The Chrysalids

3

I usually went over to see Sophie once or twice a week after that. What schooling we had — which was a matter of half a dozen children being taught to read and write and do some sums by one or another of several old women — took place in the mornings. It was not difficult at the midday meal to slip away from the table early and disappear until everyone would think someone else had found a job for me.

When her ankle was quite recovered she was able to show me the favourite corners of her territory.

One day I took her over our side of the big bank to see the steam-engine. There wasn’t another steam-engine within a hundred miles, and we were very proud of it. Corky, who looked after it, was not about, but the doors at the end of its shed were open, letting out the sound of a rhythmic groaning, creaking, and puffing. We ventured on to the threshold and peered into the gloom inside. It was fascinating to watch the big timbers moving up and down with wheezing noises while up in the shadows of the roof a huge cross-beam rocked slowly backwards and forwards, with a pause at the end of each tilt as though it were summoning up energy for the next effort. Fascinating — but, after a time, monotonous.

Ten minutes of it were enough, and we withdrew to climb to the top of the wood-pile beside the shed. We sat there with the whole heap quivering beneath us as the engine chugged ponderously on.

‘My Uncle Axel says the Old People must have had much better engines than this,’ I told her.

‘My father says that if one-quarter of the things they say about the Old People are true, they must have been magicians: not real people, at all,’ Sophie countered.

‘But they were wonderful,’ I insisted.

‘Too wonderful to be true, he says,’ she told me.

‘Doesn’t he think they were able to fly, like people say?’ I asked.

‘No. That’s silly. If they could’ve, we’d be able to.’

‘But there are lots of things they could do that we are learning to do again,’ I protested.

‘Not flying.’ She shook her head. ‘Things can either fly, or they can’t, and we can’t,’ she said.

I thought of telling her about my dream of the city and the things flying over it, but after all, a dream isn’t much evidence of anything, so I let it pass. Presently we climbed down, leaving the engine to its panting and creaking, and made our way over to her home.

John Wender, her father, was back from one of his trips. A sound of hammering came from the outside shed where he was stretching skins on frames, and the whole place smelt of his operations. Sophie rushed to him and flung her arms round his neck. He straightened up, holding her against him with one arm.

‘Hullo, Chicky,’ he said.

He greeted me more gravely. We had an unspoken understanding that we were on a man to man basis. It had always been like that. When he first saw me he had looked at me in a way that had scared me and made me afraid to speak in his presence. Gradually, however, that had changed. We became friends. He showed me and told me a lot of interesting things — all the same I would look up sometimes to find him watching me uneasily.

And no wonder. Only some years later could I appreciate how badly troubled he must have been when he came home to find Sophie had sprained her ankle, and that it had been David Strorm, the son of Joseph Strorm, of all people, who had seen her foot. He must, I think, have been greatly tempted by the thought that a dead boy could break no promise…. Perhaps Mrs. Wender saved me….

But I think he could have been reassured had he known of an incident at my home about a month after I met Sophie.

I had run a splinter into my hand and when I pulled it out it bled a lot. I went to the kitchen with it only to find everybody too busy getting supper to be bothered with me, so I rummaged a strip out of the rag-drawer for myself. I tried clumsily for a minute or two to tie it, then my mother noticed. She made tchk-tchk noises of disapproval and insisted on it being washed. Then she wound the strip on neatly, grumbling that of course I had to go and do it just when she was busy. I said I was sorry, and added:

‘I could have managed it all right by myself if I’d had another hand.’

My voice must have carried, for silence fell on the whole room like a clap.

My mother froze. I looked round the room at the sudden quiet. Mary, standing with a pie in her hands, two of the farm men waiting for their meal, my father about to take his seat at the head of the table, and the others; they were all staring at me. I caught my father’s expression just as it was turning from amazement to anger. Alarmed, but uncomprehending, I watched his mouth tighten, his jaw come forward, his brows press together over his still incredulous eyes. He demanded:

‘What was that you said, boy?’

I knew the tone. I tried to think in a desperate hurry how I had offended this time. I stumbled and stuttered.

‘I — I said I couldn’t manage to tie this for myself,’ I told him.

His eyes had become less incredulous, more accusing.

‘And you wished you had a third hand!’

‘No, father. I only said if I had another hand…’

‘… you would be able to tie it. If that was not a wish, what was it?’

‘I only meant if,’ I protested. I was alarmed, and too confused to explain that I had only happened to use one way of expressing a difficulty which might have been put in several ways. I was aware that the rest had stopped gaping at me, and were now looking apprehensively at my father. His expression was grim.

‘You — my own son — were calling upon the Devil to give you another hand!’ he accused me.

‘But I wasn’t. I only—’

‘Be quiet, boy. Everyone in this room heard you. You’ll certainly make it no better by lying.’

‘But—’

‘Were you, or were you not, expressing dissatisfaction with the form of the body God gave you — the form in His own image?’

‘I just said if I—’

‘You blasphemed, boy. You found fault with the Norm. Everybody here heard you. What have you to say to that? You know what the Norm is?’

I gave up protesting. I knew well enough that my father in his present mood would not try to understand. I muttered, parrot-like:

‘“The Norm is the Image of God”.’

‘You do know — and yet, knowing this, you deliberately wished yourself a Mutant. That is a terrible thing, an outrageous thing. You, my son, committing blasphemy, and before his parents!’ In his sternest pulpit voice, he added:

‘What is a Mutant?’

‘“A thing accursed in the sight of God and man”,’ I mumbled.

‘And that is what you wished to be! What have you to say?’

With a heart-sunk certainty that it would be useless to say anything, I kept my lips shut and my eyes lowered.

‘Down on your knees!’ he commanded. ‘Kneel and pray!’

The others all knelt, too. My father’s voice rose:

‘Lord, we have sinned in omission. We beg Thy forgiveness that we have not better instructed this child in Thy laws…’ The prayer seemed to go booming on for a long time. After the ‘Amen’ there was a pause, until my father said:

‘Now go to your room, and pray. Pray, you wretched boy for a forgiveness you do not deserve, but which God, in His mercy, may yet grant you. I will come to you later.’

In the night, when the anguish which had followed my father’s visit was somewhat abated, I lay awake, puzzling. I had had no idea of wishing for a third hand, but even if I had. . .? If it was such a terrible thing just to think of having three hands, what would happen if one really had them — or anything else wrong; such as, for instance, an extra toe —?

And when at last I fell asleep I had a dream. We were all gathered in the yard, just as we had been at the last Purification. Then it had been a little hairless calf that stood waiting, blinking stupidly at the knife in my father’s hand; this time it was a little girl, Sophie, standing barefooted and trying uselessly to hide the whole long row of toes that everyone could see on each foot. We all stood looking at her, and waiting. Presently she started to run from one person to another, imploring them to help her, but none of them moved, and none of their faces had any expression. My father started to walk towards her, the knife shining in his hand. Sophie grew frantic; she flitted from one unmoving person to another, tears running down her face. My father, stern, implacable, kept on coming nearer; still no one would move to help her. My father came closer still, with long arms outspread to prevent her bolting as he cornered her.

He caught her, and dragged her back to the middle of the yard. The sun’s edge began to show above the horizon, and everyone started to sing a hymn. My father held Sophie with one arm just as he had held the struggling calf. He raised his other hand high, and as he swept it down the knife flashed in the light of the rising sun, just as it had flashed when he cut the calf’s throat….

If John and Mary Wender had been there when I woke up struggling and crying, and then lay in the dark trying to convince myself that the terrible picture was nothing more than a dream, they would, I think, have felt quite a lot easier in their minds.