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...
I had many questions, of course, so many that it was impossible to know where to begin: What to say, what to ask.
“Don’t people in New Britain sound different?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “We do.”
“But you sound like you’re from here,” I said.
“I’m pretending,” he said. “If we were somewhere safe, I would use my regular voice, and I would sound different to you.”
“Oh,” I said. For a while we were silent. Then I asked him something I’d been wondering for a long time. “Your hair,” I said, “it’s long.” He looked at me, surprised, and I was proud of myself for having surprised him. “Some of it fell out of your cap that first day I saw you in the shuttle queue,” I said, and he nodded.
“It’s true, I had long hair,” he said. “But I cut it, months ago.”
“To fit in?” I asked him, and he nodded again.
“Yes,” he said, “to fit in. You’re very observant, Charlie,” and I smiled, just a bit, pleased that David thought I was observant, and pleased because I knew Grandfather would be proud of me for noticing something that perhaps some other people would not have.
“Do people in New Britain have long hair?” I asked.
“Some do,” he said. “Some don’t. People wear their hair how they like.”
“Even men?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, “even men.”
I thought about this, a place where you could wear your hair long if you wanted—if you were able to grow it long, that is. Then I asked, “Did you ever meet my grandfather?”
“No,” he said. “I was never so lucky.”
“I miss him,” I said.
“I know, Charlie,” he said. “I know you do.”
“Were you really sent here to get me?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s the only reason I’m here.”
Then I didn’t know what to say again. I know this will sound vain, and I am not a vain person, but hearing that David had come just for me, just to find me, made me feel light inside. I wished I could hear it again and again; I wished I could tell everyone. Someone had come here to find me: I was his only reason. No one would believe it—I didn’t believe it myself.
“I don’t know what else to ask,” I finally said, and once again, I could feel him looking at me, just a bit.
“Well,” he said, “why don’t I begin by telling you the plan,” and he looked at me again, and I nodded, and he began to talk. Around and around the track we went, sometimes passing other walkers, sometimes being passed by them. We were neither the fastest nor the slowest there, neither the youngest nor the oldest—and if you were watching us all from above, you wouldn’t have been able to tell who was talking about something safe, and who was, at that moment, discussing something so dangerous, so impossible, that you wouldn’t have thought they could still be alive at all.
PART VIII
Summer, twenty years earlier
Dearest Peter, June 17, 2074
Thank you for your lovely, kind note, and apologies for this late reply. I wanted to write earlier, because I knew you’d be anxious, but I hadn’t found a new courier I can trust completely until now.
Of course I’m not angry with you. Of course not. You did everything you could. It was my fault—I should have let you get me out when I (and you) had the chance. Again and again, I think: If I had asked you just five years ago, we would be in New Britain now. It wouldn’t have been easy, but it at least would’ve been possible. Then, invariably, my thoughts grow more dangerous and more despairing: If we had left, would Charlie still have gotten sick? If she hadn’t gotten sick, would she be happier now? Would I?
Then I think that maybe this, her no-longer-new way of thinking, of being, has perhaps better equipped her for the realities of this country after all. Maybe her affectlessness is a kind of stolidity, one that will see her through whatever this world becomes. Maybe the qualities whose loss I mourned on her behalf—an emotional complexity, a demonstrativeness, even a rebelliousness—are actually ones about whose disappearance I should feel relief. In more hopeful moments, I can almost imagine that she’s somehow evolved and become the sort of person who’s better-suited for our time and our place. She isn’t sad about who she is.
But then the old cycle replays itself: If she hadn’t gotten sick. If she hadn’t taken Xychor. If she had grown up in a country where tenderness, vulnerability, romance were still, if not encouraged, then at least tolerated. Who would she be? Who would I be, without this guilt, this sorrow, and the sorrow about the guilt?
Don’t worry about us. Or, rather, do worry, but not any more than you would. They don’t know I tried to escape. And as I know I keep reminding the both of us, they still need me. As long as there’s disease, there’ll be me.
With thanks and love. (As always.) Charles
Dear Peter, July 21, 2075
I’m writing this to you in haste, because I want to make sure I catch the courier before he leaves. I nearly called you today and might still, even though it’s been harder and harder to get a secure line. But if I figure out a way in the next few days, I will.
I think I mentioned that at the start of the summer, I began letting Charlie go out on brief walks by herself. And when I say brief, I mean brief: She can walk one block north to the Mews, and then east to University, and then south to Washington Square North, and then west to home. I had been reluctant, but one of her tutors encouraged it—she’ll be eleven in September, she reminded me; I had to let her out in the world, just a little.
So I did. For the first three weeks, I had security follow her, just to make sure. But she did exactly as I’d told her, and I watched from the second-floor window as she climbed the stairs to the house.
I hadn’t wanted her to know how nervous I had been, and so I waited until dinner to talk to her about it. “How was your walk, little cat?” I asked.
She looked up at me. “Good,” she said.
“What did you see?” I asked.
She thought. “Trees,” she said.
“That’s nice,” I said. “What else?”
Another silence. “Buildings,” she said.
“Tell me about the buildings,” I said. “Did you see anyone in any of the windows? What color were the buildings? Did any of them have flower boxes outside? What color were their doors?” It helps her, these exercises, but they also make me feel like I’m coaching a spy: Did you see anyone suspicious? What were they doing? What were they wearing? Can you identify them from these pictures I’m showing you?
She tries so hard to give me what she thinks I want. But all I want is for her to one day come home and tell me that she saw something funny or beautiful or exciting or scary—all I want for her is the ability to tell herself a story. She looks at me occasionally as she talks, and I nod or smile to show her I approve, and whenever I do, there’s that awful squeezing in my chest, that sensation only she is capable of causing.
In late June, I began letting her go alone. When I’m not home, her nanny is to wait for her arrival; it only takes her seven minutes to make the loop, and that’s allowing her plenty of time to stop and look at things as she goes. She’s never been curious to go any farther, and it’s too hot, besides. But then, at the beginning of the month, she asked if she could walk into the Square.
Part of me thrilled to this: My little Charlie, who never asks for anything or to go anywhere, who seems at times devoid of appetites and desires and preferences at all. Though that isn’t true—she knows the difference between sweet and salty, for example, and she prefers the salty. She knows the difference between a pretty shirt and an ugly one, and she prefers the pretty. She knows when someone’s laughter is mean and when it’s joyful. She can’t articulate why, but she knows. I remind her constantly: It’s fine to ask for what she wants; it’s fine to like someone, or something, or someplace, more than another. It’s fine to dislike, too. “All you have to do is say,” I tell her, “all you have to do is ask. Do you understand me, little cat?”