Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [87]
“How terrible,” says Tony.
“Oh well,” says Zenia, “who gives a shit? Anyway it wasn’t only me – she rented herself out, too. She was a sort of bargain-basement mistress, I suppose. For gentlemen down on their luck. Only Russians though, and nobody below the rank of major. She had her standards. She helped them with their pretensions, they helped her with hers. But she wasn’t very successful at the sex part, maybe because she didn’t really like it. She preferred suffering. There was quite a turnover of men. Also she was sick a lot of the time. Coughing, just like an opera! Blood in the hankie. Her breath smelled worse and worse, she used to wear a lot of perfume, when she could get it. I suppose it was TB, and that’s what killed her. What a corny death!”
“You were very lucky not to get it yourself,” says Tony. All of this seems so archaic. Surely nobody gets TB any more. It’s a vanished illness, like smallpox.
“Yes, wasn’t I?” says Zenia. “But I was long gone by the time she finally croaked. As I got older I didn’t love her any more. I did most of the work, she kept most of the money, and that was hardly fair! And I couldn’t stand listening to her coughing, and crying to herself at night. She was so hopeless; I think she was stupid, as well. So I ran away. It was a mean thing to do, I suppose; she didn’t have anybody by that time, any man; only me. But it was her or me. I had to choose.”
“What about your father?” says Tony.
Zenia laughs. “What father?”
“Well, you must have had one,” says Tony.
“I did better,” says Zenia. “I had three! My mother had several versions – minor Greek royalty, a general in the Polish cavalry, an Englishman of good family. She had a photograph of him, just the one man – but three stories. The story about him changed, depending on how she felt; though in all three of the stories he died in the war. She used to show me where, on the map: a different place, a different death for each. Charging the German tanks on horseback, behind the French lines in a parachute, machine-gunned in a palace. When she could afford it she would put a single rose in front of the picture; sometimes she would light a candle. God knows whose photo it was really! A young man in a jacket, with a knapsack, sort of blurry, looking over his shoulder; not even in uniform. Pre-war. Maybe she bought it. Myself, I think she got raped, by a bunch of soldiers or something, but she didn’t want to tell me. It would’ve been too much – for me to discover that my father was someone like that. But it would figure, wouldn’t it? A woman with no money, on the run from one place to another, by herself – no protection. Women like that were fair game! Or else she had a Nazi lover, some German thug. Who can tell? She was quite a liar, so I’ll never know. Anyway, she’s dead now.”
Tony’s own little history has dwindled considerably. Beside Zenia’s, it seems no more than an incident, minor, grey, suburban; a sedate parochial anecdote; a footnote. Whereas Zenia’s life sparkles – no, it glares, in the lurid although uncertain light cast by large and portentous world events. (White Russians!)
So far Tony has seen Zenia as very different from herself, but now she sees her as similar too, for aren’t they both orphans? Both motherless, both war babies, making their way in the world by themselves, trudging onwards with their baskets over their arms, baskets containing their scant, their only worldly possessions – one brain apiece, for what else do they have to rely on? She admires Zenia tremendously, not least for keeping her cool. Right now, for instance, when other women might be crying, Zenia is actually smiling – smiling at Tony, with perhaps a hint of mockery, which Tony chooses to interpret as a touching gallantry, a steely courage in the face of adverse