Page 63 - What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

The ghost observed that I was going to come to the end of my translation one

day.
“Yeah, but come on. We’re only halfway through the second chapter. And
after this book there are fifteen others by the same author.”
The ghost asked if I thought my great-grandfather would be impressed by this
use of his hard work.
“Oh, ghost—what have you got against love?”
Nothing, said the ghost, sounding injured. She had nothing whatsoever

against love. She was just saying.
The ghost showed that she was on my side when she heard you mention the
news that you were one of the two final-year students who got to select a
newcomer to mentor. “It’s going to be fun. We get to watch the applicants
through hidden panels in a soundproofed room so they don’t hear us booing or

cheering them.”
This terrified me, but the ghost breathed on the windowpane and wrote FOR
GO IT on the misted glass.
“Who’s the other student?” I asked. “Not green-haired Joe?”
“Haha, no. Though he does put on interesting Punch and Judy shows. Dad
says he’s going to be very good one day. The other student’s a boy called Gustav
Grimaldi. I don’t like the way he performs; it’s scruffy. And I’d say his puppets

have a nihilistic spirit, if you’d understand what I meant by that.”
“Nihilistic, eh . . . sounds bad,” I said, pinning the phone to my ear with my
shoulder as I googled “nileistic.”
“Sometimes his puppets won’t perform at all. He just lets them sit there,
watching us. Then he has them look at each other and then back at us until it
feels as if they have information, some kind of dreadful information about each

and every one of us, and you begin to wish they’d decide to keep their mouths
shut forever. There’s no entertainment in it at all, and I don’t understand why he
chooses this way to put on a show when he knows so many other ways. He
shouldn’t be allowed to choose any new students. If there’s anyone bound to
introduce unsavory elements into our group, it’s Grimaldi.”
“Good thing I’m extra wholesome then. Do applicants have to have
experience with puppets and all that?” I asked, and when you said that in fact

your father liked people to come to the field fresh, I asked if fifteen was too old
to start.
“Not if you’re serious. Are you?”