The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [166]
Point taken, he says. But you’ve broken the rules. You can’t just change the undead women into a bunch of folkloric pastoralists at whim.
You never actually put these women into the story, she says. Not directly. You only told rumours about them. Rumours can be false.
He laughs. True enough. Now here’s my version. In the camp of the People of Joy, everything happens as you’ve said, although with better speeches. Our two young folks are taken to the foothills of the western mountains and left there among the tombs, and then the barbarians proceed to enter the city as per instructions, and they loot and destroy, and massacre the inhabitants. Not one escapes alive. The King is hanged from a tree, the High Priestess is disembowelled, the plotting courtier perishes along with the rest. The innocent slave children, the guild of blind assassins, the sacrificial girls in the Temple – all die. An entire culture is wiped from the universe. No one is left alive who knows how to weave the marvellous carpets, which you’ll have to admit is a shame.
Meanwhile the two young people, hand in hand with wandering steps and slow, through the western mountains take their solitary way. They are secure in the faith that they’ll soon be discovered by the benevolent vegetable-gardeners, and taken in. But, as you say, rumours don’t have to be true, and the blind assassin has got hold of the wrong rumour. The dead women really are dead. Not only that, the wolves really are wolves, and the dead women can whistle them up at will. Our two romantic leads are wolf meat before you can say Jack Robinson.
You’re certainly an incurable optimist, she says.
I’m not incurable. But I like my stories to be true to life, which means there have to be wolves in them. Wolves in one form or another.
Why is that so true to life? She turns away from him onto her back, stares up at the ceiling. She’s miffed because her own version has been trumped.
All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.
All of them?
Sure, he says. Think about it. There’s escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist.
I think they do, she says. I think the story about you telling me the story about wolves isn’t about wolves.
Don’t bet on it, he says. I have a wolf side to me. Come over here.
Wait. There’s something I have to ask you.
Okay, shoot, he says lazily. His eyes are closed again, his hand is across her.
Are you ever unfaithful to me?
Unfaithful. What a quaint word.
Never mind my choice of vocabulary, she says. Are you?
No more than you are to me. He pauses. I don’t think of it as unfaithfulness.
What do you think of it as? she asks, in a cold voice.
Absent-mindedness, on your part. You close your eyes and forget where you are.
And on yours?
Let’s just say you’re first among equals.
You really are a bastard.
I’m only telling the truth, he says.
Well, maybe you shouldn’t.
Don’t get up on your hind legs, he says. I’m only fooling. I couldn’t stand to lay a finger on any other woman. I’d sick up.
There’s a pause. She kisses him, draws back. I have to go away, she says carefully. I needed to tell you. I didn’t want you to wonder where I was.
Away where? What for?
We’re going on the maiden voyage. All of us, the whole entourage. He says we can’t miss it. He says it’s the event of the century.
The century’s only a third finished. And even so, I’d have thought that little spot was reserved for the Great War. Champagne by moonlight can hardly compete with millions dead in the trenches. Or how about the influenza epidemic, or ...
He means the social event.
Oh, pardon me, ma’am. I stand corrected.
What’s the matter? I’ll only be gone a month – well,