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...
He had thought to take a hansom, but he instead walked slowly, first south, then east, moving dreamily through the streets, his feet somehow knowing where to sidestep a pile of dung, a scrap of turnip, a scampering feral kitten, before even his eyes did; he felt himself a slim cone of fire, licking his way down the dear filthy streets he had walked his entire life, his shoes leaving no imprint, making no sound, the people parting for him before he even had to announce himself with a clear of his throat. And so it was that, when he finally reached Bingham Brothers, he was quite far from himself, afloat even, and it was as if he were hovering meters above the city, swooping slowly around the stone building, before being landed gently on its steps, and walking through its doors, the same as he’d done for nearly twenty-nine years, and yet of course not the same at all.
Down the hall he walked, through the doors to the bank’s offices, and then to the left, where he met with the banker who was responsible for the family’s accounts, and where he withdrew all of his savings; the Free States’ currency was accepted in the West, but only grudgingly, and David had sent word beforehand that he needed his money in gold. He watched as the ingots were weighed and wrapped in cloth and then stacked inside a small black leather case and its straps buckled.
As he handed him the case, the banker—someone new, unknown to him—bowed. “May I wish you the best of luck, Mister Bingham,” he said, somberly, and David, suddenly breathless, his arm tugged downward by the weight of the metal, could only nod his thanks.
Once again, his story was apparently known, and as he left the banker and made his final walk down the long, carpeted hallway toward his grandfather’s office, he sensed a collective murmuring, almost a hum, though he encountered no one. It was not until he had almost reached the office’s closed doorway that he did see someone, Norris, stepping quickly into the hallway from an antechamber.
“Mister David,” he said. “Your grandfather is awaiting you.”
“Thank you, Norris,” he managed. He could hardly speak; the words were choking him.
He turned to knock on the door, but as he did, Norris touched him, suddenly, on the shoulder. David was startled; Norris never touched him or his siblings, and when he looked at the man again, he was shocked to see his eyes were wet. “I wish you all the happiness, Mister David,” Norris said. And then he had vanished, and David was pressing the brass handle on his grandfather’s door and entering the room, and—ah!—there was his grandfather, rising from behind his desk, not beckoning him as he usually did but waiting for him to walk across the soft carpet, one so plush that you could, as David once did when he was a boy, drop a crystal goblet upon it and it would not shatter but bounce, gently, off the surface. He saw, at once, his grandfather’s eyes flicker to his case, and knew he knew what was secured within; indeed, knew to the cent how much gold it contained, and as he sat, his grandfather yet to say a single word, he smelled smoke, earth, and opened his eyes to watch Lapsang souchong being poured into a cup, and his eyes once more stung with tears. But then he realized: There was only one cup, and it was his grandfather’s.
“I have come to say goodbye,” he said after a silence so dense he could not bear it, though he could hear the tremble in his voice as he spoke. And then, when his grandfather did not respond, “Are you not going to say anything?” He had intended to re-present his case—Edward’s denials, how much Edward cared for him, how Edward had assuaged his concerns—and then he realized: He did not have to. At his feet was a trunk of gold, like something from a fairy tale, and it was his, and a little more than a mile from here was a man who loved him, and together they would travel many more miles, and David would hope that their love would come with them—because he believed it; because he must.
“Grandfather,” he said, hesitantly, and then, when his grandfather responded only with a sip of his tea, David repeated it, and then again, and then in a shout—“Grandfather!”—and still the man remained impassive, lifting his cup to his mouth.
“It is not too late, David,” his grandfather said at last, and the sound of his grandfather’s voice—its patience, its authority that David had never before seen need or reason or desire to doubt—filled him with an ache, and he had to stop himself from bending over and clutching his stomach in pain. “You can choose. I can keep you safe—I can still keep you safe.”
He knew then, as he had always known, that he would never be able to explain himself—he would never have the argument, he would never have the words, he would never be more than Nathaniel Bingham’s grandson. What was Edward Bishop against Nathaniel Bingham? What was love against all his grandfather symbolized and was? What was he against any of it? He was no one; he was nothing; he was a man who was in love with Edward Bishop and he was, for perhaps the first time in his life, doing something he wanted, something that frightened him, but something that was his own. He was choosing foolishly, perhaps, but he was choosing. He reached his arm down to his feet; he slid his fingers through the case’s handle; he tightened his hand around it; he stood.
“Goodbye,” he whispered. “I love you, Grandfather.”
He was halfway to the door when his grandfather cried out, in a voice David had never before heard from him, “You are a fool, David!” And still he kept walking, and as he was closing the door behind him, he heard his grandfather not so much call as groan his name, two anguished syllables: “David!”
No one stopped him as he left. Down the carpeted hallway he walked once more, and then through the spectacular doors, and then across the marble lobby. And then he was outside, with Bingham Brothers to his back and the city before him.
Once, when he and his siblings were still quite young, probably soon after they came to live in Washington Square, they had had a conversation with their grandfather about Heaven, and after Grandfather had explained it, John had promptly said, “I’d like mine to be made all of ice cream,” but David, who did not care, then, for cold things, had disagreed: His Heaven would be made of cakes. He could see it—oceans made turgid with buttercream; mountains made of sponge; trees dangling candied cherries. He did not want to be in John’s Heaven; he wanted to be in his own. That night, when his grandfather came to wish him good night, he had asked him, anxious: How could God know what each person wanted? How could He be certain they were in the place they had dreamed of? His grandfather had laughed. “He knows, David,” he had said. “He knows, and He will make as many Heavens as He needs.”
And so what if this was Heaven? Would he know it if it were? Perhaps not. But he knew it was not whence he had come: That was someone else’s Heaven, but it was not his. His was somewhere else, but it would not appear in front of him; rather, it would be his to find. Indeed, was that not what he had been taught, been made to hope for, his entire life? Now it was time to seek. Now it was time to be brave. Now he must go alone. So he would stand here for another moment, the bag leaden in his hand, and then he would take a breath, and then he would make his first step: his first step to a new life; his first step—to paradise.