Surfacing - Margaret Atwood [73]
I float, no need to paddle. Further in, the trees they didn’t cut before the flood are marooned, broken and grey-white, tipped on their sides, their giant contorted roots bleached and skinless; on the sodden trunks are colonies of plants, feeding on disintegration, laurel, sundew the insect-eater, its toenail-sized leaves sticky with red hairs. Out of the leaf nests the flowers rise, pure white, flesh of gnats and midges, petals now, metamorphosis.
I lie down on the bottom of the canoe and wait. The still water gathers the heat; birds, off in the forest a woodpecker, somewhere a thrush. Through the trees the sun glances; the swamp around me smoulders, energy of decay turning to growth, green fire. I remember the heron; by now it will be insects, frogs, fish, other herons. My body also changes, the creature in me, plant-animal, sends out filaments in me; I ferry it secure between death and life, I multiply.
The motor approaching wakes me: it’s out on the lake, it will be Evans. I beach the canoe, knot the rope to a tree. They won’t be expecting me, not from this direction; I have to make sure they leave with him as they should, it would be their way to pretend but stay behind to catch me when I come back.
It’s less than a quarter of a mile through the trees, swerving to avoid branches, careful where I step, along the vestiges of the coded trail to where the laboratory shelves were, if I didn’t know the trail was there I could never find it. As Evans’ boat pulls into the dock I am behind them, near the piled wood, head down and lying flat, I can see them through the screen of plant stems.
They stoop, they’re loading the things into the boat. I wonder if they’re taking mine as well, my clothes, fragments of pictures.
They stand talking with Evans, their voices low, inaudible; but they’ll be explaining, they’ll have to invent some reason, accident, say why I’m not with them. They will be plotting, a strategy for recapture; or will they really go off and discard me, vanish into the catacombs of the city, giving me up for lost, stashing me away in their heads with all the obsolete costumes and phrases? For them I’ll soon be ancient as crew cuts and world war songs, a half-remembered face in a highschool yearbook, a captured enemy medal: memorabilia, or possibly not even that.
Joe comes up the steps, shouting; Anna shouts too, shrill, like a train whistle before departure, my name. It’s too late, I no longer have a name. I tried for all those years to be civilized but I’m not and I’m through pretending.
Joe goes around to the front of the cabin, concealed from me. After a minute he reappears, stumping back down the hill to them, shoulders sloped in defeat. Perhaps by now he understands.
They clamber into the boat. Anna pauses for a moment, turned directly towards me, face in the sunlight puzzled, oddly forlorn: does she see me, is she going to wave goodbye? Then the others reach out hands to her and lift her in, a gesture that looks from a distance almost like love.
The boat chugs backwards into the bay, then swings into forward and roars. Bullhead Evans at the wheel, checkshirted and stolid, American, they are all Americans now. But they are really going, really gone, a ringing in my ears and then a silence. I get to my feet slowly, my body is cramped from not moving; on the bare flesh of my legs are the imprints of leaves and twigs.
I walk to the hill and scan the shoreline, finding the place, opening, where they disappeared: checking, reassuring. It’s true, I am by myself; this is what I wanted, to stay here alone. From any rational point of view I am absurd; but there are no longer any rational points of view.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
They’ve locked the doors, on the toolshed, on the cabin; it was Joe, he may have assumed I’d take the canoe to the village. No, it was ill will. I shouldn’t have left the keys hanging on the nail, I should have put them in my pocket. But it was stupid of them to think they could keep me out. Soon they will reach the village, the