Surfacing - Margaret Atwood [16]
“Up your ass,” David says, smiling at her, “that’s where they’d look first, they grab a good thing when they see one. Don’t worry, baby, I know what I’m doing.”
“Sometimes I wonder,” Anna says.
We go outside and down to the dock and sit on the damp wood, watching the sunset, smoking a little. The clouds to the west are yellow and grey, fading, and in the clear sky southeast of us the moon is rising.
“This is great,” David says, “it’s better than in the city. If we could only kick out the fascist pig Yanks and the capitalists this would be a neat country. But then, who would be left?”
“Oh Christ,” Anna says, “don’t get going on that.”
“How?” I say. “How would you kick them out?”
“Organize the beavers,” David says, “chew them to pieces, it’s the only way. This Yank stockbroker is going along Bay Street and the beavers ambush him, drop on him from a telephone pole, chomp chomp and it’s all over. You heard about the latest national flag? Nine beavers pissing on a frog.”
It’s old and shoddy but I laugh anyway. A little beer, a little pot, some jokes, a little political chitchat, the golden mean; we’re the new bourgeoisie, this might as well be a Rec Room. Still I’m glad they’re with me, I wouldn’t want to be here alone; at any moment the loss, vacancy, will overtake me, they ward it off.
“Do you realize,” David says, “that this country is founded on the bodies of dead animals? Dead fish, dead seals, and historically dead beavers, the beaver is to this country what the black man is to the United States. Not only that, in New York it’s now a dirty word, beaver. I think that’s very significant.” He sits up and glares at me through the semi-darkness.
“We aren’t your students,” Anna says, “lie down.” His head rests in her lap, she’s stroking his forehead, I can see her hand moving back and forth. They’ve been married nine years, Anna told me, they must have got married about the same time I did; but she’s older than I am. They must have some special method, formula, some knowledge I missed out on; or maybe he was the wrong person. I thought it would happen without my doing anything about it, I’d turn into part of a couple, two people linked together and balancing each other, like the wooden man and woman in the barometer house at Paul’s. It was good at first but he changed after I married him, he married me, we committed that paper act. I still don’t see why signing a name should make any difference but he began to expect things, he wanted to be pleased. We should have kept sleeping together and left it at that.
Joe puts his arm around me, I take hold of his fingers. What I’m seeing is the black and white tugboat that used to be on the lake, or was it flat like a barge, it towed the log booms slowly down towards the dam, I waved at it whenever we went past in our boat and the men would wave back. It had a little house on it for them to live in, with windows and a stovepipe coming out through the roof. I felt that would be the best way to live, in a floating house carrying everything you needed with you and some other people you liked; when you wanted to move somewhere else it would be easy.
Joe is swaying back and forth, rocking, which may mean he’s happy. The wind starts again, brushing over us, the air warm-cool and fluid, the trees behind us moving their leaves, the sound ripples; the water gives off icy light, zinc moon breaking on small waves. Loon voice, each hair on my body lifting with the shiver; the echoes deflect from all sides, surrounding us, here everything echoes.
CHAPTER FIVE
Birdsong wakes me. It’s pre-dawn, earlier than the traffic starts in the city, but I’ve learned to sleep through that. I used to know the species; I listen, my ears are rusty, there’s nothing but a jumble of sound. They sing for the same reason trucks honk, to proclaim their territories: a rudimentary language. Linguistics, I should have studied that instead of art.
Joe is