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“I said I apologise, Jonas.”
Jonas sighed. It was no use. Of course Asher couldn’t understand. “I accept your apology, Asher,” he said wearily.
“Do you want to go for a ride along the river, Jonas?” Fiona asked, biting her lip with nervousness.
Jonas looked at her. She was so lovely. For a fleeting instant he thought he would like nothing better than to ride peacefully along the river path, laughing and talking with his gentle female friend. But he knew that such times had been taken from him now. He shook his head. After a moment his two friends turned and went to their bikes. He watched as they rode away.
Jonas trudged to the bench beside the Storehouse and sat down, overwhelmed with feelings of loss. His childhood, his friendships, his carefree sense of security – all of these things seemed to be slipping away. With his new, heightened feelings, he was overwhelmed by sadness at the way the others had laughed and shouted, playing at war. But he knew that they could not understand why, without the memories. He felt such love for Asher and for Fiona. But they could not feel it back, without the memories. And he could not give them those. Jonas knew with certainty that he could change nothing.
Back in their dwelling, that evening, Lily chattered merrily about the wonderful holiday she had had, playing with her friends, having her midday meal out of doors, and (she confessed) sneaking a very short try on her father’s bicycle.
“I can’t wait till I get my very own bicycle next month. Father’s is too big for me. I fell,” she explained matter-of-factly. “Good thing Gabe wasn’t in the child seat!”
“A very good thing,” Mother agreed, frowning at the idea of it. Gabriel waved his arms at the mention of himself. He had begun to walk just the week before. The first steps of a newchild were always the occasion for celebration at the Nurturing Centre, Father said, but also for the introduction of a discipline wand. Now Father brought the slender instrument home with him each night, in case Gabriel misbehaved.
But he was a happy and easygoing toddler. Now he moved unsteadily across the room, laughing. “Gay!” he chirped. “Gay!” It was the way he said his own name.
Jonas brightened. It had been a depressing day for him, after such a bright start. But he set his glum thoughts aside. He thought about starting to teach Lily to ride so that she could speed off proudly after her Ceremony of Nine, which would be coming soon. It was hard to believe that it was almost December again, that almost a year had passed since he had become a Twelve.
He smiled as he watched the newchild plant one small foot carefully before the other, grinning with glee at his own steps as he tried them out.
“I want to get to sleep early tonight,” Father said. “Tomorrow’s a busy day for me. The twins are being born tomorrow, and the test results show that they’re identical.”
“One for here, one for Elsewhere,” Lily chanted. “One for here, one for Else—”
“Do you actually take it Elsewhere, Father?” Jonas asked.
“No, I just have to make the selection. I weigh them, hand the larger over to a Nurturer who’s standing by, waiting, and then I get the smaller one all cleaned up and comfy. Then I perform a small Ceremony of Release and …” He glanced down, grinning at Gabriel. “Then I wave bye-bye,” he said, in the special sweet voice he used when he spoke to the newchild. He waved his hand in the familiar gesture.
Gabriel giggled and waved bye-bye back to him.
“And somebody else comes to get him? Somebody from Elsewhere?”
“That’s right, Jonas-bonus.”
Jonas rolled his eyes in embarrassment that his father had used the silly pet name.
Lily was deep in thought. “What if they give the little twin a name Elsewhere, a name like, oh, maybe Jonathan? And here, in our community, at his naming, the twin that we kept here is given the name Jonathan, and then there would be two children with the same name, and they would look exactly the same, and someday, maybe when they were a Six, one group of Sixes would go to visit another community on a bus, and there in the other community, in the other group of Sixes, would be a Jonathan who was exactly the same as the other Jonathan, and then maybe they would get mixed up and take the wrong Jonathan home, and maybe his parents wouldn’t notice, and then—”
She paused for breath.
“Lily,” Mother said, “I have a wonderful idea. Maybe when you become a Twelve, they’ll give you the Assignment of Storyteller! I don’t think we’ve had a Storyteller in the community for a long time. But if I were on the Committee, I would definitely choose you for that job!”
Lily grinned. “I have a better idea for one more story,” she announced. “What if actually we were all twins and didn’t know it, and so Elsewhere there would be another Lily, and another Jonas, and another Father, and another Asher, and another Chief Elder, and another—”
Father groaned. “Lily,” he said. “It’s bedtime.”
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“GIVERR,” JONAS ASKED the next afternoon, “do you ever think about release?”
“Do you mean my own release, or just the general topic of release?”
“Both, I guess. I apologi— I mean I should have been more precise. But I don’t know exactly what I meant.”
“Sit back up. No need to lie down while we’re talking.” Jonas, who had already been stretched out on the bed when the question came to his mind, sat back up.
