Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [15]
“Who?” says Tony. “Uncle Sam?”
“Uncle Saddam, pardon the pun,” says Roz.
“He can’t,” says Tony. “He’s gone too far. His own folks would murder him. Not that they haven’t tried.”
“This is depressing,” says Charis.
“You bet,” says Tony. “The lust for power will prevail. Thousands will die needlessly. Corpses will rot. Women and children will perish. Plagues will rage. Famine will sweep the land. Relief funds will be set up. Officials will siphon off the cash from them. It’s not all bad, though – the suicide rate will fall. It always does during wars. And maybe women soldiers will get a crack at front-line combat, strike a blow for feminism. Though I doubt it. They’ll probably just be doing bandages-as-usual. Let’s order another bottle of Evian.”
“Tony, you are so cold-blooded,” says Roz. “Who’s going to win?”
“The battle, or the war?” says Tony. “For the battle, it’ll definitely be technology. Whoever’s got air superiority. Now who could that be?”
“The Iraqis have some kind of a giant gun,” says Roz. “I read something about it.”
“Only part of one,” says Tony, who knows quite a lot about this because it interests her. Her, and Jane’s Defence Weekly, and persons unknown. “The Supergun. It would have been a technological breakthrough all right; done away with medium-range aircraft and expensive rockets, cut down on the cost. Guess what they called it? Project Babylon! But the guy who was making it got himself murdered. A mad weapons genius – Gerry Bull. Best ballistics man in the world – one of ours, by the way. He’d been warned, sort of. Stuff kept moving around inside his apartment when he wasn’t there. More than a hint, I’d say. But he kept right on building the gun, until bang – five bullets in his head.”
“That’s awful,” said Charis. “I hate that.”
“Take your choice,” says Tony. “Think how many people the Supergun would have killed.”
“Well anyway, I hear they’re dug in,” says Roz. “I hear they have deep cement bunkers. Bomb-proof.”
“Only for the generals,” says Tony. “Wait and see.”
“Tony, you’re such a cynic,” says Charis, with a pitying sigh. She keeps hoping for Tony’s spiritual improvement, which would consist, no doubt, of a discovery of previous lives, a partial lobotomy, and an increased interest in gardening.
Tony looks at her, sitting in front of her pretty dessert, the Assorted Sorbets, a ball of pink, a ball of red, a ball of curranty purple, spoon at the ready like a kid at a birthday party. Such innocence pains Tony, two ways at once. She wants to console Charis; also to shake her. “What do you want me to say? That we should all try for a more positive attitude?”
“It might help,” says Charis solemnly. “You never know. If everyone did it.”
Sometimes Tony would like to take Charis by the lily-white hand and lead her to the piles of skulls, to the hidden pits filled with bodies, to the starved children with their stick arms and ballooning stomachs, to the churches locked up and then burned with their sizzling prisoners howling inside, to the crosses, row on row on row. Century after century, back and back, as far as you can go. Now tell me, she’d say to Charis. What do you see?
Flowers, Charis would say.
Zenia would not have said that.
Tony feels a chill. The door must have opened. She looks up, and into the mirror.
Zenia is standing here, behind her, in the smoke, in the glass, in this room. Not someone who looks like Zenia: Zenia herself.
It’s not a hallucination. The leopard-skinned waitress has seen her too. She’s nodding, she’s going over, she’s indicating a table at the back. Tony feels her heart clench, clench like a fist, and plummet.
“Tony, what’s wrong?” says Roz. She clutches Charis’s arm.
“Turn your head slowly,” says Tony. “Don’t scream.”
“Oh shit,” says Roz. “It’s her.”
“Who?” says Charis.
“Zenia,” says Tony.
“Zenia’s dead,” says Charis.
“God,” says Roz, “it really is. Charis, don’t stare, she’ll see you.”
“And after putting us through that idiotic service,” says Tony.
“Well, she wasn’t at it,” says Roz. “There was only that tin can, remember?”
“And that