09rpfNny

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11What I heard first the next morning was a scream and a crash. Cora, dropping the breakfast tray. It woke me up. I was still half in the cupboard, head on the bundled cloak. I must have pulled it off the hanger, and gone to sleep there; for a moment I couldn't remember where I was. Cora was kneeling beside me, I felt her hand touch my back. She screamed again when I moved.
12What's wrong? I said. I rolled over, pushed myself up.
13Oh, she said. I thought.
14She thought what?
15Like… she said.
16The eggs had broken on the floor, there was orange juice and shattered glass.
17I'll have to bring another one, she said. Such a waste. What was you doing on the floor like that? She was pulling at me, to get me up, respectably onto my feet.
18I didn't want to tell her I'd never been to bed at all. There would be no way of explaining that. I told her I must have fainted. That was almost as bad, because she seized on it.
19It's one of the early signs, she said, pleased. Thai, and throwing up. She should have known there hadn't been time enough, but she was very hopeful.
20No, it's not that, I said. I was sitting in the chair. I'm sure it isn't that. I was just dizzy. I was just standing here and things went dark.
21Itmust have been the strain, she said, of yesterday and all. Takes it out of you.
22She meant the Birth, and I said it did. By this time I was sitting in the chair, and she was kneeling on the floor, picking up the pieces of broken glass and egg, gathering them onto the tray. She blotted some of the orange juice with the paper napkin.
23I'll have to bring a cloth, she said. They'll want to know why the extra eggs. Unless you could do without. She looked up at me side-ways, slyly, and I saw that it would be better if we could both pretend I'd eaten my breakfast after all. If she said she'd found me lying on the floor, there would be too many questions. She'd have to account for the broken glass in any case; but Rita would get surly if she had to cook a second breakfast.
24I'll do without, I said. I'm not that hungry. This was good, it fit in with the dizziness. But I could manage the toast, I said. I didn't want to go without breakfast altogether.
25It's been on the floor, she said.
26I don't mind, I said. I sat there eating the piece of brown toast while she went into the bathroom and flushed the handful of egg, which could not be salvaged, down the toilet. Then she came back.
27I'll say I dropped the tray on the way out, she said.
28It pleased me that she was willing to lie for me, even in such a small thing, even for her own advantage. It was a link between us.
29I smiled at her. I hope nobody heard you, I said.
30It did give me a turn, she said, as she stood in the doorway with the tray. At first I thought it was just your clothes, like. Then I said to myself, what're they doing there on the floor? I thought maybe you'd…
31Run off, I said.
32Well, but, she said. But it was you.
33Yes, I said. It was.
34And it was, and she went out with the tray and came back with a cloth for the rest of the orange juice, and Rita that afternoon made a grumpy remark about some folks being all thumbs. Too much on their minds, don't look where they're going, she said, and we continued on from there as if nothing had happened. * * *
35That was in May. Spring has now been undergone. The tulips have had their moment and are done, shedding their petals one by one, like teeth. One day I came upon Serena Joy, kneeling on a cushion in the garden, her cane beside her on the grass. She was snipping off the seedpods with a pair of shears. I watched her sideways as I went past, with my basket of oranges and lamb chops. She was aiming, positioning the blades of the shears, then cutting with a convulsive jerk of the hands. Was it the arthritis, creeping up? Or some blitzkrieg, some kamikaze, committed on the swelling geni-talia of the flowers? The fruiting body. To cut off the seedpods is supposed to make the bulb store energy.
36Saint Serena, on her knees, doing penance.
37I often amused myself this way, with small mean-minded bitter jokes about her; but not for long. It doesn't do to linger, watching Serena Joy, from behind.
38What I coveted was the shears.
39Well. Then we had the irises, rising beautiful and cool on their tall stalks, like blown glass, like pastel water momentarily frozen in a splash, light blue, light mauve, and the darker ones, velvet and purple, black cat's ears in the sun, indigo shadow, and the bleeding hearts, so female in shape it was a surprise they'd not long since been rooted out. There is something subversive about this garden of Serena's, a sense of buried things bursting upwards, wordlessly, into the light, as if to point, to say: Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently. A Tennyson garden, heavy with scent, languid; the return of the word swoon. Light pours down upon it from the sun, true, but also heat rises, from the flowers themselves, you can feel it: like holding your hand an inch above an arm, a shoulder. It breathes, in the warmth, breathing itself in. To walk through it in these days, of peonies, of pinks and carnations, makes my head swim.
40The willow is in full plumage and is no help, with its insinuating whispers. Rendezvous, it says, terraces; the sibilants run up my spine, a shiver as if in fever. The summer dress rustles against the flesh of my thighs, the grass grows underfoot, at the edges of my eyes I here are movements, in the branches; feathers, flirtings, grace notes, tree into bird, metamorphosis run wild. Goddesses are possible now and the air suffuses with desire. Even the bricks of the house are softening, becoming tactile; if I leaned against them they'd be warm and yielding. It's amazing what denial can do. Did the sight of my ankle make him lightheaded, faint, at the checkpoint yesterday, when I dropped my pass and let him pick it up for me? No handkerchief, no fan, I use what's handy.
41Winter is not so dangerous. I need hardness, cold, rigidity; not this heaviness, as if I'm a melon on a stem, this liquid ripeness.
42The Commander and I have an arrangement. It's not the first such arrangement in history, though the shape it's taken is not the usual one.
43I visit the Commander two or three nights a week, always after dinner, but only when I get the signal. The signal is Nick. If he's polishing the car when I set out for the shopping, or when I come back, and if his hat is on askew or not on at all, then I go. If he isn't there or if he has his hat on straight, then I stay in my room in the ordinary way. On Ceremony nights, of course, none of this applies.
44The difficulty is the Wife, as always. After dinner she goes to their bedroom, from where she could conceivably hear me as I sneak along the hall, although I take care to be very quiet. Or she stays in the sitting room, knitting away at her endless Angel scarves, turning out more and more yards of intricate and useless wool people: her form of procreation, it must be. The sitting room door is usually left ajar when she's in there, and I don't dare to go past it. When I've had the signal but can't make it, down the stairs or along the hall past the sitting room, the Commander understands. He knows my situation, none better. He knows all the rules.
45Sometimes, however, Serena Joy is out, visiting another Commander's Wife, a sick one; that's the only place she could conceivably go, by herself, in the evenings. She takes food, a cake or pie or loaf of bread baked by Rita, or a jar of jelly, made from the mint leaves that grow in her garden. They get sick a lot, these Wives of the Commanders. It adds interest to their lives. As for us, the Handmaids and even the Marthas, we avoid illness. The Marthas don't want to be forced to retire, because who knows where they go? You don't see that many old women around anymore. And as for us, any real illness, anything lingering, weakening, a loss of flesh or appetite, a fall of hair, a failure of the glands, would be terminal. I remember Cora, earlier in the spring, staggering around even though she had the flu, holding on to the door frames when she thought no one was looking, being careful not to cough. A slight cold, she said when Serena asked her.
46Serena herself sometimes takes a few days off, tucked up in bed. Then she's the one to get the company, the Wives rustling up the stairs, clucking and cheerful; she gets the cakes and pies, the jelly, the bouquets of flowers from their gardens.
47They take turns. There is some sort of list, invisible, unspoken. Each is careful not to hog more than her share of the attention.
48On the nights when Serena is due to be out, I'm sure to be summoned.
49The first time, I was confused. His needs were obscure to me, and what I could perceive of them seemed to me ridiculous, laughable, like a fetish for lace-up shoes.
50Also, there had been a letdown of sorts. What had I been expecting, behind that closed door, the first time? Something unspeakable, down on all fours perhaps, perversions, whips, mutilations? At the very least some minor sexual manipulation, some bygone peccadillo now denied him, prohibited by law and punishable by amputation. To be asked to play Scrabble, instead, as if we were an old married couple, or two children, seemed kinky in the extreme, a violation in its own way. As a request it was opaque.
51So when I left the room, it still wasn't clear to me what he wanted, or why, or whether I could fulfill any of it for him. If there's to be a bargain, the terms of exchange must be set forth. This was something he certainly had not done. I thought he might be toying, some cat-and-mouse routine, but now I think that his motives and desires weren't obvious even to him. They had not yet reached the level of words.
52The second evening began in the same way as the first. I went to the door, which was closed, knocked on it, was told to come in. Then followed the same two games, with the smooth beige counters. Prolix, quartz, quandary, sylph, rhythm, all the old tricks with consonants I could dream up or remember. My tongue felt thick with the effort of spelling. It was like using a language I'd once known but had nearly forgotten, a language having to do with customs that had long before passed out of the world: cafe au lait at an outdoor table, with a brioche, absinthe in a tall glass, or shrimp in a cornucopia of newspaper; things I'd read about once but had never seen. It was like trying to walk without crutches, like those phony scenes in old TV movies. You can do it. I know you can. That was the way my mind lurched and stumbled, among the sharp R's and T's, sliding over the ovoid vowels as if on pebbles.
53The Commander was patient when I hesitated, or asked him for a correct spelling. We can always look it up in the dictionary, he said. He said we. The first time, I realized, he'd let me win.
54That night I was expecting everything to be the same, including the good-night kiss. But when we'd finished the second game, he sat back in his chair. He placed his elbows on the arms of the chair, the tips of his fingers together, and looked at me.
55I have a little present for you, he said.
56He smiled a little. Then he pulled open the top drawer of his desk and took something out. He held it a moment, casually enough, between thumb and finger, as if deciding whether or not to give it to me. Although it was upside-down from where I was sitting, I recognized it. They were once common enough. It was a magazine, a women's magazine it looked like from the picture, a model on glossy paper, hair blown, neck scarfed, mouth lipsticked; the fall fashions. I thought such magazines had all been destroyed, but here was one, left over, in a Commander's private study, where you'd least expect to find such a thing. He looked down at the model, who was right-side-up to him; he was still smiling, that wistful smile of his. It was a look you'd give to an almost extinct animal, at the zoo.
57Staring at the magazine, as he dangled it before me like fish bait, I wanted it. I wanted it with a force that made the ends of my fingers ache. At the same time I saw this longing of mine as trivial and absurd, because I'd taken such magazines lightly enough once. I'd read them in dentists' offices, and sometimes on planes; I'd bought them to take to hotel rooms, a device to fill in empty time while I was waiting for Luke. After I'd leafed through them I would throw them away, for they were infinitely discardable, and a day or two later I wouldn't be able to remember what had been in them.
58Though I remembered now. What was in them was promise. They dealt in transformations; they suggested an endless series of possibilities, extending like the reflections in two mirrors set facing one another, stretching on, replica after replica, to the vanishing point. They suggested one adventure after another, one wardrobe after another, one improvement after another, one man after another. They suggested rejuvenation, pain overcome and transcended, endless love. The real promise in them was immortality.
59This was what he was holding, without knowing it. He riffled the pages. I felt myself leaning forward.
60It's an old one, he said, a curio of sorts. From the seventies, I think. A Vogue. This like a wine connoisseur dropping a name. I thought you might like to look at it.
61I hung back. He might be testing me, to see how deep my indoctrination had really gone. It's not permitted, I said.
62In here, it is, he said quietly. I saw the point. Having broken the main taboo, why should I hesitate over another one, something minor? Or another, or another; who could tell where it might stop? Behind this particular door, taboo dissolved.
63I took the magazine from him and turned it the right way round. There they were again, the images of my childhood: bold, striding, confident, their arms flung out as if to claim space, their legs apart, feet planted squarely on the earth. There was something Renaissance about the pose, but it was princes I thought of, not coiffed and ringleted maidens. Those candid eyes, shadowed with makeup, yes, but like the eyes of cats, fixed for the pounce. No quailing, no clinging there, not in those capes and rough tweeds, those boots that came to the knee. Pirates, these women, with their ladylike briefcases for the loot and their horsy acquisitive teeth.
64I felt the Commander watching me as I turned the pages. I knew I was doing something I shouldn't have been doing, and that he found pleasure in seeing me do it. I should have felt evil; by Aunt Lydia's lights, I was evil. But I didn't feel evil. Instead I felt like an j old Edwardian seaside postcard: naughty. What was he going to give me next? A girdle?
65Why do you have this? I asked him.
66Some of us, he said, retain an appreciation for the old things.
67But these were supposed to have been burned, I said. There were house-to-house searches, bonfires…
68What's dangerous in the hands of the multitudes, he said, with what may or may not have been irony, is safe enough for those whose motives are…
69Beyond reproach, I said.
70He nodded gravely. Impossible to tell whether or not he meant it.
71But why show it to me? I said, and then felt stupid. What could he possibly say? That he was amusing himself, at my expense? For he must have known how painful it was to me, to be reminded of the former time.
72I wasn't prepared for what he actually did say. Who else could I show it to? he said, and there it was again, that sadness.
73Should I go further? I thought. I didn't want to push him, too far, too fast. I knew I was dispensable. Nevertheless I said, too softly, How about your wife?
74He seemed to think about that. No, he said. She wouldn't understand. Anyway, she won't talk to me much anymore. We don't seem to have much in common, these days.
75So there it was, out in the open: his wife didn't understand him.
76That's what I was there for, then. The same old thing. It was too banal to be true.
77On the third night I asked him for some hand lotion, I didn't want to sound begging, but I wanted what I could get.
78Some what? he said, courteous as ever. He was across the desk from me. He didn't touch me much, except for that one obligatory kiss. No pawing, no heavy breathing, none of that; it would have been out of place, somehow, for him as well as for me.
79Hand lotion, I said. Or face lotion. Our skin gets very dry. For some reason I said our instead of my. I would have liked to ask also for some bath oil, in those little colored globules you used to be able to get, that were so much like magic to me when they existed in the round glass bowl in my mother's bathroom at home. But I thought he wouldn't know what they were. Anyway, they probably weren't made anymore.
80Dry? the Commander said, as if he'd never thought about that before. What do you do about it?
81We use butter, I said. When we can get it. Or margarine. A lot of the time it's margarine.
82Butter, he said, musing. That's very clever. Butter. He laughed.
83I could have slapped him.
84I think I could get some of that, he said, as if indulging a child's wish for bubble gum. But she might smell it on you. I wondered if this fear of his came from past experience. Long past: lipstick on the collar, perfume on the cuffs, a scene, late at night, in some kitchen or bedroom. A man devoid of such experience wouldn't think of that. Unless he's craftier than he looks.
85I'd be careful, I said. Besides, she's never that close to me.
86Sometimes she is, he said.
87I looked down. I'd forgotten about that. I could feel myself blushing. I won't use it on those nights, I said.
88On the fourth evening he gave me the hand lotion, in an un-labeled plastic bottle. It wasn't very good quality; it smelled faintly of vegetable oil. No Lily of the Valley for me. It may have been something they made up for use in hospitals, on bedsores. But I thanked him anyway.
89The trouble is, I said, I don't have anywhere to keep it.
90In your room, he said, as if it were obvious.
91They'd find it, I said. Someone would find it.
92Why? he asked, as if he really didn't know. Maybe he didn't. It wasn't the first time he gave evidence of being truly ignorant of the real conditions under which we lived.
93They look, I said. They look in all our rooms.
94What for? he said.
