Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [250]
She feels something else she never thought she would feel, towards Zenia. Oddly enough, it’s gratitude. What for? Who knows? But that’s what she feels.
“Should I just pour it out or throw in the whole thing?” says Charis. She has a sneaking wish to keep the vase for herself: it has a strong energy.
“What would you do with it afterwards?” says Tony, looking at her sternly, and after a moment – in which she pictures the vase full of flowers, or standing empty on a shelf, giving off a baleful crimson light in both cases – Charis says, “You’re right.” It would be a mistake to keep the vase, it would be holding Zenia to the earth; she has already seen the results of that, she doesn’t want a repeat. The mere absence of a body would not stop Zenia; she would just take somebody else’s. The dead return in other forms, she thinks, because we will them to.
“Heave ho, then,” says Roz, “last one in’s a rotten stinker!” What on earth is she thinking of? Cold water! Summer camp! Talk about mood swings! Not to mention bad taste. How much more of her life is she going to spend showing off, playing for cheap laughs? How old do you have to get before wisdom descends like a plastic bag over your head and you learn to keep your big mouth shut? Maybe never. Maybe you get more frivolous with age. Their eyes, their ancient glittering eyes, are gay.
But this is death, and death is Death, capital D, never mind whose, so sober up, Roz. Anyway she is sober, it’s only the way things come out of her. Bite my tongue, God, I didn’t mean it. It’s just the way I am.
Tony gives Roz an annoyed glance. What she herself would like is a little gunfire. A ritual cannon shot, the flag lowering to half-mast, a single bugle note quivering in the silvery air. Other dead fighters get that, so why not Zenia? She thinks of solemn moments, battlefield vignettes: the hero leaning on his sword or spear or musket, gazing down with noble and philosophical grief at his freshly killed opponent. Of equal rank, it goes without saying. I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
All very well, in art. In real battles, more likely a quick rifling of the watch pocket and the cutting off of ears as souvenirs. Old photographs of hunters with one foot on the bear carcass, clowning around with the sad sawed-off omnivorous ravenous head. Reduction of your sacred foe to a rug, with all the paintings and poems a kind of decorous curtain to disguise the gloating discourse going on behind.
“Okay,” she says to Charis, and Charis thrusts both arms and both hands and the flower vase straight out from her body, over the railing, and there is a sharp crack, and the vase splits in two. Charis gives a little shriek and pulls her hands back as if they’ve been burned. She looks at them: there’s a slight blue tinge, a flickering. The pieces of the vase splash into the water, and Zenia trails off in a long wavering drift, like smoke.
“Holy Moly!” says Roz. “What did that?”
“I think she hit it on the railing,” says Tony.
“No,” says Charis in a hushed voice. “It cracked by itself. It was her.” Entities can cause things like that, they can affect physical objects; they do it to get your attention.
Nothing Roz or Tony is likely to say will change her mind, so they say nothing. Charis herself is oddly comforted. It pleases her that Zenia would attend her own scattering, make herself known. It’s a token of her continuation. Zenia will now be free, to be reborn for another chance at life. Maybe she will be more fortunate next time. Charis tries to wish her well.
Nevertheless she’s shaking. She takes the hands held out to her, one on either side, and grips them tightly, and in this way they glide in to the Island dock. Three dark-coated middle-aged women; women