The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [219]
The situation was critical. We had to fight fire with fire.
You won, though. I know you won!
Nobody won.
Has she made a mistake? Surely there was news of victory. There was a parade, she says. I heard about it. There was a brass band.
Look at me, he says.
But she can’t. She can’t focus on him, he won’t stay steady. He’s indeterminate, he wavers, like a candle flame but devoid of light. She can’t see his eyes.
He’s dead, of course. Of course he’s dead, because didn’t she get the telegram? But it’s only an invention, all of this. It’s only another dimension of space. Why then is there such desolation?
He’s moving away now, and she can’t call after him, her throat won’t make a sound. Now he’s gone.
She feels a choking pressure around the heart. No, no, no, no , says a voice inside her head. Tears are running down her face.
This is when she wakes up really.
XIII
Gloves
Today it’s raining, the thin, abstemious rain of early April. Already the blue scilla are beginning to flower, the daffodils have their snouts above ground, the self-seeded forget-me-nots are creeping up, getting ready to hog the light. Here it comes – another year of vegetative hustling and jostling. They never seem to get tired of it: plants have no memories, that’s why. They can’t remember how many times they’ve done all this before.
I must admit it’s a surprise to find myself still here, still talking to you. I prefer to think of it as talking, although of course it isn’t: I’m saying nothing, you’re hearing nothing. The only thing between us is this black line: a thread thrown onto the empty page, into the empty air.
The winter’s ice in the Louveteau Gorge is almost gone, even in the shaded crevasses of the cliffs. The water, black and then white, hurtles down through the limestone chasms and over the boulders, effortlessly as ever. A violent sound, but soothing; alluring, almost. You can see how people are drawn to it. To waterfalls, to high places, to deserts and deep lakes – places of no return.
Only one corpse in the river so far this year, a drug-ridden young woman from Toronto. Another girl in a hurry. Another waste of time, her own. She had relatives here, an aunt, an uncle. Already they’re the objects of narrow sideways looks, as if they had something to do with it; already they’ve assumed the cornered, angry air of the consciously innocent. I’m sure they’re blameless, but they’re alive, and whoever’s left alive gets blamed. That’s the rule in things like this. Unfair, but there it is.
Yesterday morning Walter came round, to see about the spring tune-up. That’s what he calls the household fix-it routine he goes through, on my behalf, every year. He brought his toolbox, his hand-held electric saw, his electric screwdriver: he likes nothing better than to be whirring away like part of a motor.
He parked all these tools on the back porch, then stomped around outside the house. When he came back in he had a gratified expression. “Garden gate missing a slat,” he said. “I can whack her in today, paint her when it’s dry.”
“Oh, don’t bother,” I say, as I do every year. “Everything’s falling apart, but it will last me out.”
Walter ignores this, as always. “Front steps too,” he says. “Need paint. One of them should come right off – put a new one on her. You let it go too long, the water gets in and then you get the rot. Maybe a stain though, for the porch, better for the wood. We could put another colour strip along the edges of the steps, so people could see better. The way it is they could miss their footing, hurt themselves.” He uses we out of courtesy, and by people he means me. “I can have that new step in later today.”
“You’ll get all wet,” I said. “The weather channel says more of the same.”
“Nope, it’ll clear up.” He didn’t even look at the sky.
Walter went off to get the necessities – some planks, I suppose – and I spent the interval reclining on the parlour sofa, like some vaporous novelistic heroine who’s been forgotten in the pages of her own book and left to yellow and mildew and