The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [126]
The danger would come from looking too closely and seeing too much – from having him dwindle, and herself along with him. Then waking up empty, all of it used up – over and done. She would have nothing. She would be bereft.
An old-fashioned word.
He hasn’t come to meet her, this time. He said it was better not. She’s been left to make her way alone. Tucked into the palm of her glove there’s a square of folded paper, with cryptic directions, but she doesn’t need to look at it. She can feel the slight glow of it against her skin, like a radium dial in the dark.
She imagines him imagining her – imagining her walking along the street, closer now, impending. Is he impatient, on edge, can he hardly wait? Is he like her? He likes to imply indifference – that he doesn’t care whether she’ll arrive or not – but it’s just an act, one of several. For instance, he’s no longer smoking ready-mades, he can’t afford them. He rolls his own, with one of those obscene-looking pink rubber devices that turns out three at a time; he cuts them with a razor blade, then stows them in a Craven A package. One of his small deceptions, or vanities; his need for them makes her breath catch.
Sometimes she brings him cigarettes, handfuls of them – largesse, opulence. She nicks them out of the silver cigarette box on the glass coffee table, crams them into her purse. But she doesn’t do this every time. It’s best to keep him in suspense, it’s best to keep him hungry.
He lies on his back, replete, smoking. If she wants avowals, she has to get them beforehand – make sure of them first, like a whore and her money. Meagre though they may be. I’ve missed you, he might say. Or: I can’t get enough of you. His eyes shut, grinding his teeth to hold himself back; she can hear it against her neck.
Afterwards, she has to fish.
Say something.
Like what?
Like anything you like.
Tell me what you want to hear.
If I do that and then you say it, I won’t believe you.
Read between the lines then.
But there aren’t any lines. You don’t give me any.
Then he might sing:
Oh, you put your dingus in, and you pull your dingus out, And the smoke goes up the chimney just the same –
How’s that for a line? he’ll say.
You really are a bastard.
I’ve never claimed otherwise.
No wonder they resort to stories.
She turns left at the shoe repair, then a block along, then two houses. Then the small apartment building: The Excelsior. It must be named after the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. A banner with a strange device, a knight sacrificing all earthly concerns to scale the heights. The heights of what? Of armchair bourgeois pietism. How ridiculous, here and now.
The Excelsior is red brick with three storeys, four windows each floor, with wrought-iron balconies – more like ledges than balconies, no room for a chair. A cut above the neighbourhood once, now a place where people cling to the edges. On one balcony someone’s improvised a clothesline; a greying dishcloth hangs on it like the flag of some defeated regiment.
She walks past the building, then crosses at the next corner. There she stops and glances down as if there’s something caught on her shoe. Down, then back. There’s nobody walking behind her, no slow car. A stout woman labouring up front steps, a string bag in either hand like ballast; two patched boys chasing a grubby dog along the sidewalk. No men here except three old porch vultures hunched over a shared newspaper.
She turns then and retraces her steps, and when she comes to the Excelsior she ducks into the alleyway beside it and hurries along, forcing herself not to run. The asphalt is uneven, her heels too high. This is the wrong place to turn an ankle. She feels more exposed now, caught in the glare, although there are no windows. Her heart’s going hard, her legs are flimsy, silken. Panic has its hook into her, why?
He won’t be there, says a soft voice in her head; a soft anguished voice, a plaintive cooing voice like a mourning dove’s. He’s gone away. He’s been taken away. You’ll never see him again. Never.