The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [53]
Oh yes. And you protested. If you don’t like this story I could tell you a different one, but I can’t promise it would be any more civilized. It might be worse. It might be modern. Instead of a few dead Zycronians, we could have acres of stinking mud and hundreds of thousands of . . .
I’ll keep this one, she says quickly. Anyway it’s the one you want to tell me.
She stubs out her cigarette in the brown glass ashtray, then settles herself against him, ear to his chest. She likes to hear his voice this way, as if it begins not in his throat but in his body, like a hum or a growl, or like a voice speaking from deep underground. Like the blood moving through her own heart: a word,a word,a word.
The Mail and Empire, December 5, 1934
PLAUDITS FOR BENNETT
SPECIAL TO THE MAIL AND EMPIRE
In a speech to the Empire Club last evening, Mr. Richard E. Griffen, Toronto financier and outspoken President of Royal Classic Knitwear, had moderate praise for Prime Minister R.B. Bennett and brickbats for his critics.
Referring to Sunday’s boisterous Maple Leaf Gardens rally in Toronto, when 15,000 Communists staged a hysterical welcome for their leader Tim Buck, jailed for seditious conspiracy but paroled Saturday from Kingston’s Portsmouth Penitentiary, Mr. Griffen expressed himself alarmed by the Government’s “caving in to pressure” in the form of a petition signed by 200,000 “deluded bleeding hearts.” Mr. Bennett’s policy of “the iron heel of ruthlessness” had been correct, he said, as imprisonment of those plotting to topple elected governments and confiscate private property was the only way to deal with subversion.
As for the tens of thousands of immigrants deported under Section 98, including those sent back to countries such as Germany and Italy where they face internment, these had advocated tyrannical rule and now would get a first-hand taste of it, Mr. Griffen stated.
Turning to the economy, he said that although unemployment remained high, with consequent unrest and Communists and their sympathizers continuing to profit from it, there were hopeful signs and he was confident that the Depression would be over by spring. Meanwhile the only sane policy was to stay the course and allow the system to correct itself. Any inclination towards the soft socialism of Mr. Roosevelt should be resisted, as such efforts could only further sicken the ailing economy. Although the plight of the unemployed was to be deplored, many were idle from inclination, and force should be used promptly and effectively against illegal strikers and outside agitators.
Mr. Griffen’s remarks were roundly applauded.
The Blind Assassin: The messenger
Now then. Let’s say it’s dark. The suns, all three of them, have set. A couple of moons have risen. In the foothills the wolves are abroad. The chosen girl is waiting her turn to be sacrificed. She’s been fed her last, elaborate meal, she’s been scented and anointed, songs have been sung in her praise, prayers have been offered. Now she’s lying on a bed of red and gold brocade, shut up in the Temple’s innermost chamber, which smells of the mixture of petals and incense and crushed aromatic spices customarily strewn on the biers of the dead. The bed itself is called the Bed of One Night, because no girl ever spends two nights in it. Among the girls themselves, when they still have their tongues, it’s called the Bed of Voiceless Tears.
At midnight she will be visited by the Lord of the Underworld, who is said to be dressed in rusty armour. The Underworld is the place of tearing apart and of disintegration: all souls must pass through it on their way to the land of the Gods, and some – the most sinful ones – must remain there. Every dedicated Temple maiden must undergo a visitation from the rusty Lord the night before her sacrifice, for if not, her soul will be unsatisfied, and instead of travelling to the land of the Gods she will be forced to join the band of beautiful nude dead women with azure hair, curvaceous figures, ruby-red lips and eyes like snakefilled