“I guess I do think about it occasionally,” the Giver said. “I think about my own release when I’m in an awful lot of pain. I wish I could put in a request for it, sometimes. But I’m not permitted to do that until the new Receiver is trained.”
“Me,” Jonas said in a dejected voice. He was not looking forward to the end of the training, when he would become the new Receiver. It was clear to him what a terribly difficult and lonely life it was, despite the honour.
“I can’t request release either,” Jonas pointed out. “It was in my rules.”
The Giver laughed harshly. “I know that. They hammered out those rules after the failure ten years ago.”
Jonas had heard again and again now, reference to the previous failure. But he still did not know what had happened ten years before. “Giver,” he said, “tell me what happened. Please.”
The Giver shrugged. “On the surface, it was quite simple. A Receiver-to-be was selected, the way you were. The selection went smoothly enough. The Ceremony was held, and the selection was made. The crowd cheered, as they did for you. The new Receiver was puzzled and a little frightened, as you were.”
“My parents told me it was a female.”
The Giver nodded.
Jonas thought of his favourite female, Fiona, and shivered. He wouldn’t want his gentle friend to suffer the way he had, taking on the memories. “What was she like?” he asked the Giver.
The Giver looked sad, thinking about it. “She was a remarkable young woman. Very self-possessed and serene. Intelligent, eager to learn.” He shook his head and drew a deep breath. “You know, Jonas, when she came to me in this room, when she presented herself to begin her training—”
Jonas interrupted him with a question. “Can you tell me her name? My parents said that it wasn’t to be spoken again in the community. But couldn’t you say it just to me?”
The Giver hesitated painfully, as if saying the name aloud might be excruciating. “Her name was Rosemary,” he told Jonas, finally.
“Rosemary. I like that name.”
The Giver went on. “When she came to me for the first time, she sat there in the chair where you sat on your first day. She was eager and excited and a little scared. We talked. I tried to explain things as well as I could.”
“The way you did to me.”
The Giver chuckled ruefully. “The explanations are difficult. The whole thing is so beyond one’s experience. But I tried. And she listened carefully. Her eyes were very luminous, I remember.”
He looked up suddenly. “Jonas, I gave you a memory that I told you was my favourite. I still have a shred of it left. The room, with the family, and grandparents?”
Jonas nodded. Of course he remembered. “Yes,” he said. “It had that wonderful feeling with it. You told me it was love.”
“You can understand, then, that that’s what I felt for Rosemary,” the Giver explained. “I loved her.
“I feel it for you, too,” he added.
“What happened to her?” Jonas asked.
“Her training began. She received well, as you do. She was so enthusiastic. So delighted to experience new things. I remember her laughter …”
His voice faltered and trailed off.
“What happened?” Jonas asked again, after a moment. “Please tell me.”
The Giver closed his eyes. “It broke my heart, Jonas, to transfer pain to her. But it was my job. It was what I had to do, the way I’ve had to do it to you.”
The room was silent. Jonas waited. Finally the Giver continued.
“Five weeks. That was all. I gave her happy memories: a ride on a merry-go-round; a kitten to play with; a picnic. Sometimes I chose one just because I knew it would make her laugh, and I so treasured the sound of that laughter in this room that had always been so silent.
“But she was like you, Jonas. She wanted to experience everything. She knew that it was her responsibility. And so she asked me for more difficult memories.”
Jonas held his breath for a moment. “You didn’t give her war, did you? Not after just five weeks?”
The Giver shook his head and sighed. “No. And I didn’t give her physical pain. But I gave her loneliness. And I gave her loss. I transferred a memory of a child taken from its parents. That was the first one. She appeared stunned at its end.”
Jonas swallowed. Rosemary, and her laughter, had begun to seem real to him, and he pictured her looking up from the bed of memories, shocked.
The Giver continued. “I backed off, gave her more little delights. But everything changed, once she knew about pain. I could see it in her eyes.”
“She wasn’t brave enough?” Jonas suggested.
The Giver didn’t respond to the question. “She insisted that I continue, that I not spare her. She said it was her duty. And I knew, of course, that she was correct.
“I couldn’t bring myself to inflict physical pain on her. But I gave her anguish of many kinds. Poverty, and hunger, and terror.
“I had to, Jonas. It was my job. And she had been chosen.” The Giver looked at him imploringly. Jonas stroked his hand.
“Finally one afternoon, we finished for the day. It had been a hard session. I tried to finish – as I do with you – by transferring something happy and cheerful. But the times of laughter were gone by then. She stood up very silently, frowning, as if she were making a decision. Then she came over to me and put her arms around me. She kissed my cheek.” As Jonas watched, the Giver stroked his own cheek, recalling the touch of Rosemary’s lips ten years before.
