Surfacing - Margaret Atwood [74]
I stand on the front step and lean sideways, clutching the window-ledge, looking in. The canvas packsack with my clothes has been moved, it’s back inside now, on the table with my case; beside it is Anna’s detective novel, her last one, cold comfort but comfort, death is logical, there’s always a motive. Perhaps that’s why she read them, for the theology.
Sun gone, sky darkening, it may rain later. Clouds building over the hills, anvils, ominous hammerheads, it will be a storm; it might miss though, sometimes they eddy for days, approaching but never striking. I’ll have to get inside. Breaking into my own house, go in and out the window they used to sing, holding their arms up like bridges; as we have done before.
The handbarrow is underneath the cabin, beside the stacked wood where it was always kept, two poles with boards nailed across like rungs. I haul it out and prop it against the wall under the window, the one with no screen. The window is hooked on the inside at the corners, I’ll have to break four of the little squares of glass. I do it with a rock, my head turned away, eyes closed because of the splinters. I reach carefully in through the jagged holes and undo the hooks and lift the window inwards onto the couch. If I could open the toolshed I could use the screwdriver to take the padlock hasp off the door, but the toolshed has no windows. Axe and machete inside it, saw, metal utensils.
I step on the couch and then on the floor, I’m in. I sweep up the broken glass; after that I hook the window back in place. It will be a nuisance, climbing in and out, removing the window each time, but the other windows have screens and I’ve nothing to cut them with. I could try the knife: if I had to leave in a hurry it would be better to use one of the back windows, they’re nearer the ground.
I’ve succeeded; I don’t know what to do now. I pause in the middle of the room, listening: no wind, stillness, held breath of the lake, the trees.
To be busy I unpack my clothes again and hang them on the nails in my room. My mother’s jacket is back, I last saw it in Anna’s room, it’s been shifted. My footsteps are the only sounds, reverberation of shoes on wood.
There must be something that comes next but the power has drained away, my fingers are empty as gloves, eyes ordinary, nothing guides me.
I sit down at the table and leaf through an old magazine, shepherds knitting their own socks, weather gnarling their faces, women in laced bodices and red lipstick balancing washing baskets on their heads, smiling to show their teeth and happiness; rubber plantations and deserted temples, jungle crawling over the serene carved gods. Ring from a wet cup on the cover, printed there yesterday or ten years ago.
I open a can of peaches and eat two of the yellow fibrous halves, sugary juice dribbling from the spoon. Then I lie down on the couch and sleep descends over my face, black oblong, dreamless.
When I wake up the diffused light outside is further west, it feels late, it must be almost six, dinner hour; David had the only watch. Hunger is there in me, a contained whimper. I unhook the window and climb out, one foot on the wobbling handbarrow, scraping my knee as I let myself drop to the ground. I should build a ladder; but there are no implements, no boards.
I go down to the garden. I’ve forgotten the knife and the bowl but they aren’t needed, fingers will do. I unlatch the gate, the chicken wire walls are around me; outside the fence the trees droop as though wilting, the plants inside are pale in the greyish light; the air is heavy, oppressive. I start to pull up the onions and the carrots.
I’m crying finally, it’s the first time, I watch myself doing it: I’m crouching down beside the lettuces, flowers finished now, gone to seed, my breath knots, my body tightens against it; the water fills my mouth, fish taste. But I’m not mourning, I’m accusing them, Why did you? They chose it, they had