The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [138]
But no doubt Sabrina would reject such a gift. She’s an adult now, I keep reminding myself. If she has anything to ask me, anything to say to me at all, she’ll let me know.
But why doesn’t she? What can be taking her so long? Is her silence a form of revenge, for something or someone? Not for Richard, surely. She never knew him. Not for Winifred, from whom she ran away. For her mother then – for poor Aimee?
How much can she possibly remember? She was only four.
Aimee’s death was not my fault.
Where is Sabrina now, and what can she be seeking? I picture her as a thinnish girl, with a hesitant smile, a little ascetic; lovely though, with her grave eyes blue as Laura’s, her long dark hair coiled like sleeping serpents around her head. She won’t have a veil, though; she’ll have sensible sandals, or even boots, the soles worn down. Or has she assumed a sari? Girls of her sort do.
She’s on some mission or other – feeding the Third World poor, soothing the dying; expiating the sins of the rest of us. A fruitless task – our sins are a bottomless pit, and there’s lots more where they came from. But that’s God’s point, she’d doubtless argue – the fruitlessness. He’s always liked futility. He thinks it’s noble.
She takes after Laura in that respect: the same tendency towards absolutism, the same refusal to compromise, the same scorn for the grosser human failings. To get away with that, you have to be beautiful. Otherwise it seems mere peevishness.
The Fire Pit
The weather remains unseasonably warm. Balmy, kindly, dry and bright; even the sun, so pale and thin usually at this time of year, is full and mellow, the sunsets lush. The brisk, smiley-face folks on the weather channel say it’s due to some distant, dusty catastrophe – an earthquake, a volcano? Some new, murderous Act of God. No cloud without a silver lining, is their motto. And no silver lining without a cloud.
Yesterday Walter drove me into Toronto for the appointment with the lawyer. It’s a place he never goes if he can help it, but Myra put him up to it. That was after I said I’d be taking the bus. Myra wouldn’t hear of it. As everyone knows, there’s only one bus, and it leaves in the dark and returns in it. She said that when I got off the bus at night, the motorists would never see me and I’d be squashed like a bug. Anyway, I shouldn’t be going to Toronto by myself, because, as everyone also knows, it’s populated entirely by crooks and thugs. Walter, she said, would take care of me.
Walter wore a red baseball cap for the trip; between the back of it and the top of his jacket collar his bristly neck bulged out like a biceps. His eyelids were creased as knees. “I would of took the pickup,” he said, “built like a brick shithouse, give the buggers something to think about before ramming into me. Only there’s a few springs gone, so it’s not such a smooth ride.” According to him, the drivers in Toronto were all crazy. “Well, you’d have to be crazy to go there, eh?” he said.
“We’re going there,” I pointed out.
“But only the once. Like we used to tell the girls, once don’t count.”
“And did they believe you, Walter?” I said, stringing him along as he likes to be strung.
“Sure. Dumb as a stump. Specially the blondes.” I could feel him grinning.
Built like a brick shithouse. That used to be said about women. It was meant as a compliment, in the days when not everyone had a brick shit-house: only wooden ones, flimsy and smelly and easy to push over.
As soon as he’d got me into the car and buckled me up, Walter turned on the radio: electric violins wailing, twisted romance, the four-square beat of heartbreak. Trite suffering, but suffering nonetheless. The entertainment business. What voyeurs we have all become. I leaned back against the pillow provided by Myra. (She’d provisioned us as if for an ocean voyage – she’d packed a lap rug, tuna sandwiches, brownies, a thermos of coffee.) Out the window was the Jogues River, pursuing its sluggish course.