The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [122]
A smoke-filled room, a devil’s moon, and you –
I stole a kiss, you promised me you would be true –
I slid my hand beneath your dress.
You bit my ear, we made a mess,
Now it is dawn – and you are gone –
And I am blue.
She laughs. Where’d you get that?
It’s my tart song. It goes with the surroundings.
She’s not a real tart. Not even an amateur. I don’t expect she takes money. Most likely she gets rewarded in some other way.
A lot of chocolates. Would you settle for that?
It would have to be truckloads, she says. I’m moderately expensive. The bedspread’s real silk, I like the colour – garish, but it’s quite pretty. Good for the complexion, like pink candle-shades. Have you cooked up any more?
Any more what?
Any more of my story.
Your story?
Yes. Isn’t it for me?
Oh yes, he says. Of course. I think of nothing else. It keeps me awake nights.
Liar. Does it bore you?
Nothing that pleases you could possibly bore me.
God, how gallant. We should have the pink towels more often. Pretty soon you’ll be kissing my glass slipper. But go on, anyway.
Where was I?
The bell had rung. The throat was slit. The door was opening.
Oh. Right, then.
He says: The girl of whom we have been speaking has heard the door open. She backs against the wall, pulling the red brocade of the Bed of One Night tightly around herself. It has a brackish odour, like a salt marsh at low tide: the dried fear of those who have gone before her. Someone has come in; there’s the sound of a heavy object being dragged along the floor. The door closes again; the room is dark as oil. Why is there no lamp, no candle?
She stretches her hands out in front of her to protect herself, and finds her left hand taken and held by another hand: held gently and without coercion. It’s as if she’s being asked a question.
She can’t speak. She can’t say, I can’t speak.
The blind assassin lets his woman’s veil fall to the floor. Holding the girl’s hand, he sits down on the bed beside her. He still intends to kill her, but that can come later. He’s heard about these impounded girls, kept hidden away from everyone until the last day of their lives; he’s curious about her. In any case she’s a gift of sorts, and all for him. To refuse such a gift would be to spit in the face of the gods. He knows he should move swiftly, finish the job, vanish, but there’s lots of time for that still. He can smell the scent they’ve rubbed on her; it smells of funeral biers, those of young women who’ve died unwed. Wasted sweetness.
He won’t be ruining anything, or nothing that’s been bought and paid for: the fraudulent Lord of the Underworld must have been and gone already. Had he kept his rusty chainmail on? Most likely. Clanked into her like a ponderous iron key, turned himself in her flesh, wrenched her open. He remembers the feeling all too well. Whatever else, he will not do that.
He lifts her hand to his mouth and touches his lips to it, not a kiss as such but a token of respect and homage. Gracious and most golden one, he says – the beggar’s standard address to a prospective benefactor – rumour of your extreme beauty has brought me here, though simply by being here my life is forfeit. I can’t see you with my eyes, because I’m blind. Will you permit me to see you with my hands? It would be a last kindness, and perhaps for yourself as well.
He hasn’t been a slave and a whore for nothing: he’s learned how to flatter, how to lie plausibly, how to ingratiate himself. He puts his fingers on her chin, and waits until she hesitates, then nods. He can hear what she’s thinking: Tomorrow I’ll be dead. He wonders if she guesses why he’s really here.
Some of the best things are done by those with nowhere to turn, by those who don’t have time, by those who truly understand the word helpless. They dispense with the calculation of risk and profit, they take no thought for the future, they’re forced at spearpoint into the present tense. Thrown over a precipice, you fall or else you fly; you clutch at any hope, however unlikely; however – if I may use such an overworked word – miraculous. What