Surfacing - Margaret Atwood [72]
Anna sits, darkness in her eye sockets, skull with a candle. She clicks the compact shut and stubs out her cigarette against the dock; I remember the way she was crying, climbing up the sand hill, it was yesterday, since then she has crystallized. The machine is gradual, it takes a little of you at a time, it leaves the shell. It was all right as long as they stuck to dead things, the dead can defend themselves, to be half dead is worse. They did it to each other also, without knowing.
I unzip the bag with the camera equipment and lift out the canisters of film.
“What’re you doing?” Anna says, listlessly however.
I unwind the film, standing full in the sun, and let it spiral into the lake. “You better not do that,” Anna says, “they’ll kill you.” But she doesn’t interfere, she doesn’t call them.
When I’ve unravelled the reels I open the back of the camera. The film coils onto the sand under the water, weighted down by its containers; the invisible captured images are swimming away into the lake like tadpoles, Joe and David beside their defeated log, axemen, arms folded, Anna with no clothes on jumping off the end of the dock, finger up, hundreds of tiny naked Annas no longer bottled and shelved.
I study her to see if her release has made any difference, but the green eyes regard me unaltered from the enamel face. “They’ll get you,” she says, doleful as a prophet. “You shouldn’t have done it.”
They’re at the top of the hill now, coming back for the other canoe. I run quickly towards it, flip it over right side up, throw a paddle inside and drag it along the dock.
“Hey!” David calls. “What’re you doing?” They’re almost here, Anna watches me, biting a knuckle, she can’t decide whether or not to tell: if she keeps quiet they’ll treat her as an accomplice.
I slide the canoe stern first into the water, squat, step in, shove.
“She dumped out your film,” Anna says behind me.
I push the blade into the water, I don’t turn, I can hear them peering down into the lake.
“Shit,” David says, “shit, shit, oh shit, why the shit didn’t you stop her?”
When I’m as far as the sand point I look back. Anna stands, arms slack at her sides, uninvolved; David is kneeling, his hands fishing in the water, pulling up the film in spaghetti handfuls though he must know it’s futile, everything has escaped.
Joe is not there. He appears then at the top of the sand cliff, running, halting. He yells my name, furiously: if he had a rock he would throw it.
The canoe glides, carrying the two of us, around past the leaning trees and out of range. It’s too late for them to get the other canoe and follow; probably they haven’t thought of it, surprise attacks work by confusing. The direction is clear. I see I’ve been planning this, for how long I can’t tell.
I go along near the trees, boat and arms one movement, amphibian; the water closes behind me, no track. The land bends and we bend with it, a narrowing and then a space and I’m safe, hidden in the shore maze.
Here there are boulders; they loom under the water, brown shadows like clouds or threats, barricade. Slope of ground on either side, rock hung with creepers. The lake floor, once land floor, slants upward, so shallow now a motor could not pass. Another turning and I’m in the bay, landlocked swamp, layer of tepid water with reeds and cat-tails nosing up through the black vegetable ooze, around the sawed stumps of the once tower-high trees. This is where