95I think I lost control then, a little. Razor blades, I said. Books, writing, black-market stuff. All the things we aren't supposed to have. Jesus Christ, you ought to know. My voice was angrier than I'd intended, but he didn't even wince.
96Then you'll have to keep it here, he said.
97So that's what I did.
98He watched me smoothing it over my hands and then my face with that same air of looking in through the bars. I wanted to turn my back on him-it was as if he were in the bathroom with me-but I didn't dare.
99For him, I must remember, I am only a whim.
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109When the night for the Ceremony came round again, two or three weeks later, I found that things were changed. There was an awkwardness now that there hadn't been before. Before, I'd treated it as a job, an unpleasant job to be gone through as fast as possible so it could be over with. Steel yourself, my mother used to say, before examinations I didn't want to take or swims in cold water. I never thought much at the time about what the phrase meant, but it had something to do with metal, with armor, and that's what I would do, I would steel myself. I would pretend not to be present, not in the flesh.
110This state of absence, of existing apart from the body, had been true of the Commander too, I knew now. Probably he thought about other things the whole time he was with me; with us, for of course Serena Joy was there on those evenings also. He might have been thinking about what he did during the day, or about playing golf, or about what he'd had for dinner. The sexual act, although he performed it in a perfunctory way, must have been largely unconscious, for him, like scratching himself.
111But that night, the first since the beginning of whatever this new arrangement was between us-I had no name for it-I felt shy of him. I felt, for one thing, that he was actually looking at me, and
112I didn't like it. The lights were on, as usual, since Serena Joy always avoided anything that would have created an aura of romance or eroticism, however slight: overhead lights, harsh despite the canopy. It was like being on an operating table, in the full glare; like being on a stage. I was conscious that my legs were hairy, in the straggly way of legs that have once been shaved but have grown back; I was conscious of my armpits too, although of course he couldn't see them. I felt uncouth. This act of copulation, fertilization perhaps, which should have been no more to me than a bee is to a flower, had become for me indecorous, an embarrassing breach of propriety, which it hadn't been before.
113He was no longer a thing to me. That was the problem. I realized it that night, and the realization has stayed with me. It complicates.
114Serena Joy had changed for me, too. Once I'd merely hated her for her part in what was being done to me; and because she hated me too and resented my presence, and because she would be the one to raise my child, should I be able to have one after all. But now, although I still hated her, no more so than when she was gripping my hands so hard that her rings bit my flesh, pulling my hands back as well, which she must have done on purpose to make me as uncomfortable as she could, the hatred was no longer pure and simple. Partly I was jealous of her; but how could I be jealous of a woman so obviously dried-up and unhappy? You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself. Nevertheless I was jealous.
115But I also felt guilty about her. I felt I was an intruder, in a territory that ought to have been hers. Now that I was seeing the Commander on the sly, if only to play his games and listen to him talk, our functions were no longer as separate as they should have been in theory, I was taking something away from her, although she didn't know it. I was filching. Never mind that it was something she apparently didn't want or had no use for, had rejected even; still, it was hers, and if I took it away, this mysterious "it" I couldn't quite define-for the Commander wasn't in love with me, I refused to believe he felt anything for me as extreme as that-what would be left for her?
116Why should I care? I told myself. She's nothing to me, she dislikes me, she'd have me out of the house in a minute, or worse, if she could think up any excuse at all. If she were to find out, for instance. He wouldn't be able to intervene, to save me; the transgressions of women in the household, whether Martha or Handmaid, are supposed to be under the jurisdiction of the Wives alone. She was a malicious and vengeful woman, I knew that. Nevertheless I couldn't shake it, that small compunction towards her.
117Also: I now had power over her, of a kind, although she didn't, know it. And I enjoyed that. Why pretend? I enjoyed it a lot. f
118But the Commander could give me away so easily, by a look, by a gesture, some tiny slip that would reveal to anyone watching that there was something between us now. He almost did it the night of the Ceremony. He reached his hand up as if to touch my face; I moved my head to the side, to warn him away, hoping Serena Joy hadn't noticed, and he withdrew his hand again, withdrew into himself and his singled-minded journey.
119Don't do that again, I said to him the next time we were alone.
120Do what? he said.
121Try to touch me like that, when we're… when she's there.
122Did I? he said.
123You could get me transferred, I said. To the Colonies. You know that. Or worse. I thought he should continue to act, in public, as if I were a large vase or a window: part of the background, inanimate or transparent.
124I'm sorry, he said. I didn't mean to. But I find it…
125What? I said, when he didn't go on.
126Impersonal, he said.
127How long did it take you to find that out? I said. You can see from the way I was speaking to him that we were already on different terms.
128For the generations that come after, Aunt Lydia said, it will be so much better. The women will live in harmony together, all in one family; you will be like daughters to them, and when the population level is up to scratch again we'll no longer have to transfer you from one house to another because there will be enough to go round. There can be bonds of real affection, she said, blinking at us ingratiatingly, under such conditions. Women united for a common end!
129Helping one another in their daily chores as they walk the path of life together, each performing her appointed task. Why expect one woman to carry out all the functions necessary to the serene running of a household? It isn't reasonable or humane. Your daughters will have greater freedom. We are working towards the goal of a little garden for each one, each one of you-the clasped hands again, the breathy voice-and that's just one for instance. The raised finger, wagging at us. But we can't be greedy pigs and demand too much before it's ready, now can we?
130The fact is that I'm his mistress. Men at the top have always had mistresses, why should things be any different now? The arrangements aren't quite the same, granted. The mistress used to be kept in a minor house or apartment of her own, and now they've amalgamated things. But underneath it's the same. More or less. Outside woman, they used to be called, in some countries. I am the outside woman. It's my job to provide what is otherwise lacking. Even the Scrabble. It's an absurd as well as an ignominious position.
131Sometimes I think she knows. Sometimes I think they're in collusion. Sometimes I think she put him up to it, and is laughing at me; as I laugh, from time to time and with irony, at myself. Let her take the weight, she can say to herself. Maybe she's withdrawn from him, almost completely; maybe that's her version of freedom.
132But even so, and stupidly enough, I'm happier than I was before. It's something to do, for one thing. Something to fill the time, at night, instead of sitting alone in my room. It's something else to think about. I don't love the Commander or anything like it, but he's of interest to me, he occupies space, he is more than a shadow.
133And I for him. To him I'm no longer merely a usable body. To him I'm not just a boat with no cargo, a chalice with no wine in it, an oven-to be crude-minus the bun. To him I am not merely empty.
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143I walk with Ofglen along the summer street. It's warm, humid; this would have been sundress-and-sandals weather, once. In each of our baskets are strawberries-the strawberries are in season now, so we'll eat them and eat them until we're sick of them-and some wrapped fish. We got the fish at Loaves and Fishes, with its wooden sign, a fish with a smile and eyelashes. It doesn't sell loaves though. Most households bake their own, though you can get dried-up rolls and wizened doughnuts at Daily Bread, if you run short. Loaves and Fishes is hardly ever open. Why bother opening when there's nothing to sell? The sea fisheries were defunct several years ago; the few fish they have now are from fish farms, and taste muddy. The news says the coastal areas are being "rested." Sole, I remember, and haddock, swordfish, scallops, tuna; lobsters, stuffed and baked, salmon, pink and fat, grilled in steaks. Could they all be extinct, like the whales? I've heard that rumor, passed on to me in soundless words, the lips hardly moving, as we stood in line outside, waiting for the store to open, lured by the picture of succulent white fillets in the window. They put the picture in the window when they have something, take it away when they don't. Sign language.
144Ofglen and I walk slowly today; we are hot in our long dresses, wet under the arms, tired. At least in this heat we don't wear gloves.
145There used to be an ice cream store, somewhere in this block. I can't remember the name. Things can change so thickly, buildings can be torn down or turned into something else, it's hard to keep them straight in your mind the way they used to be. You could get double scoops, and if you wanted they would put chocolate sprinkles on the top. These had the name of a man. Johnnies? Jackies? I can't remember.
146We would go there, when she was little, and I'd hold her up so she could see through the glass side of the counter, where the vats of ice cream were on display, colored so delicately, pale orange, pale green, pale pink, and I'd read the names to her so she could choose. She wouldn't choose by the name, though, but by the color. Her dresses and overalls were those colors too. Ice cream pastels.
147Jimmies, that was the name.
148Ofglen and I are more comfortable with one another now, we're used to each other. Siamese twins. We don't bother much with the formalities anymore when we greet each other; we smile and move off, in tandem, traveling smoothly along our daily track. Now and again we vary the route; there's nothing against it, as long as we stay within the barriers. A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.
149We've been to the stores already, and the church; now we're at the Wall. Nothing on it today, they don't leave the bodies hanging as long in summer as they do in winter, because of the flies and the smell. This was once the land of air sprays, pine and floral, and people retain the taste; especially the Commanders, who preach purity in all things.
150"You have everything on your list?" Ofglen says to me now, though she knows I do. Our lists are never long. She's given up some of her passivity lately, some of her melancholy. Often she speaks to me first.
151"Yes," I say.
152"Let's go around," she says. She means down, towards the river. We haven't been that way for a while.
153"Fine," I say. I don't turn at once, though, but remain standing where I am, taking a last look at the Wall. There arc the red bricks, there are the searchlights, there's the barbed wire, there arc the hooks. Somehow the Wall is even more foreboding when it's empty like this. When there's someone hanging on it at least you know the worst. But vacant, it is also potential, like a storm approaching. When I can see the bodies, the actual bodies, when I can guess from the sizes and shapes that none of them is Luke, I can believe also that he is still alive.
154I don't know why I expect him to appear on this wall. There are hundreds of other places they could have killed him. But I can't shake the idea that he's in there, at this moment, behind the blank red bricks.
155I try to imagine which building he's in. I can remember where the buildings are, inside the Wall; we used to be able to walk freely there, when it was a university. We still go in there once in a while, for Women's Salvagings. Most of the buildings are red brick too; some have arched doorways, a Romanesque effect, from the nineteenth century. We aren't allowed inside the buildings anymore; but who would want to go in? Those buildings belong to the Eyes.
156Maybe he's in the Library. Somewhere in the vaults. The stacks.
157The Library is like a temple. There's a long flight of white steps, leading to the rank of doors. Then, inside, another white staircase going up. To either side of it, on the wall, there are angels. Also there are men fighting, or about to fight, looking clean and noble, not dirty and bloodstained and smelly the way they must have looked. Victory is on one side of the inner doorway, leading them on, and Death is on the other. It's a mural in honor of some war or other. The men on the side of Death are still alive. They're going to heaven. Death is a beautiful woman, with wings and one breast almost bare; or is that Victory? I can't remember.
158They won't have destroyed that.
159We turn our backs to the Wall, head left. Here there are several empty storefronts, their glass windows scrawled with soap. I try to remember what was sold in them, once. Cosmetics? Jewelry? Most of the stores carrying things for men are still open; it's just the ones dealing in what they call vanities that have been shut down.
160At the corner is the store known as Soul Scrolls. It's a franchise: there are Soul Scrolls in every city center, in every suburb, or so they say. It must make a lot of profit.
161The window of Soul Scrolls is shatterproof. Behind it are printout machines, row on row of them; these machines are known as Holy Rollers, but only among us, it's a disrespectful nickname. What the machines print is prayers, roll upon roll, prayers going out endlessly. They're ordered by Compuphone, I've overheard the Commander's Wife doing it. Ordering prayers from Soul Scrolls is supposed to be a sign of piety and faithfulness to the regime, so of course the Commanders' Wives do it a lot. It helps their husbands' careers.
162There are five different prayers: for health, wealth, a death, a birth, a sin. You pick the one you want, punch in the number, then punch in your own number so your account will be debited, and punch in the number of times you want the prayer repeated.
163The machines talk as they print out the prayers; if you like, you can go inside and listen to them, the toneless metallic voices repeating the same thing over and over. Once the prayers have been printed out and said, the paper rolls back through another slot and is recycled into fresh paper again. There are no people inside the building: the machines run by themselves. You can't hear the voices from outside; only a murmur, a hum, like a devout crowd, on its knees. Each machine has an eye painted in gold on the side, flanked by two small golden wings.
164I try to remember what this place sold when it was a store, before it was turned into Soul Scrolls. I think it was lingerie. Pink and silver boxes, colored pantyhose, brassieres with lace, silk scarves? Something lost.
165Ofglen and I stand outside Soul Scrolls, looking through the shatterproof windows, watching the prayers well out from the ma7 chines and disappear again through the slot, back to the realm of the unsaid. Now I shift my gaze. What I see is not the machines, but Ofglen, reflected in the glass of the window. She's looking straight at me.
166We can see into each other's eyes. This is the first time I've ever seen Ofglen's eyes, directly, steadily, not aslant. Her face is oval, pink, plump but not fat, her eyes roundish.
167She holds my stare in the glass, level, unwavering. Now it's hard to look away. There's a shock in this seeing; it's like seeing somebody naked, for the first time. There is risk, suddenly, in the air between us, where there was none before. Even this meeting of eyes holds danger. Though there's nobody near.
168At last Ofglen speaks. "Do you think God listens," she says, "to these machines?" She is whispering: our habit at the Center.
169In the past this would have been a trivial enough remark, a kind of scholarly speculation. Right now it's treason.
170I could scream. I could run away. I could turn from her silently, to show her I won't tolerate this kind of talk in my presence. Subversion, sedition, blasphemy, heresy, all rolled into one.
171I steel myself. "No," I say.
172She lets out her breath, in a long sigh of relief. We have crossed the invisible line together. "Neither do I," she says.
173"Though I suppose it's faith, of a kind," I say. "Like Tibetan prayer wheels."
174"What are those?" she asks.
175"I only read about them," I say. "They are moved around by the wind. They're all gone now."
176"Like everything," she says. Only now do we stop looking at one another.
177"Is it safe here?" I whisper.
178"I figure it's the safest place," she says. "We look like we're praying, is all."
179"What about them?"
180"Them?" she says, still whispering. "You're always safest out of doors, no mike, and why would they put one here? They'd think nobody would dare. But we've stayed long enough. There's no sense in being late getting back." We turn away together. "Keep your head down as we walk," she says, "and lean just a little towards me. That way I can hear you better. Don't talk when there's anyone coming."
181We walk, heads bent as usual. I'm so excited I can hardly breathe, but I keep a steady pace. Now more than ever I must avoid drawing attention to myself.
182"I thought you were a true believer," Ofglen says.
183"I thought you were," I say.
184"You were always so stinking pious."
185"So were you," I reply. I want to laugh, shout, hug her.
186"You can join us," she says.
187"Us?" I say. There is an us then, there's a we. I knew it.
188"You didn't think I was the only one," she says.
189I didn't think that. It occurs to me that she may be a spy, a plant, set to trap me; such is the soil in which we grow. But I can't believe it; hope is rising in me, like sap in a tree. Blood in a wound. We have made an opening.
190I want to ask her if she's seen Moira, if anyone can find out what's happened, to Luke, to my child, my mother even, but there's not much time; too soon we're approaching the corner of the main street, the one before the first barrier. There will be too many people.
191"Don't say a word," Ofglen warns me, though she doesn't need to. "In any way."
