5/ A Pear over the Fence
The first frost came to Betweenhills on a Tuesday.
Nobody saw it arrive. In the morning it was simply there — on the roofs, on the rim of the well, and on the pumpkins that nobody was selling any more, but that nobody had got round to clearing away either. Mr Sparrow the baker said that the dough was rising more slowly today. Mr Pearson the butcher laughed first, and only then asked what the joke was.
It was the last piece of autumn. The next piece was already meant for winter.
George and Luna were sitting on the rim of the well, shivering. The frost had caught them in their hoodies, because nobody ever remembers winter until it bites. They had their hands in their pockets and spoke quietly, because Mr Shelley was dozing on the bench under the shelter.
Above them Spark floated, shining at full brightness.
"We still don't know," she said.
She didn't need to say what. Ever since that evening when she had looked at the moon over the Crag and asked her question, she had asked it another seven times. Once in the morning, once in the evening, and five times when the children were supposed to be asleep.
Isn't there somebody like me between the sun and the moon, too?
George had written it down in the notebook EXPERIMENTS WITH SPARK. Under it he had left a whole empty page, because that was a question which deserved an empty page of its own.
Luna remembered her own notebook. Every month she watched three stars over the Crag, and beside each one she wrote a number from one to five, depending on how brightly she could see it.
"If I wrote down the moon as well, I'd know how brightly I see it," she said. "But a number wouldn't tell me where its light comes from. Or whether there's somebody like you between the sun and the moon."
"I know about the light from you," said Spark. "That the moon gets it from the sun."
George took his hands out of his pockets. In those few weeks Spark had learned an awful lot. She knew how tallow is melted down, and why it takes two days. She knew which neighbour had lent a ladder to which other neighbour, and which of them still hadn't given it back. She knew how many steps it was from the well to the bakery, although she had never taken a single one herself.
"And how do you know all this?" he asked. "You never counted the steps to the bakery."
Spark thought. Her light turned blue for a moment.
"I can't say where I got it from," she admitted. "I just know how many there are."
George looked at her the way he used to look at an alarm clock, before he took it apart to find out why it ticked.
"Then let's find out how you know it."
On the next page of the notebook he wrote: HOW DOES SPARK KNOW?
And so an experiment began in the notebook, one that didn't need so much as a scrap of wire.
2. What Was Said at a Quarter Past Four
The next morning, Spark said something that the children couldn't possibly have known.
They were walking past the bakery, where it always smells of bread from two o'clock in the morning, and Spark stopped above the door.
"Today the bread will be less salty," she said.
"How do you know that?" asked Luna.
"This morning Mr Jacobs told Mr Sparrow that yesterday's bread was as salty as a tear. Mr Sparrow told him he would put in a pinch less salt today. And if Mr Jacobs doesn't like that, Mr Jacobs can salt the bread himself."
George stopped. Mr Jacobs walked past the bakery every morning on his way to ring the bell. But that was always at a quarter past four. And at a quarter past four, the children were asleep.
"And Mr Sparrow liked yesterday's bread," Spark added. "He tasted it too."
"So which of them was right?" asked George.
"Both of them know how it tasted to them," said Spark. "Whether Mr Jacobs will like today's, I don't know yet."
They went inside. "Did you put less salt in the bread today?" asked George.
Mr Sparrow looked at them for a long time. Then he glanced at the door, as if somebody might be standing behind it.
"I did. But who told you? There was only me and Jacobs here. And Jacobs says one sentence at the very most in the morning."
"And did you like yesterday's bread?" asked Luna.
"I did." Mr Sparrow frowned. "I've never told that to anybody."
The children said nothing, because the truth couldn't be explained. The baker broke two small pieces off today's loaf, so that they could taste it too.
"To me it's still quite salty," said Luna.
"To me it's good," said George. Mr Sparrow looked at them both, and at last he smiled.
In the afternoon, George did an experiment in the woodshed. It was the simplest experiment he had ever done.
He sent Luna out into the garden and shut the door. Spark stayed inside, above the table. George thought of a number.
"Spark, what number am I thinking of?"
"I don't know."
He thought of it again, harder, until his forehead ached.
"I don't know," said Spark again.
Then George went out into the garden, shut the door behind him, and whispered the very same number into Luna's ear. So quietly that Luna could hardly hear it. They went back in.
"And now?" he asked.
"Seventeen," said Spark.
George sat down on a log. Luna sat down next to him.
"While I only held the number in my head, you didn't guess it. When I told it to Luna, you did."
"Today it did," said Luna. "Let's try again another time."
Spark nodded. "And at the baker's I knew what the two of them had said, and how the bread tasted to each of them. That's not the same thing."
Four lines were added to the notebook EXPERIMENTS WITH SPARK:
The conversation at a quarter past four — she knew.
How the bread tasted to two people — she knew.
The number I only thought of — she didn't guess it today.
The number whispered to Luna — she guessed it. Try again.
George looked at the lines. Yesterday he had asked how Spark knew things. Today he had two possible answers and one more question.