“She left here that day, left this room, and did not go back to her dwelling. I was notified by the Speaker that she had gone directly to the Chief Elder and asked to be released.”
“But it’s against the rules! The Receiver-in-training can’t apply for rel—”
“It’s in your rules, Jonas. But it wasn’t in hers. She asked for release, and they had to give it to her. I never saw her again.”
So that was the failure, Jonas thought. It was obvious that it saddened the Giver very deeply. But it didn’t seem such a terrible thing, after all. And he, Jonas, would never have done it – never have requested release, no matter how difficult his training became. The Giver needed a successor, and he had been chosen.
A thought occurred to Jonas. Rosemary had been released very early in her training. What if something happened to him, Jonas? He had a whole year’s worth of memories now.
“Giver,” he asked, “I can’t request release, I know that. But what if something happened: an accident? What if I fell into the river like the little Four, Caleb, did? Well, that doesn’t make sense because I’m a good swimmer. But what if I couldn’t swim, and fell into the river and was lost? Then there wouldn’t be a new Receiver, but you would already have given away an awful lot of important memories, so even though they would select a new Receiver, the memories would be gone except for the shreds that you have left of them? And then what if—”
He started to laugh, suddenly. “I sound like my sister, Lily,” he said, amused at himself.
The Giver looked at him gravely. “You just stay away from the river, my friend,” he said. “The community lost Rosemary after five weeks and it was a disaster for them. I don’t know what the community would do if they lost you.”
“Why was it a disaster?”
“I think I mentioned to you once,” the Giver reminded him, “that when she was gone, the memories came back to the people. If you were to be lost in the river, Jonas, your memories would not be lost with you. Memories are forever.
“Rosemary had only those five weeks’ worth, and most of them were good ones. But there were those few terrible memories, the ones that had overwhelmed her. For a while they overwhelmed the community. All those feelings! They’d never experienced that before.
“I was so devastated by my own grief at her loss, and my own feeling of failure, that I didn’t even try to help them through it. I was angry, too.”
The Giver was quiet for a moment, obviously thinking. “You know,” he said, finally, “if they lost you, with all the training you’ve had now, they’d have all those memories again themselves.”
Jonas made a face. “They’d hate that.”
“They certainly would. They wouldn’t know how to deal with it at all.”
“The only way I deal with it is by having you there to help me,” Jonas pointed out with a sigh.
The Giver nodded. “I suppose,” he said slowly, “that I could …”
“You could what?”
The Giver was still deep in thought. After a moment, he said, “If you floated off in the river, I suppose I could help the whole community the way I’ve helped you. It’s an interesting concept. I need to think about it some more. Maybe we’ll talk about it again sometime. But not now.
“I’m glad you’re a good swimmer, Jonas. But stay away from the river.” He laughed a little, but the laughter was not lighthearted. His thoughts seemed to be elsewhere, and his eyes were very troubled.
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JONAS GLANCED AT the clock. There was so much work to be done, always, that he and the Giver seldom simply sat and talked, the way they just had.
“I’m sorry that I wasted so much time with my questions,” Jonas said. “I was only asking about release because my father is releasing a newchild today. A twin. He has to select one and release the other one. They do it by weight.” Jonas glanced at the clock. “Actually, I suppose he’s already finished. I think it was this morning.”
The Giver’s face took on a solemn look. “I wish they wouldn’t do that,” he said quietly, almost to himself.
“Well, they can’t have two identical people around! Think how confusing it would be!” Jonas chuckled.
“I wish I could watch,” he added, as an afterthought. He liked the thought of seeing his father perform the ceremony, and making the little twin clean and comfy. His father was such a gentle man.
“You can watch,” the Giver said.
“No,” Jonas told him. “They never let children watch. It’s very private.”
“Jonas,” the Giver told him, “I know that you read your training instructions very carefully. Don’t you remember that you are allowed to ask anyone anything?”
Jonas nodded. “Yes, but—”
“Jonas, when you and I have finished our time together, you will be the new Receiver. You can read the books; you’ll have the memories. You have access to everything. It’s part of your training. If you want to watch a release, you have simply to ask.”
Jonas shrugged. “Well, maybe I will, then. But it’s too late for this one. I’m sure it was this morning.”
The Giver told him, then, something he had not known. “All private ceremonies are recorded. They’re in the Hall of Closed Records. Do you want to see this morning’s release?”
Jonas hesitated. He was afraid that his father wouldn’t like it, if he watched something so private.
