Sulawesi.
Dark gray rain clouds blanketed the lush, green island.
Torrential rain lashed the seaside stilt house. Tall wooden pillars supported the house above the water, and the rising tide flowed between them as silvery little fish thrashed in the seawater.
A small wooden boat slowly rowed beneath the house. Antonio was its only boatman. His Irish-red hair was soaked through by the rain, and his coarse clothes were tattered.
Judging by his appearance alone, passersby would probably have taken him for a down-and-out poor fisherman. It was hard to imagine that he was a Nobel Prize winner in biology.
"A shark didn't eat you? What did you bring back this time?" A blond woman's face appeared at the window of the house, her tone hostile.
"Conchs!" Antonio happily raised his fishing net, which was packed full of them.
"We can barely fit anything else inside! These conchs are growing maggots! Stop collecting them!" The blond woman was furious. "Even after winning the Nobel Prize, you're still a filthy savage!"
"I'll clean them up today, darling. Don't be so angry!" Antonio apologized humbly. "Lower the rope for me!"
A wooden panel opened in the bottom of the stilt house, and a thick bundle of rope came crashing down onto the small boat.
Antonio picked up the rope, tied the small boat to one of the stilts, and sighed helplessly.
They had been married for twenty years, and whenever his wife got angry, she called him a savage.
There were two reasons she called him a savage.
One was his hair color. In the Western cultural context, Antonio's burgundy hair was at the bottom of the hierarchy of contempt, for reasons rooted in a long history.
Black hair was considered the most noble, because the rulers of the early Roman Empire