Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood [131]
Her lungs hurt: she was dizzy from too much air. They were leaning against a cement wall, one of the sides of the bridge. Marian put her arms on the top and rested. Level with her eyes there were tree-tops, a maze of branches, the ends already pale yellow, pale red, knotted with buds.
“We aren’t there yet,” Duncan said. He tugged at her arm. “We go down.” He led her to the end of the bridge. At one side was an unofficial path: the imprints of feet, a muddy track. They climbed down gingerly, their feet sideways like children learning to go down stairs, step by step. Water was dripping on them from the icicles on the underside of the bridge.
When they had reached the bottom and were standing on level ground Marian asked, “Are we here yet?”
“Not yet,” said Duncan. He began to walk away from the bridge. Marian hoped they were going to a place where they could sit down.
They were in one of the ravines that fissured the city, but which one she didn’t know. She had gone for walks close to the one that was visible from their living-room window, but nothing she saw around her was familiar. The ravine was narrow here and deep, closed in by trees which looked as though they were pinning the covering of snow to the steep sides. Far above, towards the rim, some children were playing. Marian could see their bright jackets, red and blue, and hear their faint laughter.
They were going single file along a track in the crusted snow. Some other people had walked there, but not many. At intervals she noticed what she thought were the marks of horses’ hooves. All she could see of Duncan was his slouched back and his feet lifting and setting down.
She wished he would turn around so she could see his face; his expressionless coat made her uneasy.
“We’ll sit down in a minute,” he said as if in answer.
She didn’t see any place they might possibly sit. They were walking now through a field of tall weedstalks whose stiff dried branches scraped against them as they passed: goldenrod, teazles, burdocks, the skeletons of anonymous grey plants. The burdocks had clusters of brown burrs and the teazles their weathered-silver spiked heads but otherwise nothing interrupted the thin branching and re-branching monotony of the field. Beyond it on either side rose the walls of the ravine. Along the top now were houses, a line of them perched on the edge, careless of the erosion gullies that scarred the ravine-face at irregular intervals. The creek had disappeared into an underground culvert.
Marian looked behind her. The ravine had made a curve; she had walked around it without noticing; ahead of them was another bridge, a larger one. They kept walking.
“I like it down here in winter,” Duncan’s voice said after a while. “Before I’ve only been down here in summer. Everything grows, it’s so thick with green leaves and stuff you can’t see three feet in front of you, some of it’s poison ivy. And it’s populated. The old drunks come down here and sleep under the bridges and the kids play here too. There’s a riding stable down here somewhere, I think what we’re on is one of the bridle paths. I used to come down because it was cooler. But it’s better covered with snow. It hides the junk. They’re beginning to fill this place up with junk too, you know, beginning with the creek, I wonder why they like throwing things around all over the landscape … old tires, tin cans.…” The voice came from a mouth she couldn’t see, as though from nowhere; it was foreshortened, blunted, as if it was being blotted up, absorbed by the snow.
The ravine had widened out around them and in this place there were fewer weeds. Duncan turned off the path, breaking the crusted snow; she followed him. They plodded up the side of a small hill.
“Here we are,” Duncan said. He stopped and turned, and reached a hand to draw her up beside