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aligned, as though a regiment of the Red Army were passing through. Every day he would review his troops at least once.
    4) Heaven’s Child , pp. 98–103
    The Child assigned people to cut down some trees, so that they could be sawed or chopped up. The wood would be used to make furniture for their rooms. The remainder would be used as kindling in winter. Just as the Child was warming up by the stove, there was a knock at the door. It was bitterly cold outside, and the frozen ground was as hard as death.
    When the snow wanted to fall, it did.
    When the weather wanted to be cold, it was.
    The Child was in the process of lighting a fire with the books he had seized, when his door was suddenly pushed open and the Theologian appeared in the doorway. The Theologian looked at the Child, and saw that as kindling he was using a thick novel titled Resurrection . Next to the fire basin there were torn-out pages and half a book cover. There was also the French novel The Red and the Black . The Child was getting warm by the fire, his face glowing bright. “Sit down,” said the Child. “Don’t just stand there.” He then picked up the scraps of pages and the book cover and threw them into the fire as well. As he did so, the words Red and Black were devoured by the flames, as was the name Stendhal. The Theologian stood there, staring at the remaining half of Resurrection , and asked, “Are you reading this?”
    The Child replied, “No, I’m not.”
    “What books do you like to read?”
    “None.”
    “But you have so many . . .” the Theologian said, as he tried to sidle toward the fire basin, to sit down.
    The Child kicked the Theologian a stool. “So many books,” he said, “and I can burn most of them in a single winter. In two years, they’ll be all gone.” He looked up, as though he had remembered something. He asked, “Why have you come?” The Theologian knew he should confess, so he replied with a laugh, “I have the fewest blossoms in my entire brigade, so I want to earn some more.”
    The Child gazed at the Theologian.
    “Look at how thick this book is,” he said. “Two hundred pages would earn you a small blossom, and a thousand would earn you a medium-sized one.”
    After a brief silence, the Theologian said, “The books I donated are more important than those donated by others.”
    “But they all burn just the same,” the Child replied. “The only real difference between them is their thickness. If a volume is too thin, it won’t produce even a tiny flame.”
    The Theologian stared in shock.
    “Hand them over,” the Child said, “and you will receive your own red blossoms. If others denounce you, however, the blossoms will instead go to someone else. In addition, you will be fined and forced to hand over the blossoms you have already received.”
    “It occurs to me,” the Theologian said, standing up from the stool, “that my books have illustrations, which are quite unlike those that appear in other people’s books.”
    The Child stared at the Theologian with wide eyes, as if the Theologian were one of those illustrations. “Regardless of how good the illustrations may be, they are still printed on paper and will burn like any other.”
    The Theologian had no response. He went to fetch the volume, and quickly returned. It turned out he had left his books just outside the door, and had first tried to negotiate. He brought in a yellow bundle, from which he removed several volumes. One was the Old Testament, two were copies of the New Testament, and another was titled Hymns , and consisted of songs from the Bible. Hymns was a thick volume printed on glossy paper, and every page had a color illustration. The Child looked first at the book, then at the illustrations. He looked at the pictures of the Heavenly Father, the birth of Jesus, and the Virgin Mary. The Child laughed. When he saw a picture of Christ bleeding on the cross, the Child stared in shock. When he saw the image of the birth of