I smiled, my nerves suddenly awake in my body. I picked up Heart of Darkness, thankful to have its weight in my hands, steadying my trembling fingers. “I started to teach them to read. You never showed them the alphabet? Their names?”
“I went into the labor camps when I was seven, so I had learned a bit before the plague. My mother had taught me some basic things before she died—smaller words and the sounds. And then after, here, I would read at night to . . .” He stared at the ceiling. The stubble on his face was getting thicker, creating dark shadows along his chin and neck. “. . . to escape, I guess. It was never an option, teaching the boys, especially not with Leif around. As the oldest, we need to hunt, fish, survey the land, and keep watch for troops in the area. All day, every day. They need food more than they need books. Unfortunately.” He sighed and met my eyes. “I’m glad you’re teaching them, though.”
He held my gaze until I finally had to look away. “You read all of these?” I glanced at Anna Karenina and On the Road, which looked strange sandwiched between Art History for Dummies and The Complete Book of Swimming.
“Every word.” Caleb laughed. “I’m not such a caveman after all, huh?”
Caleb’s long tattered gray shirt was unbuttoned, revealing the occasional glimpse of his tanned chest. “I didn’t really say that, did I?”
“You didn’t have to,” he replied.
I crossed the room to another pile and Caleb followed, his steps right behind mine, as though shadowing me in a dance. “I was wrong,” I said. Standing so close to him I could see the specks of brown in his pale green irises.
Caleb circled me, laughing, as if I were some delightful creature he’d discovered in the brush. “Oh really?” was all he said.
“Oh, this one . . .” I picked up To the Lighthouse. Its pages were curled up at the corners. “Charles Tansley! What a nightmare. Who is he to say women can’t paint, women can’t write? And the way Mr. Ramsay just forgets about his wife after she died—he’s practically swooning over Lily at the end!”
Caleb tilted his head. “I assumed your education was skewed, but I never realized how much.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Caleb took a step closer and I could smell the smoke on his skin. “Mr. Ramsay is in mourning, he’s devastated. That’s why he takes James to the lighthouse—he’s still thinking of that argument he had with his wife years ago.” I furrowed my brow, trying to process what Caleb said. “The book shows what happens without Mrs. Ramsay, how important a mother is, how quickly everything fell apart without her,” he continued. “They all loved her.”
I remembered the lesson at School, with Teacher Agnes lecturing about men’s desire for younger women, or the inability of men to fulfill the emotional needs of the people around them. It all seemed so clear then.
“That’s just your opinion,” I tried, shaking my head.
But Caleb didn’t look away. His face was half lit by the glow of the lantern, making his features softer. “That’s what happens in the book, Eve.” He rapped on its hard cover.
I dropped the book and sat down on the armchair, for the first time not minding the musty smell that seemed inescapable at the camp.
“It’s just—” I said, feeling the sudden swell of embarrassment. I thought of that night in the doctor’s office, right before I left School. Teacher Florence had told me the King wanted to repopulate the earth efficiently, without all the complications of families, marriage, and love. She had said the girls had done it willingly at first. It made some sick sense. They must’ve thought if we feared men we would never desire them. We would never want love, or families of our own. Then we would be more willing to do whatever they asked of us. “That’s not how I learned it.”
I turned away, hoping Caleb didn’t see my eyes, washed over by emotion. I had worked so hard at School, taken detailed notes on each lesson, scribbling down the margins until my fingers cramped. And for what? To fill my head with lies?
“Sometimes it seems like all the things I need to know, I don’t. And all the things I do know are completely wrong.” I dug my fingernails into my palm, suddenly frustrated. Anger swelled inside me. I started to the door but Caleb grabbed my hand, pulling me back.
“Wait.” He curled my fingers around his, just for a moment, before dropping them. “What do you mean?”
“Twelve years in School and I . . . I don’t even know how to swim,” I managed, remembering the panic I felt that night at the river. I couldn’t hunt or fish, I didn’t even know where in the world I was. I was completely useless.
He stood, walking me to the doorway. “Here, Eve,” he said as he grabbed his copy of To the Lighthouse off the floor. “Have my book. You could read it again—for yourself.”