Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [113]
Occasionally the exiles forgather at her house to drink beer and talk and smoke dope, though they take care to keep the parties quiet: the last thing they need is the police. They come across on the ferry and they bring their girlfriends, stringy-haired girls quite a lot younger than Charis, girls who take baths in Charis’s bathroom because they live in places where they don’t have bathrooms of their own, and they use up Charis’s few towels and leave rings in Charis’s old claw-footed bathtub. Dirt is an illusion, it’s just one way of thinking about matter, and Charis knows she shouldn’t be upset about it, but if she has to deal with an illusion of dirt she would rather it be her own dirt, not the dirt of these vacant-eyed girls. The men, or boys, refer to these girls as “my old lady,” though they are the opposite of old, which makes Charis feel some better about the fact that Billy calls her by this name, as well.
Billy’s group is always talking about plans. They think they should do something, take some action, but what kind? They’ve gone so far as to make up a list of names, the names of the others in the group, though they’re first names only and false names at that. Charis – peeking at Billy’s copy of the list, although she shouldn’t have – was taken aback to discover that some of them were women’s names: Edith, Ethel, Emma. During the parties, as she gets cold beer out of her tiny refrigerator, as she dumps chips and mixed nuts from the co-op into bowls, as she finds the shampoo for some girl who wants to wash her hair, as she sits on the floor beside Billy, breathing in second-hand pot smoke and smiling and gazing into space, she has listened in, she has overheard, and she knows that Billy is really Edith, or vice versa. He’s named after Edith Cavell, some person in the past. There are telephone numbers, too; some of them are scrawled on the wall beside the phone, but Billy tells her it’s safe because they’re just the numbers of places where you can leave messages. They also have a plan to put out a newspaper, although there are several draft-dodger newspapers already. A lot of other guys got here before Billy and his new-found friends.
Charis isn’t sure all these cloak-and-dagger props, the sneaking around and the codes and the pretend names, are really necessary. It’s like kids playing. But the activity seems to give Billy more energy, and a purpose in life. He’s venturing out more, he’s less cooped up. On the days when Charis thinks the danger isn’t real she rejoices in this, but on the days when she believes in it she worries. And every time Billy steps on board the ferry to go to the mainland, there’s a corner of her that panics. Billy is like a tightrope walker, stepping carelessly blindfolded along a clothesline strung between two thirty-storey buildings, thinking he’s only four feet above the ground. He believes that his actions, his words, his tiny little newspaper, can change things, can change things out there in the world.
Charis knows that there is no change possible in the world at large, no change for the better that is. Events are deceptive, they are part of a cycle; to get caught up in them is to be trapped in a whirlpool. But what does Billy know about the relentless malice of the physical universe? He is too young.
Charis feels that the only thing she herself can change is her own body, and through it her spirit. She wishes to free her spirit: this is what led her to yoga. She wants to rearrange her body, get rid of the heaviness hidden deep within it,