192"Of course I won't," I say. Who could I tell?
193We walk the main street in silence, past Lilies, past All Flesh. There are more people on the sidewalks this afternoon than usual: the warm weather must have brought them out. Women, in green, blue, red, stripes; men too, some in uniform, some only in civilian suits. The sun is free, it is still there to be enjoyed. Though no one bathes in it anymore, not in public.
194There are more cars too, Whirlwinds with their chauffeurs and their cushioned occupants, lesser cars driven by lesser men.
195Something is happening: there's a commotion, a flurry among the shoals of cars. Some are pulling over to the side, as if to get out of the way. I look up quickly: it's a black van, with the white-winged eye on the side. It doesn't have the siren on, but the other cars avoid it anyway. It cruises slowly along the street, as if looking for something: shark on the prowl.
196I freeze, cold travels through me, down to my feet. There must have been microphones, they've heard us after all.
197Ofglen, under cover of her sleeve, grips my elbow. "Keep moving," she whispers. "Pretend not to see."
198But I can't help seeing. Right in front of us the van pulls up. Two Eyes, in gray suits, leap from the opening double doors at the back. They grab a man who is walking along, a man with a briefcase, an ordinary-looking man, slam him back against the black side of the van. He's there a moment, splayed out against the metal as if stuck to it; then one of the Eyes moves in on him, does something sharp and brutal that doubles him over, into a limp cloth bundle. They pick him up and heave him into the back of the van like a sack of mail. Then they are also inside and the doors are closed and the van moves on.
199It's over, in seconds, and the traffic on the street resumes as if nothing has happened.
200What I feel is relief. It wasn't me.
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210I don't feel like a nap this afternoon, there's still too much adrenaline. I sit on the window seat, looking out through the semisheer of the curtains. White nightgown. The window is as open as it goes, there's a breeze, hot in the sunlight, and the white cloth blows across my face. From the outside I must look like a cocoon, a spook, face enshrouded like this, only the outlines visible, of nose, bandaged mouth, blind eyes. But I like the sensation, the soft cloth brushing my skin. It's like being in a cloud.
211They've given me a small electric fan, which helps in this humidity. It whirs on the floor, in the corner, its blades encased in grille-work. If I were Moira, I'd know how to take it apart, reduce it to its cutting edges. I have no screwdriver, but if I were Moira I could do it without a screwdriver. I'm not Moira.
212What would she tell me, about the Commander, if she were here? Probably she'd disapprove. She disapproved of Luke, back then. Not of Luke but of the fact that he was married. She said I was poaching, on another woman's ground. I said Luke wasn't a fish or a piece of dirt either, he was a human being and could make his own decisions. She said I was rationalizing. I said I was in love. She said that was no excuse. Moira was always more logical than I am.
213I said she didn't have that problem herself anymore, since she'd decided to prefer women, and as far as I could see she had no scruples about stealing them or borrowing them when she felt like it. She said it was different, because the balance of power was equal between women so sex was an even-steven transaction. I said "even Steven" was a sexist phrase, if she was going to be like that, and anyway that argument was outdated. She said I had trivialized the issue and if I thought it was outdated I was living with my head in the sand.
214We said all this in my kitchen, drinking coffee, sitting at my kitchen table, in those low, intense voices we used for such arguments when we were in our early twenties; a carry-over from college. The kitchen was in a rundown apartment in a clapboard house near the river, the kind with three stories and a rickety outside back staircase. I had the second floor, which meant I got noise from both above and below, two unwanted disc players thumping late into the night. Students, I knew. I was still on my first job, which didn't pay much: I worked a computer in an insurance company. So the hotels, with Luke, didn't mean only love or even only sex to me. They also meant time off from the cockroaches, the dripping sink, the linoleum that was peeling off the floor in patches, even from my own attempts to brighten things up by sticking posters on the wall and hanging prisms in the windows. I had plants, too; though they always got spider mites or died from being unwatered. I would go off with Luke, and neglect them.
215I said there was more than one way of living with your head in the sand and that if Moira thought she could create Utopia by shutting herself up in a women-only enclave she was sadly mistaken. Men were not just going to go away, I said. You couldn't just ignore them.
216That's like saying you should go out and catch syphilis merely because it exists, Moira said.
217Are you calling Luke a social disease? I said.
218Moira laughed. Listen to us, she said. Shit. We sound like your mother.
219We both laughed then, and when she left we hugged each other as usual. There was a time when we didn't hug, after she'd told me about being gay; but then she said I didn't turn her on, reassuring me, and we'd gone back to it. We could fight and wrangle and name-call, but it didn't change anything underneath. She was still my oldest friend.
220Is.
221I got a better apartment after that, where I lived for the two years it took Luke to pry himself loose. I paid for it myself, with my new job. It was in a library, not the big one with Death and Victory, a smaller one.
222I worked transferring books to computer discs, to cut down on storage space and replacement costs, they said. Discers, we called ourselves. We called the library a discotheque, which was a joke of ours. After the books were transferred they were supposed to go to the shredder, but sometimes I took them home with me. I liked the feel of them, and the look. Luke said I had the mind of an antiquarian. He liked that, he liked old things himself.
223It's strange, now, to think about having a job. Job. It's a funny word. It's a job for a man. Do a jobbie, they'd say to children when they were being toilet trained. Or of dogs: he did a job on the carpet. You were supposed to hit them with rolled-up newspapers, my mother said. I can remember when there were newspapers, though I never had a dog, only cats.
224The Book of Job.
225All those women having jobs: hard to imagine, now, but thousands of them had jobs, millions. It was considered the normal thing. Now it's like remembering the paper money, when they still had that. My mother kept some of it, pasted into her scrapbook along with the early photos. It was obsolete by then, you couldn't buy anything with it. Pieces of paper, thickish, greasy to the touch, green-colored, with pictures on each side, some old man in a wig and on the other side a pyramid with an eye above it. It said In God We Trust. My mother said people used to have signs beside their cash registers, for a joke: In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash. That would be blasphemy now.
226You had to take those pieces of paper with you when you went shopping, though by the time I was nine or ten most people used plastic cards. Not for the groceries though, that came Inter. It seems so primitive, totemistic even, like cowry shells. I must have used that kind of money myself, a little, before everything went on the Compubank.
227I guess that's how they were able to do it, in the way they did, all at once, without anyone knowing beforehand. If there had still been portable money, it would have been more difficult.
228It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time.
229Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control.
230I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen?
231That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for sofne direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.
232Look out, said Moira to me, over the phone. Here it comes.
233Here what comes? I said.
234You wait, she said. They've been building up to this. It's you and me up against the wall, baby. She was quoting an expression of my mother's, but she wasn't intending to be funny.
235Things continued in that state of suspended animation for weeks, although some things did happen. Newspapers were censored and some were closed down, for security reasons they said. The roadblocks began to appear, and Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldn't be too careful. They said that new elections would be held, but that it would take some time to prepare for them. The thing to do, they said, was to continue on as usual.
236The Pornomarts were shut, though, and there were no longer any Feels on Wheels vans and Bun-Die Buggies circling the Square. But I wasn't sad to see them go. We all knew what a nuisance they'd been.
237It's high time somebody did something, said the woman behind the counter, at the store where I usually bought my cigarettes. It was on the corner, a newsstand chain: papers, candy, cigarettes. The woman was older, with gray hair; my mother's generation.
238Did they just close them, or what? I asked.
239She shrugged. Who knows, who cares, she said. Maybe they i moved them off somewhere else. Trying to get rid of it altogether is like trying to stamp out mice, you know? She punched my Compunumber into the till, barely looking at it: I was a regular, by then. People were complaining, she said.
240The next morning, on my way to the library for the day, I stopped by the same store for another pack, because I'd run out. I was smoking more those days, it was the tension, you could feel it, like a subterranean hum, although things seemed so quiet. I was drinking more coffee too, and having trouble sleeping. Everyone was a little jumpy. There was a lot more music on the radio than usual, and fewer words.
241It was after we'd been married, for years it seemed; she was three or four, in daycare.
242We'd all got up in the usual way and had breakfast, granola, I remember, and Luke had driven her off to school, in the little outfit I'd bought her just a couple of weeks before, striped overalls and a blue T-shirt. What month was this? It must have been September. There was a School Pool that was supposed to pick them up, but for some reason I'd wanted Luke to do it, I was getting worried even about the School Pool. No children walked to school anymore, there had been too many disappearances.
243When I got to the corner store, the usual woman wasn't there. Instead there was a man, a young man, he couldn't have been more than twenty.
244She sick? I said as I handed him my card.
245Who? he said, aggressively I thought.
246The woman who's usually here, I said.
247How would I know, he said. He was punching my number in, studying each number, punching with one finger. He obviously hadn't done it before. I drummed my fingers on the counter, impatient for a cigarette, wondering if anyone had ever told him something could be done about those pimples on his neck. I remember quite clearly what he looked like: tall, slightly stooped, dark hair cut short, brown eyes that seemed to focus two inches behind the bridge of my nose, and that acne. I suppose I remember him so clearly because of what he said next.
248Sorry, he said. This number's not valid.
249That's ridiculous, I said. It must be, I've got thousands in my account. I just got the statement two days ago. Try it again.
250It's not valid, he repeated obstinately. See that red light? Means it's not valid.
251You must have made a mistake, I said. Try it again.
252He shrugged and gave me a fed-up smile, but he did try the number again. This time I watched his fingers, on each number, and checked the numbers that came up in the window. It was my number all right, but there was the red light again.
253See? he said again, still with that smile, as if he knew some private joke he wasn't going to tell me.
254I'll phone them from the office, I said. The system had fouled up before, but a few phone calls usually straightened it out. Still, I was angry, as if I'd been unjustly accused of something I didn't even know about. As if I'd made the mistake myself.
255You do that, he said indifferently. I left the cigarettes on the counter, since I hadn't paid for them. I figured I could borrow some at work.
256I did phone from the office, but all I got was a recording. The lines were overloaded, the recording said. Could I please phone back?
257The lines stayed overloaded all morning, as far as I could tell. I phoned back several times, but no luck. Even that wasn't too unusual.
258About two o'clock, after lunch, the director came in to the discing room.
259I have something to tell you, he said. He looked terrible; his hair was untidy, his eyes were pink and wobbling, as though he'd been drinking.
260We all looked up, turned off our machines. There must have been eight or ten of us in the room.
261I'm sorry, he said, but it's the law. I really am sorry.
262For what? somebody said.
263I have to let you go, he said. It's the law, I have to. I have to let you all go. He said this almost gently, as if we were wild animals, frogs he'd caught, in a jar, as if he were being humane.
264We're being fired? I said. I stood up. But why?
265Not fired, he said. Let go. You can't work here anymore, it's the law. He ran his hands through his hair and I thought, He's gone crazy. The strain has been too much for him and he's blown his wiring.
266You can't just do that, said the woman who sat next to me. This sounded false, improbable, like something you would say on television.
267It isn't me, he said. You don't understand. Please go, now. His voice was rising. I don't want any trouble. If there's trouble the books might be lost, things will get broken… He looked over his shoulder. They're outside, he said, in my office. If you don't go now they'll come in themselves. They gave me ten minutes. By now he sounded crazier than ever.
268He's loopy, someone said out loud; which we must all have thought.
269But I could see out into the corridor, and there were two men standing there, in uniforms, with machine guns. This was too theatrical to be true, yet there they were: sudden apparitions, like Martians. There was a dreamlike quality to them; they were too vivid, too at odds with their surroundings.
270Just leave the machines, he said while we were getting our things together, filing out. As if we could have taken them.
271We stood in a cluster, on the steps outside the library. We didn't know what to say to one another. Since none of us understood what had happened, there was nothing much we could say. We looked at one another's faces and saw dismay, and a certain shame, as if we'd been caught doing something we shouldn't.
272It's outrageous, one woman said, but without belief. What was it about this that made us feel we deserved it?
273When I got back to the house nobody was there. Luke was still at work, my daughter was at school. I felt tired, bone-tired, but when I sat down I got up again, I couldn't seem to sit still. I wandered through the house, from room to room. I remember touching things, not even that consciously, just placing my fingers on them; things like the toaster, the sugar bowl, the ashtray in the living room. After a while I picked up the cat and carried her around with me. I wanted Luke to come home. I thought I should do something, take steps; but I didn't know what steps I could take.
274I tried phoning the bank again, but I only got the same recording. I poured myself a glass of milk-I told myself I was too jittery for another coffee-and went into the living room and sat down on the sofa and put the glass of milk on the coffee table, carefully, without drinking any of it. I held the cat up against my chest so I could feel her purring against my throat.
275After a while I phoned my mother at her apartment, but there was no answer. She'd settled down more by then, she'd stopped moving every few years; she lived across the river, in Boston. I waited a while and phoned Moira. She wasn't there either, but when I tried half an hour later she was. In between these phone calls I just sat on the sofa. What I thought about was my daughter's school lunches. I thought maybe I'd been giving her too many peanut butter sandwiches.
276I've been fired, I told Moira when I got her on the phone. She said she would come over. By that time she was working for a women's collective, the publishing division. They put out books on birth control and rape and things like that, though there wasn't as much demand for those things as there used to be.
277I'll come over, she said. She must have been able to tell from my voice that this was what I wanted.
278She got there after some time. So, she said. She threw off her jacket, sprawled into the oversize chair. Tell me. First we'll have a drink.
279She got up and went to the kitchen and poured us a couple of Scotches, and came back and sat down and I tried to tell her what had happened to me. When I'd finished, she said, Tried getting anything on your Compucard today?
280Yes, I said. I told her about that too.
281They've frozen them, she said. Mine too. The collective's too. Any account with an F on it instead of an M. All they needed to do is push a few buttons. We're cut off.
282But I've got over two thousand dollars in the bank, I said, as if my own account was the only one that mattered.
283Women can't hold property anymore, she said. It's a new law. Turned on the TV today?
284No, I said.
285It's on there, she said. All over the place. She was not stunned, the way I was. In some strange way she was gleeful, as if this was what she'd been expecting for some time and now she'd been proven right. She even looked more energetic, more determined. Luke can use your Compucount for you, she said. They'll transfer your number to him, or that's what they say. Husband or male next of kin.
286But what about you? I said. She didn't have anyone.
287I'll go underground, she said. Some of the gays can take over our numbers and buy us things we need.
288But why? I said. Why did they?
289Ours is not to reason why, said Moira. They had to do it that way, the Compucounts and the jobs both at once. Can you picture the airports, otherwise? They don't want us going anywhere, you can bet on that.
290I went to pick my daughter up from school. I drove with exaggerated care. By the time Luke got home I was sitting at the kitchen table. She was drawing with felt pens at her own little table in the corner, where her paintings were taped up next to the refrigerator.
291Luke knelt beside me and put his arms around me. I heard, he said, on the car radio, driving home. Don't worry, I'm sure it's temporary.
292Did they say why? I said.
293He didn't answer that. We'll get through it, he said, hugging me.
294You don't know what it's like, I said. I feel as if somebody cut off my feet. I wasn't crying. Also, I couldn't put my arms around him.
295It's only a job, he said, trying to soothe me.
296I guess you get all my money, I said. And I'm not even dead. I was trying for a joke, but it came out sounding macabre.
