Chapter 13

“Does this happen?” I ask in shock.

It is now five days since I shamed myself. In all of those days Linda has treated me as kindly as before. She spends her time teaching me, and I learn as quickly as I can, but still I think it goes slowly.

Two days ago, when I have better words, I try to speak of what I did that day. I try to say my deep regret and shame for my actions. But I say only a little, as soon as she understands my intent she stops me.

“It’s all right, Hugo,” she says. “I think it was my fault, not yours. You thought I wanted to make love, didn’t you?”

I do not know the making of love, but I think it is the way that people here—now—talk of mating. I nodded yes, and began to speak more but again she would not let me go on.

“You don’t need to say any more. You stopped as soon as I showed you I didn’t, and that was enough. And I’m sorry, too, I could have only told you to stop and you would have. I didn’t know that then.”

I looked at her with great surprise. “Will all men in this place not stop when told?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “There’s something— well, it’s called rape, it means taking a woman by force, by strength against her will.”

Her face clouded as she said this, and I saw all was not right with her. “Does this happen to you?” I asked.

“Not to me, but to other women,” she said. Tears began in her eyes. “Even to little girls,” she added in a tone that was suddenly harsh.

I could not believe such a thing; my mouth opened but no words came out. Then she shook her head sharply. “Never mind, I don’t want to think about that now. Later. Maybe.”

And we spoke of other things.

This day she has shown me a thing that sits on a wall of the room where we spend our days. It is like the box on the table, which she calls computer, but bigger and different. She says the name is television, or teevee, and she shows how it, too, lights up when she takes up a small thing and presses a boss on it.

“I don’t usually watch, but it’s time for the news and I have no idea what’s happening in the world,” she tells me. I ask what is news, and she says it is reports of things that take place elsewhere.

“You won’t understand most of it, but try to get as much as you can,” she says. “It’s a good way to learn English,” which is what she names their way of speech.

The thing on the wall shows pictures, and there are sounds from it too. I can recognize that the sounds are words. Mostly the pictures show the person who speaks the words, but sometimes they show other things. Linda says the other things are like photographs, photographs which also have move­ment.

It is yet another wonder, pictures that move. It is like being where the pictures are made.

She is right that I understand little of what is said, but if I simply let the words flow through my mind without picking at each one I can sometimes understand the sense. And the moving pictures I can understand much more easily.

There are dreadful things in those pictures. I see fire burning down huge trees and dwellings, and the words say that people die in this fire. I see moving things on great flat plains that crash into each other, and there, too, the words say people die. I see great snow that moves downhill and overruns many dwellings, and again there are words speaking of death.

“How does all of this happen at one time?” I ask Linda.

“It’s different places, all around the world,” she tells me. “Look, let’s turn it off, I think it’s too much for you all at once.” She reaches for the thing with the bosses on it, but before she can use it I see the most dreadful of all.

The picture is of many men running this way and that and pointing things at each other that make sharp noise. And some of the men fall and do not rise again, and the way of their falls brings to me a memory of how animals fall when they are struck true by a spear or the stone from a sling.