The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [57]
Prior to order being restored, a meeting of strikers ran out of control. Shop windows were broken all along the town’s main street, with extensive looting. Several shop owners attempting to defend their property are in hospital recovering from contusions. One policeman is said to be in grave danger from concussion, having been struck on the head by a brick. A fire that broke out in Factory One during the early hours, but which was subdued by the town’s firefighters, is being investigated, and arson is suspected. The night watchman, Mr. Al Davidson, was dragged to safety out of the path of the flames, but was found to have died due to a blow on the head and smoke inhalation. The perpetrators of this outrage are being sought, with several suspects already identified.
The editor of the Port Ticonderoga newspaper, Mr. Elwood R. Murray, stated that the trouble had been caused by liquor introduced into the crowd by several outside agitators. He claimed that the local workmen were law-abiding and would not have rioted unless provoked.
Mr. Norval Chase, President of Chase and Sons Industries, was unavailable for comment.
The Blind Assassin: Horses of the night
A different house this week, a different room. At least there’s space to turn around between door and bed. The curtains are Mexican, striped in yellow and blue and red; the bed has a bird’s-eye maple headboard; there’s a Hudson’s Bay blanket, crimson and scratchy, that’s been tossed onto the floor. A Spanish bullfight poster on the wall. An armchair, maroon leather; a desk, fumed oak; a jar with pencils, all neatly sharpened; a rack of pipes. Tobacco particulate thickens the air.
A shelf of books: Auden, Veblen, Spengler, Steinbeck, Dos Passos. Tropic of Cancer, out in plain view, it must have been smuggled. Salammbô, Strange Fugitive, Twilight of the Idols, A Farewell to Arms. Barbusse, Montherlant. Hammurabis Gesetz: Juristische Erlaüterung. This new friend has intellectual interests, she thinks. Also more money. Therefore less trustworthy. He has three different hats topping his bentwood coat stand, as well as a plaid dressing gown, pure cashmere.
Have you read any of these books? she’d asked, after they’d come in and he’d locked the door. While she was taking off her hat and gloves.
Some, he said. He didn’t elaborate. Turn your head. He untangled a leaf from her hair.
Already they’re falling.
She wonders if the friend knows. Not just that there’s a woman – they’ll have something worked out between them so the friend won’t barge in, men do that – but who she is. Her name and so on. She hopes not. She can tell by the books, and especially by the bullfight poster, that this friend would be hostile to her on principle.
Today he’d been less impetuous, more pensive. He’d wanted to linger, to hold back. To scrutinize.
Why are you looking at me like that?
I’m memorizing you.
Why? she said, putting her hand over his eyes. She didn’t like being examined like that. Fingered.
To have you later, he said. Once I’ve gone.
Don’t. Don’t spoil today.
Make hay while the sun shines, he said. That your motto?
More like waste not, want not, she said. He’d laughed then.
Now she’s wound herself in the sheet, tucked it across her breasts; she lies against him, legs hidden in a long sinuous fishtail of white cotton. He has his hands behind his head; he’s gazing up at the ceiling. She feeds him sips of her drink, rye and water this time. Cheaper than scotch. She’s been meaning to bring something decent of her own – something drinkable – but so far she’s forgotten.
Go on, she says.
I have to be inspired, he says.
What can I do to inspire you? I don’t have to be back till five.
I’ll take a rain check on the real