To Paradise

“Your husband seems nice,” said David, finally, because I wasn’t saying anything.

“Yes,” I said. “He is nice.”

“Was it an arranged marriage?”

“Yes; my grandfather arranged it,” I said.

I remembered when Grandfather first spoke to me about marriage. I was twenty-one; the previous year, I had been asked to leave my college because my father had been declared an enemy of the state, even though he was long dead. It was a strange period: Depending on the week, there were rumors that the insurgents were gaining ground, followed by reports that the state had beaten them back. The official news promised that the state would prevail, and Grandfather had assured me that that would be true. But he had also said that he wanted to make sure I was safe, that I would have someone to take care of me. “But I have you,” I had said, and he had smiled. “Yes,” he said, “you have my whole heart, little cat. But I won’t live forever, and I want to make sure that you’ll always have someone to protect you, even long after I’m gone.”

I hadn’t said anything to that, because I didn’t like it when Grandfather spoke of dying, but the next week, Grandfather and I had gone to a marriage broker. This was when Grandfather still had a little bit of influence, and the marriage broker he had chosen was one of the most elite in the prefecture; he usually only arranged marriages for residents of Zone Fourteen, but he had agreed to see Grandfather as a favor.

At the marriage broker’s office, Grandfather and I sat in a waiting room, and then another door opened and a tall, thin, pale-faced man came in. “Doctor?” he asked Grandfather.

“Yes,” Grandfather said, standing. “Thank you for seeing us.”

“Of course,” said the man, who had been staring at me since he entered. “And this is your granddaughter?”

“Yes,” said Grandfather, proudly, and he drew me to his side. “This is Charlie.”

“I see,” said the man. “Hello, Charlie.”

“Hello,” I whispered.

There had been a silence. “She’s a little shy,” said Grandfather, and he stroked my hair.

“I see,” said the man, again. Then he spoke to Grandfather. “Would you come in alone, Doctor, so we can speak?” He looked at me. “You can wait here, young lady.”

I sat there for about fifteen minutes, knocking my heels against the chair legs, which was a bad habit I had. There was nothing in the room to look at, nothing to see: just four plain chairs and a piece of plain gray carpet. But then I heard raised voices from behind the other door, the sound of arguing, and I went over and pressed my ear against the wood.

The first voice I heard was the man’s. “With respect, Doctor—with respect—I think you have to be realistic,” he was saying.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Grandfather, and I was surprised to hear that he sounded angry.

There had been a silence, and when the man spoke again, he was quieter, and I had to concentrate hard to hear him again.

“Doctor, forgive me,” the man was saying, “but your granddaughter is—”

“My granddaughter is what?” Grandfather snapped, and there was another silence.

“Special,” the man said.

“That’s right,” Grandfather said. “She is special, she is very special, and she will need a husband who understands how special she is.”

I had had enough then, and I had sat down again, and a few minutes later, Grandfather had walked briskly out and opened the office door for me and we had left. On the street, neither of us spoke. Finally, I asked, “Did you find someone for me?”

Grandfather had snorted. “That man’s an idiot,” he said. “No clue what he’s doing. We’re going to go to someone else, someone different. I’m sorry I wasted our time, little cat.”

After that, we had gone to two more brokers, and both times, Grandfather had swept from the room, ushered me out, and, once we were in the street, announced that the broker was a moron or a fool. Then he said I didn’t have to come with him on the appointments, as he wasn’t going to waste both of our time. Finally, he found a broker he liked, one who specialized in matching sterile people, and one day, he told me he had found someone for me to marry, someone who would always take care of me.

He had shown me a picture of the man who was to become my husband. On the back of the picture was his name, birth date, height, weight, racial makeup, and occupation. The card had been debossed with the special stamp that everyone who was sterile had applied to their papers, as well as a stamp denoting that at least one of his immediate family members was an enemy of the state. Usually, cards like this listed the applicant’s parents’ names and occupations, but here that information had been left blank. Yet, even though my husband’s parents had been declared enemies, he must have known someone or been related to someone with some influence or power, because, like me, he was not in a labor camp, or jail, or detention, but free.