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...
“How did he sound?” Charles asked. He and Olivier were still friendly but only saw each other once or twice a year at most.
“Very well,” said Adams. “Please give him my regards.”
“I absolutely will,” Charles said.
Anyway, trying to complain about Adams was useless, because Charles would never abandon him: He had been Charles’s parents’ butler when he was a teenager, and when they both died, Charles, who was their only child, inherited not only their house but Adams as well. He could never tell his friends that; they would see Charles’s employment of a seventy-five-year-old man in a physically demanding position as a form of geriatric exploitation, despite the fact that David knew that Adams enjoyed having his job as much as Charles enjoyed providing it to him. His friends never understood that—how, for some people, work was the only thing that made them feel real to the world.
“I know it seems anachronistic to have a butler,” Charles had said—few of his own friends did, even the ones who were richer or from older money than he was—“but when you’re raised with one, it’s a hard habit to give up.” He sighed. “I don’t expect you, or anyone, to understand.” David said nothing. “This is as much Adams’s house as it is mine,” Charles often said, and David knew he meant it in a way, even if it wasn’t true. Habitation is not equivalent to ownership, he’d reminded Charles, quoting his first-year law-school professor, and Charles had grabbed him (they’d been in bed then, too). “Are you actually explaining legal principles to me?” he’d asked, teasing. “To me? You really are adorable.” You wouldn’t understand, Charles said to him, about this and so many other matters, and when he did, David’s grandmother’s face would suddenly flash through his mind. Would his grandmother have ever said that their house was as much Matthew’s and Jane’s as it was theirs? He didn’t think so. Their house belonged only to the Binghams, and the only way to become a Bingham was to be born one or to marry one.
It certainly would never have occurred to Matthew or Jane to consider the Bingham house theirs either, and David suspected that Adams felt the same way: This was Charles’s house, and always would be, and although he might be a part of it, it was only as a chair or a sidewall cabinet was part of it—a fixture, but nothing with its own desires or motivations or sense of autonomy. Adams could behave as if it were his—look at him now, ignoring the presence of the party planner to order the caterers into the kitchen and the furniture movers into the dining room—but though his authority was in part innate, much of it was due to his association with Charles, whose name he invoked only when necessary, though still not infrequently. “You know Mr. Griffith doesn’t like them,” he was now chiding the florist, who stood before him, protesting, trying to persuade, clutching a green plastic bucket of partially opened Easter lilies against her chest. “We discussed this. He thinks their scent is funereal.”
“But I ordered all of these!” (The florist, in a near-wail.)
“Then I suggest you contact Mr. Griffith and try to convince him,” Adams said, knowing she never would, and, indeed, the florist turned and walked away, calling to her crew as she did, “We have to eighty-six the lilies!” and, lower, “Asshole.”
David watched her go, feeling triumphant as she did. He was to have coordinated the flowers. After the last big party—this was shortly after David had moved in—he had suggested to Charles that the flowers were a little listless, and far too fragrant: overly perfumed flowers distracted from the food. “You’re right,” Charles had said. “Next time, you’ll be in charge of them.”
Will I really?
“Of course. What do I know about flowers? You’re the expert,” Charles had said, and had kissed him.
At the time, this had felt like a privilege, a gift, but since then he had come to learn that when Charles declared his ignorance it was only because he thought the subject inconsequential. He could make his lack of knowledge—about flowers, baseball, football, modernist architecture, contemporary literature and art, South American food—sound like a boast; he didn’t know because there was no reason to know. You might know, but then you had wasted your time—he had other, more important things to learn about and remember. And anyway, it hadn’t happened: Charles had remembered to tell the party planner not to hire the same florist, but had forgotten to tell her that David would be in charge. David had spent the past month planning his arrangements, calling different shops in the Flower District to ask if they could special-order stephanotis and protea, and it had only been two weeks ago, when he and Charles were having a drink in the living room and Charles had asked Adams for an update about the party planner—“Yes, she’s hired a different florist”—that David had realized that he wasn’t to be responsible for the flowers after all.
He had waited until Adams left to ask Charles about it, both because they tried not to argue in front of Adams and because he wanted to rehearse the words to himself, to make sure he didn’t sound like he was whining. But he had anyway. I thought I was overseeing the flowers, he’d said, once Adams exited the room.
“What?”
Remember? You said I could?
“Oh, god. Did I?”
Yes.
“I don’t remember. But if you say I did, then I did. Oh, David, I’m sorry.” And then, when he didn’t answer, “You’re not mad, are you? It’s just a bunch of silly flowers. David. Are you upset?”
No, he lied.
“But you are. I’m sorry, David. You can do the next one, I promise.”
He had nodded, and then Adams had reappeared to announce that dinner was served, and the two of them had gone to the dining room. As they ate, he tried to be cheerful, because that was what Charles liked, but later, in bed, Charles had turned to him in the dark and asked, “You’re still annoyed, aren’t you?”
It was difficult to explain why he was—he knew he would sound petty. I just want to help you, he’d begun. I just want to feel like I’m doing something here.
“But you are helping me,” Charles had said. “Every night you’re here with me, you’re helping me.”
Well—thank you. But—I want to feel like we’re doing something together, like I’m contributing something to your life. I feel like—like I’m just taking up room in this house, but I’m not actually doing anything, do you know what I mean?
Charles had been quiet. “I understand,” he said, finally. “Next time, David, I promise. And—I’ve been thinking—why don’t we have some of your friends over for a dinner? Just your friends. You know all of mine, but I feel I’ve hardly met yours.”
Really?
“Yes. This is your house, too; I want them to feel welcome here.”
He had been relieved that night, but since then, Charles hadn’t repeated his offer, and David hadn’t reminded him, partly because he wasn’t sure whether Charles had meant it, but also because he wasn’t certain he wanted his friends meeting Charles at all. The fact that they hadn’t been introduced by now, so long into their relationship, had gone from being unusual to being suspicious: What was David hiding? What didn’t he want them to see? They already knew how old Charles was, and how rich, and how they had met, so what else was he embarrassed about? So, yes, they would come, but they would come to gather evidence, and after dinner they would all go out together and talk about why David was with Charles to begin with, and what he could possibly see in a man thirty years older than he was.
“I know one thing,” he could hear Eden saying.
Yet David often wondered whether it was only the difference in their ages that made him feel like such a child around Charles, in a way that he had never felt around his own father, who was five years younger than his boyfriend. Look at him now: He was hiding in the stairway that connected the parlor and second floors, crouching on a step that he knew afforded him an excellent view of downstairs while concealing him completely, and from which he could watch the florist, still grumbling, snipping the twine off cords of juniper branches and, just behind her, the two movers, white cotton gloves on their hands, hoisting the eighteenth-century wooden sidewall cupboard from its spot in the dining room and carrying it slowly toward the kitchen, like a coffin, where it would remain for the evening. As a child, he had also hidden on the stairs, listening first to his father and grandmother arguing and later Edward and his grandmother arguing, ready to get up and run back toward his room, back under the sheet, if he needed to.