The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [159]
“It was no good,” said Laura. “They were very nice to me, but they said no. It wasn’t just not being a Catholic. They said I didn’t have a true vocation, I was just evading my duties. They said if I wanted to serve God, I should do it in the life to which he has called me.” A pause. “But what life?” she said. “I have no life!”
She cried then, and I put my arms around her, the time-worn gesture from when she was little. Just stop howling. If I’d had a lump of brown sugar I would have given it to her, but we were well past the brown-sugar stage by then. Sugar was not going to help.
“How can we ever get out of here?” she wailed. “Before it’s too late?” At least she had the sense to be frightened; she had more sense than I did. But I thought it was just adolescent melodrama. “Too late for what?” I asked her gently. A deep breath was all that was called for; a deep breath, some calm, some stocktaking. There was no need to panic.
I thought I could cope with Richard, with Winifred. I thought I could live like a mouse in the castle of the tigers, by creeping around out of sight inside the walls; by staying quiet, by keeping my head down. No: I give myself too much credit. I didn’t see the danger. I didn’t even know they were tigers. Worse: I didn’t know I might become a tiger myself. I didn’t know Laura might become one, given the proper circumstances. Anyone might, for that matter.
“Look on the bright side,” I said to Laura in my best soothing tone. I patted her back. “I’ll get you a cup of warm milk and then you can have a good long sleep. You’ll feel better tomorrow.” But she cried and cried, and would not be comforted.
Xanadu
Last night I dreamt I was wearing my costume from the Xanadu ball. I was supposed to be an Abyssinian maiden – the damsel with the dulcimer. It was green satin, that costume: a little bolero jacket with gold spangle trim, showing a lot of cleavage and midriff; green satin undershorts, translucent pantaloons. Lots of fake gold coins, worn as necklaces and looped over the forehead. A small, jaunty turban with a crescent pin. A nose veil. Some tawdry circus designer’s idea of the East.
I thought I looked pretty nifty in it, until I realized, looking down at my drooping belly, my enlarged blue-veined knuckles, my shrivelled arms, that I was not the age I was then, but the age I am now.
I wasn’t at the ball, however. I was all alone, or so it seemed at first, in the ruined glass conservatory at Avilion. Empty pots were strewn here and there; others, not empty, filled with dry earth and dead plants. One of the stone sphinxes was lying on the floor, tipped on its side, defaced with Magic Marker – names, initials, crude drawings. There was a hole in the glass roof. The place stank of cat.
The main house behind me was dark, deserted, everyone in it gone away. I’d been left behind in this ridiculous fancy dress. It was night, with a fingernail moon. By its light I could see that there was indeed a single plant left alive: a glossy sort of bush, with one white flower. Laura, I said. From over in the shadows, a man laughed.
Not much of a nightmare, you’d say. Wait till you try it. I woke up desolate.
Why does the mind do such things? Turn on us, rend us, dig the claws in. If you get hungry enough, they say, you start eating your own heart. Maybe it’s much the same.
Nonsense. It’s all chemicals. I need to take steps, about these dreams. There must be a pill.
More snow today. Just looking out the window at it makes my fingers ache. I write at the kitchen table, as slowly as if engraving. The pen is heavy, hard to push, like a nail scratching on cement.
Autumn, 1935. The heat receded, the cold advanced. Frost on fallen leaves, then on leaves that were not fallen. Then on windows. I took joy in such details then. I liked breathing in. The space inside my lungs was all my own.
Meanwhile, things continued.
What was now referred to by Winifred as “Laura’s little escapade” was covered up as much as possible. Richard told