John Irving: The Cider House Rules

o lorde mi got wen i en ausum wundor

konsider al the wurlds thi hends hav mad…

Or there was this one:

o ruck of eges clift fur me let mi hid misulf en

theee…

And so forth.

The third tutor, a retired schoolteacher from Camden, was an old, unhappy man who lived with his daughter's family because he couldn't take care of himself. He taught history, but he had no books. He taught the world from memory; he said the dates weren't important. He was capable of sustaining a rant about Mesopotamia for a full half hour, but when he paused for breath, or for a sip of water, he would find himself in Rome, or in Troy; he would recite long, uninterrupted passages from Thucydides, but a mere swallow would transport him to Elba, with Napoleon.

I think,' Nurse Edna once remarked to Dr. Larch, 'that he manages to give a sense of the scope of history.'

Nurse Angela rolled her eyes. 'Whenever I try to listen to him,' she said, 'I can think of a hundred good reasons for war.'

She meant, Homer Wells understood, that no one should live so long.

It is easy to understand why Homer was more fond of doing chores than he was fond of education. {42}

Homer's favorite chore was selecting, for Dr. Larch, the evening reading. He was supposed to estimate a passage that would take Dr. Larch exactly twenty minutes to read; this was difficult because when Homer read aloud to himself, he read more slowly than Dr. Larch, but when he simply read to himself, he read more quickly than Dr. Larch could read aloud. At twenty minutes an evening, it took Dr. Larch several months to read GreatExpectations, and more than a year to read DavidCopperfield -at the end of which time, St. Larch announced to Homer that he would start at the beginning of Great Expectations again. Except for Homer, the orphans who'd first heard Great Expectations had moved on.

Almost none of them understood Great Expectations or David Copperfield, anyway. They were not only too young for the Dickerisian language, they were also too young to comprehend the usual language of St. Cloud's. What mattered to Dr. Larch was the idea of reading aloud-it was a successful soporific for the children who didn't know what they were listening to, and for those few who understood the words and the story, the evening reading provided them with a way to leave St. Cloud's in their dreams, in their imaginations.

Dickens was a personal favorite of Dr. Larch; it was no accident, of course, that both Great Expectations and David Copperfield were concerned with orphans. ('What in hell else would you read to an orphan?' Dr. Larch inquired in his journal.)

And so Homer Wells was familiar with the vision of that gibbet in the marshland-'with some chains hanging to it which had once held a pirate'-and Homer's imagination of the orphan, Pip, and the convict, Magwitch…the beautiful Estella, the vengeful Miss Havisham…provided him with sharper details when, falling asleep, he would follow the ghostly mothers who left St. Cloud's in the cover of darkness, and boarded the horse-drawn coach cair, or, later, the bus which replaced {43} the coach, and gave Homer Wells his first sensation of the passage of time, of progress. Soon after the bus replaced the coach, all bus service in St. Cloud's was discontinued. Thereafter, the mothers walked; this gave Homer further understanding of progress.

The mothers he saw in his sleep never changed. But the men who had not bothered to accompany them to St. Cloud's-where were they? Homer liked the part in Great Expectations when Pip is just starting out and he says that 'the mists had all solemnly risen…and the world lay spread before me.' A boy from St. Cloud's knew plenty about 'mists'-they were what shrouded the river, the town, the orphanage itself; they drifted downriver from Three Mile Falls; they were what concealed one's parents. They were the clouds of St. Cloud's that allowed one's parents to slip away, unseen.

'Homer,' Dr. Larch would say, 'one day you'll get to see the ocean. You've only been as; far as the mountains; they're not nearly as spectacular as the sea. There's fog on the coast-it can be worse than the fog here-and when the fog lifts, Homer…well,' said St. Larch, 'that's a moment you must see.'

But Homer Wells had already seen it, he'd already imagined it-'the mists…all solemnly risen.' He smiled at Dr. Larch and excused himself; it was time to ring a bell. That was what he was doing-bell-ringing- when his fourth foster family arrived at St. Cloud's to fetch him. Dr. Larch had prepared him very well; Homer had no trouble recognizing the couple.

They were, in today's language, sports-oriented; in Maine, in 193-, when Homer Wells was twelve, the couple who wanted to adopt him were simply thought fanatical about everything that could be done outdoors. They were a white-water-canoeing couple, an oceansailing couple-a mountain-climbing, deep-sea-diving, wilderness-camping couple. A one-hundred-mile (at forced-march-pace) tramping couple. Athletes-but not of organized sports; they were not a sissy-sport couple. {44}

The day they arrived at St. Cloud's, Homer Wells rang the bell for ten o'clock fourteen times. He was transfixed by them-by their solid, muscular looks, by their loping strides, by his safari hat, by her bush-whacking machete in a long sheath (with Indian beads) at her cartridge belt. They both wore boots that looked lived in. Their vehicle was a homemade pioneer of what would years later be called a camper; it looked equipped to capture and contain a rhino. Homer instantly foresaw that he would be made to hunt bears, wrestle alligators-in short, live off the land. Nurse Edna stopped him before he could ring fifteen o'clock.

Wilbur Larch was being cautious. He didn't fear for Homer's mind. A boy who has read Great Expectations and David Copperfield by himself, twice each-and had each word of both books read aloud to him, also twice- is more mentally prepared than most. Dr. Larch felt that the boy's physical or athletic development had been less certain. Sports seemed frivolous to Larch when compared to the learning of more necessary, more fundamental skills. Larch knew that the St. Cloud's sports program-which consisted of indoor football in the dining hall when there was bad weather-was inadequate. In good weather, the boys' and girls' divisions played tag, or kick the can, or sometimes Nurse Edna or Nurse Angela pitched for stickball. The ball was composed of several socks wrapped in adhesive tape; it moved poorly. Larch had nothing against an outdoor life; he also knew nothing about one. He guessed that a little of its wasted energy (wasted to Larch) would be good for Homer-possibly such physical activity might enhance the boy's sense of humor.

The couple's name was a source of humor for Nurse Edna and Nurse Angela. Their married name was Winkle-he was called Grant, she was called Billy. They were members of Maine's very small money class. Their business, as they ridiculously called it, didn't make a cent, but they didn't need to make money; they were {45} born rich. Their needless enterprise consisted of taking people to the wilderness and creating for them the sensation that they were lost there; they also took people shooting down rapids in frail rafts or canoes, creating for them the sensation that they would surely be bashed to death before they drowned. The Winkles were in the business of manufacturing sensations for people who were so removed from any sensations of their own making or circumstances that only high (but simulated) adventure could provoke any response from them at all. Dr. Larch was not impressed with the Winkles' 'business'; he knew that they were simply rich people who did exactly what they wanted to do and needed to call what they did something more serious-sounding than play. What impressed Larch with the Winkles was that they were deliriously happy. Among adults-and among orphans-Wilbur Larch noted that delirious happiness was rare.