Surfacing - Margaret Atwood [35]
Anna stood up. “Fuck off,” she said, squinting at them against the sun.
“You’ve hardly done anything,” David said, unquenchable, “you call that a garden?”
I measured their axework with my father’s summarizing eye. In the city he would shake hands with them, estimating them shrewdly: could they handle an axe, what did they know about manure? They would stand there embarrassed in their washed suburban skins and highschool clothes, uncertain what was expected of them.
“That’s great,” I said.
David wanted us to get the movie camera and take some footage of both of them carrying the log, for Random Samples; he said it would be his cameo appearance. Joe said we couldn’t work the camera. David said all you did was press a button, an idiot could do it, anyway it might be even better if it was out of focus or overexposed, it would introduce the element of chance, like a painter throwing paint at a canvas, it would be organic. But Joe said what if we wrecked the camera, who would pay for it. In the end they stuck the axe in the log, after several tries, and took turns shooting each other standing beside it, arms folded and one foot on it as if it was a lion or a rhinoceros.
In the evening we played bridge, with the set of slightly greasy cards that had always been there, blue seahorses on one deck, red seahorses on the other. David and Anna played against us. They won easily: Joe didn’t know how, exactly, and I hadn’t played for years. I was never any good; the only part I liked was picking up the cards and arranging them.
Afterwards I waited for Anna to walk up to the outhouse with me; usually I went first, alone. We took both flashlights; they made protective circles of weak yellow light, moving with our feet as they walked. Rustlings, toads in the dry leaves; once the quick warning thump of a rabbit. The sounds would be safe as long as I knew what they were.
“I wish I had a warmer sweater,” Anna said, “I didn’t know it got so cold.”
“There’s some raincoats,” I said, “you could try those.”
When we got back to the cabin the other two were in bed; they didn’t bother going as far as the outhouse after dark, they peed on the ground. I brushed my teeth; Anna started taking off her makeup by the light of a candle and her flashlight propped on end, they’d blown out the lamp.
I went into my room and got undressed. Joe mumbled, he was half asleep; I curled my arm over him.
Outside was the wind, trees moving in it, nothing else. The yellow target from Anna’s flashlight was on the ceiling; it shifted, she was going into their room and I could hear them, Anna breathing, a fast panic sound as though she was running; then her voice began, not like her real voice but twisted as her face must have been, a desperate beggar’s whine, please please. I put the pillow over my head, I didn’t want to listen, I wanted it to be through but it kept on, Shut up I whispered but she wouldn’t. She was praying to herself, it was as if David wasn’t there at all. Jesus jesus oh yes please jesus. Then something different, not a word but pure pain, clear as water, an animal’s at the moment the trap closes.
It’s like death, I thought, the bad part isn’t the thing itself but being a witness. I suppose they could hear us too, the times before. But I never say anything.
CHAPTER TEN
The sunset had been red, reddish purple, and the next day the sun held as I guessed it would; without a radio or a barometer you have to make your own prophecies. It was the second day of the week, I was ticking them off in my head, prisoner’s scratches on the wall; I felt stretched, pulled tight like a drying rope, the fact that he had not yet appeared only increased the possibility that he would. The seventh day seemed a great distance away.
I wanted to get them off the island, to protect them from him, to protect him from them, save all of them from knowledge. They might start to explore, cut other trails; already they were beginning to be restless: fire and food, the only two necessities, were taken care of and there was nothing left to