The Giver
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‘It’s good to have some volunteers here today,’ the attendant told him. ‘We celebrated a release this morning, and that always throws the schedule off a little, so things get backed up.’ She looked at a printed sheet. ‘Let’s see. Asher and Fiona are helping in the bathing room. Why don’t you join them there? You know where it is, don’t you?’
Jonas nodded, thanked her, and walked down the long hallway. He glanced into the rooms on either side. The Old were sitting quietly, some visiting and talking with one another, others doing handwork and simple crafts. A few were asleep. Each room was comfortably furnished, the floors covered with thick carpeting. It was a serene and slow-paced place, unlike the busy centres of manufacture and distribution where the daily work of the community occurred.
Jonas was glad that he had, over the years, chosen to do his hours in a variety of places so that he could experience the differences. He realised, though, that not focusing on one area meant he was left with not the slightest idea – not even a guess – of what his Assignment would be.
He laughed softly. Thinking about the Ceremony again, Jonas? he teased himself. But he suspected that with the date so near, probably all of his friends were, too.
He passed a Caretaker walking slowly with one of the Old in the hall. ‘Hello, Jonas,’ the young uniformed man said, smiling pleasantly. The woman beside him, whose arm he held, was hunched over as she shuffled along in her soft slippers. She looked towards Jonas and smiled, but her dark eyes were clouded and blank. He realised she was blind.
He entered the bathing room with its warm moist air and scent of cleansing lotions. He removed his tunic, hung it carefully on a wall hook, and put on the volunteer’s smock that was folded on a shelf.
‘Hi, Jonas!’ Asher called from the corner where he was kneeling beside a tub. Jonas saw Fiona nearby, at a different tub. She looked up and smiled at him, but she was busy, gently washing a man who lay in the warm water.
Jonas greeted them and the caretaking attendants at work nearby. Then he went to the row of padded lounging chairs where others of the Old were waiting. He had worked here before; he knew what to do.
‘Your turn, Larissa,’ he said, reading the nametag on the woman’s robe. ‘I’ll just start the water and then help you up.’ He pressed the button on a nearby empty tub and watched as the warm water flowed in through the many small openings on the sides. The tub would be filled in a minute and the water flow would stop automatically.
He helped the woman from the chair, led her to the tub, removed her robe, and steadied her with his hand on her arm as she stepped in and lowered herself. She leaned back and sighed with pleasure, her head on a soft cushion headrest.
‘Comfortable?’ he asked, and she nodded, her eyes closed. Jonas squeezed cleansing lotion on to the clean sponge at the edge of the tub and began to wash her frail body.
Last night he had watched as his father bathed the newchild. This was much the same: the fragile skin, the soothing water, the gentle motion of his hand, slippery with soap. The relaxed, peaceful smile on the woman’s face reminded him of Gabriel being bathed.
And the nakedness, too. It was against the rules for children or adults to look at another’s nakedness; but the rule did not apply to newchildren or the Old. Jonas was glad. It was a nuisance to keep oneself covered while changing for games, and the required apology if one had by mistake glimpsed another’s body was always awkward. He couldn’t see why it was necessary. He liked the feeling of safety here in this warm and quiet room; he liked the expression of trust on the woman’s face as she lay in the water unprotected, exposed and free.
From the corner of his eye he could see his friend Fiona help the old man from the tub and tenderly pat his thin, naked body dry with an absorbent cloth. She helped him into his robe.
Jonas thought Larissa had drifted into sleep, as the Old often did, and he was careful to keep his motions steady and gentle so he wouldn’t wake her. He was surprised when she spoke, her eyes still closed.
‘This morning we celebrated the release of Roberto,’ she told him. ‘It was wonderful.’
‘I knew Roberto!’ Jonas said. ‘I helped with his feeding the last time I was here, just a few weeks ago. He was a very interesting man.’
Larissa opened her eyes happily. ‘They told his whole life before they released him,’ she said. ‘They always do. But to be honest,’ she whispered with a mischievous look, ‘some of the tellings are a little boring. I’ve even seen some of the Old fall asleep during tellings – when they released Edna recently. Did you know Edna?’
Jonas shook his head. He couldn’t recall anyone named Edna.
‘Well, they tried to make her life sound meaningful. And of course,’ she added primly, ‘all lives are meaningful, I don’t mean that they aren’t. But Edna. My goodness. She was a Birthmother, and then she worked in Food Production for years, until she came here. She never even had a family unit.’
Larissa lifted her head and looked around to make sure no one else was listening. Then she confided, ‘I don’t think Edna was very smart.’