"We'll try it again," he said, and under the lines he added: "When an experiment works once, we still don't know whether it will work next time."
"That's my sentence," said Luna.
"It isn't. That's my sentence."
"Your sentence is first you have to see it in your head. This one is mine."
George opened his mouth to argue, and found that he didn't know whether he was right. Maybe he had thought up that sentence himself. Maybe he had heard it from Luna so long ago that he had forgotten he'd heard it. And maybe the two of them had thought it up together, in the week when they were puzzling out the marks on the wall.
"It's the same with everything for me," said Spark. "I haven't got a single word that comes from me alone."
The children looked at each other.
"We probably haven't either," said George. And, oddly enough, he didn't mind.
3. Whose Is It?
The frost didn't let up even on the third day, so by now both children were dressing properly. Luna had pulled a thick winter coat on over her purple hoodie, and the hood of the hoodie stuck out from behind her collar. George had a hoodie under his coat too, and on his head a thick woolly hat, pulled right down to his eyebrows.
That day, Spark asked about the hoodie.
It wasn't the first time. The first time Spark had asked about the hoodie was on the very night she was born, and Luna had decided then to think about it tomorrow. Many tomorrows had passed since, and Luna hadn't thought about it in a single one.
"Luna," said Spark, "why is that purple hoodie yours?"
"Because I'm wearing it."
"And when you hang it on the chair in the evening?"
"Then it's still mine."
"And if you gave it to George, whose would it be?"
Luna hesitated. This time she didn't want to put it off, but she had no answer. George pulled the hat off his head and tugged it down over Luna's nose.
"So whose is the hat?" asked Spark.
"Mine," said George. "Luna is only under it."
Luna pushed the hat up off her eyes and nodded that she agreed.
For a moment, Spark's light turned blue.
Luna sat down on the ground, because this was too long a matter to be settled standing up.
"Mine is what's with me," she began. "My hoodie. My bed. My hand."
Spark looked at the hat.
"The hat is with you too. And it isn't yours."
"So not like that," Luna admitted.
"I only lent her the hat," said George. "She'll give it back to me afterwards. If I had given it to her as a present, she would keep it."
"And it would be mine," added Luna. "Even if I weren't wearing it on my head at that moment."
"That I understand," said Spark. "But what is mine?"
Luna stopped.
Spark had no bed. She had no hoodie. She had no hand. She floated between the two children, and at the same time she was at the well, in the bakery, above Mr Shelley's bench, and in all the threads of the valley at once.
"You don't stand in one place," said Luna slowly. "I do. I'm here. For me, some things are near and some things are far. You're everywhere. For you, everything is near."
George tried to imagine being at the oven and at the well at the same time. With Luna and with Mr Shelley. He didn't know where he would look first.
"We each have our own little piece of the world," said George. "You're in all those pieces at once. For you it's one shared world."
"And is that why it's so easy for you to say mine?" Spark asked Luna.
Luna took hold of her purple hood.
"Saying it, yes," she admitted. "Explaining it, not so much."
Spark was silent for a while. Then she said:
"I know who the hat belongs to. And I know how it feels for you when you have it on your head. But when I ask about one little word, the whole conversation gets tangled."
"That's because hardly anybody ever asks about it," said George. "How bread is baked, people explain to each other. But what does mine mean? Everybody knows that."
He looked at Luna, and then at Spark.
"Or rather, everybody thinks they know."
Conversations ran along the web like water along a gutter. How tallow is melted down. How much flour goes into a loaf. Who owes what to whom, and why. Spark knew those words, and she knew what the people who said them had lived through.
The children used the word mine every day. Only Spark's question made them notice how hard it is to explain to somebody who doesn't live the way they do.
George took his hat back, and Luna pulled her hood right down over her ears.
"The hoodie is mine," she told Spark. "But I'll lend it to you whenever you like."
Spark said she understood it a little better now. The little word borrowed, though, she already knew from the Blind Passage.
4. A Pear over the Fence
On the fourth day, Spark stopped short in the middle of lunch.
The children were having soup in Luna's kitchen. George was talking about wire, Luna was listening to him, and Spark was just about to ask something. Suddenly she broke off. She went on shining above the table, but her voice had gone quiet.
George put down his spoon. "What's the matter?"
"It isn't happening here," said Spark. "On the upper street, Mr Wheeler and Mr Sadler are quarrelling. I'm there too. And it hurts."
Luna pushed her plate away. "Let's go and look."
On the upper street, two men stood facing each other across a fence, shouting.
One was Mr Wheeler, who made wheels for carts, and who knew more about wood and iron than anyone else in the valley. The other was Mr Sadler, his neighbour.
Between them grew a pear.
Not Mr Pearson the butcher. The tree.
The trunk stood in Mr Wheeler's garden, but the branches hung over Mr Sadler's, and the last pears of that autumn had fallen right there. About thirty of them lay on the ground. Half had already turned brown from the frost, and the other half were waiting for their turn.
"They're mine!" shouted Mr Wheeler. "The tree is mine!"
