Enchantment by Orson Scott Card Read Free Book Online

staining of the paper. It was simple enough:
    Deliver this message.
    Simple, but recursive to the point of meaninglessness. Nothing else was written on the paper, so the instruction to deliver the message apparently
was
the message. But to whom was he to deliver it? And was he the intended message-bearer, anyway? Hardly likely. Maybe the paper had been attached to some other paper that had slipped farther back into the crevice. Or maybe it was part of a larger message which had been removed long ago, this little instructional note having been overlooked. But even as he thought of this, he knew it wasn’t true. If there was another message with this one, containing the message itself and the name of the person to whom it should be delivered, why would this cover note be needed? When one addresses an envelope and puts a stamp on it, one hardly needs to then attach a note to the envelope saying, “Deliver this letter.” One gives it to the postman and he does his job.
    Who was the postman? What was the message? One thing was certain: Whoever was meant to be the messenger, whoever it was who might have made sense of this recursive note, had not picked up the message for many years. Indeed, all meaning was now utterly lost, and all that remained was this brief writing which might as well have been in Minoan Linear A for all the luck he would ever have in deciphering it.
    But it was found in the place where Baba Tila left things for Mother, and Mother would want to have it. Ivan took the note and tucked it into his luggage, an inside pocket of the carryon bag. Even if he forgot it, it would be there when he got home, he’d find it again as he was unpacking, and he’d take it to Mother. Maybe she’d explain to him then who Baba Tila was and why she brought her gifts. Maybe she’d tell him what this message meant. Though, more than likely, Mother would simply go enigmatic on him, give him one of her inscrutable smiles, and tell him that if he didn’t already understand, he never would.
    Women always said things like that, and it made him crazy. It’s as if every conversation with a woman was a test, and men always failed it, because they always lacked the key to the code and so they never quite understood what the conversation was really about. If, just once, the man could understand, really comprehend the whole of the conversation, then the perfect union between male and female would be possible. But instead men and women continued to cohabit, even to love each other, without ever quite crossing over the chasm of misunderstanding between them.
    And I’m marrying Ruthie?
    Well, why not? She loved him. He loved her. In the absence of understanding, that was as good a reason as any for living together and making babies and raising them up and throwing them out of the house and then going through the long slow decline together until one of them died and left the other alone again, understanding as little as ever about what their spouses really wanted, who they really were.
    Was that tragedy? Or was that comedy?
    Was there really any difference?
     
    The semester had just ended, and Ruthie was over for a visit. Esther Smetski had liked her son’s fiancée from the start, but she hadn’t enjoyed spending time with her ever since she realized that Vanya mustn’t marry the girl. It wasn’t Ruthie’s fault, was it? Something Vanya had done. Something that happened to him that the boy himself didn’t understand, but he was encumbered, he wasn’t free to marry, and here was this girl with his ring, with a right to come to the Smetski house and cluck her tongue over what a bad correspondent Vanya was.
    “My mother keeps saying, ‘He doesn’t act like a young man in love,’ and I have to keep explaining to her that he’s doing research, he’s buried, he spends all day writing and reading and he hardly wants to do more of it when the libraries close.” Ruthie’s voice sounded almost amused by the whole thing, but by now