snowed; she was out shovelling at six; the son came at eight and it was done. This morning she didn't come out; after a long wait she opened the door holding on to the wall; her back won't move; she refused an ambulance; she's lying on the sofa; she told the neighbour not to tell me. I'm coming back tonight. Rose asked nothing: "Go." A small paper bag from her apron pocket, warm from being carried against her all day: "For your mother. Mine, first row, last September." Nora drove me to the airport at ten in the rain. Mum, don't shovel it yourself. I know. The same tone as my eight years of "next year".

"Being right counts for little. Writing down the times you were wrong, the same as the times you were right, is what makes it evidence."
Wang Chong was a first-century thinker so poor that he read books standing at the market stalls of Luoyang. His Discourses Weighed in the Balance examines popular beliefs one by one and asks what evidence supports them. He said the whole work came down to one phrase: hatred of empty claims. When people said thunder was heaven punishing the guilty, he argued that thunder was fire and listed five observations to support it.
A Fresno grower who has kept a daily weather ledger since 1966 has done the same thing on a small scale. Each night she wrote her own forecast beside the official one; each next night, what happened. She tested folk signs against her records and ranked them honestly, her own aching knee included. When the official forecast became more accurate than she was, she wrote that down too, and kept going.
Her decision rule for September, when the year's crop is drying on the ground, is the one risk managers use and seldom state so plainly: the question is not whether it will rain, but whether you can survive it if it does. A ten per cent chance of losing everything is not a small risk.
"Ten per cent of rain soaks a whole year."