دانلود رمان انگلیسی “وقتی پروانه را سوزاندند”

Adeline stared at the back of Elaine Chew’s head and thought about setting God on fire. It would be an inconvenience to the chapel, which was still fairly new— the stained glass had only been put in a decade or so ago. The small organ, however, had allegedly been playing hymns for St. Mary’s Girls since Mother Marguerite St. Moreau and her Sisters of St. Maur had been sent over from Paris in eighteen fifty-something to bring faith and learning to the neglected girls of the Straits. The nuns hadn’t been alone in their mission: their Anglican counterparts had arrived soon after bearing the protestant face of God, and some century or so later the St. Mary’s girls were constantly competing with the various Methodist Girls’ schools for devoutness, preening status, and rich husbands plucked from the swim team of the Anglo-Chinese Oldham’s boys. Nurturing said devoutness, the Secondary Four cohort of St. Mary’s turned the pages of their hymnals and sang as the organ ached on. Adeline Siow was squeezed on the pew between Surya Mohanan, who was halfheartedly delivering a decent rendition of “Amazing Grace,” and Ooi May Woon, who was passionately giving a terrible one. Adeline, who also couldn’t sing but at least didn’t try to inflict that fact on others, studied Head Prefect Elaine Chew’s faux sweetheart bob in front of her and imagined lighting the strands like wicks. Adeline would never actually do it, of course. But when she was bored she started wanting to burn, and her imagination needed something else to feed the restlessness in her veins. It was very easy to imagine that being Elaine, given that Elaine was a preternatural bitch. It was either her or the hymnal, so fragile and flammable—and then from there wouldn’t the entire chapel catch, with all the wood that was in it? It was inadvisable. Recently, though, the devotions around St. Mary’s had been getting more impassioned. There was a group that now met three times a day in the clock tower, where they prayed loudly in an incomprehensible babbling language, from which they came down holding hands and looking smugly serene. Bishop Lim was more excited than Adeline had ever seen him in ten years. He was calling it a revival, said that young people were suddenly coming to God in schools all across the island. Once, while singing just like this, a girl had burst into tears.