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...
And yet it also does look like something. The things I have described are elements of the sanctioned life, the life that can be lived aboveground. But out of the corner of our eyes, there is another life, one we see in glimpses, in movements. There is no television, for example, there is no internet, and yet messages are still relayed, and the dissidents are still able to telegraph their reports. I sometimes read of them in our daily briefings, and while it typically takes only a week or so to discover them—a surprising, or perhaps unsurprising, number of them are related to state employees—there are always those who elude us. There is no foreign travel, and yet every month there are reports of attempted defections, of dinghies capsizing off the coast of Maine or South Carolina or Massachusetts or Florida. There are no more refugee camps, and yet there are still reports—fewer, admittedly—of escapees from even worse countries than this, found and packed into a poorly made boat and sent back out to sea under armed guard. To live in a place like this means to be aware that that little movement, that twitching, that faint, mosquito-like buzzing, is not your imagination but proof of another existence, the country you once knew and you know must still exist, beating onward just beyond the range of your senses.
Data, investigation, analysis, news, rumor: A dystopia flattens those terms into one. There is what the state says, and then there is everything else, and that everything else falls into one category: information. People in a young dystopia crave information—they are starved for it, they will kill for it. But over time, that craving diminishes, and within a few years, you forget what it tasted like, you forget the thrill of knowing something first, of sharing it with others, of getting to keep secrets and asking others to do the same. You become freed of the burden of knowledge; you learn, if not to trust the state, then to surrender to it.
And we try to make the process of forgetting, of unlearning, as easy as we can. It is why all dystopias seem so generic in their systems and appearance; there is the removal of the vehicles of information (the press, the television, the internet, books—even though I think we should have kept television, which can easily be made useful), and an emphasis instead on the elemental—the things gathered or made by hand. Eventually, the two worlds, the primitive and the technological, are united in endeavors such as the Farm, which looks like an agrarian project but will be powered by the most sophisticated irrigation and climatic systems the state can afford. Eventually, you hope, the people working there will forget how that technology was once applied, and what it was once capable of doing, and how many ways we once depended on it, and what information it could provide.
I look at you, and what you’re doing over there, Peter, and I know we’re doomed. Of course I do. But what can I do now? Where can I go? Last week they changed my profession on all my state papers from “scientist” to “senior administrator.” “A promotion,” said the interior minister, “congratulations.” And while it is, it also isn’t. If I were still classified as a scientist, I’d in theory be able to attend foreign symposiums and conferences, not that the invitations have exactly been flooding in. But as a state administrator, there is no reason, no need, for me to ever leave here. I am a powerful man in a country I cannot leave, which by definition makes me a prisoner.
Which is why I’m sending you this. I don’t think I’ll ever be stripped of my possessions. But it’s valuable, and I suppose I think that if the day comes when Charlie and I are able to leave, we won’t be able to take our money or our things. We might not be able to take anything at all. So I’m asking you to keep this safe for us. Maybe someday I’ll be able to reclaim it from you, or have you sell it so we can use the money to settle elsewhere. I understand how naïve this all sounds. But I also know that you, being kind, aren’t laughing at me. I know you’re worried for me. I wish I could tell you not to be. For now, I know you’ll protect this for me.
Love, Charles
My dear Peter, October 29, 2077
Sorry I’ve been so quiet, and, yes, I will send you regular updates, if only to say, “I’m here and alive.” You’re kind to want to hear them. And thank you for the new courier—much safer, I think, to have the person be from your side rather than ours, especially now.
Everyone is still astonished that you’re ceasing relations with us. I’m not saying this in an accusatory way, not that it would make a difference—but it just seemed like one of those threats that would never be realized. The bigger fear is not so much your lack of recognition, however, but that you might inspire other places to do the same.
Yet we also understand perfectly why it’s happened. When the Marriage Act was first discussed, six years ago, it had seemed not just impossible but silly. There had been that study from the University of Kandahar about how rising rates of unrest in three different countries were linked to the percentage of unmarried men over the age of twenty-five. The study failed to take into account other socially destabilizing effects, such as poverty, illiteracy, illness, and climatic disaster, and was eventually discredited.
But I guess it had had more of an effect on certain members of the Committee than I (and perhaps they) had realized, though when the proposal was revived and re-presented this past summer, it was framed differently: Marriage would be a way to encourage repopulation, and to do so within a state-supported institution. The proposal was coauthored by a deputy minister from Interior and another from Health, and was thorough and almost troublingly rational, as if the entire point of marriage was not an expression of devotion but an acquiescence to the needs of the society. Which it perhaps is. The deputy ministers explained the system of rewards and incentives for marriage, which could be used, they argued, as a way to ease the population into the concept of a comprehensive welfare state. There would be housing allowances, and what they’re calling “procreation incentives,” which essentially means that people would be rewarded, in either benefits or cash, for having children.
“I never thought I’d see the day when free Black people would be celebrated for making more free Black people,” said one of the justice ministers, dryly, and everyone stiffened.
“The society needs all people, of all kinds, to contribute to its rebuilding,” said the deputy interior minister.
“I guess desperate times call for desperate measures,” the justice minister responded, quietly, and there was a strained silence.
“Well, then,” said the deputy interior minister, finally, in a conclusive way.
There was another silence, this one unhappy as well, but also anticipatory, as if we were all actors in a play and at a particularly charged moment, one of us had forgotten his lines.
Finally, someone spoke. “Ah, what is the definition of marriage here?” he asked.
Everyone in the room either looked down at the table or up at the ceiling. The man who had asked the question was a deputy in the Pharmacology Ministry, newly arrived from the private sector. I knew little else about him except that he was white, and probably in his early fifties, and that both of his children and his husband had died in ’70.
“Well,” said the deputy interior minister, at last, and then she too fell silent, looking around the room almost beseechingly, as if someone might answer for her. But no one did. “We will of course honor all preexisting marital contracts,” she said, after a pause.