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Authors: Madeleine L'Engle
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thousand years ago, what had happened to them?
She sighed, opened the second book to the page her grandmother had marked. It was by Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in the troubled period of Andrew Jackson, when the Indians were treated with terrible unfairness, and yet Tocqueville wrote that the settlers in America “had arrived at a state of democracy without having to endure a democratic revolution” and that they were “born free without having to become so.”
Still true? Polly thought of herself as having been born free, and yet in the short span of her life she had witnessed much abuse of freedom. Surely the lusts and guilts and greeds of the Old World had taken root in the New. And despite her affection for the natives of Gaea, for the Quiztano Indians in Venezuela, she was leery of the concept of the “noble savage.” People, in her experience, were people, some good, some bad, most a mixture.
Next in the pile was Lectiones geometricae, published by Isaac Barrow in 1670, and despite Polly’s proficiency with languages she could not concentrate on the Old Latin, so she put it aside for when she could focus better. She read a marked chapter in a history of the sixteenth century, learning that Giordano Bruno had been burned at the stake for heresy, including the proposal, horrifying to the Church establishment of those days, that there are as many times as there are planets.
—And even one planet, Polly thought,—has many time zones, and when we try to cross them too quickly we get jet lag. And even in one zone, time doesn’t move at a steady rate.
She remembered a day of lying in bed with flu and fever, every joint aching, and the day dragged on and on, far longer than an ordinary day. And then there was a New Year’s Eve party at Max’s beautiful plantation house, Beau Allaire, with Max sparkling as brightly as the crystal chandeliers, and there had been singing and charades and the evening passed in the twinkling of an eye. Poor Giordano Bruno. He was probably right about time. How many people have been burned at the stake for being right?
Then came a book by an eighteenth-century philosopher, Berkeley. She sat with the book unopened on her lap. Max had talked to her about this philosopher, who was also a bishop (was he anything like Bishop Colubra?), who had had the idea, amazing in his day, that the stairs outside his study were not there unless he was aware of them, that things had to be apprehended to be . “The anthropic principle,” Max had called it, and had seen it as both fascinating and repellent.
If Polly did not believe that she had seen and talked with Anaral, would that keep the other girl in the past where she belonged? Would it close the threshold? But she had seen Anaral, and there was no way she could pretend that she hadn’t. The threshold was open.
Last in the pile was a copy of the New England Journal of Medicine with an article by her grandmother on the effect of the microscopic on the macroscopic universe. What might seem to have been a random assortment of books was beginning to reveal a pattern, and the pattern seemed to Polly to have something to do with Anaral and the Ogam stones, though she did not think that her grandmother had had either Anaral or the Ogam stones in mind when she had chosen the readings, any more than she had had Polly in mind when she redecorated the bedroom.
Polly studied for a couple of hours, making notes, absorbing, so that she would be able to answer her grandparents’ questions. She was fully focused in the present moment, and she did not know what made her look at her watch. It was after eleven. One of her jobs was to drive to the post office for the mail. If something was needed for lunch or dinner, her grandmother would leave a note with the outgoing mail.
She went downstairs. No one in the living room or kitchen. Her grandmother’s lab door was closed, but Polly knocked.
“What?” came the not very gracious response.
“It’s Polly.
She sighed, opened the second book to the page her grandmother had marked. It was by Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in the troubled period of Andrew Jackson, when the Indians were treated with terrible unfairness, and yet Tocqueville wrote that the settlers in America “had arrived at a state of democracy without having to endure a democratic revolution” and that they were “born free without having to become so.”
Still true? Polly thought of herself as having been born free, and yet in the short span of her life she had witnessed much abuse of freedom. Surely the lusts and guilts and greeds of the Old World had taken root in the New. And despite her affection for the natives of Gaea, for the Quiztano Indians in Venezuela, she was leery of the concept of the “noble savage.” People, in her experience, were people, some good, some bad, most a mixture.
Next in the pile was Lectiones geometricae, published by Isaac Barrow in 1670, and despite Polly’s proficiency with languages she could not concentrate on the Old Latin, so she put it aside for when she could focus better. She read a marked chapter in a history of the sixteenth century, learning that Giordano Bruno had been burned at the stake for heresy, including the proposal, horrifying to the Church establishment of those days, that there are as many times as there are planets.
—And even one planet, Polly thought,—has many time zones, and when we try to cross them too quickly we get jet lag. And even in one zone, time doesn’t move at a steady rate.
She remembered a day of lying in bed with flu and fever, every joint aching, and the day dragged on and on, far longer than an ordinary day. And then there was a New Year’s Eve party at Max’s beautiful plantation house, Beau Allaire, with Max sparkling as brightly as the crystal chandeliers, and there had been singing and charades and the evening passed in the twinkling of an eye. Poor Giordano Bruno. He was probably right about time. How many people have been burned at the stake for being right?
Then came a book by an eighteenth-century philosopher, Berkeley. She sat with the book unopened on her lap. Max had talked to her about this philosopher, who was also a bishop (was he anything like Bishop Colubra?), who had had the idea, amazing in his day, that the stairs outside his study were not there unless he was aware of them, that things had to be apprehended to be . “The anthropic principle,” Max had called it, and had seen it as both fascinating and repellent.
If Polly did not believe that she had seen and talked with Anaral, would that keep the other girl in the past where she belonged? Would it close the threshold? But she had seen Anaral, and there was no way she could pretend that she hadn’t. The threshold was open.
Last in the pile was a copy of the New England Journal of Medicine with an article by her grandmother on the effect of the microscopic on the macroscopic universe. What might seem to have been a random assortment of books was beginning to reveal a pattern, and the pattern seemed to Polly to have something to do with Anaral and the Ogam stones, though she did not think that her grandmother had had either Anaral or the Ogam stones in mind when she had chosen the readings, any more than she had had Polly in mind when she redecorated the bedroom.
Polly studied for a couple of hours, making notes, absorbing, so that she would be able to answer her grandparents’ questions. She was fully focused in the present moment, and she did not know what made her look at her watch. It was after eleven. One of her jobs was to drive to the post office for the mail. If something was needed for lunch or dinner, her grandmother would leave a note with the outgoing mail.
She went downstairs. No one in the living room or kitchen. Her grandmother’s lab door was closed, but Polly knocked.
“What?” came the not very gracious response.
“It’s Polly.
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