She thought about the books at Amarna, the books she had denied for two years. She didn’t know what Rachel had picked up in her scavenging, but she knew what had been there Before. The encyclopedias. At least, they offered summaries of knowledge. Books on science, especially earth sciences. On human history. On art. Yes, the children of the future would have some idea of what the Parthenon looked like, or the stricken gray figures of Kollwitz, the woodcuts of Hiroshige, the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the seething sunflowers of Van Gogh, the columns of Karnak. For a moment the grief revived. Was that all the children of the future would know of those astounding creations? A few pictures in a few books?
But they would know something of them. They would know what was possible for the human mind.
Fiction. There wasn’t much fiction at Amarna. At least, there was a complete Shakespeare. And a volume of Sophocles’ plays. Dickens, Kafka, Melville, Tolstoy, Cervantes, Austen, Conrad, Steinbeck…
Yes, and poetry. Dickinson, Eliot, Yeats, Dante, Wordsworth, Sappho, Auden, Whitman…
So little, such a minute fraction, but Rachel was right. It was all they had.
Mary said on a long exhalation of breath, “Yes. Oh, Rachel, yes.”
Rachel laughed. “Yes, we should do it?”
“Yes, we must do it.” Then she hesitated. “But how? This climate is so damned hard on books.”
“There’s also the problem of acidification. Not many of our books are printed on paper that won’t acidify. There are ways to stop it, but they’re too technical for us. I think all we can do is seal the books as nearly airtight as possible, then hope that someday, someone will learn how to make paper and ink—or even a crude printing press—so they can copy the books before they disintegrate.”
That seemed a remote possibility, and Mary was again aware of the chill in the wind, the acrid smell of the smoke from their signal fire.
Rachel seemed to sense her doubt. “Mary, we can’t predict the future, and I know it’s unreasonable to ask more of life than life, but I do, just as human beings always have. This is my more. Maybe nothing will come of it but a pile of rotten paper. But I have to try.”
Mary pulled in a deep breath, felt it astringent in her throat. “No, Rachel. We have to try.”
Two years ago, in the frigid shadow of the winter, they had made a choice to survive. Now they were making another choice in a silent, lightless wilderness.
A choice to live, not just survive; to live as human beings.
Chapter 15
For as there are misanthropists, or haters of men, there are also misologists, or haters of ideas, and both spring from the same cause, which is ignorance of the world.
The last lesson today was on geography. The globe on its wrought-iron stand is still by the table where the children were gathered around it a short while ago, naming continents and oceans. When we came to the end of our allotted time, and the other children made their hurried exits, Stephen stayed, studying the globe. “Mary, it looks like if you could cut out Africa and South America, they’d fit together.”
It was a startling observation for a thirteen-year-old whose education, despite my best efforts, is so limited. Now I sit in my usual chair at the head of the table, and he stands beside me, tense with concentration, his eyes fixed on the book open on the table. He’s looking at a map of the megacontinent of Pangaea, a map of our world as it was 250 million years ago. For the last fifteen minutes, with the help of this historical geology text, I’ve been introducing him to plate tectonics.
He asks, “Is the land still moving, Mary?”
“Yes. That is, the continents are riding on top of the plates, and they’re still moving. But very slowly. At best, a few inches a year.”
He smiles, the fire of wonder in his eyes. But I see it quenched at the same moment I hear a sound behind me. Someone has come out of the kitchen.
I choose not to show that I’m aware of her. “Stephen, you can take this book and look through it. If there’s anything you don’t understand, I’ll help you with it.”
But he shakes his head, looking past me. “I’ve got to help Jonathan split wood.”
I don’t try to stop him. I watch him as he hurries out the back door. Then I say, “Hello, Miriam.”
I hear a quick intake of breath. Witch, she is no doubt thinking. How did I know it was she standing behind me? She walks past me to the long side of the table, puts down a bowl and a basket of pea pods. I close the book, but only after she has given it an oblique scrutiny, and I see something in her eyes that surprises me.
Fear.
I’ve never seen Miriam afraid, not even for a fleeting moment as now. It is as unnerving as the opening of a door where I didn’t know one existed. You can’t hate someone who is capable of fear.
And do I hate her? I hadn’t thought my feelings were so extreme. And they aren’t. Not for Miriam. I don’t hate her. I hate what she represents to me: the perpetuation and potential triumph of unreason. I hate her lack of fear, and above all, her lack of doubt.
Miriam has never in her life said, “I don’t know.”
Her hands move quickly about the task of emptying the pods; the peas rattle and ricochet against the glazed sides of the bowl. But she pauses, tosses her bright hair back from her shoulders.
“Why are you staring at me?”
I am for a moment embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to stare, Miriam. I was only thinking… how much you remind me of Luke.”
She resumes her work, facile hands moving ceaselessly. “I look more like my mother than Luke.”
There’s a cast of antagonism in that, and I don’t know if it’s for me or Luke. “Well, you’re certainly prettier than he was,” I reply lightly.
Her cheeks redden as she slits open a pod with her thumbnail and strips out the peas. “Beauty is only in the soul.”
“No doubt. But it’s your hair that reminds me so much of Luke.”
Slit, strip, peas tumbling into the bowl. “Luke was only my physical father. My uncle, Brother Jonas, was my true father.”
I hear the antagonism again, and I’m sure now it’s for Luke. I wait to see if she’ll say more, and finally she does.
“Some said my uncle was a hard man.”
I respond cautiously, “Did they?”
“Well, maybe he was in some ways. Not like Luke. But Brother Jonas was a good man. He was a man of faith, and he loved God and always kept His Commandments. Always!”
And, of course, the children in that good man’s household had no choice but to love Jonas’s god and keep those patriarchal canons. For a while the only sounds are the cracks and rattles of her work. I remain silent, and finally Miriam stops, looks at me, then down at the book.
“What were you showing Stephen in that book?”
“I was telling him about plate tectonics.”
When I don’t elaborate, she looks at the cover of the book, takes some time to read its title, which is also its subject. I see again, only because I’m looking for it, that hint of fear in her eyes, but it is immediately masked by righteous contempt.
She says, “That’s one of those books that goes against the Bible.”
“Miriam, it has nothing to do with the Bible.”
“Nor God!”
“No. It’s not a philosophical treatise. You’re welcome to read it before you condemn it.” And I wince at my own words. That didn’t need to be said. I know she won’t read it. She can’t read it. Her reading skills are minimal, and her voluminous quotes from the Bible at morning services come primarily from memory.