297Hush, he said. He was still kneeling on the floor. You know I'll always take care of you.
298I thought, Already he's starting to patronize me. Then I thought, Already you're starting to get paranoid.
299I know, I said. I love you.
300Later, after she was in bed and we were having supper, and I wasn't feeling so shaky, I told him about the afternoon. I described the director coming in, blurting out his announcement. It would have been funny if it wasn't so awful, I said. I thought he was drunk. Maybe he was. The army was there, and everything.
301Then I remembered something I'd seen and hadn't noticed, at the time. It wasn't the army. It was some other army.
302There were marches, of course, a lot of women and some men. But they were smaller than you might have thought. I guess people were scared. And when it was known that the police, or the army, or whoever they were, would open fire almost as soon as any of the marches even started, the marches stopped. A few things were blown up, post offices, subway stations. But you couldn't even be sure who was doing it. It could have been the army, to justify the computer searches and the other ones, the door-to-doors.
303I didn't go on any of the marches. Luke said it would be futile and I had to think about them, my family, him and her. I did think about my family. I started doing more housework, more baking. I tried not to cry at mealtimes. By this time I'd started to cry, without warning, and to sit beside the bedroom window, staring out. I didn't know many of the neighbors, and when we met, outside on the street, we were careful to exchange nothing more than the ordinary greetings. Nobody wanted to be reported, for disloyalty.
304Remembering this, I remember also my mother, years before. I must have been fourteen, fifteen, that age when daughters are most embarrassed by their mothers. I remember her coming back to one of our many apartments, with a group of other women, part of her ever-changing circle of friends. They'd been in a march that day; it was during the time of the porn riots, or was it the abortion riots, they were close together. There were a lot of bombings then: clinics, video stores; it was hard to keep track.
305My mother had a bruise on her face, and a little blood. You can't stick your hand through a glass window without getting cut, is what she said about it. Fucking pigs.
306Fucking bleeders, one of her friends said. They called the other side bleeders, after the signs they carried: Let them bleed. So it must have been the abortion riots.
307I went into my bedroom, to DC out of their way. They were talking too much, and too loudly. They ignored me, and I resented them. My mother and her rowdy friends. I didn't see why she had to dress that way, in overalls, as if she were young; or to swear so much.
308You're such a prude, she would say to me, in a tone of voice that was on the whole pleased. She liked being more outrageous than I was, more rebellious. Adolescents are always such prudes.
309Part of my disapproval was that, I'm sure: perfunctory, routine. But also I wanted from her a life more ceremonious, less subject to makeshift and decampment.
310You were a wanted child, God knows, she would say at other moments, lingering over the photo albums in which she had me framed; these albums were thick with babies, but my replicas thinned out as I grew older, as if the population of my duplicates had been hit by some plague. She would say this a little regretfully, as though I hadn't turned out entirely as she'd expected. No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well. But despite everything, we didn't do badly by one another, we did as well as most.
311I wish she were here, so I could tell her I finally know this.
312Someone has come out of the house. I hear the distant closing of a door, around at the side, footsteps on the walk. It's Nick, I can see him now; he's stepped off the path, onto the lawn, to breathe in the humid air which stinks of flowers, of pulpy growth, of pollen thrown into the wind in handfuls, like oyster spawn into the sea. All this prodigal breeding. He stretches in the sun, I feel the ripple of muscles go along him, like a cat's back arching. He's in his shirt sleeves, bare arms sticking shamelessly out from the rolled cloth. Where does the tan end? I haven't spoken to him since that one night, dreamscape in the moon-filled sitting room. He's only my flag, my semaphore. Body language.
313Right now his cap's on sideways. Therefore I am sent for.
314What does he get for it, his role as page boy? How does he feel, pimping in this ambiguous way for the Commander? Does it fill him with disgust, or make him want more of me, want me more? Because he has no idea what really goes on in there, among the books. Acts of perversion, for all he knows. The Commander and me, covering each other with ink, licking it off, or making love on stacks of forbidden newsprint. Well, he wouldn't be far off at that.
315But depend on it, there's something in it for him. Everyone's on the take, one way or another. Extra cigarettes? Extra freedoms, not allowed to the general run? Anyway, what can he prove? It's his word against the Commander's, unless he wants to head a posse. Kick in the door, and what did I tell you? Caught in the act, sinfully Scrabbling. Quick, eat those words.
316Maybe he just likes the satisfaction of knowing something secret. Of having something on me, as they used to say. It's the kind of power you can use only once.
317I would like to think better of him.
318That night, after I'd lost my job, Luke wanted to make love. Why didn't I want to? Desperation alone should have driven me. But I still felt numbed. I could hardly even feel his hands on me.
319What's the matter? he said.
320I don't know, I said.
321We still have… he said. But he didn't go on to say what we still had. It occurred to me that he shouldn't be saying we, since nothing that I knew of had been taken away from him.
322We still have each other, I said. It was true. Then why did I sound, even to myself, so indifferent?
323He kissed me then, as if now I'd said that, things could get back to normal. But something had shifted, some balance. I felt shrunken, so that when he put his arms around me, gathering me up, I was small as a doll. I felt love going forward without me.
324He doesn't mind this, I thought. He doesn't mind it at all. Maybe he even likes it. We are not each other's, anymore. Instead, I am his.
325Unworthy, unjust, untrue. But that is what happened.
326So Luke: what I want to ask you now, what I need to know is, Was I right? Because we never talked about it. By the time I could have done that, I was afraid to. I couldn't afford to lose you.
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336I'm sitting in the Commander's office, across from him at his desk, in the client position, as if I'm a bank customer negotiating a hefty loan. But apart from my placement in the room, little of that formality remains between us. I no longer sit stiff-necked, straight-backed, feet regimented side by side on the floor, eyes at the salute. Instead my body's lax, cozy even. My red shoes are off, my legs tucked up underneath me on the chair, surrounded by a buttress of red skirt, true, but tucked nonetheless, as at a campfire, of earlier and more picnic days. If there were a fire in the fireplace, its light would be twinkling on the polished surfaces, glimmering warmly on flesh. I add the firelight in.
337As for the Commander, he's casual to a fault tonight. Jacket off, elbows on the table. All he needs is a toothpick in the corner of his mouth to be an ad for rural democracy, as in an etching. Fly-specked, some old burned book.
338The squares on the board in front of me are filling up: I'm making my penultimate play of the night. Zilch, I spell, a convenient one-vowel word with an expensive Z.
339"Is that a word?" says the Commander.
340"We could look it up," I say. "It's archaic."
341"I'll give it to you," he says. He smiles. The Commander likes it when I distinguish myself, show precocity, like an attentive pet, prick-eared and eager to perform. His approbation laps me like a warm bath. I sense in him none of the animosity I used to sense in men, even in Luke sometimes. He's not saying bitch in his head. In fact he is positively daddyish. He likes to think I am being entertained; and I am, I am.
342Deftly he adds up our final scores on his pocket computer. "You ran away with it," he says. I suspect him of cheating, to flatter me, to put me in a good mood. But why? It remains a question. What does he have to gain from this sort of pampering? There must be something.
343He leans back, fingertips together, a gesture familiar to me now. We have built up a repertoire of such gestures, such familiarities, between us. He's looking at me, not unbenevolently, but with curiosity, as if I am a puzzle to be solved.
344"What would you like to read tonight?" he says. This too has become routine. So far I've been through a Mademoiselle magazine, an old Esquire from the eighties, a Ms., a magazine I can remember vaguely as having been around my mother's various apartments while I was growing up, and a Reader's Digest. He even has novels. I've read a Raymond Chandler, and right now I'm halfway through Hard Times, by Charles Dickens. On these occasions I read quickly, voraciously, almost skimming, trying to get as much into my head as possible before the next long starvation. If it were eating it would be the gluttony of the famished; if it were sex it would be a swift furtive stand-up in an alley somewhere.
345While I read, the Commander sits and watches me doing it, without speaking but also without taking his eyes off me. This watching is a curiously sexual act, and I feel undressed while he does it. I wish he would turn his back, stroll around the room, read something himself. Then perhaps I could relax more, take my time. As it is, this illicit reading of mine seems a kind of performance.
346"I think I'd rather just talk," I say. I'm surprised to hear myself saying it.
347He smiles again. He doesn't appear surprised. Possibly he's been expecting this, or something like it. "Oh?" he says. "What would you like to talk about?"
348I falter. "Anything, I guess. Well, you, for instance."
349"Me?" He continues to smile. "Oh, there's not much to say about me. I'm iust an ordinary kind of guy."
350The falsity of this, and even the falsity of the diction-guy?-pulls me up short. Ordinary guys do not become Commanders. "You must be good at something," I say. I know I'm prompting him, playing up to him, drawing him out, and I dislike myself for it, it's nauseating, in fact. But we are fencing. Either he talks or I will. I know it, I can feel speech backing up inside me, it's so long since I've really talked with anyone. The terse whispered exchange with Ofglen, on our walk today, hardly counts; but it was a tease, a preliminary. Having felt the relief of even that much speaking, I want more.
351And if I talk to him I'll say something wrong, give something away. I can feel it coming, a betrayal of myself. I don't want him to know too much.
352"Oh, I was in market research, to begin with," he says diffidently. "After that I sort of branched out."
353It strikes me that, although I know he's a Commander, I don't know what he's a Commander of. What does he control, what is his field, as they used to say? They don't have specific titles.
354"Oh," I say, trying to sound as if I understand.
355"You might say I'm a sort of scientist," he says. "Within limits, of course."
356After that he doesn't say anything for a while, and neither do I. We are outwaiting each other.
357I'm the one to break first. "Well, maybe you could tell me something I've been wondering about."
358He shows interest. "What might that be?"
359I'm heading into danger, but I can't stop myself. "It's a phrase I remember from somewhere." Best not to say where. "I think it's in Latin, and I thought maybe…"I know he has a Latin dictionary. He has dictionaries of several kinds, on the top shelf to the left of the fireplace.
360"Tell me," he says. Distanced, but more alert, or am I imagining it?
361"Nolite te bastardes carborundorum" I say.
362"What?" he says.
363I haven't pronounced it properly. I don't know how. "I could spell it," I say. "Write it down."
364He hesitates at this novel idea. Possibly he doesn't remember I can. I've never held a pen or a pencil, in this room, not even to add up the scores. Women can't add, he once said, jokingly. When I asked him what he meant, he said, For them, one and one and one and one don't make four.
365What do they make? I said, expecting five or three.
366Just one and one and one and one, he said.
367But now he says, "All right," and thrusts his roller-tip pen across the desk at me almost defiantly, as if taking a dare. I look around for something to write on and he hands me the score pad, a desktop notepad with a little smile-button face printed at the top of the page. They still make those things.
368I print the phrase carefully, copying it down from inside my head, from inside my closet. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Here, in this context, it's neither prayer nor command, but a sad graffiti, scrawled once, abandoned. The pen between my fingers is sensuous, alive almost, I can feel its power, the power of the words it contains. Pen Is Envy, Aunt Lydia would say, quoting another Center motto, warning us away from such objects. And they were right, it is envy. Just holding it is envy. I envy the Commander his pen. It's one more thing I would like to steal.
369The Commander takes the smile-button page from me and looks at it. Then he begins to laugh, and is he blushing? "That's not real Latin," he says. "That's just a joke."
370"A joke?" I say, bewildered now. It can't be only a joke. Have I risked this, made a grab at knowledge, for a mere joke? "What sort of a joke?"
371"You know how schoolboys are," he says. His laughter is nostalgic, I see now, the laughter of indulgence towards his former self. He gets up, crosses to the bookshelves, takes down a book from his trove; not the dictionary though. It's an old book, a textbook it looks like, dog-eared and inky. Before showing it to me he thumbs through it, contemplative, reminiscent; then, "Here," he says, laying it open on the desk in front of me.
372What I see first is a picture: the Venus de Milo, in a black-and-white photo, with a mustache and a black brassiere and armpit hair drawn clumsily on her. On the opposite page is the Colosseum in Rome, labeled in English, and below, a conjugation: sum es est, su-mus estis sunt. "There," he says, pointing, and in the margin I see it, written in the same ink as the hair on the Venus. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.
373"It's sort of hard to explain why it's funny unless you know Latin," he says. "We used to write all kinds of things like that. I don't know where we got them, from older boys perhaps." Forgetful of me and of himself, he's turning the pages. "Look at this," he says. The picture is called The Sabine Women, and in the margin is scrawled: pirn pis pit, pimus pistis pants. "There was another one," he says. "Cim, cis, cit…" He stops, returning to the present, embarrassed. Again he smiles; this time you could call it a grin. I imagine freckles on him, a cowlick. Right now I almost like him.
374"But what did it mean?" I say.
375"Which?" he says. "Oh. It meant, 'Don't let the bastards grind you down.' I guess we thought we were pretty smart, back then."
376I force a smile, but it's all before me now. I can see why she wrote that, on the wall of the cupboard, but I also see that she must have learned it here, in this room. Where else? She was never a schoolboy. With him, during some previous period of boyhood reminiscence, of confidences exchanged. I have not been the first then. To enter his silence, play children's word games with him.
377"What happened to her?" I say.
378He hardly misses a beat. "Did you know her somehow?"
379"Somehow," I say.
380"She hanged herself," he says; thoughtfully, not sadly. "That's why we had the light fixture removed. In your room." He pauses. "Serena found out," he says, as if this explains it. And it does.
381If your dog dies, get another.
382"What with?" I say.
383He doesn't want to give me any ideas. "Does it matter?" he says. Torn bedsheet, I figure. I've considered the possibilities.
384"I suppose it was Cora who found her," I say. That's why she screamed.
385"Yes," he says. "Poor girl." He means Cora.
386"Maybe I shouldn't come here anymore," I say.
387"I thought you were enjoying it," he says lightly, watching me, however, with intent bright eyes. If I didn't know better I would think it was fear. "I wish you would."
388"You want my life to be bearable to me," I say. It comes out not as a question but as a flat statement; flat and without dimension. If my life is bearable, maybe what they're doing is all right after all.
389"Yes," he says. "I do. I would prefer it."
390"Well then," I say. Things have changed. I have something on him, now. What I have on him is the possibility of my own death. What I have on him is his guilt. At last.
391"What would you like?" he says, still with that lightness, as if it's a money transaction merely, and a minor one at that: candy, cigarettes.
392"Besides hand lotion, you mean," I say.
393"Besides hand lotion," he agrees.
394"I would like…" I say. "I would like to know." It sounds indecisive, stupid even, I say it without thinking.
395"Know what?" he says.
396"Whatever there is to know," I say; but that's too flippant. "What's going on."
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415Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you look east, at sunset, you can see night rising, not falling; darkness lifting into the sky, up from the horizon, like a black sun behind cloud cover. Like smoke from an unseen fire, a line of fire just below the horizon, brushfire or a burning city. Maybe night falls because it's heavy, a thick curtain pulled up over the eyes. Wool blanket. I wish I could see in the dark, better than I do.
