Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [105]
The day begins as mist. Charis sees the mist as she gets out of bed, or rather off the bed, because the bed is a mattress on the floor. She goes to the window to look out. There’s a miniature transparent rainbow stuck onto the glass, though Charis did not stick it there: it was left over from the previous tenants, a batch of burned-out hippies who also drew pictures in Magic Marker on the flowered, faded wallpaper – naked people copulating and cats with halos – and played the Doors and Janis Joplin at top volume in the middle of the night, and left mounds of human shit in the backyard. They were finally kicked out by the landlord with the help of the next-door neighbours after a screaming acid party, during which one of them set fire to a black plastic beanbag chair in the living room under the impression that it was a carnivorous puffball. The landlord – an old man who lives at the other end of the street – welcomed Charis and Billy, because there were only two of them and they did not have a big speaker system, and because Charis said she intended to plant a vegetable garden, which indicated some sort of decorous coupledom; and the neighbours were so grateful for the change that they didn’t even make a fuss about the chickens, chickens that may or may not be illegal, but this is the Island and strict legality is not the norm here, witness the number of house additions that go up without a permit. Luckily they have a corner lot, so there are neighbours on only one side.
Charis painted over the naked people and cats and dug the human shit into her compost heap, telling herself that it was the right thing to do because the Chinese used it, in China, and everyone knew they were the world’s best organic gardeners. Shit to food to shit, it was all part of the cycle.
They moved into this house in late spring, and from the very first Charis knew it was right. She loves the house and, even more, she loves the Island. It’s infused with a vibrant, brooding, humid life; it makes her feel that everything – even the water, even the stones – is alive and aware, and her along with it. Some mornings she goes out before daybreak and just walks around, up and down the streets that are not real streets but more like paved bicycle paths, past the dilapidated or spruced-up former cottages with their woodpiles and hammocks and patchy gardens; or else she just lies on the grass, even when damp. Billy likes the Island too, or so he says, but not the same way she does.
The mist is rising from the ground and from the bushes, dripping from the old apple tree at the back of the yard. There are still a few brownish frostbitten apples, hanging from the twisted branches like burnt Christmas decorations. The fallen apples Charis was unable to use for jelly lie rotting and fermented at the base of the tree. Several of the chickens have been pecking at them; Charis can tell by the way those chickens stagger around, so drunk they have difficulty walking up the ramp into their chicken house. Billy thinks those drunken hens are cool.
The wide painted floorboards are cold under her bare feet; she hugs her goose-pimpled arms, shivering a little. She can’t see the lake from here: the mist blots it out. She makes an effort to find the mist beautiful – everything made by nature should be beautiful – but succeeds only partly. The mist is beautiful, true, it’s like solid light, but it’s also ominous: when there’s mist you can’t see what’s coming.
She leaves Billy sleeping on their mattress, under their opened-out sleeping bag, and puts on her embroidered Indian slippers, and pulls one of Billy’s sweatshirts over her cotton nightgown. The nightgown is Victorian-style, second-hand; she bought it at a used-clothing place in Kensington