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...
The shuttle inched forward, and I turned back around in my seat. I realized that it couldn’t have been David after all; it was an hour past his usual shuttle time—he would already have been at work at the Farm.
And yet I had been so sure I had seen him, even though it was impossible. For the first time, I felt a kind of fear about everything that was happening—the illness, how little I knew, what was going to happen next. I was not afraid of getting sick myself; I wasn’t sure why. But that day on the shuttle, I had the strange sensation that the world was truly being split, and that in one world, I was riding the shuttle to my job taking care of the pinkies, while in another, David was going somewhere completely different, somewhere I had never seen or heard of, as if Zone Eight were actually much bigger than I knew it to be, and within it were places that everyone else knew about, but that I somehow did not.
I was always thinking of Grandfather, and yet there were two days on which I thought about him especially hard. The first was September 20, the day he was killed. The second was August 14, the day he was taken from me, the last day I ever spent with him, and though I know this will sound strange, this date was even more difficult for me than the actual day of his death.
I had been with him that afternoon. It was a Saturday, and he had come to meet me at what had been our apartment but was now my husband’s and my apartment. My husband and I had only been married since June 4, and of all the things that were strange and difficult for me about being married, the strangest and most difficult was not seeing Grandfather every day. He had been resettled into a very tiny flat near the eastern edge of the zone, and for the first two weeks of my marriage, I had gone over to his building every day after work and waited in the street, sometimes for several hours, until he came home. Each day, he would smile but also shake his head. “Little cat,” he would say, patting my hair, “it’ll never get easier if you keep coming over here every night. Besides, your husband will worry.”
“No, he won’t,” I would say. “I told him I was coming to see you.”
Then Grandfather would sigh. “Come up,” he would say, and I would go upstairs with him and he would put down his briefcase and give me a glass of water, and then he would walk me home. On the way, he would ask me questions about how work was, and how my husband was, and whether we were comfortable in our apartment.
“I still don’t understand why you had to leave,” I would say.
“I told you already, little cat,” Grandfather would say, but gently. “Because it’s your apartment. And because you’re married now—you don’t want to hang around your old grandfather forever.”
At least Grandfather and I still spent every weekend together. Every Friday, my husband and I invited him over for dinner, and he and my husband would talk about complicated scientific matters I couldn’t understand past the first ten minutes of conversation. Then, on Saturday and Sunday, it would be just the two of us. Things were very hard for Grandfather at work then—the capital had fallen to the insurgents six weeks earlier, and the insurgents had held enormous rallies, promising to reinstate technology to all citizens and to punish the leading members of the regime. I was worried, hearing that, because Grandfather was part of the regime. I didn’t know if he was a leading member, but I knew he was important. But so far, nothing had happened, except that the new government had instituted a 23:00 curfew. Everything else, though, seemed exactly the same as it had been. I was beginning to think that nothing would change in the end, because in reality, nothing had. It didn’t matter to me who was in charge of the state: I was just a citizen, and would be either way, and it wasn’t my place to worry about such things.
That Saturday, August 14, was a typical day. It was very hot, and so Grandfather and I met at 14:00 at the center and listened to a string quartet. Then he bought us some iced milk, and we sat at one of the tables, eating the milk with little spoons. He asked how work was, and if I liked Dr. Wesley, who had once worked for Grandfather, many years ago. I said I liked work, and that Dr. Wesley was fine, both of which were true, and he nodded. “Good, little cat,” he said. “I’m glad to hear it.”
For a while, we lingered in the air-conditioning, and then Grandfather said that the worst of the heat would have broken, and we could go look at the vendors’ offerings in the Square, which we sometimes did, before I went home.
We were only three blocks from the northern entrance when the van pulled alongside us, and three men in black got out. “Dr. Griffith,” one of them said to Grandfather, and Grandfather, who had stopped to watch as the van approached, standing next to me with his hand on my shoulder, now took my hand and squeezed it, and turned me to face him.
“I have to go with these men, little cat,” he said, calmly.
I didn’t understand. I felt like I was going to collapse. “No,” I said. “No, Grandfather.”
He patted my hand. “Don’t worry, little cat,” he said. “I’m going to be fine. I promise you.”
“Get in,” said another of the men, but Grandfather ignored him. “Go home,” he whispered to me. “You’re only three blocks away. Go home, and tell your husband I was taken, and don’t worry, all right? I’ll be back with you soon.”
“No,” I said, and Grandfather winked at me and climbed into the back of the van. “No, Grandfather,” I said. “No, no.”
Grandfather looked out at me and smiled and began to say something, but then the man who had told him to get in slammed the doors shut, and then all three men got into the front seat and the van drove away.
By this point, I was shouting, and although some people stopped to look at me, most did not. Too late, I began to run after the van, which was driving south, but then it turned west, and it was so hot, and I was so slow, that I tripped and fell, and for a while I remained on the sidewalk, rocking myself.
Finally, I stood. I walked into our building and up to our apartment. My husband was there, and when he saw me, he opened his mouth, but before he could speak, I told him what had happened, and he went immediately to the closet and took out the box with our papers, and removed some. Then he went to the drawer beneath my bed and took out some of our gold coins. He put them all in a bag, and then he scooped some water into a mug for me. “I have to go see if I can help your grandfather,” he said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, all right?” I nodded.
I waited all night for my husband to return, sitting on the couch in my cooling suit, the blood from the scrapes on my forehead drying in place and making my skin itch. Finally, very late, just before the curfew began, he returned, and when I asked, “Where is Grandfather?,” he looked down.
“I’m sorry, Cobra,” he said. “They wouldn’t let him out. I’m going to keep trying.”
I began moaning then, moaning and rocking, and my husband finally got my pillow from my bed so I could moan into it, and sat on the floor by my side. “I’m going to keep trying, Cobra,” he repeated. “I’m going to keep trying.” Which he did, but then, on September 15, I was notified that Grandfather had lost his trial and was to be executed, and five days later, he was killed.
Today was the six-year anniversary of the day Grandfather was taken, which my husband and I always commemorated with a bottle of grape-flavored juice we bought at the store. My husband would pour us each a glass, and we would both say Grandfather’s name aloud, and then we would drink.
I always spent the day alone. Every August 13 for the past five years, my husband would ask, “Do you want to be alone tomorrow?” and I would say “Yes,” though in the last year or so, I began to wonder whether that was actually true, or whether I was saying yes only because it was easier for us both. If my husband instead had asked, “Do you want company tomorrow?,” would I not also have said “Yes”? But there was no way I would ever know this for sure, because last night, he had asked as usual if I wanted to be alone, and as usual, I said I did.