To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara Read Free Book Online

parents, but parents clearly unfit to tend to them—were, depending on their age, sent either to one of the Free States’ trade schools or to one of their charitable institutions, where they would become available for adoption.
    Like most charities of its kind, Hiram Bingham’s housed very few infants and toddlers—there was such a demand for them that they were adopted quickly; unless they were sick or deformed or an imbecile, it was rare for a baby to remain more than a month in the orphanage. Both of David’s siblings had procured their children from here, and if David himself were ever to desire an heir, he would find him within the institution as well. John and Peter’s son was a Colony orphan; Eden and Eliza’s children were saved from the squalid hovel of some wretched Irish immigrant couple who could scarcely afford to feed them. There were frequent lively debates, in the newspapers and in drawing rooms, about what to do with the ever-increasing number of immigrants finding their way to the Manhattan shores—these days from Italy, Germany, Russia, and Prussia, not to mention the Orient—but one thing everyone had to agree upon, even if grudgingly, was that the European immigrants provided children for couples who wanted them, not only in their own city but throughout the Free States.
    So fierce was the competition for a child that recently the government had introduced a campaign encouraging people to adopt older children. But this had been largely unsuccessful, and it was well understood, even by the children themselves, that those over the age of six were unlikely to ever find a home. This meant that the Binghams’ institution, like others, concentrated on teaching its wards how to read and do sums, so that they might be prepared to learn a trade; when they were fourteen, they would be apprenticed to a tailor or a carpenter or a seamstress or a cook or any number of people whose skills were essential to the continued prosperity and functioning of the Free States. Or they would join the militia or the navy, and serve their country in that way.
    In the meantime, however, they were children, and as children, they attended school, as was required by law in the Free States. The new philosophy in education was that children would grow into healthier, better citizens and adults if they were exposed notjust to the necessities of life (math, reading, writing) but to art and music and sport as well. And so, the previous summer, when his grandfather asked him if he might want to assist in the search for an art teacher for the institution, David had surprised even himself by volunteering for the responsibility—for had he not studied art for many years? Had he not been looking for something, some useful task, with which to define his days?
    He taught his class every Wednesday, toward the end of the afternoon, just before the children had their supper, and initially, he had often wondered whether their fidgeting and tittering was at him or in anticipation of their meal—he had even considered asking the matron if he might teach his class earlier in the day, but she was fearsome to adults (though, curiously, beloved by her charges), and although she would have had to accede to his request, he was too intimidated to do so. He had always been wary of children, their unflinching, unbroken gazes that suggested they could see him in a way that adults no longer bothered to or could, but over time, he had grown first accustomed to and then fond of them, and as the months passed, they too grew steadier and calmer in his quiet presence, toiling away with their sticks of charcoal over their pads of paper, trying as best they could to reproduce the blue-and-white chinoiserie bowl filled with quince he had placed atop a stool at the front of the room.
    He heard the music that day before he even opened the door—something familiar, a popular song, a song that he did not think was right for children to listen to—and he reached