To Paradise
- Автор: Yanagihara Hanya
- Год: 2022
- Язык: английский
- Год: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
- Жанр: Современная русская и зарубежная проза
Электронная книга - «To Paradise». Краткое содержание книги:
In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love whomever they please (or so it seems). The fragile young scion of a distinguished family resists betrothal to a worthy suitor, drawn to a charming music teacher of no means. In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist's damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him--and solve the mystery of her husband's disappearances.
These three sections are joined in an enthralling and...
After the story was over, we walked to the northern end of the Square. “What did you think?” David asked, and I didn’t say anything, because I was embarrassed to admit that I had felt betrayed by the story. I had thought that the husband and wife were just husband and wife, like my husband and me, and yet suddenly they had two children, a boy and a girl, which meant they weren’t like my husband and me after all. They weren’t just a man and a woman: They were a father and a mother.
But it was silly to say any of this, so instead I said, “It was okay.”
“I thought it was dumb,” David said, and I looked up at him. “Whose apartment is that big that they can run around in it? Who’s such a goody-goody that they’d actually take the bird into the center?”
This was thrilling to hear, but also alarming. I looked down at my shoes. “But it’s the law.”
“Of course it’s the law, but he’s a storyteller,” David said. “Does he really expect us to believe that, if a big, plump, juicy pigeon flew into any of our windows, we wouldn’t just kill it, pluck it, and put it straight into the oven?” I looked up then, and saw that he was looking back at me with a crooked little smile.
I didn’t know what to say. “Well, it’s just a story,” I said.
“That’s exactly my point,” he said, like I had agreed with him, and then he gave me a little salute. “Bye, Charlie. Thanks for the snack and company.” And then he left, walking westward, back to Little Eight.
He hadn’t said he would see me next week, but when I returned the following Saturday, there he was again, standing outside the storyteller’s tent, and again, I got that same strange feeling in my stomach.
“I thought we’d take a walk instead, if that’s okay,” he said, even though it was very hot, so hot I’d had to wear my cooling suit. He, however, was in his same gray shirt and pants, his same gray cap, and didn’t look hot at all. He spoke as if we had made plans to meet here, as if we had an arrangement that he was now changing.
As we walked, I remembered to ask him the question I’d been wondering about all week. “I don’t see you at the shuttle stop anymore,” I said.
“That’s true,” he said. “My shift changed. I catch the 07:30 now.”
“Oh,” I said. Then I said, “My husband catches the 07:30, too.”
“Really,” David said. “Where does he work?”
“The Pond,” I said.
“Ah,” said David. “I work at the Farm.”
It wasn’t worth asking if they knew each other, because the Farm was the biggest state project in the prefecture, with dozens of scientists and hundreds of techs, and what’s more, Pond employees stayed isolated in the Pond, and rarely had any reason to encounter anyone who worked in the larger enterprise.
“I’m a bromeliad specialist,” said David, although I hadn’t asked, because asking someone what they did wasn’t done. “That’s what it’s called, but really, I’m just a gardener.” This was unusual, too: both to describe your work but also to make it sound less important than it was. “I help crossbreed the specimens we have, but mostly, I’m just there to take care of the plants.” His voice was cheerful as he said this, matter-of-fact, but I suddenly felt the need to defend his own job to him.
“That’s important work,” I said. “We need all the research from the Farm we can get.”
“I suppose,” he said. “Not that I’m doing any of the actual research myself. But I do love the plants, as silly as that sounds.”
“I love the pinkies, too,” I said, and as I did, I realized that it was true. I did love the pinkies. They were so fragile and their lives had been so short; they were poor, unformed things, and had been created only to die and be pulled apart and examined, and then they were incinerated and forgotten.
“The pinkies?” he asked. “What are those?”
So I explained a little about what I did, and how I prepared them, and how the scientists got impatient when I didn’t deliver them on time, which made him laugh, and his laughter made me flustered, because I didn’t want him to think I was complaining about the scientists, or making fun of them, because they did essential work, and I said so. “No, I don’t think that you’re disparaging them,” he said. “It’s just—they’re such important people, but really, they’re people, you know? They get impatient and in bad moods, just like the rest of us.” I had never thought about the scientists like that before, as people, and so I didn’t say anything.
“How long have you been married?” David asked.
This was a very forward question, and for a moment, I didn’t know what to say. “Maybe I shouldn’t have asked,” he said, looking at me. “You have to forgive me. Where I come from, people talk much more openly.”
“Oh,” I said. “Where are you from?”
He was from Prefecture Five, one of the southern prefectures, but he didn’t have an accent. Sometimes people transferred prefectures, but they usually did so only when they had unusual or in-demand skills. This made me wonder whether David was actually more important than he was saying; it would explain why he was here, not only in Prefecture Two but in Zone Eight.
“I’ve been married almost six years,” I said, and then, because I knew what he was going to ask next, I added, “We’re sterile.”
“I’m sorry, Charlie,” he said. His voice was gentle, but it wasn’t pitying, and, unlike some people, he didn’t turn away from me, as if my sterility were something contagious. “Was it an illness?” he asked.
This too was very forward, but I was getting used to him, and I wasn’t as shocked as I would have been had someone else asked me. “Yes, of ’70,” I said.
“And your husband—the same reason?”
“Yes,” I said, though that wasn’t true. And then I was truly done with the topic, which was really not something to be discussed with strangers, or casual acquaintances, or with anyone, really. The state had worked hard to decrease the stigmatization of sterility. It was now illegal to refuse to rent to a sterile couple, but most of us clustered together anyway, because it was just easier that way: No one looked at you oddly, and moreover, you didn’t have to be confronted by other people’s babies and children, daily reminders of your own inadequacy. Our building, for example, was almost wholly occupied by sterile couples. The previous year, the state made it legal for a sterile person of either sex to marry a fertile person, but as far as I knew, no one actually had, because if you were fertile there was no point in ruining your life like that.
I must have looked strange then, because David touched my shoulder, and I flinched and moved away, but he didn’t seem offended. “I’ve upset you, Charlie,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.” He sighed. “It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, though.”
And then, before I could think of how to respond, he turned and left, giving me another of his salutes. “I’ll see you next week,” he said.
“Okay,” I said, and I stood and watched him walk west until he had disappeared from sight completely.
I saw David every Saturday after that, and soon it was April and becoming even warmer, so warm that we’d no longer be able to take our walks, and I was trying not to think about what would happen then.
One evening, about a month after I started meeting with David, my husband looked at me at dinner and said, “You seem different.”
“Do I?” I asked. Earlier, David had been telling me stories about growing up in Prefecture Five, and how he and his friends used to climb pecan trees and eat so many nuts they’d get sick. I asked him if he wasn’t scared to pick the nuts, because, legally, all fruiting trees belonged to the state, but he said the state was more relaxed in Prefecture Five. “They really only care about Prefecture Two, because that’s where all the money and power is,” he said. He announced these things comfortably, for anyone to hear, but when I asked him to lower his voice, he looked confused. “Why?” he asked. “I’m not saying anything treasonous,” and I had had to think about it. He wasn’t, it was true, but something about the way he said it made me feel like he was. “I’m sorry,” I said.