Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood [93]
Marian shuddered and turned away. She was intrigued, not by the mummy itself – she didn’t enjoy looking at things like that – but by Duncan’s evident fascination with it. From somewhere the thought drifted into her mind that if she were to reach out and touch him at that moment he would begin to crumble. “You’re being morbid,” she said.
“What’s wrong with death?” Duncan said, his voice suddenly loud in the empty room. “There’s nothing morbid about it; we all do it, you know, it’s perfectly natural.”
“It’s not natural to like it,” she protested, turning toward him. He was grinning at her.
“Don’t take me seriously,” he said. “I’ve warned you about that. Now come on and I’ll show you my womb-symbol. I’m going to show it to Fish pretty soon. He’s threatening to write a short monograph for Victorian Studies called ‘Womb-Symbols in Beatrix Potter.’ He has to be stopped.”
He led her to the far corner of the room. At first in the rapidly fading light she couldn’t make out what was inside the case. It looked like a heap of rubble. Then she saw that it was a skeleton, still covered in places with skin, lying on its side with its knees drawn up. There were some clay pots and a necklace lying beside it. The body was so small it looked like that of a child.
“It’s sort of pre-pyramid,” Duncan said. “Preserved by the sands of the desert. When I get really fed up with this place I’m going to go and dig myself in. Maybe the library would serve the purpose just as well; except this city is kind of damp. Things would rot.”
Marian leaned further over the glass case. She found the stunted figure pathetic: with its jutting ribs and frail legs and starved shoulder blades it looked like the photographs of people from underprivileged countries or concentration camps. She didn’t exactly want to gather it up in her arms, but she felt helplessly sorry for it.
When she moved away and glanced up at Duncan, she realized with an infinitesimal shiver of horror that he was reaching out for her. Under the circumstances, his thinness was not reassuring, and she drew back slightly.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not going to return from the tomb.” He passed his hand over the curve of her cheek, smiling down at her sadly. “The trouble is, especially with people and when I’m touching them and so on, I can’t concentrate on the surface. As long as you only think about the surface I suppose it’s all right, and real enough; but once you start thinking about what’s inside …”
He bent to kiss her. She swerved, rested her head against his winter-coated shoulder, and closed her eyes. He felt more fragile than usual against her: she was afraid of holding him too tightly.
She heard a creaking of the parquet floor, opened her eyes, and found herself confronted by a pair of austere grey scrutinizing eyes. They belonged to a blue-uniformed guard, who had come up behind them. He tapped Duncan on the shoulder.
“Pardon me, sir,” he said, politely though firmly, “but – ah – kissing in the Mummy Room is not permitted.”
“Oh,” said Duncan. “Sorry.”
They wound their way back through the maze of rooms and reached the main staircase. A stream of schoolchildren carrying folding stools was coming out of the gallery opposite, and they were caught up by the current of small moving feet and swept down the marble stairs in a waterfall of strident laughter.
Duncan had suggested that they go for coffee, so they were sitting at a square grubby-surfaced table in the Museum Coffee Shop, surrounded by groups of self-consciously disconsolate students. Marian had for so long associated having coffee in a restaurant with the office and morning coffee breaks that she kept expecting the three office virgins to materialize across the table from her, beside Duncan.
Duncan