Surfacing - Margaret Atwood [66]
I looked at him. His smile was like a benevolent uncle’s; under his forehead there was a plan, it corrugated the skin. I pushed his hand off and he put it back again.
“How about it?” he said. “You wanted me to follow you.”
His fingers were squeezing, he was drawing away some of the power, I would lose it and come apart again, the lies would recapture. “Please don’t,” I said.
“Come on now, don’t give me hassle,” he said. “You’re a groovy chick, you know the score, you aren’t married.” He reached his arm around me, invading, and pulled me over towards him; his neck was creased and freckled, soon he would have jowls, he smelled like scalp. His moustache whisked my face.
I twisted away and stood up. “Why are you doing this?” I said. “You’re interfering.” I wiped at my arm where he had touched it.
He didn’t understand what I meant, he smiled even harder. “Don’t get uptight,” he said, “I won’t tell Joe. It’ll be great, it’s good for you, keeps you healthy.” Then he went “Yuk, yuk” like Goofy.
He was speaking about it as though it was an exercising programme, athletic demonstration, ornamental swimming in a chlorine swimming pool noplace in California. “It wouldn’t keep me healthy,” I said, “I’d get pregnant.”
He lifted his eyebrows, incredulous. “You’re putting me on,” he said, “this is the twentieth century.”
“No it isn’t,” I said. “Not here.”
He stood up also and took a step towards me. I backed away. He was turning mottled pink, turkey neck, but his voice was still rational. “Listen,” he said, “I realize you walk around in never-never land but don’t tell me you don’t know where Joe is; he’s not so noble, he’s off in the bushes somewhere with that cunt on four legs, right about now he’s shoving it into her.” He glanced quickly at his wristwatch as though timing them; he seemed elated by what he’d said, his eyes gleamed like test-tubes.
“Oh,” I said; I thought about it for a minute. “Maybe they love each other.” It would be logical, they were the ones who could. “Do you love me,” I asked in case I hadn’t understood him, “is that why you want me to?”
He thought I was being either smart or stupid and said “Christ.” Then he paused, aiming. “You aren’t going to let him get away with it, are you?” he said. “Tit for tat as they say.” He folded his arms, resting his case, retaliation was his ultimate argument: he must have felt it was a duty, an obligation on my part, it would be justice. Geometrical sex, he needed me for an abstract principle; it would be enough for him if our genitals could be detached like two kitchen appliances and copulate in mid-air, that would complete his equation.
His wristwatch glittered, glass and silver: perhaps it was his dial, the key that wound him, the switch. There must be a phrase, a vocabulary that would work. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but you don’t turn me on.”
“You,” he said, searching for words, not controlled any more, “tight-ass bitch.”
The power flowed into my eyes, I could see into him, he was an imposter, a pastiche, layers of political handbills, pages from magazines, affiches, verbs and nouns glued on to him and shredding away, the original surface littered with fragments and tatters. In a black suit knocking on doors, young once, even that had been a costume, a uniform; now his hair was falling off and he didn’t know what language to use, he’d forgotten his own, he had to copy. Second-hand American was spreading over him in patches, like mange or lichen. He was infested, garbled, and I couldn’t help him: it would take such time to heal, unearth him, scrape down to where he was true.
“Keep it to yourself then,” he said, “I’m not going to sit up and beg for a little third-rate cold tail.”
I detoured around past him, back towards the cabin. More than ever I needed to find it, the thing she had hidden; the power from my father’s intercession wasn’t enough to protect me, it gave only knowledge and there were more gods than his, his were the gods of the head, antlers rooted in the brain. Not only how to see but how to act.
I thought he would stay there, at least till I