Jonas laughed. He rinsed her left arm, laid it back into the water, and began to wash her feet. She murmured with pleasure as he massaged her feet with the sponge.
‘But Roberto’s life was wonderful,’ Larissa went on, after a moment. ‘He had been an Instructor of Elevens – you know how important that is – and he’d been on the Planning Committee. And – goodness, I don’t know how he found the time – he also raised two very successful children, and he was also the one who did the landscaping design for the Central Plaza. He didn’t do the actual labour, of course.’
‘Now your back. Lean forward and I’ll help you sit up.’ Jonas put his arm around her and supported her as she sat. He squeezed the sponge against her back and began to rub her sharp-boned shoulders. ‘Tell me about the celebration.’
‘Well, there was the telling of his life. That is always first. Then the toast. We all raised our glasses and cheered. We chanted the anthem. He made a lovely goodbye speech. And several of us made little speeches wishing him well. I didn’t, though. I’ve never been fond of public speaking.
‘He was thrilled. You should have seen the look on his face when they let him go.’
Jonas slowed the strokes of his hand on her back thoughtfully. ‘Larissa,’ he asked, ‘what happens when they make the actual release? Where exactly did Roberto go?’
She lifted her bare wet shoulders in a small shrug. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think anybody does, except the committee. He just bowed to all of us and then walked, like they all do, through the special door in the Releasing Room. But you should have seen his look. Pure happiness, I’d call it.’
Jonas grinned. ‘I wish I’d been there to see it.’
Larissa frowned. ‘I don’t know why they don’t let children come. Not enough room, I guess. They should enlarge the Releasing Room.’
‘We’ll have to suggest that to the committee. Maybe they’d study it,’ Jonas said slyly, and Larissa chortled with laughter.
‘Right!’ she hooted, and Jonas helped her from the tub.
Chapter Five
Usually, at the morning ritual when the family members told their dreams, Jonas didn’t contribute much. He rarely dreamed. Sometimes he awoke with a feeling of fragments afloat in his sleep, but he couldn’t seem to grasp them and put them together into something worthy of telling at the ritual.
But this morning was different. He had dreamed very vividly the night before.
His mind wandered while Lily, as usual, recounted a lengthy dream, this one a frightening one in which she had, against the rules, been riding her mother’s bicycle and been caught by the Security Guards.
They all listened carefully and discussed with Lily the warning that the dream had given.
‘Thank you for your dream, Lily.’ Jonas said the standard phrase automatically, and tried to pay better attention while his mother told of a dream fragment, a disquieting scene where she had been chastised for a rule infraction she didn’t understand. Together they agreed that it probably resulted from her feelings when she had reluctantly dealt punishment to the citizen who had broken the major rules a second time.
Father said that he had had no dreams.
‘Gabe?’ Father asked, looking down at the basket where the newchild lay gurgling after his feeding, ready to be taken back to the Nurturing Centre for the day.
They all laughed. Dream-telling began with Threes. If newchildren dreamed, no one knew.
‘Jonas?’ Mother asked. They always asked, though they knew how rarely Jonas had a dream to tell.
‘I did dream last night,’ Jonas told them. He shifted in his chair, frowning.
‘Good,’ Father said. ‘Tell us.’
‘The details aren’t clear, really,’ Jonas explained, trying to recreate the odd dream in his mind. ‘I think I was in the bathing room at the House of the Old.’
‘That’s where you were yesterday,’ Father pointed out.
Jonas nodded. ‘But it wasn’t really the same. There was a tub, in the dream. But only one. And the real bathing room has rows and rows of them. But the room in the dream was warm and damp. And I had taken off my tunic, but hadn’t put on the smock, so my chest was bare. I was perspiring, because it was so warm. And Fiona was there, the way she was yesterday.’
‘Asher, too?’ Mother asked.
Jonas shook his head. ‘No. It was only me and Fiona, alone in the room, standing beside the tub. She was laughing. But I wasn’t. I was almost a little angry at her, in the dream, because she wasn’t taking me seriously.’
‘Seriously about what?’ Lily asked.
Jonas looked at his plate. For some reason that he didn’t understand, he felt slightly embarrassed. ‘I think I was trying to convince her that she should get into the tub of water.’
He paused. He knew he had to tell it all, that it was not only all right but necessary to tell all of a dream. So he forced himself to relate the part that made him uneasy.
‘I wanted her to take off her clothes and get into the tub,’ he explained quickly. ‘I wanted to bathe her. I had the sponge in my hand. But she wouldn’t. She kept laughing and saying no.’
