The Elephant's Journey by José Saramago

IT ISN'T TRUE THAT heaven and the heavens are indifferent to our preoccupations and desires. They're constantly sending us signs and warnings, and the only reason we don't add good advice to that list is that experience, heaven's and ours, has shown that memory, which isn't anyone's strong point, is best not overburdened with too much detail. Signs and warnings are easy to interpret if we remain alert, as the commanding officer discovered when, at one point along the route, the convoy was caught in a heavy drenching shower. For the men engaged in the hard work of pushing the ox-cart, that rain was a blessing, an act of charity for the suffering to which the lower classes have always been subject.

Solomon and his mahout subhro also enjoyed that sudden cooling rain, although this did not prevent subhro from thinking that, in future, he really could do with an umbrella in such situations, perched up high and unprotected from the water falling from the clouds, especially on the road to vienna. The only ones not to appreciate this atmospheric precipitation were the cavalry men, proudly got up as usual in their colorful uniforms, now stained and sodden, as if they had just returned, defeated, from a battle. As for their commanding officer, he, with his already proven agility of mind, had understood at once that they were facing a very grave problem. Once again, it just showed that the strategy for this mission had been drawn up by incompetents incapable of foreseeing the most ordinary of eventualities, such as rain in august, when popular wisdom has been warning since time immemorial that winter always begins in august.