(From the beginning): Drought since December

He snaps on the electricity just before daybreak. For twenty five years he has not lived in this country, though up to the age of eleven he slept in rooms like this--with no curtains, just delicate bars across the windows so no one could break in. and the floors of red cement polished smooth, cool against bare feet.

Dawn through a garden. Clarity to leaves, fruit, the dark yellow of the King Coconut. This delicate light is allowed only a brief moment of the day. In ten minutes the garden will lie in a blaze of heat, frantic with noise and butterflies.

Half a page--and the morning is already ancient.

D. Pedro: Good morrow, Benedick. Why, what's the matter, that you have such a February face, so full of frost, of storm, and cloudiness?

(from Much Ado About Nothing, Act V, scene iii.)