He looked up at his parents. ‘That’s all,’ he said.
‘Can you describe the strongest feeling in your dream, son?’ Father asked.
Jonas thought about it. The details were murky and vague. But the feelings were clear, and flooded him again now as he thought. ‘The wanting,’ he said. ‘I knew that she wouldn’t. And I think I knew that she shouldn’t. But I wanted it so terribly. I could feel the wanting all through me.’
‘Thank you for your dream, Jonas,’ Mother said after a moment. She glanced at Father.
‘Lily,’ Father said, ‘it’s time to leave for school. Would you walk beside me this morning and keep an eye on the newchild’s basket? We want to be certain he doesn’t wiggle himself loose.’
Jonas began to rise to collect his schoolbooks. He thought it surprising that they hadn’t talked about his dream at length before the thank you. Perhaps they found it as confusing as he had.
‘Wait, Jonas,’ Mother said gently. ‘I’ll write an apology to your instructor so that you won’t have to speak one for being late.’
He sank back down into his chair, puzzled. He waved to Father and Lily as they left the dwelling, carrying Gabe in his basket. He watched while Mother tidied the remains of the morning meal and placed the tray by the front door for the Collection Crew.
Finally she sat down beside him at the table. ‘Jonas,’ she said with a smile, ‘the feeling you described as the wanting? It was your first Stirrings. Father and I have been expecting it to happen to you. It happens to everyone. It happened to Father when he was your age. And it happened to me. It will happen someday to Lily.
‘And very often,’ Mother added, ‘it begins with a dream.’
Stirrings. He had heard the word before. He remembered that there was a reference to the Stirrings in the Book of Rules, though he didn’t remember what it said. And now and then the Speaker mentioned it. Attention. A reminder that stirrings must be reported in order for treatment to take place.
He had always ignored that announcement because he didn’t understand it and it had never seemed to apply to him in any way. He ignored, as most citizens did, many of the commands and reminders read by the Speaker.
‘Do I have to report it?’ he asked his mother.
She laughed. ‘You did, in the dream-telling. That’s enough.’
‘But what about the treatment? The Speaker says that treatment must take place.’ Jonas felt miserable. Just when the Ceremony was about to happen, his Ceremony of Twelve, would he have to go away somewhere for treatment? Just because of a stupid dream?
But his mother laughed again in a reassuring, affectionate way. ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘It’s just the pills. You’re ready for the pills, that’s all. That’s the treatment for Stirrings.’
Jonas brightened. He knew about the pills. His parents both took them each morning. And some of his friends did, he knew. Once he had been heading off to school with Asher, both of them on their bikes, when Asher’s father had called from their dwelling doorway, ‘You forgot your pill, Asher!’ Asher had groaned good-naturedly, turned his bike, and ridden back while Jonas waited.
It was the sort of thing one didn’t ask a friend about because it might have fallen into that uncomfortable category of ‘being different’. Asher took a pill each morning; Jonas did not. Always better, less rude, to talk about things that were the same.
Now he swallowed the small pill that his mother handed him.
‘That’s all?’ he asked.
‘That’s all,’ she replied, returning the bottle to the cupboard. ‘But you mustn’t forget. I’ll remind you for the first weeks, but then you must do it on your own. If you forget, the Stirrings will come back. The dreams of Stirrings will come back. Sometimes the dosage must be adjusted.’
‘Asher takes them,’ Jonas confided.
His mother nodded, unsurprised. ‘Many of your groupmates probably do. The males, at least. And they all will, soon. Females too.’
‘How long will I have to take them?’
‘Until you enter the House of the Old,’ she explained. ‘All of your adult life. But it becomes routine; after a while you won’t even pay much attention to it.’
She looked at her watch. ‘If you leave right now, you won’t even be late for school. Hurry along.
‘And thank you again, Jonas,’ she added, as he went to the door, ‘for your dream.’
Pedalling rapidly down the path, Jonas felt oddly proud to have joined those who took the pills. For a moment, though, he remembered the dream again. The dream had felt pleasurable. Though the feelings were confused, he thought that he had liked the feelings that his mother had called Stirrings. He remembered that upon waking, he had wanted to feel the Stirrings again.
Then, in the same way that his own dwelling slipped away behind him as he rounded a corner on his bicycle, the dream slipped away from his thoughts. Very briefly, a little guiltily, he tried to grasp it back. But the feelings had disappeared. The Stirrings were gone.
Chapter Six
‘Lily, please hold still,’ Mother said again.
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