The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [136]
“My will,” I said. “I’m considering writing one. He’s often told me that I should.” (A lie, but I wanted to establish in her easily distracted brain the fact that Mr. Sykes and I were as close as two peas in a pod.) “That, and some other matters. I ought to come into Toronto soon, to consult him. Perhaps he could give me a call, when he can spare a minute.”
I imagined Mr. Sykes receiving the message; I imagined the tiny chill that would run down the back of his neck as he tried to place my name, and then succeeded. Goose feet on his grave. It’s what you feel – even I feel – when coming across those small items in the paper concerning folks once famous or glamorous or notorious, and long thought dead. Yet it appears they continue to live on, in some shrivelled, darkened form, encrusted with years, like beetles under a stone.
“Of course, Mrs. Griffen,” said the receptionist. “I’ll make sure he gets back to you.” They must take lessons – elocution lessons – to achieve just the right blend of consideration and contempt. But why am I complaining? It’s a skill I perfected, once, myself.
I set down the phone. No doubt there will be some eyebrow-raising among Mr. Sykes and his youthful, balding, Mercedes-driving, tubby-bellied cronies: What can the old bat possibly have to leave?
What, that is, worth mentioning?
In one corner of my kitchen there’s a steamer trunk, stuck with tattered labels. It’s part of the matched luggage set from my trousseau – clear yellow calfskin once, dingy now, the steel bindings marred and grimy. I keep it locked, the key sunk deep in a sealer jar filled with bran cereal. Coffee and sugar tins would be too obvious.
I wrestled with the jar lid – I must think of some better, easier hiding place – and finally got it open, and extracted the key. I knelt with some difficulty, turned the key in the lock, lifted the lid.
I hadn’t opened this trunk for some time. The singed, autumn-leaf smell of old paper rose to greet me. There were all of the notebooks with their cheap cardboard covers, like pressed sawdust. Also the type-script, held together by a crisscross of ancient kitchen string. Also the letters to the publishers – from me, of course, not from Laura, she was dead by then – and the corrected proofs. Also the hate mail, until I stopped saving it.
Also five copies of the first edition, with the dust jackets still in mint condition – tawdry, but dust jackets were then, in the years just after the war. The colours are a garish orange, a flat purple, a lime green, printed on flimsy paper, with an awful drawing – a faux Cleopatra type with bulbous green breasts and kohl-rimmed eyes and purple necklaces from navel to chin and an enormous, pouting orange mouth, rising up like a genie from the writhing smoke of a purple cigarette. Acid is eating into the pages, the virulent cover fading like the feathers of a stuffed tropical bird.
(I received six free copies – the author’s copies, they were called – but I gave one of them to Richard. I don’t know what became of it. I expect he tore it up, which was what he always did with pieces of paper he didn’t want. No – I remember now. It was found on the boat with him, on the galley table, beside his head. Winifred sent it back to me with a note: Now look what you’ve done! I threw it out. I didn’t want anything near me that had ever touched Richard.)
I’ve often wondered what to do with all of this – this cache of odds and ends, this tiny archive. I can’t bring myself to sell it, but I can’t bring myself to discard it either. If I do nothing, the choice will be left to Myra, tidying up after me. After her first moments of shock – supposing she begins to read – there will no doubt be some ripping and shredding. Then a struck match and none the wiser. She’d interpret that as loyalty: it’s what Reenie would have done. In the old days trouble was kept in the family, which is still the best place for it, not that there’s ever a best place for trouble. Why stir everything up again after that many years, with all concerned