Children of the Dragon by Frank Robinson

Author:Frank Robinson [Robinson, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Capricorn Literary
Published: 2019-06-26T23:00:00+00:00

Now each evening Golana eagerly counted the hours to her husband’s coming home. Her ears were peeled for the sound of his arrival, and she would rush down to greet him. They would polish off dinner in some haste, and afterward Mutsukh would take his young wife by the hand, up into his library, to teach her the secret of language.

It was not easy at first. The Magistrate took his own reading skill quite for granted, and his attempt to convey the knowledge was a stumbling one. But Golana was an apt and avid pupil, and soon, by teaching her the sounds of all the letters, he had her reading fluently. She was learning the rudiments of grammar too, and writing; her first letter was to her father, and it naturally took him quite by surprise. Few were the women who could read, let alone write a cogent letter.

Once she had gained these basics, Golana spent every possible hour in the library, poring over the books and scrolls, puzzling out difficult words and expressions. Many of them were in an old, archaic style, but she soon mastered these as well. She was immeasurably excited not just at her ability to decipher the long-mysterious scripts, but at the feast of wonders that the books contained. At the beginning she’d had no idea whether their contents would be worth the trouble of digging out, but she quickly found herself reading in complete absorption. Golana was thirstily soaking up an ocean of knowledge that she’d never known existed. All at once, the world was infinitely greater than the narrow confines that had theretofore bounded her vision.

Her reading was indiscriminate but diligent, so as not to miss the tiniest morsel, even in abstruse texts she could hardly understand. She read history, poetry, science, geography, mathematics, and the sacred books of theology, all precious realms completely new to her. Forgotten was her boredom; her life now, in Mutsukh’s library, was an ecstatic romp.

“What does the tutor teach Eshomdai?” she asked one day, referring to her stepson.

Mutsukh replied that he was taught everything a boy should know: literature, religion, history, every conceivable subject.

“Oh, just like in your books!”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“I would so much enjoy listening to his lessons.”

“But such lessons are for boys, not girls.”

“You said the same of your books—but I love to read! Oh, please let me listen to Eshomdai’s lessons!”

The Magistrate waggled his head in consternation at the remarkable wife he had acquired. But in fact, he was pleased by her hunger for knowledge; it set her quite apart from the ordinary run of pampered women whom he might have married. “Very well,” he said, “you may certainly attend the lessons.”

At first Golana exercised this privilege sheepishly, hiding herself in a corner while the tutor lectured Eshomdai and engaged him in dialogues. She sat quiet as a cat, as an interloper who knew she didn’t belong there. Sometimes, though, the master and the boy touched upon topics that she had encountered herself in

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