The Giver, Gathering Blue, Messenger, Son. Lois Lowry

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      

      “YOU SLEPT SOUNDLY, Jonas?” his mother asked at the morning meal. “No dreams?”

      Jonas simply smiled and nodded, not ready to lie, not willing to tell the truth. “I slept very soundly,” he said.

      “I wish this one would,” his father said, leaning down from his chair to touch Gabriel’s waving fist. The basket was on the floor beside him; in its corner, beside Gabriel’s head, the stuffed hippo sat staring with its blank eyes.

      “So do I,” Mother said, rolling her eyes. “He’s so fretful at night.”

      Jonas had not heard the newchild during the night because as always, he had slept soundly. But it was not true that he had no dreams.

      Again and again, as he slept, he had slid down that snow-covered hill. Always, in the dream, it seemed as if there were a destination: a something – he could not grasp what – that lay beyond the place where the thickness of snow brought the sledge to a stop.

      He was left, upon awakening, with the feeling that he wanted, even somehow needed, to reach the something that waited in the distance. The feeling that it was good. That it was welcoming. That it was significant.

      But he did not know how to get there.

      He tried to shed the leftover dream, gathering his schoolwork and preparing for the day.

      School seemed a little different today. The classes were the same: language and communications; commerce and industry; science and technology; civil procedures and government. But during the breaks for recreation periods and the midday meal, the other new Twelves were abuzz with descriptions of their first day of training. All of them talked at once, interrupting each other, hastily making the required apology for interrupting, then forgetting again in the excitement of describing the new experiences.

      Jonas listened. He was very aware of his own admonition not to discuss his training. But it would have been impossible anyway. There was no way to describe to his friends what he had experienced there in the Annexe room. How could you describe a sledge without describing a hill and snow; and how could you describe a hill and snow to someone who had never felt height or wind or that feathery, magical cold?

      Even trained for years as they all had been in precision of language, what words could you use which would give another the experience of sunshine?

      So it was easy for Jonas to be still and to listen.

      After school hours he rode again beside Fiona to the House of the Old.

      “I looked for you yesterday,” she told him, “so we could ride home together. Your bike was still there, and I waited for a little while. But it was getting late, so I went on home.”

      “I apologise for making you wait,” Jonas said.

      “I accept your apology,” she replied automatically.

      “I stayed a little longer than I expected,” Jonas explained.

      She pedalled forward silently, and he knew that she expected him to tell her why. She expected him to describe his first day of training. But to ask would have fallen into the category of rudeness.

      “You’ve been doing so many volunteer hours with the Old,” Jonas said, changing the subject. “There won’t be much that you don’t already know.”

      “Oh, there’s lots to learn,” Fiona replied. “There’s administrative work, and the dietary rules, and punishment for disobedience – did you know that they use a discipline wand on the Old, the same as for small children? And there’s occupational therapy, and recreational activities, and medications, and—”

      They reached the building and braked their bikes.

      “I really think I’ll like it better than school,” Fiona confessed.

      “Me too,” Jonas agreed, wheeling his bike into its place.

      She waited for a second, as if, again, she expected him to go on. Then she looked at her watch, waved, and hurried towards the entrance.

      Jonas stood for a moment beside his bike, startled. It had happened again: the thing that he thought of now as “seeing beyond”. This time it had been Fiona who had undergone that fleeting indescribable change. As he looked up and towards her going through the door, it happened; she changed. Actually, Jonas thought, trying to recreate it in his mind, it wasn’t Fiona in her entirety. It seemed to be just her hair. And just for that flickering instant.

      He ran through it in his mind. It was clearly beginning to happen more often. First, the apple a few weeks before. The next time had been the faces in the audience at the Auditorium, just two days ago. Now, today, Fiona’s hair.

      Frowning, Jonas walked towards the Annexe. I will ask the Giver, he decided.

      The old man looked up, smiling, when Jonas entered the room. He was already seated beside the bed, and he seemed more energetic today, slightly renewed, and glad to see Jonas.

      “Welcome,” he said. “We must get started. You’re one minute late.”

      “I apologi—” Jonas began, and then stopped, flustered, remembering there were to be no apologies.

      He removed his tunic and went to the bed. “I’m one minute late because something happened,” he explained. “And I’d like to ask you about it, if you don’t mind.”

      “You may ask me anything.”

      Jonas tried to sort it out in his mind so that he could explain it clearly. “I think it’s what you call seeing-beyond,” he said.

      The Giver nodded. “Describe it,” he said.

      Jonas told him about the experience with the apple. Then the moment on the stage, when he had looked out and seen the same phenomenon in the faces of the crowd.

      “Then today, just now, outside, it happened with my friend Fiona. She herself didn’t change, exactly. But something about her changed for a second. Her hair looked different; but not in its shape, not in its length. I can’t quite …” Jonas paused, frustrated by his inability to grasp and describe exactly what had occurred.

      Finally he simply said, “It changed. I don’t know how, or why.

      “That’s why I was one minute late,” he concluded, and looked questioningly at the Giver.

      To his surprise, the old man asked him a question which seemed unrelated to the seeing-beyond. “When I gave you the memory yesterday, the first one, the ride on the sledge, did you look around?”

      Jonas nodded. “Yes,” he said, “but the stuff – I mean the snow – in the air made it hard to see anything.”

      “Did you look at the sledge?”

      Jonas thought back. “No. I only СКАЧАТЬ