Chapter 15 - Russia

Dolly, the cloned sheep

Moscow was a strange period for Oliver. His mother had grown to regret leaving him and did her best to make up. She was pleased that he could now speak and that although he may not be a child prodigy in any apparent way he was at least appreciative of the things of high culture. His education in his "Russian Period," as he would later call this phase of his life, was strictly informal. During the mornings, Oliver would read at the Stanislavski museum library. Lunch was a time to study the finest of the culinary arts and lasted two hours, an hour of eating and an hour of writing about what he had eaten. In the afternoons he was tutored by rotating college students in the more technical subjects of mathematics and physics that his mother had always believed were too masculine for her to master.

#

The house in Russia was in many ways an ideal atmosphere for a boy like Oliver but he always spoke of the period as merely pleasant. He would explain, if pestered, that Russia simply was not challenging, that he felt a bit guilty about having advantages over other children and the most of all he felt his life was false. False or not, the volumes of information that Oliver was able to absorb during that year and a half provided what has been described has Persephone's historical fullness--That quality that Persephone is the culmination of all of the art and history that preceded it, that no artistic revelation is unaccounted for. Perhaps we have Mrs. Thomas to thank for that.

It was also while in Russia the Oliver was ambushed by puberty. He had been well informed about the changes that would one day happen to him and they did not come early, but he had not expected the experience to be such an interruption. But once the first signs appeared he became secretly and shamefully obsessed with everything about his physical self. He would lie in bed with a hand mirror and examine himself for changes. Any difference excited him not just more obvious occurrences either. When his skin became oily, when his shoe-size changed. He would giggle with glee for every high note he could no longer hit. Becoming an adult made him so happy he was scared, mostly because he had no desire to be a prodigy. He was sure enough that he was as good as an adult in many ways, and he did not really have any desire to hold onto his childhood, he just found the status of child star to be tacky. He knew that premature fame was something that one could never escape and that worse than being subjected to the harmful effects of fame at a young age, after maturity he would be constantly scrutinized to see what permanent damage those effects had caused. He saw that the world treats a prodigy who has grown up like a cloned sheep. The world feels guilty about having created such a thing, and wants to find a definitive excuse not to make the mistake again.

It may seem unrelated, but since we are on the subject of cloning, Oliver Fagin Thomas had the particularly odd reputation for being a supporter of cloning of all kinds.

"People are against cloning for only one reason, and that is fear," Oliver is recorded as saying in his first Nobel Prize acceptance speech. "And I think that is wrong. I will never understand not doing something because we don't know the consequences. Pandora is going to open the box. I see that some of you are surprised about that one. I can see you thinking that opening the box was a bad thing, that because of her opening the box, evil, pestilence, famine, and all that were released upon the Earth. That makes me very sad, I am always sad when someone stops reading two sentences before the end of the story. The story of Pandora's box is not the story of a girl who can't control herself and do what she's told and then unleashes pestilence upon the world. The story is about a girl who, despite the fears implanted in her by others, ventured into the unknown and, because of that bravery, allowed hope to come into the world. Sure murder and hate and body odor slipped out too, but so what? Isn't hope worth it?"

When the newspapers printed their reports they replaced Oliver's speech with someone else's speech from the year before. Only the people who were there noticed the difference, but the Nobel Prize crowd tends to be a polite, unassuming group.

Chapter 14 - Other People's Children

Maria Escalante was not Costa Rican either, but this school bus is.

Maria took a job driving a school bus. At the interview, she was worried that the school board would look into her record and not trust her with the safety of children but fortunately, the issue never came up and she was offered the position on the spot. She decided right then and there that she would not let seeing other people’s children every day would not make her sad, but instead she would concentrate on being the best of all possible bus drivers. Maria had concentrated on a lot of things in her life but before she had become a bus driver, external circumstances prevented her from getting any benefit out of her focus. However, though she never realized it, she did actually become the best of all possible bus drivers.

The big city school district had a hard time assigning drivers to routes for any extended period of time. The sort of people who were willing to drive pre-pubescent children around town for near minimum wage generally had neither the work ethic nor the strength of character to stay in the position long. The children in Maria's bus had already seen seven drivers that semester. They still talked about the one who would call sports talk radio to scream, the lady who cried all of the time, the mean one who gave assigned seats and did a graffiti inspection at each stop before anyone could get off. The other three were frightening unspoken memories.

But when Maria drove, the kids looked forward to taking the bus. She was the first driver they had seen who actually knew their names and she never had to call anyone young man or young woman. The kids felt that she really knew them and she understood the children in a most un-adult kind of way. She may not know the names of the latest cartoon characters or the popular T-Shirt band but she understood why the kids liked them, why they were important.

She was also very good at divining the flavor of each child's family life and knew how to provide, just by driving the bus, whatever the child missed the most. For some kids a smile was all that was needed. For some it was a steady voice of reason. With one child in particular she found a way to pack him a lunch each day and give it to him without anyone noticing.

On her fifth anniversary of being a bus driver, Maria’s boss gave her a card with a gift certificate for the local coffee shop. Maria didn’t drink coffee but she enjoyed the cup hot cider and cinnamon doughnut very much