Jonas asked once, as they prepared for the day’s work, “don’t you have a spouse? Aren’t you allowed to apply for one?” Although he was exempted from the rules against rudeness, he was aware that this was a rude question. But the Giver had encouraged all of his questions, not seeming to be embarrassed or offended by even the most personal.
The Giver chuckled. “No, there’s no rule against it. And I did have a spouse. You’re forgetting how old I am, Jonas. My former spouse lives now with the Childless Adults.”
“Oh, of course.” Jonas had forgotten the Giver’s obvious age. When adults of the community became older, their lives became different. They were no longer needed to create family units. Jonas’s own parents, when he and Lily were grown, would go to live with the Childless Adults.
“You’ll be able to apply for a spouse, Jonas, if you want to. I’ll warn you, though, that it will be difficult. Your living arrangements will have to be different from those of most family units, because the books are forbidden to citizens. You and I are the only ones with access to the books.”
Jonas glanced around at the astonishing array of volumes. From time to time, now, he could see their colours. With their hours together, his and the Giver’s, consumed by conversation and by the transmission of memories, Jonas had not yet opened any of the books. But he read the titles here and there, and knew that they contained all of the knowledge of centuries, and that one day they would belong to him.
“So if I have a spouse, and maybe children, I will have to hide the books from them?”
The Giver nodded. “I wasn’t permitted to share the books with my spouse, that’s correct. And there are other difficulties, too. You remember the rule that says the new Receiver can’t talk about his training?”
Jonas nodded. Of course he remembered. It had turned out, by far, to be the most frustrating of the rules he was required to obey.
“When you become the official Receiver, when we’re finished here, you’ll be given a whole new set of rules. Those are the rules that I obey. And it won’t surprise you that I am forbidden to talk about my work to anyone except the new Receiver. That’s you, of course.
“So there will be a whole part of your life which you won’t be able to share with a family. It’s hard, Jonas. It was hard for me.
“You do understand, don’t you, that this is my life? The memories?”
Jonas nodded again, but he was puzzled. Didn’t life consist of the things you did each day? There wasn’t anything else, really. “I’ve seen you taking walks,” he said.
The Giver sighed. “I walk. I eat at mealtimes. And when I am called by the Committee of Elders, I appear before them, to give them counsel and advice.”
“Do you advise them often?” Jonas was a little frightened at the thought that one day he would be the one to advise the ruling body.
But the Giver said no. “Rarely. Only when they are faced with something that they have not experienced before. Then they call upon me to use the memories and advise them. But it very seldom happens. Sometimes I wish they’d ask for my wisdom more often – there are so many things I could tell them; things I wish they would change. But they don’t want change. Life here is so orderly, so predictable – so painless. It’s what they’ve chosen.”
“I don’t know why they even need a Receiver, then, if they never call upon him,” Jonas commented.
“They need me. And you,” the Giver said, but didn’t explain. “They were reminded of that ten years ago.”
“What happened ten years ago?” Jonas asked. “Oh, I know. You tried to train a successor and it failed. Why? Why did that remind them?”
The Giver smiled grimly. “When the new Receiver failed, the memories that she had received were released. They didn’t come back to me. They went …”
He paused, and seemed to be struggling with the concept. “I don’t know, exactly. They went to the place where memories once existed before Receivers were created. Somewhere out there…” He gestured vaguely with his arm. “And then the people had access to them. Apparently that’s the way it was, once. Everyone had access to memories.
“It was chaos,” he said. “They really suffered for a while. Finally it subsided as the memories were assimilated. But it certainly made them aware of how they need a Receiver to contain all that pain. And knowledge.”
“But you have to suffer like that all the time,” Jonas pointed out.
The Giver nodded. “And you will. It’s my life. It will be yours.”
Jonas thought about it, about what it would be like for him. “Along with walking and eating and …” He looked around the walls of books. “Reading? That’s it?”
The Giver shook his head. “Those are simply the things that I do. My life is here.”
“In this room?”
The Giver shook his head. He put his hands to his own face, to his chest. “No. Here, in my being. Where the memories are.”
“My Instructors in science and technology have taught us about how the brain works,” Jonas told him eagerly. “It’s full of electrical impulses. It’s like a computer. If you stimulate one part of the brain with an electrode, it—” He stopped talking. He could see an odd look on the Giver’s face.
“They know nothing,” the Giver said bitterly.
Jonas was shocked. Since the first day in the Annexe room, they had together disregarded the rules about rudeness, and Jonas felt comfortable with that now. But this was different, and far beyond rude. This was a terrible accusation. What if someone had heard?
He glanced quickly at the wall speaker, terrified that the Committee might be listening as they could at any time. But, as always during their sessions together, the switch had been turned to OFF.
“Nothing?” Jonas whispered nervously. “But my instructors—”
The Giver flicked his hand as if brushing something aside. “Oh, your instructors are well trained. They know their scientific facts. Everyone is well trained for his job.
“It’s just that … without the memories it’s all meaningless. They gave that burden to me. And to the previous Receiver. And the one before him.”
“And back and back and back,” Jonas said, knowing the phrase that always came.
The Giver smiled, though his smile was oddly harsh. “That’s right. And next it will be you. A great honour.”
“Yes, sir. They told me that at the Ceremony. The very highest honour.”
Some afternoons the Giver sent him away without training. Jonas knew, on days when he arrived to find the Giver hunched over, rocking his body slightly back and forth, his face pale, that he would be sent away.
“Go,” the Giver would tell him tensely. “I’m in pain today. Come back tomorrow.”
On those days, worried and disappointed, Jonas would walk alone beside the river. The paths were empty of people except for the few Delivery Crews and Landscape Workers here and there. Small children were all at the Childcare Centre after school, and the older ones busy with volunteer hours or training.
By himself, he tested his own developing memory. He watched the landscape for glimpses of the green that he knew was embedded in the shrubbery; when it came flickering into his consciousness, he focused upon it, keeping it there, darkening it, holding it in his vision as long as possible until his head hurt and he let it fade away.
He stared at the flat, colourless sky, bringing blue from it, and remembered sunshine until finally, for an instant, he could feel warmth.
He stood at the foot of the bridge that spanned the river, the bridge