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...
He asked me what I liked to eat, what kind of music I liked, if I was enjoying my job at Rockefeller, if I had any hobbies. Meetings between relatives of state traitors were usually recorded, even meetings such as these, so we were both careful. I liked that he was careful, and that he hadn’t asked me any questions that I wouldn’t be able to answer; I liked his voice, which was soft and gentle.
But I still hadn’t known if I wanted to marry him. I knew I had to be married someday. But getting married would mean it would no longer be just me and Grandfather, and I wanted to delay that for as long as I could.
Finally, though, I decided I would. The next day, Grandfather visited the broker to finalize the arrangements, and soon, a year had passed, and it was the night before my marriage ceremony. We had a celebratory dinner, for which Grandfather had found apple juice, which we drank from our favorite teacups, and oranges, which were dry and sour but which we dipped in artificial honey for sweetness. The next day I would again see the man who would be my husband; he had failed in his attempt to appeal his expulsion, but Grandfather had found him a job at the Pond, which he would begin the following week.
As we were finishing our meal, Grandfather said, “Little cat, I want to tell you something about your future husband.”
He had been serious, and quiet, all through dinner, but when I asked him if he was angry at me, he had only smiled and shaken his head. “No, not angry,” he said. “But this is a bittersweet moment. My little cat, all grown up and getting married.” Now he continued: “I have debated whether to tell you this or not. But I think—I think I must, for reasons I will explain.”
He got up to turn on the radio, and then he sat down again. For a long time, he was silent. Then he said, “Little cat, your future husband is like I am. Do you understand what I mean by this?”
“He’s a scientist,” I said, though I already knew that. Or he was an aspiring scientist, at least. That was a good thing.
“No,” Grandfather said. “Well, yes. But that’s not what I’m trying to say. I’m trying to say that he is like—he is like me, but also like your other grandfather is. Was.” He was quiet, then, until he saw I understood what he was trying to say.
“He’s a homosexual,” I said.
“Yes,” Grandfather said.
I knew a little about homosexuality. I knew what it was; I knew Grandfather was one, and I knew it had once been legal. Now it was neither legal nor illegal. You could be a homosexual. You could have homosexual intercourse, even though it was discouraged. But you could never get married to someone of your same sex. Technically, all adults could reside with another person to whom they weren’t related, which meant you could be two men or two women and live together, but very few people chose to do that—if you were two people living together and weren’t married, you would receive food coupons and water and electricity tokens for only one person. There were only three kinds of dwellings: dwellings for single people, dwellings for married couples (no children), and dwellings for families (one for families with one child; one for families with two or more children). Until you were thirty-five, you could live in a single-person residence. But then, according to the 2078 Marriage Act, you had to get married. If you were married and got divorced or were widowed, you had four years to get remarried and were eligible for a state-sponsored re-partnering within two years. There were a few exceptions made, of course, for people like Grandfather. The state also honored all preexisting legal homosexual unions, but only for twenty years after the law’s passage. The point is that it was illogical to choose to live with someone to whom you weren’t married; it was almost impossible for two people to survive on a single person’s benefits. A society was more stable and healthier when its citizens were married, which was why the state tried to dissuade people from alternative arrangements.
Other countries had banned homosexuality for religious reasons, but that was not the case here. Here, it had been discouraged because it was the duty of adults to produce children, as the country’s birth rate had fallen to catastrophic levels, and because so many children had died in the illnesses of ’70 and ’76, and so many of the survivors had been left sterile. Moreover, the way the children had died had been so horrific that many parents and former parents had been reluctant to have more children, because they were certain that those, too, would die in an equally horrific manner. But the other reason homosexuals had been targeted was because so many of them had joined the ’67 rebellion; they had sided with the insurgents, and the state had had to punish them and, moreover, keep them under control. Grandfather had once told me that many members of racial minority groups had also joined the rebellion, but punishing them in the same way was counterproductive, as the state needed everyone they could to replenish the population.
But even though homosexuality was not illegal, it was also not something people discussed. Aside from Grandfather, I knew no other homosexuals. I thought of them neither one way nor another. They were simply not people who affected my life in any significant way.
“Oh,” I said to Grandfather now.
“Little cat,” Grandfather began, and then stopped. Then he started again. “I hope someday you’ll understand why I decided this match was the best one for you. I wanted to find you a husband who I knew would always look after you, who would always take care of you, who would never raise a hand to you, who would never shout at or diminish you. I am confident this young man is that person.
“I could have not told you. But I want to tell you, because I don’t want you to think it’s your fault that you and your husband don’t have sexual relations. I don’t want you to think it’s your fault if he doesn’t love you in some ways. He will love you in other ways, or at least show love for you in other ways, and those are the ways that matter.”
I thought about this. Neither of us said anything for a long time.
Then I said, “Maybe he will change his mind.”
Grandfather looked at me, and then he looked down. There was another silence. “No,” he said, very softly. “He will not, little cat. This is not something that he can change.”
I know this will sound very foolish, because Grandfather was so smart, and as I have said, I believed everything he said. But even though he had told me otherwise, I have always hoped that he might have been wrong about my husband, that one day, my husband might grow to be physically attracted to me. I wasn’t sure how, exactly, this would happen. I know I am not attractive. I also knew that even if I was attractive, it wouldn’t have mattered to my husband.
Yet for the first two or so years of our marriage, I had a dream of how he might fall in love with me. It wasn’t a typical dream but, rather, a waking one, as I never had it while I slept, though I always wished I would. In it, I was lying in my bed, and suddenly I felt my husband get into bed next to me. He held me, and then we kissed. That was the end of that dream, but sometimes I had other dreams, in which my husband kissed me while we were standing, or that we went to the center and listened to some music and held hands.
I understood that Grandfather had told me the truth about my husband before I was married so I wouldn’t think it was my fault that my husband wasn’t attracted to me. But knowing the truth didn’t make it easier; it didn’t make me stop wishing that maybe my husband was an exception, that maybe our life would end up being different than Grandfather had told me it would. And even though it hadn’t, it was difficult to stop hoping. I had always been good at accepting things as they were, but it was harder for me than I had expected to accept this. Every day I tried; every day I failed. There were some days, some weeks, even, when I didn’t hope that maybe, maybe Grandfather had been wrong about my husband—that maybe someday he would love me back. I knew it was more realistic and ultimately less distressing to spend my time working on accepting, rather than hoping. But hoping, though it made me feel worse, also made me feel better.