The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [118]
They brought me a basin, and cold weak tea with sugar but no milk. Richard said I should drink champagne because it was the best cure, but I didn’t want to take the risk. He was more or less considerate, but also more or less annoyed, though he did say what a shame I was feeling ill. I said I didn’t want to ruin his evening and he should go off and socialize, and so he did. The benefit to my seasickness was that Richard showed no inclination to climb into bed with me. Sex may go nicely with many things, but vomit isn’t one of them.
The next morning Richard said I should make an effort to appear at breakfast, as having the right attitude was the war half won. I sat at our table and nibbled bread and drank water, and tried to ignore the cooking smells. I felt bodiless and flaccid and crepey-skinned, like a deflating balloon. Richard tended me intermittently, but he knew people, or seemed to know them, and people knew him. He got up, shook hands, sat down again. Sometimes he introduced me, sometimes not. He did not however know all of the people he wanted to know. This was clear by the way he was always gazing around, past me, past those he was talking with – over their heads.
I made a gradual recovery during the day. I drank ginger ale, which helped. I did not eat dinner, but I attended it. In the evening there was a cabaret. I wore the dress Winifred had chosen for such an event, dove grey with a chiffon cape in lilac. There were lilac sandals with high heels and open toes to match. I had not yet quite got the hang of such high heels: I teetered slightly. Richard said the sea air must have agreed with me; he said I had just the right amount of colour, a faint schoolgirl blush. He said I looked marvellous. He steered me to the table he’d reserved, and ordered a martini for me and one for himself. He said the martini would fix me up in no time flat.
I drank some of it, and after that Richard was no longer beside me, and there was a singer who stood in a blue spotlight. She had her black hair waved down over one eye, and was wearing a tubular black dress covered with big scaly sequins, which clung to her firm but prominent bottom and was held up by what looked like twisted string. I stared at her with fascination. I’d never been to a cabaret, or even to a nightclub. She wiggled her shoulders and sang “Stormy Weather” in a voice like a sultry groan. You could see halfway down her front.
People sat at their tables watching her and listening to her, and having opinions about her – free to like or dislike her, to be seduced by her or not, to approve or disapprove of her performance, of her dress, of her bottom. She however was not free. She had to go through with it – to sing, to wiggle. I wondered what she was paid for doing this, and whether it was worth it. Only if you were poor, I decided. The phrase in the spotlight has seemed to me ever since to denote a precise form of humiliation. The spotlight was something you should evidently stay out of, if you could.
After the singer, there was a man who played a white piano, very fast, and after him a couple, two professional dancers: a tango act. They were in black, like the singer. Their hair shone like patent leather in the spotlight, which was now an acid green. The woman had one dark curl glued to her forehead, and a large red flower behind one ear. Her dress gored out from mid-thigh but was otherwise like a stocking. The music was jagged, hobbled – like a four-legged animal lurching on three legs. A crippled bull with its head down, lunging.
As for the dance, it was more like a battle than a dance. The faces of the dancers were set, impassive; they eyed each other glitteringly, waiting for a chance to bite. I knew it was an act, I could see that it was expertly done; nonetheless, both of them looked wounded.
The third day came. In the early afternoon I walked on the deck, for the fresh