Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [34]
But she has it at last, the thread: it’s Saddam Hussein and the invasion of Kuwait, and what will happen next. “It’s already been decided,” says Tony, “like the Rubicon,” and Charis says, “The what?”
“Never mind, sweetie, it’s just something historical,” says Roz, because she at least does understand that this is not Charis’s favourite topic of conversation, she’s giving her permission to drift off.
But then it comes to Charis what the Rubicon is. It’s something to do with Julius Caesar, they took it in high school. He crossed the Alps with elephants; another of those men who got famous for killing people. If they stopped giving medals to such men, thinks Charis, if they stopped giving them parades and making statues out of them, then those men would stop doing it. Stop all the killing. They do it to get attention.
Maybe that’s who Tony was, in a previous life: Julius Caesar. Maybe Julius Caesar has been sent back in the body of a woman, to punish him. A very short woman, so he can see what it’s like, to be powerless. Maybe that is the way things work.
The door opens, and Zenia is standing there. Charis goes cold all over, then takes a breath. She’s ready, she’s been readying herself, though lunch at the Toxique is the last place she would have expected this, this manifestation, this return. The Tower, thinks Charis. A sudden event. Something you weren’t looking for. No wonder the pendulum stopped dead, right over her head! But why did Zenia bother opening the door? She could have walked right through it.
Zenia is in black, which is no surprise, black was her colour. But the strange thing is that she’s fatter. Death has filled her out, which is not the usual way. Spirits are supposed to be thinner, hungry-looking, parched, and Zenia appears to be quite well. Especially, her breasts are larger. The last time Charis saw her in the flesh, she was skinny as a rake, a shadow practically, her breasts almost flat, like circles of thick cardboard stuck against her chest, the nipples buttoning them on. Now she’s what you would call voluptuous.
She’s angry, though. A dark aura swirls out from around her, like the corona of the sun in eclipse, only negative; a corona of darkness rather than of light. It’s a turbulent muddy green, shot through with lines of blood red and greyish black – the worst, the most destructive colours, a deadly aureole, a visible infection. Charis will have to call on all her own light, the white light she’s been working so hard at, storing up, for years and years. She will have to do an instant meditation, and what a place for it! Zenia has chosen the ground well for this encounter: the Toxique, the chattering voices, the cigarette smoke and wine fumes, the thick breath-filled air of the city, all are working for Zenia. She stands in the doorway, scanning the room with a scornful rancorous glance, pulling off a glove, and Charis closes her own eyes and repeats to herself: Think about the light.
“Tony, what’s wrong?” says Roz, and Charis opens her eyes again. The waitress is moving towards Zenia.
“Turn your head slowly,” says Tony. “Don’t scream.” Charis watches with interest, to see if the waitress will walk right through Zenia; but she doesn’t, she stops short. She must sense something. A coldness.
“Oh shit,” says Roz. “It’s her.”
“Who?” says Charis, doubt beginning to form. Roz hardly ever says “Oh shit.” It must be important.
“Zenia,” says Tony. So they can see her too! Well, why not? They have enough to say to her, each one of them. It isn’t only Charis.
“Zenia’s dead,” says Charis. I wonder what she’s come back for, is what she thinks. Who she’s come back for. Zenia’s aura has faded now, or else Charis can no longer see it: Zenia appears to be solid, substantial, material, disconcertingly alive.
“He looked like a lawyer,” says Charis. Zenia is coming towards her, and she concentrates all her