To Paradise

I was so consumed by my thoughts that it wasn’t until I became aware of someone speaking to me that I realized I had been standing at the edge of the storyteller’s tarp, not moving. “Are you coming in, miss?” asked the storyteller’s assistant, and I nodded, and spread my piece of cloth on the ground, near the back.

I was arranging my bag at my side when I felt someone standing near me, and when I looked up, it was David.

“Hello, Charlie,” he said, and sat down next to me.

My heart was beating very fast. “Hello,” I said.

But then neither of us could say anything more, because the storyteller had begun to speak.

I cannot say what the story was that day, because I was unable to concentrate—all I could do was think about my questions and my doubts—and so it was with surprise that I heard the audience applaud, and then David say to me, “Let’s go to the benches.”

The benches were not really benches, but a line of cement blockades that had been used years ago for crowd control. After the insurgents were defeated, the state had left a row of them in front of a building on the east side of the Square, and sometimes people, especially old people, sat there and watched as the pack that circumnavigated the Square walked past. The benefit of the benches was that they were private, even though they were in the open, and you could stop there and rest. The drawback was that they were very hot, and in the summertime, you could feel the heat rising from the stone even through your cooling suit.

David picked one of the benches at the southern end, and for a few moments, neither of us spoke. We both had our helmets on, but when I reached up to unstrap mine, he stopped me. “No,” he said. “Leave it on. Leave it on and look straight ahead, and don’t react to what I’m going to say.” And so I did.

“Charlie,” he said, and then he stopped. “Charlie, I’m going to tell you something,” he said.

His voice sounded different, more serious, and once again, I was scared. “Are you mad at me?” I asked him.

“No,” he said. “No, not at all. I just need you to listen, all right?” And he turned his head toward me, just slightly, and I nodded, just slightly as well, to show I understood.

“Charlie, I’m not from here,” he said.

“I know that,” I said. “You’re from Prefecture Five.”

“No,” he said. “I’m not. I’m from—I’m from New Britain.” He looked at me again, quickly, but I kept my face blank, and he continued, “I know this is going to sound…strange,” he said. “But I was sent here, by my employer.”

“Why?” I whispered.

Now he did look at me. “For you,” he said. “To find you. And to watch over you, until it was safe.” And then, when I didn’t speak, he continued, “You know that there’s a new illness coming.”

For a moment, I was so shocked that I couldn’t speak. How did David know about the illness? “It’s real?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s real, and it will be very, very bad. As bad as ’70—worse. But that’s not why we need to leave immediately, though it certainly complicates matters.”

“What?” I asked. “Leave?”

“Charlie, eyes front,” he whispered, quickly, and I repositioned myself. It was unwise to display anger or alarm. “No bad emotions,” he reminded me, and I nodded, and we were silent once again.

“I work for a man who was great friends with your grandfather,” he said. “His dearest friend. Before your grandfather died, he asked my employer to help get you out of this country, and for six years, we’ve been trying to do that. Earlier this year, it finally looked like it might be possible, like we might have found a solution. And now we have. Now we can get you out of here, and take you somewhere safe.”

“But I’m safe here,” I said, when I could speak, and once again, I felt his head move, just a bit, in my direction.

“No, Charlie,” he said. “You’re not safe. You will never be safe here. And besides,” and here he shifted on the block, “don’t you want another kind of life for yourself, Charlie? Someplace where you can be free?”

“I’m free here,” I said, but he kept talking.

“Somewhere you can—I don’t know, read books or travel or go where you want? Somewhere you can—you can make friends?”

I couldn’t speak. “I have friends here,” I said, and when he didn’t answer, I added, “Every country is the same.”

And now he did turn to me, and through the tint of his face screen, I could see his eyes, which were big and dark, like my husband’s, and were looking straight at me. “No, Charlie,” he said, gently, “they’re not.”

I got up then. I was feeling strange—things were happening too fast, and I didn’t like it. “I have to go,” I said. “I don’t know why you’re telling me these things, David. I don’t know why, but what you’re saying is treason. Making up stories like this is treasonous.” I could feel my eyes turn hot, my nose begin to drip. “I don’t know why you’re doing this,” I said, and I could hear my voice becoming louder and panicky. “I don’t know why, I don’t know why,” and David swiftly stood and did something extraordinary: He pulled me to him and held me and said nothing, and after a while, I held him back, and although at first I was self-conscious, imagining that people must be looking at us, after some more time I didn’t think about them at all.