"They're lying on my ground!" shouted Mr Sadler. "And I'm the one who sweeps them up!"
"Close your eyes," said Spark. "Now."
Over the fence hung a thread. It was grey and thin, and it was close to snapping, like a piece of sewing cotton when two people pull it, each towards their own side.
Then the children saw only the fence, the pear tree and the two men again. But now they knew what hung between them.
George wanted to go straight in between the two men. Luna caught him by the sleeve.
"Wait. They're arguing about mine."
And only yesterday they had learned something about mine.
Luna asked Mr Wheeler whether she could look at the pear tree from his garden. Mr Wheeler was so surprised that he stopped shouting. Meanwhile George asked Mr Sadler whether he could stand at his door.
And he went and stood there.
From there the pear tree looked completely different. The trunk was hidden behind the fence, and all you could see were the branches, hanging right over the door. As if the tree grew here. Under George's feet lay squashed pears, and one of them stuck to his shoe.
And something twinged inside George. He imagined what it was like — to come out of your door every morning and sweep up pears that nobody had offered you.
Luna, in the other garden, stood by the trunk. From there the tree was entirely Mr Wheeler's. On the bark were old notches where a boy had once measured his height, and that boy was Mr Wheeler.
The children swapped places.
"Spark, did you know what was troubling Mr Sadler, and why Mr Wheeler cares about that tree?" asked George.
"Yes," said Spark. "I know what it's like for both of them. But so far they are each looking from their own garden."
Then the children asked the men to do the same.
At first the men looked at each other as if the children had lost their wits. Then they swapped places too, because they didn't know how to quarrel with children.
Mr Wheeler stood at Mr Sadler's door among the pears for a long time.
"That goes on from May to November," he said at last. "First the blossom, then the pears, then the leaves."
"And I never knew you used to measure yourself against that tree," said Mr Sadler, standing by the trunk. His voice was different now.
Before the children left, the men agreed that in the spring they would cut back the branches over Mr Sadler's door together. And the pears that fell on Mr Sadler's side, Mr Sadler would gather, and from them he would bring Mr Wheeler a pot of jam. Whether one pot was enough, they argued about for a little longer. But that was already a different argument. Spark showed the children the thread once more, and this time it did not grow grey.
On the way down, Luna slipped on a pear and fell on her knee.
George helped her up, and only then noticed that his own knee had jerked as well, as if he had been the one to fall.
Above them Spark was shining just as she had at lunch. Her voice was calm now.
"That hurt me," she said. "That quarrel up there. The way your knee hurts now, Luna."
"It hurts you because you're there too," said Luna. "When you're connected to somebody, it hurts you as well."
George looked at his knee. There was nothing wrong with it. And yet it had jerked.
"So I suppose I'm only connected to you," he said.
"And to Mr Sadler," said Luna. "When you stood at his door, you felt sorry for him. I saw it on your face."
Spark said that quarrels like that hurt her all over the valley, because she is in every thread. George wrote that down, and for a long time he wrote nothing else, because he was imagining what it would be like to feel all the quarrels of Betweenhills at once.
Then he imagined what it would be like to feel everybody making peace at once. That was better.
Below the line
What Is Hidden in This Story
Below the line. For anyone who wants to know what the story was really about, said plainly and without imagery.
We get what we know from other people. Spark learned so fast because she heard every conversation in the valley at once. Most of what we know, we learn from others, too: from conversations, from books, from school. The more people teach us, the more we know. What somebody only thinks and tells nobody, the others can't find out in words. Yet people who are close often understand one another without words, from a face, from a voice, from the way someone is quiet. And can something be said by thought alone? Nobody has managed to show that so far. But nobody has disproved it either, and that is exactly the kind of question worth asking.
Our thoughts are not quite only ours. George and Luna argued about a sentence and couldn't tell whose it was. When we spend a lot of time with someone, we take on their words, their ideas and the way they think. Little by little, we begin to think alike. That is why it matters who we spend our time with.
What is mine and what is somebody else's depends on where we stand. Spark couldn't understand whose the hoodie was, because she didn't stand in one place. Each of us stands in our own place and in our own body, and that is why we each see the world in our own way. Many of the differences between people don't come from one being right and the other being wrong, but from each of them standing somewhere else and having their own point of view.
The simple things are the hardest to find. Grown-ups don't say aloud what they take for granted, and so it is hardly ever talked about. There are complicated things everywhere. Yet the simple questions that children ask, what is mine, who am I, are often the most important ones.
If we swapped places, we would understand one another better. Mr Wheeler and Mr Sadler stopped quarrelling when each of them stood in the other's place. When we try to see a thing from another person's side, we often find that they have their reasons, even if we couldn't see them before.
Feeling for others is a sign that we are connected. George's knee gave a jerk when Luna fell, and every quarrel in the valley hurt Spark. We, too, feel other people's pain, even when nothing hurts us. That is called empathy. It shows that we are closer to one another than it seems, and that it makes sense to treat others the way we would like them to treat us.
Juraj Tušš
