Rite of Passage

After I felt better, I had the run of Mr. Kutsov’s house. It was a small place near the edge of Forton, a neat little house surrounded by trees and a small garden. Mr. Kutsoy lived alone, and when it wasn’t raining he worked in his garden. When it was, he came inside to his books. He used his wagon to make a regular trip to the coast and back once every two weeks. It wasn’t a very profitable business, but he said that at his age profit was no longer very important. I don’t know whether he meant it or not.

He took my clothes away, saying they weren’t appropriate for a girl, and in their place he brought me some clothes that were more locally acceptable. They were about the right length, but they were loose under the arms as though they had been meant for somebody who was broader than I.

“There,” he said. “That be better.” But I had to take them in a little before they fit.

I had the run of the house, but I wasn’t allowed outside. In some ways this wasn’t so bad because it rained, it seemed, two days in three, and the third day it threatened to. I kept busy. Mr. Kutsov continued to tutor me until he at last decided that if I was careful I could get by in polite society. When Mr. Kutsov was outside, I prowled around the house.

Mr. Kutsov had a good library of books and I looked through them, in the process finding a number of very interesting things. History — the Losels’ natural home was on a continent to the west where they had been discovered one hundred years earlier. Since that time they had been brought over by the shipload and used for simple manual labor. There had previously been no native population of Losels on this continent. Now, in addition to those owned and used for work, there was a small but growing number of Losels running wild in the back country. Most of the opinions I read granted them no particular intelligence, citing their inability to do anything beyond the simplest sort of labor, their lack of fire and their lack of language. For my part, I remembered what Mr. Kutsov had said about the ability of the wild ones to recognize their particular enemies and that didn’t seem stupid to me at all. In fact, I was relieved that I had come off so well from my encounter with one that second day.

Geography — I oriented myself by Mr. Kutsov’s maps and I tentatively tried to copy them.

And I found a book that Mr. Kutsov had written himself. It was an old book, a novel called The White Way. It was not completely successful — it tried to do too many things other than tell a story — but it was far better than my brother Joe’s book.

When I found it, I showed it to Mr. Kutsov and he admitted that it was his.

“It took me forty years to write it, and I have spent forty-two years since then living with the political repercussions. It has been an interesting forty-two years, but I be not sure that I would do it again. Read the book if you be interested.”

There were politics in the book, and from something else Mr. Kutsov said in passing, I got the impression that the simple, physical job he held was in part a result. Politics are funny.

I found two other things. I found my clothes where Mr. Kutsov had hidden them and I found the answer to a question that I didn’t ask Mr. Kutsov in one of his newspapers. The last sentence of the story read, “After sentencing, Dentermount been sent to the Territorial Jail in Forton to serve his three-month term.”

The charge was Trespassing. I thought Incitement to Riot would have been better, and that the least they could do would be to spell his name correctly. Trust it to be Jimmy.

So when I got the chance, I put on my own clothes and my coat and snuck into town. Before I came home I found out where the jail was. On the way, I passed Horst Fanger’s place of business. It was a house, pen, shed, stable and auction block in the worst quarter of town. From what I gathered, it was the worst quarter of town because Horst Fanger and similar people lived there.

When I came back, Mr. Kutsov was very angry with me. “It been’t right,” he said, “going on the streets dressed like that. It been’t right for women.” He kept a fairly close eye on me for several days after that until I convinced him that I now knew better.

It was during the next two days, while I was being good, that I found the portrait. It showed Mr. Kutsov and a younger man and woman, and a little girl. The little girl was about my size, but much more stocky. Her hair was dark brown. It was obviously a family picture and I asked him about it.