The Cure

by Sonia Levitin

I was browsing the library bookshelves recently and came across one that looked particularly intriguing. It had the stickers for both Science Fiction and Historical Fiction on its spine and I thought it might have been a mistake on the librarian's part. It wasn't. However, I didn't know that, so I checked it out, thinking it would be an interesting read, nothing more, nothing less. I never expected such a little book to be so spectacular.

Not even an inch thick, The Cure is light reading... or so you'd think. On the contrary, it is a truly moving story about a lesser-known historical event, as shown through the eyes of sixteen-year-old Johannes.

Perhaps to fully understand the story, one must first understand the background. It is the year 2407. In a way similar to that of 1984, the "human" has been taken out of humanity. People wear masks and consume high levels of serotonin to keep them subdued. Instead of being born at random like humans today, they are born in boy-girl twin sets, named with the same familiar name and formal number, and are genetically engineered to get along perfectly. Everybody wants to conform. The method of thinking of the people in this society is that conformity leads to harmony, which leads to tranquility. Diversity has all but been taken out of the people.

Enter Gemm 16884. He and his twin, Gemma 16884, are scheduled to become parents in a few days. Somehow, though, Gemm is struck by an urge to listen to and make music. He is no longer conforming. He loves music and wants more! It is wonderful, it is good! The Elders brand him as dangerous and disruptive. Gemm is seen as an exceptionally tricky case and given a choice: take "the cure," which will be painful but will make him not like music, or be recycled, which is a euphemism for die. Gemm chooses "the cure."

"The cure" for Gemm's love of music is to implant a memory into his brain, allowing him to live one year as another person from history while his real body is simply asleep for one day. Gemm becomes Johannes, a Jewish boy who lived in Germany during the beginnings of the Black Death.

Johannes is sixteen. He is the oldest in his family, and is therefore going to take over his father's business of money-changing and -lending in a few years. He loves music, his flute, and his neighbour Margarite, who loves him back. Life seems very good for Johannes and his village. Granted, being Jewish leaves everyone in the village open to ridicule from outsiders, but they are used to it by now and it has never truly affected them.

Word begins spreading of a horrible disease affecting and killing countless people. In need of a scapegoat, the Jews are blamed, and there are false and ridiculous stories popping up left and right about how the Jews were the cause of the whole thing. The most popular is that the Jews poisoned the well water.

From Johannes's village, men are being dragged in for questioning. "Questioning," in this sense, means, "being painfully tortured until they tell the authorities what they want to hear." Johannes's own father is taken, and while he (thankfully) came back alive, he would never be the same again.

A glimmer of hope appears in the chaos and distress--Johannes and Margarite are betrothed! Both they and their families are immensely pleased and hearts begin to rise in anticipation of their wedding in the springtime. This joyous occasion in a time of such sadness is a welcome reprieve from grieving.

Alas, it was not to be... all the Jews in Johannes's village were rounded up. The horrible illness was everywhere, and everybody pointed their fingers at the Jews. In punishment (and a sorry attempt to dispel their fears of the unknown), all the Jews were burned.

Gemm wakes up and no longer wants to have anything to do with music. To the Elders, he is cured. The incident left him changed for life... he remembers what it is like to feel pain, what it's like to hate and be hated... and what it's like to love and be loved.

I highly recommend this book to everybody who can find it. It expresses such meaning about the importance of the individual. I absolutely loved this story. It only took me about a day to read it, but it was so well-written and had such power that I'd be willing to read it again and again and again. I am amazed that such a little book is so compelling, but it is truly spectacular.