Surfacing - Margaret Atwood [58]
We reached the main lake and re-loaded the canoes and shoved them out over the snarl of logs. In the bay the felled trees and numbered posts showed where the surveyors had been, power company. My country, sold or drowned, a reservoir; the people were sold along with the land and the animals, a bargain, sale, solde. Les soldes they called them, sellouts, the flood would depend on who got elected, not here but somewhere else.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It was the sixth day, I had to find out; it would be my last chance, tomorrow Evans was coming to take us back. My brain was rushing, covering over the bad things and filling the empty spaces with an embroidery of calculations and numbers, I needed to finish, I had never finished anything. To be exact, to condense myself to a pinpoint, impaling a fact, a certainty.
As soon as I could I re-checked the map. The x was where it should have been, I hadn’t made a mistake. There was only one theory I could retreat to: some of the crosses might be places he thought suitable for paintings but hadn’t examined yet. I ran my finger around the shore, looking for the nearest marked site; it was the cliff where we had been fishing the first evening, it would be underwater, I would have to dive. If I found something it would vindicate him, I would know he’d been right; if not I could try the next x, near the heron island, and then the next one.
I had my bathing suit on already; we’d been washing the clothes down on the dock, rubbing them on the ribbed washboard with the worn-down bar of yellow soap, standing in the lake to rinse them. They were pegged out to dry now on the line behind the cabin, shirts, jeans, socks, Anna’s coloured lingerie, our cast skins. Anna had seemed more relaxed, she hummed from behind her fresh facade of makeup. She had stayed down by the lake to shampoo the smoke out of her hair. I pulled on a sweat shirt in case there were Americans. Before leaving I searched once more for his camera, the one he must have used to take the photographs, but it wasn’t there; he must have had it with him. At the time, the last time.
I had started down the steps before I saw them. The three of them were on the dock, split into parts by the treetrunk bars. Anna was kneeling in her orange bikini, with a towel draped over her head like a nun; David was standing over her, hands on hips. Joe was further back with the movie camera, sitting on the dock with his legs dangling, head averted as if waiting politely for them to be through. When I heard what they were saying I stood still. The canoes were there and I needed one of them but it was too dangerous. It was a calm day, the sound carried.
“Come on, take it off,” David said; his light-humour voice.
“I wasn’t bothering you.” Anna was muted, avoiding.
“It won’t hurt you, we need a naked lady.”
“What the hell for?” Anna was peevish now, her veiled head upturned; her eyes would be squinting.
“Random Samples,” David said patiently, and I thought, They’ve used up everything, there’s nothing left here now for them to take pictures of except each other, next it will be me. “You’ll go in beside the dead bird, it’s your chance for stardom, you’ve always wanted fame. You’ll get to be on Educational T.V.” he added as though it was a special bribe.
“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Anna said. She picked up her murder mystery again and pretended to read.
“Come on, we need a naked lady with big tits and a big ass,” David said in the same tender voice; I recognized that menacing gentleness, at school it always went before the trick, the punchline.
“Look, will you leave me alone?” Anna said. “I’m minding my own business, mind yours why don’t you.” She stood up, her towel sliding off, and tried to get past him to the land, but he sidestepped in front