After Dark Read Free Page A

an uninhabited island. It was a beautiful island with coconuts growing there and tons of fruit on the trees, and a big, high mountain in the middle. The night they got there, a god appeared in their dreams and said, ‘A little farther down the shore, you will find three big, round boulders. I want each of you to push his boulder as far as he likes. The place you stop pushing your boulder is where you will live. The higher you go, the more of the world you will be able to see from your home. It’s entirely up to you how far you want to push your boulder.’”
    The young man takes a drink of water and pauses for a moment. Mari looks bored, but she is clearly listening.
    “Okay so far?” he asks.
    Mari nods.
    “Want to hear the rest? If you’re not interested, I can stop.”
    “If it’s not too long.”
    “No, it’s not too long. It’s a pretty simple story.”
    He takes another sip of water and continues with his story.
    “So the three brothers found three boulders on the shore just as the god had said they would. And they started pushing them along as the god told them to. Now these were huge, heavy boulders, so rolling them was hard, and pushing them up an incline took an enormous effort. The youngest brother quit first. He said, ‘Brothers, this place is good enough for me. It’s close to the shore, and I can catch fish. It has everything I need to go on living. I don’t mind if I can’t see that much of the world from here.’ His two elder brothers pressed on, but when they were midway up the mountain, the second brother quit. He said, ‘Brother, this place is good enough for me. There is plenty of fruit here. It has everything I need to go on living. I don’t mind if I can’t see that much of the world from here.’ The eldest brother continued walking up the mountain. The trail grew increasingly narrow and steep, but he did not quit. He had great powers of perseverance, and he wanted to see as much of the world as he possibly could, so he kept rolling the boulder with all his might. He went on for months, hardly eating or drinking, until he had rolled the boulder to the very peak of the high mountain. There he stopped and surveyed the world. Now he could see more of the world than anyone. This was the place he would live—where no grass grew, where no birds flew. For water, he could only lick the ice and frost. For food, he could only gnaw on moss. Be he had no regrets, because now he could look out over the whole world. And so, even today, his great, round boulder is perched on the peak of that mountain on an island in Hawaii. That’s how the story goes.”
    Silence.
    Mari asks, “Is it supposed to have some kind of moral?”
    “Two, probably. The first one,” he says, holding up a finger, “is that people are all different. Even siblings. And the other one,” he says, holding up another finger, “is that if you really want to know something, you have to be willing to pay the price.”
    Mari offers her opinion: “To me, the lives chosen by the two younger brothers make the most sense.”
    “True,” he concedes. “Nobody wants to go all the way to Hawaii to stay alive licking frost and eating moss. That’s for sure. But the eldest brother was curious to see as much of the world as possible, and he couldn’t suppress that curiosity, no matter how big the price was he had to pay.”
    “Intellectual curiosity.”
    “Exactly.”
    Mari went on thinking about this for a while, one hand perched on her thick book.
    “Even if I asked you very politely what you’re reading, you wouldn’t tell me, would you?” he asks.
    “Probably not.”
    “It sure looks heavy.”
    Mari says nothing.
    “It’s not the size book most girls carry around in their bags.”
    Mari maintains her silence. He gives up and continues his meal. This time, he concentrates his attention on the chicken salad and finishes it without a word. He takes his time chewing and drinks a lot of water. He asks the waitress to