416Night has fallen, then. I feel it pressing down on me like a stone. No breeze. I sit by the partly open window, curtains tucked back because there's no one out there, no need for modesty, in my nightgown, long-sleeved even in summer, to keep us from the temptations of our own flesh, to keep us from hugging ourselves, bare-armed. Nothing moves in the searchlight moonlight. The scent from the garden rises like heat from a body, there must be night-blooming flowers, it's so strong. I can almost see it, red radiation, wavering upwards like the shimmer above highway tarmac at noon.
417Down there on the lawn, someone emerges from the spill of darkness under the willow, steps across the light, his long shadow attached sharply to his heels. Is it Nick, or is it someone else, someone of no importance? He stops, looks up at this window, and I can see the white oblong of his face. Nick. We look at each other. I have no rose to toss, he has no lute. But it's the same kind of hun-ger.
418Which I can't indulge. I pull the left-hand curtain so that it falls between us, across my face, and after a moment he walks on, into the invisibility around the corner.
419What the Commander said is true. One and one and one and one doesn't equal four. Each one remains unique, there is no way of joining them together. They cannot be exchanged, one for the other. They cannot replace each other. Nick for Luke or Luke for Nick. Should does not apply.
420You can't help what you feel, Moira once said, but you can help how you behave.
421Which is all very well.
422Context is all; or is it ripeness? One or the other.
423The night before we left the house, that last time, I was walking through the rooms. Nothing was packed up, because we weren't taking much with us and we couldn't afford even then to give the least appearance of leaving. So I was just walking through, here and there, looking at things, at the arrangement we had made together, for our life. I had some idea that I would be able to remember, afterwards, what it had looked like.
424Luke was in the living room. He put his arms around me. We were both feeling miserable. How were we to know we were happy, even then? Because we at least had that: arms, around.
425The cat, is what he said.
426Cat? I said, against the wool of his sweater.
427We can't just leave her here.
428I hadn't thought about the cat. Neither of us had. Our decision had been sudden, and then there had been the planning to do. I must have thought she was coming with us. But she couldn't, you don't take a cat on a day trip across the border.
429Why not outside? I said. We could just leave her.
430She'd hang around and mew at the door. Someone would notice we were gone.
431We could give her away, I said. One of the neighbors. Even as I said this, I saw how foolish that would be.
432I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before. You do that first, in your head, and then you make it real. So that's how they do it, I thought. I seemed never to have known that before.
433Luke found the cat, who was hiding under our bed. They always know. He went into the garage with her. I don't know what he did and I never asked him. I sat in the living room, hands folded in my lap. I should have gone out with him, taken that small responsibility. I should at least have asked him about it afterwards, so he didn't have to carry it alone; because that little sacrifice, that snuffing out of love, was done for my sake as well.
434That's one of the things they do. They force you to kill, within yourself.
435Useless, as it turned out. I wonder who told them. It could have been a neighbor, watching our car pull out from the driveway in the morning, acting on a hunch, tipping them off for a gold star on someone's list. It could even have been the man who got us the passports; why not get paid twice? Like them, even, to plant the passport forgers themselves, a net for the unwary. The Eyes of God run over all the earth.
436Because they were ready for us, and waiting. The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil.
437It was like being in an elevator cut loose at the top. Falling, falling, and not knowing when you will hit.
438I try to conjure, to raise my own spirits, from wherever they are. I need to remember what they look like. I try to hold them still behind my eyes, their faces, like pictures in an album. But they won't stay still for me, they move, there's a smile and it's gone, their features curl and bend as if the paper's burning, blackness eats them. A glimpse, a pale shimmer on the air; a glow, aurora, dance of electrons, then a face again, faces. But they fade, though I stretch out my arms towards them, they slip away from me, ghosts at daybreak. Back to wherever they are. Stay with me, I want to say. But they won't.
439It's my fault. I am forgetting too much.
440Tonight I will say my prayers.
441No longer kneeling at the foot of the bed, knees on the hard wood of the gym floor, Aunt Elizabeth standing by the double doors, arms folded, cattle prod hung on her belt, while Aunt Lydia strides along the rows of kneeling nightgowned women, hitting our backs or feet or bums or arms lightly, just a flick, a tap, with her wooden pointer if we slouch or slacken. She wanted our heads bowed just right, our toes together and pointed, our elbows at the proper angle. Part of her interest in this was aesthetic: she liked the look of the thing. She wanted us to look like something Anglo-Saxon, carved on a tomb; or Christmas card angels, regimented in our robes of purity. But she knew too the spiritual value of bodily rigidity, of muscle strain: a little pain cleans out the mind, she'd say.
442What we prayed for was emptiness, so we would be worthy to be filled: with grace, with love, with self-denial, semen and babies.
443Oh God, King of the universe, thank you for not creating me a man.
444Oh God, obliterate me. Make me fruitful. Mortify my flesh, that I may be multiplied. Let me be fulfilled…
445Some of them would get carried away with this. The ecstasy of abasement. Some of them would moan and cry.
446There is no point in making a spectacle of yourself, Janine, said Aunt Lydia.
447I pray where I am, sitting by the window, looking out through the curtain at the empty garden. I don't even close my eyes. Out there or inside my head, it's an equal darkness. Or light.
448My God. Who Art in the Kingdom of. Heaven, which is within.
449I wish you would tell me Your Name, the real one I mean. But You will do as well as anything.
450I wish I knew what You were up to. But whatever it is, help me to get through it, please. Though maybe it's not Your doing; I don't believe for an instant that what's going on out there is what You meant.
451I have enough daily bread, so I won't waste time on that. It isn't the main problem. The problem is getting it down without choking on it.
452Now we come to forgiveness. Don't worry about forgiving me right now. There are more important things. For instance: keep the others safe, if they are safe. Don't let them suffer too much. If they have to die, let it be fast. You might even provide a Heaven for them. We need You for that. Hell we can make for ourselves.
453I suppose I should say I forgive whoever did this, and whatever they're doing now. I'll try, but it isn't easy.
454Temptation comes next. At the Center, temptation was anything much more than eating and sleeping. Knowing was a temptation. What you don't know won't tempt you, Aunt Lydia used to say.
455Maybe I don't really want to know what's going on. Maybe I'd rather not know. Maybe I couldn't bear to know. The Fall was a fall from innocence to knowledge.
456I think about the chandelier too much, though it's gone now. But you could use a hook, in the closet. I've considered the possibilities. All you'd have to do, after attaching yourself, would be to lean your weight forward and not fight.
457Deliver us from evil.
458Then there's Kingdom, power, and glory. It takes a lot to believe in those right now. But I'll try it anyway. In Hope, as they say on the gravestones.
459You must feel pretty ripped off. I guess it's not the first time.
460If I were You I'd be fed up. I'd really be sick of it. I guess that's the difference between us.
461I feel very unreal, talking to You like this. I feel as if I'm talking to a wall. I wish You'd answer. I feel so alone.
462All alone by the telephone. Except I can't use the telephone. And if I could, who could I call?
463Oh God. It's no joke. Oh God oh God. How can I keep on living?
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472XII Jezebels
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482Every night when I go to bed I think, In the morning I will wake up in my own house and things will be back the way they were. It hasn't happened this morning, either.
483I put on my clothes, summer clothes, it's still summer; it seems to have stopped at summer. July, its breathless days and sauna nights, hard to sleep. I make a point of keeping track. I should scratch marks on the wall, one for each day of the week, and run a line through them when I have seven. But what would be the use, this isn't a jail sentence; there's no time here that can be done and finished with. Anyway, all I have to do is ask, to find out what day it is. Yesterday was July the fourth, which used to be Independence Day, before they abolished it. September first will be Labor Day, they still have that. Though it didn't used to have anything to do with mothers.
484But I tell time by the moon. Lunar, not solar.
485I bend over to do up my red shoes; lighter weight these days, with discreet slits cut in them, though nothing so daring as sandals. It's an effort to stoop; despite the exercises, I can feel my body gradually seizing up, refusing. Being a woman this way is how I used to imagine it would be to be very old. I feel I even walk like that: crouched over, my spine constricting to a question mark, my bones leached of calcium and porous as limestone. When I was younger, imagining age, I would think, Maybe you appreciate things more when you don't have much time left. I forgot to include the loss of energy. Some days I do appreciate things more, eggs, flowers, but then I decide I'm only having an attack of sentimentality, my brain going pastel Technicolor, like the beautiful-sunset greeting cards they used to make so many of in California. High-gloss hearts. The danger is gray out.
486I'd like to have Luke here, in this bedroom while I'm getting dressed, so I could have a fight with him. Absurd, but that's what I want. An argument, about who should put the dishes in the dishwasher, whose turn it is to sort the laundry, clean the toilet; something daily and unimportant in the big scheme of things. We could even have a fight about that, about unimportant, important. What a luxury it would be. Not that we did it much. These days I script whole fights, in my head, and the reconciliations afterwards too.
487I sit in my chair, the wreath on the ceiling floating above my head, like a frozen halo, a zero. A hole in space where a star exploded. A ring, on water, where a stone's been thrown. All things white and circular. I wait for the day to unroll, for the earth to turn, according to the round face of the implacable clock. The geometrical days, which go around and around, smoothly and oiled. Sweat already on my upper lip, I wait, for the arrival of the inevitable egg, which will be lukewarm like the room and will have a green film on the yolk and will taste faintly of sulphur.
488Today, later, with Ofglen, on our shopping walk:
489We go to the church, as usual, and look at the graves. Then to the Wall. Only two hanging on it today: one Catholic, not a priest though, placarded with an upside-down cross, and some other sect I don't recognize. The body is marked only with a J, in red. It doesn't mean Jewish, those would be yellow stars. Anyway there haven't been many of them. Because they were declared Sons of Jacob and therefore special, they were given a choice. They could convert, or emigrate to Israel. A lot of them emigrated, if you can believe the news. I saw a boatload of them, on the TV, leaning over the railings in their black coats and hats and their long beards, trying to look as Jewish as possible, in costumes fished up from the past, the women with shawls over their heads, smiling and waving, a little stiffly it's true, as if they were posing; and another shot, of the richer ones, lining up for the planes. Ofglen says some other people got out that way, by pretending to be Jewish, but it wasn't easy because of the tests they gave you and they've tightened up on that now.
490You don't get hanged only for being a Jew though. You get hanged for being a noisy Jew who won't make the choice. Or for pretending to convert. That's been on the TV too: raids at night, secret hoards of Jewish things dragged out from under beds, torahs, tal-liths, Magen Davids. And the owners of them, sullen faced, unrepentant, pushed by the Eyes against the walls of their bedrooms, while the sorrowful voice of the announcer tells us voice-over about their perfidy and ungratefulness.
491So the J isn't for Jew. What could it be? Jehovah's Witness? Jesuit? Whatever it meant, he's just as dead.
492After this ritual viewing we continue on our way, heading as usual for some open space we can cross, so we can talk. If you can call it talking, these clipped whispers, projected through the funnels of our white wings. It's more like a telegram, a verbal semaphore. Amputated speech.
493We can never stand long in any one place. We don't want to be picked up for loitering.
494Today we turn in the opposite direction from Soul Scrolls, to where there's an open park of sorts, with a large old building on it; ornate late Victorian, with stained glass. It used to be called Memorial Hall, though I never knew what it was a memorial for. Dead people of some kind.
495Moira told me once that it used to be where the undergraduates ale, in the earlier days of the university. If a woman went in there, they'd throw buns at her, she said.
496Why? I said. Moira became, over the years, increasingly versed in such anecdotes. I didn't much like it, this grudge-holding against the past.
497To make her go out, said Moira.
498Maybe it was more like throwing peanuts at elephants, I said. Moira laughed; she could always do that. Exotic monsters, she said.
499We stand looking at this building, which is in shape more or less like a church, a cathedral. Ofglen says, "I hear that's where the Eyes hold their banquets."
500"Who told you?" I say. There's no one near, we can speak more freely, but out of habit we keep our voices low.
501"The grapevine," she says. She pauses, looks sideways at me, I can sense the blur of white as her wings move. "There's a password," she says.
502"A password?" I ask. "What for?"
503"So you can tell," she says. "Who is and who isn't."
504Although I can't see what use it is for me to know, I ask, "What is it then?"
505"Mayday," she says. "I tried it on you once."
506"Mayday," I repeat. I remember that day. M'aidez.
507"Don't use it unless you have to," says Ofglen. "It isn't good for us to know about too many of the others, in the network. In case you get caught."
508I find it hard to believe in these whisperings, these revelations, though I always do at the time. Afterwards, though, they seem improbable, childish even, like something you'd do for fun; like a girls' club, like secrets at school. Or like the spy novels I used to read, on weekends, when I should have been finishing my homework, or like late-night television. Passwords, things that cannot be told, people with secret identities, dark linkages: this does not seem as if it ought to be the true shape of the world. But that is my own illusion, a hangover from a version of reality I learned in the former time.
509And networks. Networking, one of my mother's old phrases, musty slang of yesteryear. Even in her sixties she still did something she called that, though as far as I could see all it meant was having lunch with some other woman.
510I leave Ofglen at the corner. "I'll see you later," she says. She glides away along the sidewalk and I go up the walk towards the house. There's Nick, hat askew; today he doesn't even look at me. He must have been waiting around for me though, to deliver his silenl message, because as soon as he knows I've seen him he gives the Whirlwind one last swipe with the chamois and walks briskly off towards the garage door.
511I walk along the gravel, between the slabs of ovcrgreen lawn. Serena Joy is sitting under the willow tree, in her chair, cane propped at her elbow. Her dress is crisp cool cotton. For her it's blue, wa-tercolor, not this red of mine that sucks in heat and blazes with it at the same time. Her profile's towards me, she's knitting. How can she bear to touch the wool, in this heat? But possibly her skin's gone numb; possibly she feels nothing, like one formerly scalded.
512I lower my eyes to the path, glide by her, hoping to be invisible, knowing I'll be ignored. But not this time.
513"Offred," she says.
514I pause, uncertain.
515"Yes, you."
516I turn towards her my blinkered sight.
517"Come over here. I want you."
518I walk over the grass and stand before her, looking down.
519"You can sit," she says. "Here, take the cushion. I need you to hold this wool." She's got a cigarette, the ashtray's on the lawn beside her, and a cup of something, tea or coffee. "It's too damn close in there. You need a little air," she says. I sit, putting down my basket, strawberries again, chicken again, and I note the swear word: something new. She fits the skein of wool over my two outstretched hands, starts winding. I am leashed, it looks like, manacled; cobwebbed, that's closer. The wool is gray and has absorbed moisture from the air, it's like a wetted baby blanket and smells faintly of damp sheep. At least my hands will get lanolined.
520Serena winds, the cigarette held in the corner of her mouth smoldering, sending out tempting smoke. She winds slowly and with difficulty because of her gradually crippling hands, but with determination. Perhaps the knitting, for her, involves a kind of willpower; maybe it even hurts. Maybe it's been medically prescribed: ten rows a day of plain, ten of purl. Though she must do more than that. I see those evergreen trees and geometric boys and girls in a different light: evidence of her stubbornness, and not altogether despicable.
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528My mother did not knit or anything like that. But whenever she would bring things back from the cleaner's, her good blouses, winter coats, she'd save up the safety pins and make them into a chain. Then she'd pin the chain somewhere-her bed, the pillow, a chair back, the oven mitt in the kitchen-so she wouldn't lose them. Then she'd forget about them. I would come upon them, here and there in the house, the houses; tracks of her presence, remnants of some lost intention, like signs on a road that turns out to lead no-where. Throwbacks to domesticity.
