Messenger

3

"If we had a Gaming Machine," Matty commented in a studied, offhand manner, "our evenings would never be boring."

"You think our evenings are boring, Matty? I thought you enjoyed our reading together."

Seer laughed, and corrected himself. "Sorry. I meant your reading to me, Matty, and my listening. It’s my favorite time of day."

Matty shrugged. "No, I like reading to you, Seer. But I meant it’s not exciting."

"Well, we should choose a different book, perhaps. That last one—I’ve forgotten its name, Matty—was a little slow-going. Moby Dick. That was the one."

"It was okay," Matty conceded. "But it was too long."

"Well, ask at the library for something that would move along more quickly."

"Did I explain to you how a Gaming Machine works, Seer? It moves very quickly."

The blind man chuckled. He had heard it all before, many times. "Run out to the garden and get a head of lettuce, Matty, while I finish cleaning the fish. Then you can make a salad while the fish cooks."

"And also," Matty continued in a loud voice as he headed for the garden just beyond the door, "it would be a nice end to a meal. Something sweet. Sort of a dessert. I did tell you, didn’t I, how the Gaming Machine gives you a candy when you win?"

"See if there’s a nice ripe tomato while you’re out there getting the lettuce. A sweet one," Seer suggested in an amused voice.

"You might get a peppermint," Matty went on, "or a gumdrop, or maybe something they call a sourball." Beside the back step he reached into the vegetable garden and uprooted a small head of lettuce. As an afterthought, he pinched a cucumber loose from its vine nearby, and pulled some leaves from a clump of basil. Back in the kitchen, he put the salad things in the sink and halfheartedly began to wash them.

"Sourballs come in different colors, and each color is a flavor," he announced, "but I suppose that wouldn’t interest you."

Matty sighed. He looked around. Even though he knew the blind man wouldn’t see his gesture, he pointed to the nearby wall, which was decorated by a colorful wall-hanging, a gift from the blind man’s talented daughter. Matty stood often before it, looking carefully at the intricate embroidered tapestry depicting a large thick forest separating two small villages far from each other. It was the geography of his own life, and that of the blind man, for they had both moved from that place to this other, with great difficulty.

"The Gaming Machine could stand right there," he decided. "It would be very convenient. Extremely convenient," he added, aware that the blind man liked it when he exercised his vocabulary.

Seer went to the sink, moved the washed lettuce to the side, and began to rinse the cleaned salmon steaks. "And so we would give up—or maybe even trade away—reading, and music, in exchange for the extreme excitement of pulling a handle and watching sourballs spit forth from a mechanical device?" he asked.

Put that way, Matty thought, the Gaming Machine didn’t actually seem such a good trade. "Well," he said, "it’s fun."

"Fun," the blind man repeated. "Is the stove ready? And the pan?"

Matty looked at the stove. "In a minute," he said. He stirred the burning wood a bit so that the fire flared. Then he placed the oiled pan on top. "I’ll do the fish," he said, "if you fix the salad.

"I brought some basil in, too," he added, with a grin, "just because you’re such a salad perfectionist. It’s right there beside the lettuce." He watched while the blind man’s deft hands found the basil and tore the leaves into the wooden bowl.

Then Matty took the fish and laid it in the pan, swirling the oil around. In a moment the aroma of the sautéing salmon filled the room.

Outside, it was twilight. Matty adjusted the wick on an oil lamp and lighted it. "You know," he remarked, "when you win a candy, a bell rings and colored lights blink. Of course that wouldn’t matter to you," he added, "but some of us would really appreciate—"

"Matty, Matty, Matty," the blind man said. "Keep an eye on that fish. It cooks quickly. No bell rings when it’s done.

"And don’t forget," he added, "that they traded for that Gaming Machine. It probably came at a high cost."

Matty frowned. "Sometimes you get licorice," he said as a last attempt.

"Do you know what they traded? Has Ramon told you?"

"No. Nobody ever tells."

"Maybe he doesn’t even know. Maybe his parents didn’t tell him. That’s probably good."

Matty took the pan from the stove and slid the browned fish onto two plates, one after the other. He placed them on the table and brought the salad bowl from the sink. "It’s ready," he said.

The blind man went to the bread container and found two thick pieces of bread that smelled fresh-baked. "I got this at the marketplace this morning," he said, "from Mentor’s daughter. She’ll make someone a good wife. Is she as pretty as her voice makes her sound?"

But Matty was not going to be diverted by reminders of the schoolteacher’s pretty daughter. "When’s the next Trade Mart?" he asked, when they were both seated.

"You’re too young."

"I heard that there was one coming soon."

"Pay no attention to what you hear. You’re too young."

"I won’t be always. I ought to watch."

The blind man shook his head. "It would be painful," he said. "Eat your fish now, Matty, while it’s warm."

Matty poked at the salmon with his fork. He could tell that there was to be no more discussion of trading. The blind man had never traded, not one single time, and was proud of it. But Matty thought that someday he himself would. Maybe not for a Gaming Machine. But there were other things that Matty wanted. He ought to be allowed to know how the trading worked.

He decided he would find out. But first he had the other thing to worry about, and the troubling awareness that he had not dared to tell the blind man of it.

There were no secrets in Village. It was one of the rules that Leader had proposed, and all of the people had voted in favor of it. Everyone who had come to Village from elsewhere, all of those who had not been born here, had come from places with secrets. Sometimes—not very often, for inevitably it caused sadness—people described their places of origin: places with cruel governments, harsh punishments, desperate poverty, or false comforts.

There were so many such places. Sometimes, hearing the stories, remembering his own childhood, Matty was astounded. At first, having found his way to Village, he had thought his own brutal beginnings—a fatherless hovel for a home; a grim, defeated mother who beat him and his brother bloody—were unusual. But now he knew that there were communities everywhere, sprinkled across the vast landscape of the known world, in which people suffered. Not always from beatings and hunger, the way he had. But from ignorance. From not knowing. From being kept from knowledge.

He believed in Leader, and in Leader’s insistence that all of Village’s citizens, even the children, read, learn, participate, and care for one another. So Matty studied and did his best.

But sometimes he slipped back into the habits of his earlier life, when he had been a sly and deceitful boy in order to survive.

"I can’t help it," he had argued glumly to the blind man, in the beginning of their life together, when he had been caught in some small transgression. "It’s what I learnt."

"Learned." The correction was gentle.

"Learned," Matty had repeated.

"Now you are relearning. You are learning honesty. I’m sorry to punish you, Matty, but Village is a population of honest and decent people, and I want you to be one of us."

Matty had hung his head. "So you’ll beat me?"

"No, your punishment will be no lessons today. You will help me in the garden instead of going to school."

It had seemed, to Matty then, a laughable punishment. Who wanted to go to school, anyway? Not him!

Yet, when he was deprived of it, and could hear the other children reciting and singing in the schoolhouse, he felt woefully lost. Gradually he had learned to change his behavior and to become one of Village’s happy children, and soon a good student. Now half grown and soon to finish school, he slipped only occasionally into old bad habits and almost always caught himself when he did.

It bothered Matty greatly, now, having a secret.