“Grand parents?”
“Grandparents. It meant parents-of-the-parents, long ago.”
“Back and back and back?” Jonas began to laugh. “So actually, there could be parents-of-the-parents-of-the-parents-of-the-parents?”
The Giver laughed, too. “That’s right. It’s a little like looking at yourself looking in a mirror looking at yourself looking in a mirror.”
Jonas frowned. “But my parents must have had parents! I never thought about it before. Who are my parents-of-the-parents? Where are they?”
“You could go and look in the Hall of Open Records. You’d find the names. But think, son. If you apply for children, then who will be their parents-of-the-parents? Who will be their grandparents?”
“My mother and father, of course.”
“And where will they be?”
Jonas thought. “Oh,” he said slowly. “When I finish my training and become a full adult, I’ll be given my own dwelling. And then when Lily does, a few years later, she’ll get her own dwelling, and maybe a spouse, and children if she applies for them, and then Mother and Father—”
“That’s right.”
“As long as they’re still working and contributing to the community, they’ll go and live with the other Childless Adults. And they won’t be part of my life any more.
“And after that, when the time comes, they’ll go to the House of the Old,” Jonas went on. He was thinking aloud. “And they’ll be well cared for, and respected, and when they’re released, there will be a celebration.”
“Which you won’t attend,” the Giver pointed out.
“No, of course not, because I won’t even know about it. By then I’ll be so busy with my own life. And Lily will, too. So our children, if we have them, won’t know who their parent-of-parents are, either.
“It seems to work pretty well that way, doesn’t it? The way we do it in our community?” Jonas asked. “I just didn’t realise there was any other way, until I received that memory.”
“It works,” the Giver agreed.
Jonas hesitated. “I certainly liked the memory, though. I can see why it’s your favourite. I couldn’t quite get the word for the whole feeling of it, the feeling that was so strong in the room.”
“Love,” the Giver told him.
Jonas repeated it. “Love.” It was a word and concept new to him.
They were both silent for a minute. Then Jonas said, “Giver?”
“Yes?”
“I feel very foolish saying this. Very, very foolish.”
“No need. Nothing is foolish here. Trust the memories and how they make you feel.”
“Well,” Jonas said, looking at the floor, “I know you don’t have the memory any more, because you gave it to me, so maybe you won’t understand this—”
“I will. I am left with a vague wisp of that one; and I have many other memories of families, and holidays, and happiness. Of love.”
Jonas blurted out what he was feeling. “I was thinking that … well, I can see that it wasn’t a very practical way to live, with the Old right there in the same place, where maybe they wouldn’t be well taken care of, the way they are now, and that we have a better-arranged way of doing things. But anyway, I was thinking, I mean feeling, actually, that it was kind of nice, then. And that I wish we could be that way, and that you could be my grandparent. The family in the memory seemed a little more …” He faltered, not able to find the word he wanted.
“A little more complete,” the Giver suggested.
Jonas nodded. “I liked the feeling of love,” he confessed. He glanced nervously at the speaker on the wall, reassuring himself that no one was listening. “I wish we still had that,” he whispered. “Of course,” he added quickly, “I do understand that it wouldn’t work very well. And that it’s much better to be organised the way we are now. I can see that it was a dangerous way to live.”
“What do you mean?”
Jonas hesitated. He wasn’t certain, really, what he had meant. He could feel that there was risk involved, though he wasn’t sure how. “Well,” he said finally, grasping for an explanation, “they had fire right there in that room. There was a fire burning in the fireplace. And there were candles on a table. I can certainly see why those things were outlawed.
“Still,” he said slowly, almost to himself, “I did like the light they made. And the warmth.”
“Father? Mother?” Jonas asked tentatively after the evening meal. “I have a question I want to ask you.”
“What is it, Jonas?” his father asked.
He made himself say the words, though he felt flushed with embarrassment. He had rehearsed them in his mind all the way home from the Annexe.
“Do you love me?”
There was an awkward silence for a moment. Then Father gave a little chuckle. “Jonas. You, of all people. Precision of language, please!”
“What do you mean?” Jonas asked. Amusement was not at all what he had anticipated.
“Your father means that you used a very generalised word, so meaningless that it’s become almost obsolete,” his mother explained carefully.
Jonas stared at them. Meaningless? He had never before felt anything as meaningful as the memory.
“And of course our community can’t function smoothly if people don’t use precise language. You could ask, ‘Do you enjoy me?’ The answer is ‘Yes’,” his mother said.
“Or,” his father suggested, “‘Do you take pride in my accomplishments?’ And the answer is wholeheartedly ‘Yes’.”
“Do you understand why it’s inappropriate to use a word like ‘love’?” Mother asked.
Jonas nodded. “Yes, thank you, I do,” he replied slowly.
It was his first lie to his parents.
“Gabriel?” Jonas whispered that night to the newchild. The crib was in his room again. After Gabe had slept soundly in Jonas’s room for four nights, his parents had pronounced the experiment a success and Jonas a hero. Gabriel was growing rapidly, now crawling and giggling across the room and pulling himself up to stand. He could be upgraded in the Nurturing Centre, Father said happily, now that he slept; he could be officially named and given to his family in December, which was only two months away.
But when he was taken away, he stopped sleeping again, and cried in the night.
So he was back in Jonas’s sleepingroom. They would give it a little more time, they decided. Since Gabe seemed to like it in Jonas’s room, he would sleep there at night a little longer, until the habit of sound sleep was fully formed. The Nurturers were very optimistic about Gabriel’s future.
There was no answer to Jonas’s whisper. Gabriel was sound asleep.
“Things could change, Gabe,” Jonas went on. “Things could be different. I don’t know how, but there must be some way for things to be different. There could be colours.
“And grandparents,” he added, staring through the dimness towards the ceiling of his sleepingroom. “And everybody would have the memories.
“You know about memories,” he whispered, turning towards the crib.
Gabriel’s breathing was even and deep. Jonas liked having him there, though he felt guilty about the secret. Each night he gave memories