529"Well then," Serena says. She stops winding, leaving me with my hands still garlanded with animal hair, and takes the cigarette end from her mouth to butt it out. "Nothing yet?"
530I know what she's talking about. There are not that many subjects that could be spoken about, between us; there's not much common ground, except this one mysterious and chancy thing.
531"No," I say. "Nothing."
532"Too bad," she says. It's hard to imagine her with a baby. But the Marthas would take care of it mostly. She'd like me pregnant though, over and done with and out of the way, no more humiliating sweaty tangles, no more flesh triangles under her starry canopy of silver flowers. Peace and quiet. I can't imagine she'd want such good luck, for me, for any other reason.
533"Your time's running out," she says. Not a question, a matter of fact.
534"Yes," I say neutrally.
535She's lighting another cigarette, fumbling with the lighter. Definitely her hands are getting worse. But it would be a mistake to offer to do it for her, she'd be offended. A mistake to notice weakness in her.
536"Maybe he can't," she says.
537I don't know who she means. Does she mean the Commander, or God? If it's God, she should say won't. Either way it's heresy. It's only women who can't, who remain stubbornly closed, damaged, defective.
538"No," I say. "Maybe he can't."
539I look up at her. She looks down. It's the first time we've looked into each other's eyes in a long time. Since we met. The moment stretches out between us, bleak and level. She's trying to see whether or not I'm up to reality.
540"Maybe," she says, holding the cigarette, which she has failed to light. "Maybe you should try it another way."
541Does she mean on all fours? "What other way?" I say. I must keep serious.
542"Another man," she says.
543"You know I can't," I say, careful not to let my irritation show. "It's against the law. You know the penalty."
544"Yes," she says. She's ready for this, she's thought it through. "I know you can't officially. But it's done. Women do it frequently. All the time."
545"With doctors, you mean?" I say, remembering the sympathetic brown eyes, the gloveless hand. The last time I went it was a different doctor. Maybe someone caught him out, or a woman reported him. Not that they'd take her word, without evidence.
546"Some do that," she says, her tone almost affable now, though distanced; it's as if we're considering a choice of nail polish. "That's how Ofwarren did it. The Wife knew, of course." She pauses to let this sink in. "I would help you. I would make sure nothing went wrong."
547I think about this. "Not with a doctor," I say.
548"No," she agrees, and for this moment at least we are cronies, this could be a kitchen table, it could be a date we're discussing, some girlish stratagem of ploys and flirtation. "Sometimes they blackmail. But it doesn't have to be a doctor. It could be someone we trust."
549"Who?" I say.
550"I was thinking of Nick," she says, and her voice is almost soft. "He's been with us a long time. He's loyal. I could fix it with him."
551So that's who does her little black-market errands for her. Is this what he always gets, in return?
552"What about the Commander?" I say.
553"Well," she says, with firmness; no, more than that, a clenched look, like a purse snapping shut. "We just won't tell him, will we?"
554This idea hangs between us, almost visible, almost palpable: heavy, formless, dark; collusion of a sort, betrayal of a sort. She does want that baby.
555"It's a risk," I say. "More than that." It's my life on the line; but that's where it will be sooner or later, one way or another, whether I do or don't. We both know this.
556"You might as well," she says. Which is what I think too.
557"All right," I say. "Yes."
558She leans forward. "Maybe I could get something for you," she says. Because I have been good. "Something you want," she adds, wheedling almost.
559"What's that?" I say. I can't think of anything I truly want that she'd be likely or able to give me.
560"A picture," she says, as if offering me some juvenile treat, an ice cream, a trip to the zoo. I look up at her again, puzzled.
561"Of her," she says. "Your little girl. But only maybe."
562She knows where they've put her then, where they're keeping her. She's known all along. Something chokes in my throat. The bitch, not to tell me, bring me news, any news at all. Not even to let on. She's made of wood, or iron, she can't imagine. But I can't say this, I can't lose sight, even of so small a thing. I can't let go of this hope. I can't speak.
563She's actually smiling, coquettishly even; there's a hint of her former small-screen mannequin's allure, flickering over her face like momentary static. "It's too damn hot for this, don't you think?" she says. She lifts the wool from my two hands, where I have been holding it all this time. Then she takes the cigarette she's been fiddling with and, a little awkwardly, presses it into my hand, closing my fingers around it. "Find yourself a match," she says. "They're in the kitchen, you can ask Rita for one. You can tell her I said so. Only the one though," she adds roguishly. "We don't want to ruin your health!"
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573Rita's sitting at the kitchen table. There's a glass bowl with ice cubes floating in it on the table in front of her. Radishes made into flowers, roses or tulips, bob in it. On the chopping board in front of her she's cutting more, with a paring knife, her large hands deft, indifferent. The rest of her body does not move, nor does her face. It's as if she's doing it in her sleep, this knife trick. On the white enamel surface is a pile of radishes, washed but uncut. Little Aztec hearts.
574She hardly bothers to look up as I enter. "You got it all, huh," is what she says, as I take the parcels out for her inspection.
575"Could I have a match?" I ask her. Surprising how much like a small, begging child she makes me feel, simply by her scowl, her stolidity; how importunate and whiny.
576"Matches?" she says. "What do you want matches for?"
577"She said I could have one," I say, not wanting to admit to the cigarette.
578"Who said?" She continues with the radishes, her rhythm unbroken. "No call for you to have matches. Burn the house down."
579"You can go and ask her if you like," I say. "She's out on the lawn."
580Rita rolls her eyes to the ceiling, as if consulting silently some deity there. Then she sighs, rises heavily, and wipes her hands with ostentation on her apron, to show me how much trouble I am. She goes to the cupboard over the sink, taking her time, locates her key bunch in her pocket, unlocks the cupboard door. "Keep 'em in here, summer," she says as if to herself. "No call for a fire in this weather." I remember from April that it's Cora who lights the fires, in the sitting room and the dining room, in cooler weather.
581The matches are wooden ones, in a cardboard sliding-top box, the kind I used to covet in order to make dolls' drawers out of them. She opens the box, peers into it, as if deciding which one she'll let me have. "Her own business," she mutters. "No way you can tell her a thing." She plunges her big hand down, selects a match, hands it over to me. "Now don't you go setting fire to nothing," she says. "Not them curtains in your room. Too hot the way it is."
582"I won't," I say. "That's not what it's for."
583She does not deign to ask me what it is for. "Don't care if you eat it, or what," she says. "She said you could have one, so I give you one, is all."
584She turns away from me and sits again at the table. Then she picks an ice cube out of the bowl and pops it into her mouth. This is an unusual thing for her to do. I've never seen her nibble while working. "You can have one of them too," she says. "A shame, making you wear all them pillowcases on your head, in this weather."
585I am surprised: she doesn't usually offer me anything. Maybe she feels that if I've risen in status enough to be given a match, she can afford her own small gesture. Have I become, suddenly, one of those who must be appeased?
586"Thank you," I say. I transfer the match carefully to my zip-pered sleeve where the cigarette is, so it won't get wet, and take an ice cube. "Those radishes are pretty," I say, in return for the gift she's made me, of her own free will.
587"I like to do things right, is all," she says, grumpy again. "No sense otherwise."
588I go along the passage, up the stairs, hurrying. In the curved hallway mirror I flit past, a red shape at the edge of my own field of vision, a wraith of red smoke. I have smoke on my mind all fight, already I can feel it in my mouth, drawn down into the lungs, filling me in a long rich dirty cinnamon sigh, and then the rush as the nicotine hits the bloodstream.
589After all this time it could make me sick. I wouldn't be surprised. But even that thought is welcome.
590Along the corridor I go, where should I do it? In the bathroom, running the water to clear the air, in the bedroom, wheezy puffs out the open window? Who's to catch me at it? Who knows?
591Even as I luxuriate in the future this way, rolling anticipation around in my mouth, I think of something else.
592I don't need to smoke this cigarette.
593I could shred it up and flush it down the toilet. Or I could eat it and get the high that way, that can work too, a little at a time, save up the rest.
594That way I could keep the match. I could make a small hole, in the mattress, slide it carefully in. Such a thin thing would never be noticed. There it would be, at night, under me while I'm in bed. Sleeping on it.
595I could burn the house down. Such a fine thought, it makes me shiver.
596An escape, quick and narrow.
597I lie on my bed, pretending to nap.
598The Commander, last night, fingers together, looking at me as I sat rubbing oily lotion into my hands. Odd, I thought about asking him for a cigarette, but decided against it. I know enough not to ask for too much at once. I don't want him to think I'm using him. Also I don't want to interrupt him.
599Last night he had a drink, Scotch and water. He's taken to drinking in my presence, to unwind after the day, he says. I'm to gather he is under pressure. He never offers me any, though, and I don't ask: we both know what my body is for. When I kiss him goodnight, as if I mean it, his breath smells of alcohol, and I breathe it in like smoke. I admit I relish it, this lick of dissipation.
600Sometimes after a few drinks he becomes silly, and cheats at Scrabble. He encourages me to do it too, and we take extra letters and make words with them that don't exist, words like smurt and crup, giggling over them. Sometimes he turns on his short-wave radio, displaying before me a minute or two of Radio Free America, to show me he can. Then he turns it off again. Damn Cubans, he says. All that filth about universal daycare.
601Sometimes, after the games, he sits on the floor beside my chair, holding my hand. His head is a little below mine, so that when he looks up at me it's at a juvenile angle. It must amuse him, this fake subservience.
602He's way up there, says Ofglen. He's at the top, and I mean the very top. At such times it's hard to imagine it.
603Occasionally I try to put myself in his position. I do this as a tactic, to guess in advance how he may be moved to behave towards me. It's difficult for me to believe I have power over him, of any sort, but I do; although it's of an equivocal kind. Once in a while I think I can see myself, though blurrily, as he may see me. There are things he wants to prove to me, gifts he wants to bestow, services he wants to render, tendernesses he wants to inspire.
604He wants, all right. Especially after a few drinks.
605Sometimes he becomes querulous, at other times philosophical; or he wishes to explain things, justify himself. As last night.
606The problem wasn't only with the women, he says. The main problem was with the men. There was nothing for them anymore.
607Nothing? I say. But they had…
608There was nothing for them to do, he says.
609They could make money, I say, a little nastily. Right now I'm not afraid of him. It's hard to be afraid of a man who is sitting watching you put on hand lotion. This lack of fear is dangerous.
610It's not enough, he says. It's too abstract. I mean there was nothing for them to do with women.
611What do you mean? I say. What about all the Pornycorners, it was all over the place, they even had it motorized.
612I'm not talking about sex, he says. That was part of it, the sex was too easy. Anyone could just buy it. There was nothing to work for, nothing to fight for. We have the stats from that time. You know what they were complaining about the most? Inability to feel. Men were turning off on sex, even. They were turning off on marriage.
613Do they feel now? I say.
614Yes, he says, looking at me. They do. He stands up, comes around the desk to the chair where I'm sitting. He puts his hands on my shoulders, from behind. I can't see him.
615I like to know what you think, his voice says, from behind me.
616I don't think a lot, I say lightly. What he wants is intimacy, but I can't give him that.
617There's hardly any point in my thinking, is there? I say. What I think doesn't matter.
618Which is the only reason he can tell me things.
619Come now, he says, pressing a little with his hands. I'm interested in your opinion. You're intelligent enough, you must have an opinion.
620About what? I say.
621What we've done, he says. How things have worked out.
622I hold myself very still. I try to empty my mind. I think about the sky, at night, when there's no moon. I have no opinion, I say.
623He sighs, relaxes his hands, but leaves them on my shoulders. He knows what I think, all right.
624You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, is what he says. We thought we could do better.
625Better? I say, in a small voice. How can he think this is better?
626Better never means better for everyone, he says. It always means worse, for some.
627I lie flat, the damp air above me like a lid. Like earth. I wish it would rain. Better still, a thunderstorm, black clouds, lightning, car-splitting sound. The electricity might go off. I could go down to the kitchen then, say I'm afraid, sit with Rita and Cora around the kitchen table, they would permit my fear because it's one they share, they'd let me in. There would be candles burning, we would watch each other's faces come and go in the flickering, in the white flashes of jagged light from outside the windows. Oh Lord, Cora would say. Oh Lord save us.
628The air would be clear after that, and lighter.
629I look up at the ceiling, the round circle of plaster flowers. Draw a circle, step into it, it will protect you. From the center was the chandelier, and from the chandelier a twisted strip of sheet was hanging down. That's where she was swinging, just lightly, like a pendulum; the way you could swing as a child, hanging by your hands from a tree branch. She was safe then, protected altogether, by the time Cora opened the door. Sometimes I think she's still in here, with me.
630I feel buried.
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640Late afternoon, the sky hazy, the sunlight diffuse but heavy and everywhere, like bronze dust. I glide with Ofglen along the sidewalk; the pair of us, and in front of us another pair, and across the street another. We must look good from a distance: picturesque, like Dutch milkmaids on a wallpaper frieze, like a shelf full of period-costume ceramic salt and pepper shakers, like a flotilla of swans or anything that repeats itself with at least minimum grace and without variation. Soothing to the eye, the eyes, the Eyes, for that's who this show is for. We're off to the Prayvaganza, to demonstrate how obedient and pious we are.
641Not a dandelion in sight here, the lawns are picked clean. I long for one, just one, rubbishy and insolently random and hard to get rid of and perennially yellow as the sun. Cheerful and plebeian, shining for all alike. Rings, we would make from them, and crowns and necklaces, stains from the bitter milk on our fingers. Or I'd hold one under her chin: Do you like butter? Smelling them, she'd get pollen on her nose. Or was that buttercups? Or gone to seed: I can see her, running across the lawn, that lawn there just in front of me, at two, three years old, waving one like a sparkler, a small wand of white fire, the air filling with tiny parachutes. Blow, and you tell the time. All that time, blowing away in the summer breeze. It was daisies for love though, and we did that too.
642We line up to get processed through the checkpoint, standing in our twos and twos and twos, like a private girls' school that went for a walk and stayed out too long. Years and years too long, so that everything has become overgrown, legs, bodies, dresses all together. As if enchanted. A fairy tale, I'd like to believe. Instead we are checked through, in our twos, and continue walking.
643After a while we turn right, heading past Lilies and down towards the river. I wish I could go that far, to where the wide banks are, where we used to lie in the sun, where the bridges arch over. If you went down the river long enough, along its sinewy windings, you'd reach the sea; but what could you do there? Gather shells, loll on the oily stones.
644We aren't going to the river though, we won't see the little cupolas on the buildings down that way, white with blue and gold trim, such chaste gaiety. We turn in at a more modern building, a huge banner draped over its door-WOMEN'S PRAYVAGANZA TODAY. The banner covers the building's former name, some dead president they shot. Below the red writing there's a line of smaller print, in black, with the outline of a winged eye on either side of it: God Is a National Resource. On either side of the doorway stand the inevitable Guardians, two pairs, four in all, arms at their sides, eyes front. They're like store mannequins almost, with their neat hair and pressed uniforms and plaster-hard young faces. No pimply ones today. Each has a submachine gun slung ready, for whatever dangerous or subversive acts they think we might commit inside.
