The Mapmaker Of Valea
Written by Studio AM.
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The ministry sent Aurel to redraw the map of Valea because the old one had become a polite fiction. Roads on paper ended in open fields. A bridge marked in confident black had gone into the river during a flood eight years earlier, and the village had never replaced it, because the people who needed it had already left.
Aurel worked slowly, and the slowness bothered him. A map can look more permanent than the place it records, he thought, and Valea was a place in the middle of subtraction. Each week another shutter closed for good. If he drew the school, would the school still be there when the ink dried in an office two hundred kilometers away?
In the end he drew everything that stood, and then he added a small date in the corner, smaller than the scale and smaller than his own name. It was the most honest mark on the sheet. It told the reader when the map's description of Valea had been checked: one particular Tuesday.
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Questions
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Question 1 of 4
What is the passage mainly about?
The answer is B: Aurel dates a map to show when its changing village was recorded
Aurel worries that the village will change before the map reaches the office. Adding a date makes the time of his observations clear.
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Question 2 of 4
Why was the bridge never replaced?
The answer is D: The people who needed it had already left
The first paragraph gives the reason directly: the people who needed it had already left.
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Question 3 of 4
Why is the small date called the most honest mark on the sheet?
The answer is C: It identifies when the observations on the map were made
The date marks the observations as belonging to a particular time. It does not guarantee future accuracy or make every other mark false.
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Question 4 of 4
What does 'subtraction' mean in this passage?
The answer is B: steadily losing people and buildings
It sits beside closing shutters, a lost bridge, and departed residents, so it means continuous loss.
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