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The Giver: A Narrative Fiction

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uise knew by the new name on the call box that someone had moved in. She’d seen lights and movement in the apartment, which was across the courtyard from her and Martin, for the past few days. The new name confirmed it. Someone had finally bought the place. The name had been typed on a small piece of green paper and taped to the call box beside the apartment’s number. Louise had once known a man with the name Jahani. Arman had been a doctoral student in French the year she started at Stockholm University. He’d taught the conversation tutorial she took fall term. She looked at the green paper again. All that was so long ago. He was the second man she’d slept with. Martin still didn’t know about it. She checked her watch. She was on her way out …show more content…

“It used to scare you.” He tore open the paper wrapping of the chopsticks, pulled them apart, and rubbed them together to smooth the edges. “It was so easy to explain,” she said. “It was just her television, I always told you. But you never believed me.” The waitress arrived with two rectangular plates and set them down in the center of the table. Colorful pieces of fish were arranged on each plate. Louise had tried to listen to what Jonas had ordered for them both and to follow along by looking at the pictures in her own menu, but now that the food had arrived she couldn’t tell one piece of fish from another. Jonas pointed with his chopsticks. “Salmon,” he said. “And yellowtail. Whitefish. Eel on this plate here.” She’d always disliked eel. Eels could travel great distances out of the water, and she found this disturbing. “Who bought the apartment?” Jonas asked. “I only know a name,” Louise said. Arman had been a good teacher. She could still conjugate several French verbs, hear him reading from lists he’d written on the chalkboard: present indicative, present conditional, present subjunctive. She remembered the strangest things. There couldn’t be that many Jahanis in Stockholm. Jonas was thirty-four. Would she feel jealous or relieved if the person in the apartment was close to that

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