645The Prayvaganza is to be held in the covered courtyard, where there's an oblong space, a skylight roof. It isn't a citywide Prayvaganza, that would be on the football field; it's only for this district. Ranks of folding wooden chairs have been placed along the right side, for the Wives and daughers of high-ranking officials or officers, there's not that much difference. The galleries above, with their concrete railings, are for the lower-ranking women, the Marthas, the Econowives in their multicolored stripes. Attendance at Prayvaganzas isn't compulsory for them, especially if they're on duty or have young children, but the galleries seem to be filling up anyway. I suppose it's a form of entertainment, like a show or a circus. •
646A number of the Wives are already seated, in their best embroi dered blue. We can feel their eyes on us as we walk in our red dresses two by two across to the side opposite them. We are being looked at, assessed, whispered about; we can feel it, like tiny ants running on our bare skins.
647Here there are no chairs. Our area is cordoned off with a silky twisted scarlet rope, like the kind they used to have in movie theaters to restrain the customers. This rope segregates us, marks us off, keeps the others from contamination by us, makes for us a corral or pen; so into it we go, arranging ourselves in rows, which we know very well how to do, kneeling then on the cement floor.
648"Head for the back," Ofglen murmurs at my side. "We can talk better." And when we are kneeling, heads bowed slightly, I can hear from all around us a susurration, like the rustling of insects in tall dry grass: a cloud of whispers. This is one of the places where we can exchange news more freely, pass it from one to the next. It's hard for them to single out any one of us or hear what's being said. And they wouldn't want to interrupt the ceremony, not in front of the television cameras.
649Ofglen digs me in the side with her elbow, to call my attention, and I look up, slowly and stealthily. From where we're kneeling we have a good view of the entrance to the courtyard, where people are steadily coming in. It must be Janine she meant me to see, because there she is, paired with a new woman, not the former one; someone I don't recognize. Janine must have been transferred then, to a new household, a new posting. It's early for that, has something gone wrong with her breast milk? That would be the only reason they'd move her, unless there's been a fight over the baby; which happens more than you'd think. Once she had it, she may have resisted giving it up. I can see that. Her body under the red dress looks very thin, skinny almost, and she's lost that pregnant glow. Her face is white and peaked, as if the juice is being sucked out of her.
650"It was no good, you know," Ofglen says near the side of my head. "It was a shredder after all."
651She means Janine's baby, the baby that passed through Janine on its way to somewhere else. The baby Angela. It was wrong, to name her too soon. I feel an illness, in the pit of my stomach. Not an illness, an emptiness. I don't want to know what was wrong with it. "My God," I say. To go through all that, for nothing. Worse than nothing.
652"It's her second," Ofglen says. "Not counting her own, before. She had an eighth-month miscarriage, didn't you know?"
653We watch as Janine enters the roped-off enclosure, in her veil of untouchability, of bad luck. She sees me, she must see me, but she looks right through me. No smile of triumph this time. She turns, kneels, and all I can see now is her back and the thin bowed shoulders.
654"She thinks it's her fault," Ofglen whispers. "Two in a row. For being sinful. She used a doctor, they say, it wasn't her Commander's at all."
655I can't say I do know or Ofglen will wonder how. As far as she's aware, she herself is my only source, for this kind of information; of which she has a surprising amount. How would she have found out about Janine? The Marthas? Janine's shopping partner? Listening at closed doors, to the Wives over their tea and wine, spinning their webs. Will Serena Joy talk about me like that, if I do as she wants? Agreed to it right away, really she didn't care, anything with two legs and a good you-know-what was fine with her. They aren't squeamish, they don't have the same feelings we do. And the rest of them leaning forward in their chairs, My dear, all horror and prurience. How could she? Where? When?
656As they did no doubt with Janine. "That's terrible," I say. It's like Janine, though, to take it upon herself, to decide the baby's flaws were due to her alone. But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No plot.
657One morning while we were getting dressed, I noticed that Janine was still in her white cotton nightgown. She was just sitting there on the edge of her bed.
658I looked over towards the double doors of the gymnasium, where the Aunt usually stood, to see if she'd noticed, but the Aunt wasn't there. By that time they were more confident about us; sometimes they left us unsupervised in the classroom and even the cafeteria for minutes at a time. Probably she'd ducked out for a smoke or a cup of coffee.
659Look, I said to Alma, who had the bed next to mine.
660Alma looked at Janine. Then we both walked over to her. Get your clothes on, Janine, Alma said, to Janine's white back. We don't want extra prayers on account of you. But Janine didn't move.
661By that time Moira had come over too. It was before she'd broken free, the second time. She was still limping from what they'd done to her feet. She went around the bed so she could see Janine's face.
662Come here, she said to Alma and me. The others were beginning to gather too, there was a little crowd. Go on back, Moira said to them. Don't make a thing of it, what if she walks in?
663I was looking at Janine. Her eyes were open, but they didn't see me at all. They were rounded, wide, and her teeth were bared in a fixed smile. Through the smile, through her teeth, she was whispering to herself. I had to lean down close to her.
664Hello, she said, but not to me. My name's Janine. I'm your wait-person for this morning. Can I get you some coffee to begin with?
665Christ, said Moira, beside me.
666Don't swear, said Alma.
667Moira took Janine by the shoulders and shook her. Snap out of it, Janine, she said roughly. And don't use that word.
668Janine smiled. You have a nice day, now, she said.
669Moira slapped her across the face, twice, back and forth. Get back here, she said. Get right back here! You can't stay there, you aren't there anymore. That's all gone.
670Janine's smile faltered. She put her hand up to her cheek. What did you hit me for? she said. Wasn't it good? I can bring you another. You didn't have to hit me.
671Don't you know what they'll do? Moira said. Her voice was low, but hard, intent. Look at me. My name is Moira and this is the Red Center. Look at me.
672Janine's eyes began to focus. Moira? she said. I don't know any Moira.
673They won't send you to the Infirmary, so don't even think about it, Moira said. They won't mess around with trying to cure you. They won't even bother to ship you to the Colonies. You go too far away and they just take you up to the Chemistry Lab and shoot you. Then they burn you up with the garbage, like an Unwoman. So forsret it.
674I want to go home, Janine said. She began to cry.
675Jesus God, Moira said. That's enough. She'll be here in one minute, I promise you. So put your goddamn clothes on and shut up.
676Janine kept whimpering, but she also stood up and started to dress.
677She does that again and I'm not here, Moira said to me, you just have to slap her like that. You can't let her go slipping over the edge. That stuff is catching.
678She must have already been planning, then, how she was going to get out.
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688The sitting space in the courtyard is filled now; we rustle and wait. At last the Commander in charge of this service comes in. He's balding and squarely built and looks like an aging football coach. He's dressed in his uniform, sober black with the rows of insignia and decorations. It's hard not to be impressed, but I make an effort: I try to imagine him in bed with his wife and his Handmaid, fertilizing away like mad, like a rutting salmon, pretending to take no pleasure in it. When the Lord said be fruitful and multiply, did he mean this man?
689This Commander ascends the steps to the podium, which is draped with a red cloth embroidered with a large white-winged eye. He gazes over the room, and our soft voices die. He doesn't even have to raise his hands. Then his voice goes into the microphone and out through the speakers, robbed of its lower tones so that it's sharply metallic, as if it's being made not by his mouth, his body, but by the speakers themselves. His voice is metal-colored, horn-shaped.
690"Today is a day of thanksgiving," he begins, "a day of praise."
691I tune out through the speech about victory and sacrifice. Then there's a long prayer, about unworthy vessels, then a hymn: "There Is a Balm in Gilead."
692"There Is a Bomb in Gilead," was what Moira used to call it.
693Now comes the main item. The twenty Angels enter, newly returned from the fronts, newly decorated, accompanied by their honor guard, marching one-two one-two into the central open space. Attention, at ease. And now the twenty veiled daughters, in white, come shyly forward, their mothers holding their elbows. It's mothers, not fathers, who give away daughters these days and help with the arrangement of the marriages. The marriages are of course arranged. These girls haven't been allowed to be alone with a man for years; for however many years we've all been doing this.
694Are they old enough to remember anything of the time before, playing baseball, in jeans and sneakers, riding their bicycles? Reading books, all by themselves? Even though some of them are no more than fourteen-Start them soon is the policy, there's not a moment to be lost-still they'll remember. And the ones after them will, for three or four or five years; but after that they won't. They'll always have been in white, in groups of girls; they'll always have been silent.
695We've given them more than we've taken away, said the Commander. Think of the trouble they had before. Don't you remember the singles' bars, the indignity of high school blind dates? The meat market. Don't you remember the terrible gap between the ones who could get a man easily and the ones who couldn't? Some of them were desperate, they starved themselves thin or pumped their breasts full of silicone, had their noses cut off. Think of the human misery.
696He waved a hand at his stacks of old magazines. They were always complaining. Problems this, problems that. Remember the ads in the Personal columns, Bright attractive woman, thirty-five… This way they all get a man, nobody's left out. And then if they did marry, they could be left with a kid, two kids, the husband might just get fed up and take off, disappear, they'd have to go on welfare. Or else he'd stay around and beat them up. Or if they had A job, the children in daycare or left with some brutal ignorant woman, and they'd have to pay for that themselves, out of their wretched little paychecks. Money was the only measure of worth, lor everyone, they got no respect as mothers. No wonder they were giving up on the whole business. This way they're protected, they can fulfill their biological destinies in peace. With full support and encouragement. Now, tell me. You're an intelligent person, I like to hear what you think. What did we overlook?
697Love, I said.
698Love? said the Commander. What kind of love?
699Falling in love, I said. The Commander looked at me with his candid boy's eyes.
700Oh yes, he said. I've read the magazines, that's what they were pushing, wasn't it? But look at the stats, my dear. Was it really worth it, falling in love? Arranged marriages have always worked out just as well, if not better.
701Love, said Aunt Lydia with distaste. Don't let me catch you at it. No mooning and June-ing around here, girls. Wagging her finger at us. Love is not the point.
702Those years were just an anomaly, historically speaking, the Commander said. Just a fluke. All we've done is return things to Nature's norm.
703Women's Prayvaganzas are for group weddings like this, usually. The men's are for military victories. These are the things we are supposed to rejoice in the most, respectively. Sometimes though, for the women, they're for a nun who recants. Most of that happened earlier, when they were rounding them up, but they still unearth a few these days, dredge them up from underground, where they've been hiding, like moles. They have that look about them too: weak-eyed, stunned by too much light. The old ones they send off to the Colonies right away, but the young fertile ones they try to convert, and when they succeed we all come here to watch them go through the ceremony, renounce their celibacy, sacrifice it to the common good. They kneel and the Commander prays and then they take the red veil, as the rest of us have done. They aren't allowed to become Wives though; they're considered, still, too dangerous for positions of such power. There's an odor of witch about them, something mysterious and exotic; it remains despite the scrubbing and the welts on their feet and the time they've spent in Solitary. They always have those welts, they've always done that time, so rumor goes: they don't let go easily. Many of them choose the Colonies instead. None of us likes to draw one for a shopping partner. They are more broken than the rest of us; it's hard to feel comfortable with them.
704The mothers have stood the white-veiled girls in place and have returned to their chairs. There's a little crying going on among them, some mutual patting and hand-holding, the ostentatious use of handkerchiefs. The Commander continues with the service:
705"I will that women adorn themselves in modest apparel," he says, "with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array;
706"But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works.
707"Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection." Here he looks us over. "All," he repeats.
708"But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
709"For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
710"And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
711"Notwithstanding she shall be saved by childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety."
712Saved by childbearing, I think. What did we suppose would save us, in the time before?
713"He should tell that to the Wives," Ofglen murmurs, "when they're into the sherry." She means the part about sobriety. It's safe to talk again, the Commander has finished the main ritual and they're doing the rings, lifting the veils. Boo, I think in my head. Take a good look, because it's too late now. The Angels will qualify for Handmaids, later, especially if their new Wives can't produce. But you girls are stuck. What you see is what you get, zits and all. But you aren't expected to love him. You'll find that out soon enough. Just do your duty in silence. When in doubt, when flat on your back, you can look at the ceiling. Who knows what you may sec, up there? Funeral wreaths and angels, constellations of dust, stellar or otherwise, the puzzles left by spiders. There's always something to occupy the inquiring mind.
714Is anything wrong, dear? the old joke went. No, why? You moved. Just don't move.
715What we're aiming for, says Aunt Lydia, is a spirit of camaraderie among women. We must all pull together.
716Camaraderie, shit, says Moira through the hole in the toilet cubicle. Right fucking on, Aunt Lydia, as they used to say. How much you want to bet she's got Janine down on her knees? What you think they get up to in that office of hers? I bet she's got her working away on that dried-up old withered-.
717Moira! I say.
718Moira what? she whispers. You know you've thought it.
719It doesn't do any good to talk like that, I say, feeling nevertheless the impulse to giggle. But I still pretended to myself, then, that we should try to preserve something resembling dignity.
720You were always such a wimp, Moira says, but with affection. It does so do good. It does.
721And she's right, I know that now, as I kneel on this undeniably hard floor, listening to the ceremony drone on. There is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power. There's something delightful about it, something naughty, secretive, forbidden, thrilling. It's like a spell, of sorts. It deflates them, reduces them to the common denominator where they can be dealt with. In the paint of the washroom cubicle someone unknown had scratched: Aunt Lydia sucks. It was like a flag waved from a hilltop in rebellion. The mere idea of Aunt Lydia doing such a thing was in itself heartening.
722So now I imagine, among these Angels and their drained white brides, momentous grunts and sweating, damp furry encounters; or, better, ignominious failures, cocks like three-week-old carrots, anguished fumblings upon flesh cold and unresponding as uncooked fish.
723When it's over at last and we are walking out, Ofglen says to me in her light, penetrating whisper: "We know you're seeing him alone."
724"Who?" I say, resisting the urge to look at her. I know who.
725"Your Commander," she says. "We know you have been."
726I ask her how.
727"We just know," she says. "What does he want? Kinky sex?"
728It would be hard to explain to her what he does want, because I still have no name for it. How can I describe what really goes on between us? She would laugh, for one thing. It's easier for me to say, "In a way." That at least has the dignity of coercion.
729She thinks about this. "You'd be surprised," she says, "how many of them do."
730"I can't help it," I say. "I can't say I won't go." She ought to know that.
731We're on the sidewalk now and it's not safe to talk, we're too close to the others and the protective whispering of the crowd is gone. We walk in silence, lagging behind, until finally she judges she can say, "Of course you can't. But find out and tell us."
732"Find out what?" I say.
733I feel rather than see the slight turning of her head. "Anything you can."
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743Now there's a space to be filled, in the too-warm air of my room, and a time also; a space-time, between here and now and there and then, punctuated by dinner. The arrival of the tray, carried up the stairs as if for an invalid. An invalid, one who has been invalidated. No valid passport. No exit.
744That was what happened, the day we tried to cross at the border, with our fresh passports that said we were not who we were: that Luke, for instance, had never been divorced, that we were therefore lawful, under the law.
