The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [52]
The room is on the third floor, the servants’ quarters they must once have been. Once they’re inside he puts on the chain. The room is small and close and dim, with one window, open a few inches, the blind pulled most of the way down, white net curtains looped to either side. The afternoon sun is hitting the blind, turning it golden. The air smells of dry rot, but also of soap: there’s a tiny triangular sink in one corner, a foxed mirror hanging above it; crammed underneath it, the square-edged black box of his typewriter. His toothbrush in an enamelled tin cup; not a new toothbrush. It’s too intimate. She turns her eyes away. There’s a darkly varnished bureau scarred with cigarette burns and the marks from wet glasses, but most of the space is taken up by the bed. It’s the brass kind, outmoded and maidenish and painted white except for the knobs. It will probably creak. Thinking of this, she flushes.
She can tell he’s taken pains with the bed – changed the sheets or at least the pillowcase, smoothed out the faded Nile-green chenille spread. She almost wishes he hadn’t, because seeing this causes her a pang of something like pity, as if a starving peasant has offered her his last piece of bread. Pity isn’t what she wants to feel. She doesn’t want to feel he is in any way vulnerable. Only she is allowed to be that. She sets her purse and gloves down on top of the bureau. She’s conscious suddenly of this as a social situation. As a social situation it’s absurd.
Sorry there’s no butler, he says. Want a drink? Cheap scotch.
Yes please, she says. He keeps the bottle in the top bureau drawer; he takes it out, and two glasses, and pours. Say when.
When, please.
No ice, he says, but you can have water.
That’s all right. She gulps the whisky, coughs a little, smiles at him, standing with her back against the bureau.
Short and hard and straight up, he says, the way you love it. He sits down on the bed with his drink. Here’s to loving it. He raises his glass. He’s not smiling back.
You’re unusually mean today.
Self-defence, he says.
I don’t love it, I love you, she says. I do know the difference.
Up to a point, he says. Or so you think. It saves face.
Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just walk out of here.
He grins. Come over here then.
Although he knows she wants him to, he won’t say he loves her. Perhaps it would leave him armourless, like an admission of guilt.
I’ll take my stockings off first. They run as soon as you look at them.
Like you, he says. Leave them on. Come over here now.
The sun has moved across; there’s just a wedge of light remaining, on the left side of the drawn blind. Outside, a streetcar rumbles past, bell clanging. Streetcars must have been going past all this time. Why then has the effect been silence? Silence and his breath, their breaths, labouring, withheld, trying not to make any noise. Or not too much noise. Why should pleasure sound so much like distress? Like someone wounded. He’d put his hand over her mouth.
The room is darker now, yet she sees more. The bedspread heaped onto the floor, the sheet twisted around and over them like a thick cloth vine; the single bulb, unshaded, the cream-coloured wallpaper with its blue violets, tiny and silly, stained beige where the roof must have leaked; the chain protecting the door. The chain protecting the door: it’s flimsy enough. One good shove, one kick with a boot. If that were to happen, what would she do? She feels the walls thinning, turning to ice. They’re fish in a bowl.
He lights two cigarettes, hands her one. They both sigh in. He runs his free hand down her, then again, taking her in through his fingers. He wonders how much time she has; he doesn’t ask. Instead he takes hold of her wrist. She’s wearing a small gold watch. He covers its face.
So, he says. Bedtime story?
Yes, please, she says.
Where were we?
You’d just cut out the tongues