“Charlie,” said David, somewhere above my head, “I know this is a great shock for you. I know you don’t believe me. I know all this. And I’m sorry. I wish I could have made it easier for you.” And then I felt him slip something into my cooling suit’s pocket, something small and hard. “I want you to open this only when you’re back at home, and alone,” he said. “Do you understand me? Only when you’re absolutely certain you’re not being watched—not even by your husband.” I nodded against his chest. “Okay,” he said. “Now we’re going to separate, and I’m going to walk west, and you’re going to walk north and go up to your apartment, and then I’m going to send you a message about where our next meeting will be, all right?”

“How?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “Just know I will. And if what’s in your pocket now doesn’t convince you, then you just won’t show up. Though, Charlie”—and here he inhaled; I could feel his stomach retracting—“I hope you do. I’ve promised my employer I won’t return to New Britain without you.”

And then he abruptly dropped his arms and left, walking west: not too fast, not too slow, as if he were just another shopper in the Square.

I remained standing there for a few seconds. I had the odd sensation that what had happened had been a dream, and that I was dreaming still. But I wasn’t. Above me, the sun was hot and white, and I could feel sweat trickling down my side.

I turned the cooling suit up to its maximum level and did as David had told me. Once I was in my apartment, though, with the front door safely locked behind me and my helmet removed, I felt like I was going to faint, and I sat down, right on the floor, resting my back against the door and inhaling big gulps of air until I felt better.

Finally, I stood. I checked the locks on the door again, and then I called my husband’s name, even though it was clear he wasn’t at home. Yet I still checked every room: the kitchen, the main room, our bedroom, the bathroom. I even checked the closets. After that, I returned to the main room. I drew the blinds on the windows, one of which looked onto the back of another building, the other of which looked into an air shaft. And only then did I sit on the sofa and reach into my pocket.

It was a package about the size of a walnut shell, of brown paper wrapped around something hard. The paper had been secured with tape, and after peeling it off, I found that beneath the first layer of paper was a second, and then a layer of thin white tissue, which I also tore away. And then I was left with a small black pouch made of a soft, dense fabric and pulled tight with a drawstring. I loosened the drawstring and held out my palm and shook the bag, and into my hand fell Grandfather’s ring.

I hadn’t known what to expect, and only afterward did I realize that I should have been scared, that I could have been carrying anything: an explosive, a vial of viruses, a Fly.

But in certain ways, the ring was worse. I cannot quite say why, but I’ll try. It was as if I was learning that something I had known to be one way was actually another. Of course, that had already happened: David had told me he was not who he said he was. But I had been able to disbelieve him until I saw the ring. I had had what Grandfather had once called “plausible deniability,” which means you can pretend to not know something while knowing it as well. And so, if David was telling me the truth about himself, then were the other things he said also true? How did he know about the disease? Had he really been sent to find me?

Were other countries not like this one after all?

Who was David?

I looked at the ring, which was as heavy as I remembered, its pearl lid still smooth and shiny. “It’s called nacre,” Grandfather had explained. “It’s a kind of calcium carbonate that a mollusk produces, building layers and layers of it around an irritant—like a speck of sand—in its mantle. You can see it’s very strong.”

“Can humans make nacre?” I had asked, and Grandfather had smiled.

“No,” he said. “Humans have to protect themselves in other ways.”

It had been almost twenty years since I had seen the ring, and now I clenched it in my fist: It was warm and solid. I had to give it to the fairy, Grandfather had said. The fairy who looked over you while you were sick. And although I had always known he was teasing, and although I knew there were no such thing as fairies, I think this is what made me saddest of alclass="underline" That Grandfather hadn’t had to pay a price for me returning to him after all. That I had just come back to him anyway, and that, one day, he had sent the ring someplace else, to someone else, and now that it had been returned to me, I no longer knew what it meant, or where it had been, or what it had once stood for.