Beggars in Spain

Here, Kress introduces the dominant symbol of the book: “beggars in Spain” (56). As Tony and Leisha debate the need for a Sleepless sanctuary, Tony puts forth an thought experiment about what society's producers owe to those who produce nothing: “You walk down a street in a poor country like Spain and you see a beggar. Do you give him a dollar?” (56). Leisha says yes. Tony then asks if Leisha will give a dollar each to six beggars. Again, she says yes. When Tony raises the number to 100 beggars, Leisha finally says no; “Too draining on my own resources. My life has first claim on the resources I earn” (56). Finally, Tony says, “What if […] [the beggars] are so rotten with anger about what you have that they knock you down and grab it and then beat you out of sheer envy and despair?” (58). It is here that Tony's philosophy toward the poor begins to differ from Leisha's beliefs. While both believe in the Yagaiist tenet that the strong should never be coerced into giving their resources to the weak, Tony goes so far as to assume the poor will retaliate against the rich for refusing to share their wealth.

Throughout the book, the idea of beggars raises several philosophical questions that Leisha struggles to answer about what the strong owe the weak. The symbol also plays a major role in a broader debate in the novel about how a community balances social equality with individual excellence. Here, however, the biggest question raised is, what role kindness and compassion play in a Yagaiist society. Tony says, “What does a good Yagaiist who believes in mutually beneficial contracts do with people who have nothing to trade and can only take?” (58). He then pointedly asks Leisha why they owe beggars even the fundamental human good of compassion, and Leisha can only respond, “I don't know. I just know we do” (58). This is the earliest instance of Leisha beginning to question the sufficiency of Yagaiism as a belief system, though she won't undergo a full recalibration of her beliefs until the following chapter.

Before that, Tony is murdered, causing Leisha to briefly believe that he was right about the beggars—that they are bloodthirsty and the Sleepless must protect themselves in Sanctuary. Her anger at Sleepers also seeps through to her relationship with Alice. Alice, after recalling a story about a pretty dress she owned as a child that everyone assumed was Leisha's, says to her sister, “Whatever was yours was yours, and whatever wasn't yours was yours, too. That's the way Daddy set it up. The way he hard-wired it into our genes” (84). Leisha's response is brutal: “You, too? You're no different from the other envious beggars?” (85). With that insult, the political and the personal become intertwined as Leisha projects the qualities of the beggars who killed Tony onto her sister. It's a stark reflection of how periods of dramatic political and socioeconomic polarization—like the one depicted in the novel between Sleeper and Sleepless but also akin to the state of many Western societies in 2019—are disruptive not only politically but also within families.

After Alice and Stewart—Sleepers—go to great lengths to help Leisha rescue Stella, Leisha undergoes the first of many major transformations in her philosophical belief system. As a child of extreme privilege, both financially and intellectually, Leisha had never needed anybody's help, or at least not without having something to give in return. Therefore, an economic system made up entirely of voluntary contracts and exchange makes sense to her and feels complete. The gifts of assistance she receives from Alice and Leisha, freely given out of sheer kindness and compassion, makes her rethink her views on Yagaiism, albeit without rejecting them outright:

To Kenzo Yagai she said, Trade isn't always linear. […] If Stewart gives me something, and I give Stella something, and ten years from now Stella is a different person because of that and gives something to someone else as yet unknown—it's an ecology. An ecology of trade, yes, each niche needed, even if they're not contractually bound. Does a horse need a fish? Yes (94).

In this new worldview, the kindness and compassion Leisha struggled to fit into a Yagaiist framework are repaid in ways that can't be quantified through contracts nor fixed in time and place.

Finally, Leisha also reconsiders her position on joining Sanctuary to escape the beggars: “But there are more than beggars in Spain. Withdraw from the beggars, you withdraw from the whole damn country. And you withdraw from the possibility of the ecology of help” (94). In the previous dialogue, Leisha says “ecology of trade” (94), but here she says “ecology of help” (94). The word choice marks a significant transition for Leisha in that she begins to think about her philosophical beliefs in terms other than economic ones, a departure from the days when she would reflexively spout Yagaiist dogma.