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 then he was incensed, and yet once again, his grandfather began speaking before he could. “You must not judge me too harshly, child—though I do apologize for keeping these from you. But you were so ill, so upset, that I could not know if these would harm you further. It was such an extraordinary quantity of letters, that I thought they might be from—from—” He stopped.
“Well, they were not,” he snapped.
“I know that now,” his grandfather continued, and his face became grim. “And this leads me to the second thing I need you to read,” and once again he reached into the box and this time handed David a large brown envelope, which contained a sheaf of stitched pages, the top sheet marked, in large letters, “Confidential—for Mister Nathaniel Bingham, upon request,” and suddenly David felt a fear ripple through him, and he held the pages in his lap, careful not to look at them.
But “Read it,” his grandfather said, in that same tight, bland voice. And, when David refused to move, “Read it.”
Dear Mister Bingham, March 17, 1894
We have completed the report on the gentleman in question, Edward Bishop, and have recorded the details of the subject’s life within these pages.
The subject was born Edward Martins Knowlton on August 2, 1870, in Savannah, Georgia, to Francis Knowlton, a schoolteacher, and Sarabeth Knowlton (née Martins). The Knowltons had one other child, a daughter, Isabelle (known as Belle) Harriet Knowlton, born January 27, 1873. Mister Knowlton was a beloved teacher, but he was also a known and inveterate gambler, and the family was often in debt. Knowlton borrowed heavily from his and his wife’s extended family, but it was when he was discovered to be stealing money from the school’s coffers that he was fired and threatened with probable imprisonment. At the same time, Knowlton was found to be much more indebted than even his family knew—he had accrued hundreds of dollars’ worth, with no way to repay it.
The night before he was to be arraigned, Knowlton fled with his wife and two children. His neighbors found the house almost exactly as they’d left it, though with signs that they had departed in great haste; the larder had been ransacked for dry goods, and drawers had been left ajar. A child’s forgotten sock lay on the staircase. The authorities immediately began pursuit, but it is thought that Knowlton sought refuge in one of the underground houses, likely claiming religious persecution.
From here, the trail on Knowlton and his wife ends. The two children, Edward and Belle, are recorded as registered in a safe house in Frederick, Maryland, on October 4, 1877, but they are identified as orphans. According to notes from the shelter, neither child could or would talk about what had happened to their parents, but the boy did at one point say that “the man with the horse found them and we hid,” which led the facility director to believe that the Knowlton parents were captured by a Colony patrol just before crossing into Maryland and the children were later found and taken to the shelter by a good Samaritan.
The siblings remained at the house for another two months before being moved with a number of other parentless children found in the area to an institution for Colony orphans in Philadelphia on December 12, 1877. Here they were almost immediately adopted by a couple from Burlington, Vermont, Luke and Victoria Bishop, who already had two daughters, Laura (eight) and Margaret (nine), also Colony orphans, though both were adopted in infancy. The Bishops were wealthy, upstanding citizens: Mister Bishop owned a successful lumber concern, which he managed with his wife.
But the early, pleasant relations between the Bishops and their new son were soon to sour. While Belle adjusted quickly to her new life, Edward resisted it. The boy was highly attractive, as well as intelligent and charming, but, as Victoria Bishop put it, “lacked any true sense of industry or self-control.” Indeed, while his sisters dutifully completed their chores and homework, Edward was forever finding ways to shirk responsibility; he even engaged in petty blackmail to coerce Belle into doing his chores for him. Though obviously quick-witted, he was an indifferent student and indeed was suspended from school after he was found to have cheated on a mathematics exam. He loved sweets, and several times filched candy from the general store. And yet, as his adoptive mother emphasized, he was also beloved by his sisters, especially Belle, despite the small ways in which she was often manipulated by him. He was, she says, exceptionally patient with animals, including the family’s lame dog, as well as a gifted singer, an excellent writer and reader, and deeply affectionate. Though he had very few true friends, preferring to be with Belle, he was well-liked and had many acquaintances and never seemed to be lonely.
When the boy was ten years old, the family acquired a piano—Mister Bishop had learned to play in his youth—and although all the children were given lessons, it was Edward who demonstrated the most talent and natural skill. “It seemed to quiet something within him,” Missus Bishop said, adding that she and her husband were “relieved” that their son might have found an affinity for something. They engaged additional tutors for him, and were gratified to see Edward at last applying himself so diligently to something.
As Edward grew older, the Bishops’ difficulties with him increased. He was, his mother notes, something of a conundrum for them; though capable, he was bored by school and began to skip classes, and was again caught committing a series of petty thefts—pencils and small change and the like—from his classmates, which bewildered his parents, as they had never denied him anything he wished. After he was expelled from his third preparatory school in as many years, his parents hired a private tutor so that he might finish his education; he managed to earn his degree, barely, and thence attended a conservatory of little prestige in western Massachusetts, where he completed only one year before taking a small inheritance he had from one of his uncles and decamping for New York City, where he moved into the Harlem house of his maternal great-aunt Bethesda. Both of his parents approved of the situation: Since she became widowed nine years prior, Bethesda’s mind had slipped considerably, and though she had plenty of attendants—she was quite wealthy—they felt that Edward’s presence would be soothing for her; she had always been deeply fond of him, and, being childless, had considered him as her own son.