745The man went inside with our passports, after we'd explained about the picnic and he'd glanced into the car and seen our daughter asleep, in her zoo of mangy animals. Luke patted my arm and got out of the car as if to stretch his legs and watched the man through the window of the immigration building. I stayed in the car. I lit a cigarette, to steady myself, and drew the smoke in, a long breath of counterfeit relaxation. I was watching two soldiers in the unfamiliar uniforms that were beginning, by then, to be familiar; they were standing idly beside the yellow-and-black-striped lift-up barrier. They weren't doing much. One of them was watching a flock of birds, gulls, lifting and eddying and landing on the bridge railing beyond. Watching him, I watched themtoo. Every-thing was the color it usually is, only brighter.
746It's going to be all right, I said, prayed in my head. Oh let it. Let us cross, let us across. Just this once and I'll do anything. What I thought I could do for whoever was listening that would be of the least use or even interest I'll never know.
747Then Luke got back into the car, too fast, and turned the key and reversed. He was picking up the phone, he said. And then he began to drive very quickly, and after that there was the dirt road and the woods and we jumped out of the car and began to run. A cottage, to hide in, a boat, I don't know what we thought. He said the passports were foolproof, and we had so little time to plan. Maybe he had a plan, a map of some kind in his head. As for me, I was only running: away, away.
748I don't want to be telling this story.
749I don't have to tell it. I don't have to tell anything, to myself or to anyone else. I could just sit here, peacefully. I could withdraw. It's possible to go so far in, so far down and back, they could never get you out.
750Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Fat lot of good it did her.
751Why fight?
752That will never do.
753lx›ve? said the Commander.
754That's better. That's something I know about. We can talk about that.
755Falling in love, I said. Falling into it, we all did then, one way or another. How could he have made such light of it? Sneered even. As if it was trivial for us, a frill, a whim. It was, on the contrary, heavy going. It was the central thing; it was the way you understood yourself; if it never happened to you, not ever, you would be like a mutant, a creature from outer space. Everyone knew that.
756Falling in love, we said; I fell for him. We were falling women. We believed in it, this downward motion: so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so extreme, so unlikely. God is love, they once said, but we reversed that, and love, like heaven, was always just around the corner. The more difficult it was to love the particular man beside us, the more we believed in Love, abstract and total. We were waiting, always, for the incarnation. That word, made flesh.
757And sometimes it happened, for a time. That kind of love comes and goes and is hard to remember afterwards, like pain. You would look at the man one day and you would think, / loved you, and the tense would be past, and you would be filled with a sense of wonder, because it was such an amazing and precarious and dumb thing to have done; and you would know too why your friends had been evasive about it, at the time.
758There is a good deal of comfort, now, in remembering this.
759Or sometimes, even when you were still loving, still falling, you'd wake up in the middle of the night, when the moonlight was coming through the window onto his sleeping face, making the shadows in the sockets of his eyes darker and more cavernous than in daytime, and you'd think, Who knows what they do, on their own or with other men? Who knows what they say or where they are likely to go? Who can tell what they really are? Under their daily-ness.
760Likely you would think at those times: What if he doesn't love me?
761Or you'd remember stories you'd read, in the newspapers, about women who had been found-often women but sometimes they would be men, or children, that was the worst-in ditches or forests or refrigerators in abandoned rented rooms, with their clothes on or off, sexually abused or not; at any rate killed. There were places you didn't want to walk, precautions you took that had to do with locks on windows and doors, drawing the curtains, leaving on lights. These things you did were like prayers; you did them and you hoped they would save you. And for the most part they did. Or something did; you could tell by the fact that you were still alive.
762But all of that was pertinent only in the night, and had nothing to do with the man you loved, at least in daylight. With that man you wanted it to work, to work out. Working out was also something you did to keep your body in shape, for the man. If you worked out enough, maybe the man would too. Maybe you would be able to work it out together, as if the two of you were a puzzle that could be solved; otherwise, one of you, most likely the man, would go wandering off on a trajectory of his own, taking his addictive body with him and leaving you with bad withdrawal, which you could counteract by exercise. If you didn't work it out it was because one of you had the wrong attitude. Everything that went on in your life was thought to be due to some positive or negative power emanating from inside your head.
763If you don't like it, change it, we said, to each other and to ourselves. And so we would change the man, for another one. Change, we were sure, was for the better always. We were revisionists; what we revised was ourselves.
764It's strange to remember how we used to think, as if everything were available to us, as if there were no contingencies, no boundaries; as if we were free to shape and reshape forever the ever-expanding perimeters of our lives. I was like that too, I did that too. Luke was not the first man for me, and he might not have been the last. If he hadn't been frozen that way. Stopped dead in time, in midair, among the trees back there, in the act of falling.
765In former times they would send you a little package, of the belongings: what he had with him when he died. That's what they would do, in wartime, my mother said. How long were you supposed to mourn, and what did they say? Make your life a tribute to the loved one. And he was, the loved. One.
766Is, I say. Is, is, only two letters, you stupid shit, can't you manage to remember it, even a short word like that?
767I wipe my sleeve across my face. Once I wouldn't have done that, for fear of smearing, but now nothing comes off. Whatever expression is there, unseen by me, is real.
768You'll have to forgive me. I'm a refugee from the past, and like other refugees I go over the customs and habits of being I've left or been forced to leave behind me, and it all seems just as quaint, from here, and I am just as obsessive about it. Like a White Russian drinking tea in Paris, marooned in the twentieth century, I wander back, try to regain those distant pathways; I become too maudlin, lose myself. Weep. Weeping is what it is, not crying. I sit in this chair and ooze like a sponge.
769So. More waiting. Lady in waiting: that's what they used to call (hose stores where you could buy maternity clothes. Woman in waiting sounds more like someone in a train station. Waiting is also a place: it is wherever you wait. For me it's this room. I am a blank, here, between parentheses. Between other people
770The knock comes at my door. Cora, with the tray.
771But it isn't Cora. "I've brought it for you," says Serena Joy.
772And then I look up and around, and get out of my chair and come towards her. She's holding it, a Polaroid print, square and glossy. So they still make them, cameras like that. And there will be family albums, too, with all the children in them; no Handmaids though. From the point of view of future history, this kind, we'll be invisible. But the children will be in them all right, something for the Wives to look at, downstairs, nibbling at the buffet and waiting for the Birth.
773"You can only have it for a minute," Serena Joy says, her voice low and conspiratorial. "I have to return it, before they know it's missing."
774It must have been a Martha who got it for her. There's a network of the Marthas, then, with something in it for them. That's nice to know.
775I take it from her, turn it around so I can see it right-side-up. Is this her, is this what she's like? My treasure.
776So tall and changed. Smiling a little now, so soon, and in her white dress as if for an olden-days First Communion.
777Time has not stood still. It has washed over me, washed me away, as if I'm nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water. I have been obliterated for her. I am only a shadow now, far back behind the glib shiny surface of this photograph. A shadow of a shadow, as dead mothers become. You can see it in her eyes: I am not there.
778But she exists, in her white dress. She grows and lives. Isn't that a good thing? A blessing?
779Still, I can't bear it, to have been erased like that. Better she'd brought me nothing.
780I sit at the little table, eating creamed corn with a fork. I have a fork and a spoon, but never a knife. When there's meat they cut it up for me ahead of time, as if I'm lacking manual skills or teeth. I have both, however. That's why I'm not allowed a knife.
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790I knock on his door, hear his voice, adjust my face, go in. He's standing by the fireplace; in his hand he's got an almost-empty drink. He usually waits till I get here to start on the hard liquor, though I know they have wine with dinner. His face is a little flushed. I try to estimate how many he's had.
791"Greetings," he says. "How is the fair little one this evening?"
792A few, I can tell by the elaborateness of the smile he composes and aims. He's in the courtly phase.
793"I'm fine," I say.
794"Up for a little excitement?"
795"Pardon?" I say. Behind this act of his I sense embarrassment, an uncertainty about how far he can go with me, and in what direction.
796"Tonight I have a little surprise for you," he says. He laughs; it's more like a snigger. I notice that everything this evening is little. He wishes to diminish things, myself included. "Something you'll like."
797"What's that?" I say. "Chinese checkers?" I can take these liber-ties; he appears to enjoy them, especially after a couple of drinks. I le prefers me frivolous.
798"Something better," he says, attempting to be tantalizing.
799"I can hardly wait."
800"Good," he says. He goes to his desk, fumbles with a drawer. Then he conies towards me, one hand behind his back.
801"Guess," he says.
802"Animal, vegetable, or mineral?" I say.
803"Oh, animal," he says with mock gravity. "Definitely animal, I'd say." He brings his hand out from behind his back. He's holding a handful, it seems, of feathers, mauve and pink. Now he shakes this out. It's a garment, apparently, and for a woman: there are the cups for the breasts, covered in purple sequins. The sequins are tiny stars. The feathers are around the thigh holes, and along the top. So I wasn't that wrong about the girdle, after all.
804I wonder where he found it. All such clothing was supposed to have been destroyed. I remember seeing that on television, in news clips filmed in one city after another. In New York it was called the Manhattan Cleanup. There were bonfires in Times Square, crowds chanting around them, women throwing their arms up thankfully into the air when they felt the cameras on them, clean-cut stony-faced young men tossing things onto the flames, armfuls of silk and nylon and fake fur, lime-green, red, violet; black satin, gold lame glittering silver; bikini underpants, see-through brassieres with pink satin hearts sewn on to cover the nipples. And the manufacturers and importers and salesmen down on their knees, repenting in public, conical paper hats like dunce hats on their heads, SHAME printed on them in red.
805But some items must have survived the burning, they couldn't possibly have got it all. He must have come by this in the same way he came by the magazines, not honestly: it reeks of black market. And it's not new, it's been worn before, the cloth under the arms is crumpled and slightly stained, with some other woman's sweat.
806"I had to guess the size," he says. "I hope it fits."
807"You expect me to put that on?" I say. I know my voice sounds prudish, disapproving. Still there is something attractive in the idea. I've never worn anything remotely like this, so glittering and theatrical, and that's what it must be, an old theater costume, or something from a vanished nightclub act; the closest I ever came were bathing suits, and a camisole set, peach lace, that Luke bought for me once. Yet there's an enticement in this thing, it carries with it the childish allure of dressing up. And it would be so flaunting, such a sneer at the Aunts, so sinful, so free. Freedom, like everything else, is relative.
808"Well," I say, not wishing to seem too eager. I want him to feel I'm doing him a favor. Now we may come to it, his deep-down real desire. Does he have a pony whip, hidden behind the door? Will he produce boots, bend himself or me over the desk?
809"It's a disguise," he says. "You'll need to paint your face too; I've got the stuff for it. You'll never get in without it."
810"In where?" I ask.
811"Tonight I'm taking you out."
812"Out?" It's an archaic phrase. Surely there is nowhere, anymore, where a man can take a woman, out.
813"Out of here," he says.
814I know without being told that what he's proposing is risky, for him but especially for me; but I want to go anyway. I want anything that breaks the monotony, subverts the perceived respectable order of things.
815I tell him I don't want him to watch me while I put this thing on; I'm still shy in front of him, about my body. He says he will turn his back, and does so, and I take off my shoes and stockings and my cotton underpants and slide the feathers on, under the tent of my dress. Then I take off the dress itself and slip the thin se-quined straps over my shoulders. There are shoes, too, mauve ones with absurdly high heels. Nothing quite fits; the shoes are a little too big, the waist on the costume is too tight, but it will do.
816"There," I say, and he turns around. I feel stupid; I want to see myself in a mirror.
817"Charming," he says. "Now for the face."
818All he has is a lipstick, old and runny and smelling of artificial grapes, and some eyeliner and mascara. No eye shadow, no blusher. For a moment I think I won't remember how to do any of this, and my first try with the eyeliner leaves me with a smudged black lid, as if I've been in a fight; but I wipe it off with the vegetable-oil hand lotion and try again. I rub some of the lipstick along my cheekbones, blending it in. While I do all this, he holds a large silver-backed hand mirror for me. I recognize it as Serena Joy's. He must have borrowed it from her room.
819Nothing can be done about my hair.
820"Terrific," he says. By this time he is quite excited; it's as if we're dressing for a party.
821He goes to the cupboard and gets out a cloak, with a hood. It's light blue, the color for Wives. This too must be Serena's.
822"Pull the hood down over your face," he says. "Try not to smear the make-up. It's for getting through the checkpoints."
823"But what about my pass?" I say.
824"Don't worry about that," he says. "I've got one for you."
825And so we set out.
826We glide together through the darkening streets. The Commander has hold of my right hand, as if we're teenagers at the movies. I clutch the sky-blue cape tightly about me, as a good Wife should. Through the tunnel made by the hood I can see the back of Nick's head. His hat is on straight, he's sitting up straight, his neck is straight, he is all very straight. His posture disapproves of me, or am I imagining it? Does he know what I've got on under this cloak, did he procure it? And if so, does this make him angry or lustful or envious or anything at all? We do have something in common: both of us are supposed to be invisible, both of us are functionaries. I wonder if he knows this. When he opened the door of the car for the Commander, and, by extension, for me, I tried to catch his eye, make him look at me, but he acted as if he didn't see me. Why not? It's a soft job for him, running little errands, doing little favors, and there's no way he'd want to jeopardize it.
827The checkpoints are no problem, everything goes as smoothly as the Commander said it would, despite the heavy pounding, the pressure of blood in my head. Chickenshit, Moira would say.
828Past the second checkpoint, Nick says, "Here, sir?" and the Commander says yes.
829The car pulls over and the Commander says, "Now I'll have to ask you to get down onto the floor of the car."
830"Down?" I say.
831"We have to go through the gateway," he says, as if this means something to me. I tried to ask him where we were going, but he said he wanted to surprise me. "Wives aren't allowed."
832So I flatten myself and the car starts again, and for the next few minutes I see nothing. Under the cloak it's stifling hot. It's a winter cloak, not a cotton summer one, and it smells of mothballs. He must have borrowed it from storage, knowing she wouldn't notice. He has considerately moved his feet to give me room. Nevertheless my forehead is against his shoes. I have never been this close to his shoes before. They feel hard, unwinking, like the shells of beetles: black, polished, inscrutable. They seem to have nothing to do with feet.
833We pass through another checkpoint. I hear the voices, impersonal, deferential, and the window rolling electrically down and up for the passes to be shown. This time he won't show mine, the one that's supposed to be mine, as I'm no longer in official existence, for now.
834Then the car starts and then it stops again, and the Commander is helping me up.
835"We'll have to be fast," he says. "This is a back entrance. You should leave the cloak with Nick. On the hour, as usual," he says to Nick. So this too is something he's done before.
836He helps me out of the cloak; the car door is opened. I feel air on my almost-bare skin, and realize I've been sweating. As I turn to shut the car door behind me I can see Nick looking at me through the glass. He sees me now. Is it contempt I read, or indifference, is this merely what he expected of me?
837We're in an alleyway behind a building, red brick and fairly modern. A bank of trash cans is set out beside the door, and there's a smell of fried chicken, going bad. The Commander has a key to the door, which is plain and gray and flush with the wall and, I think, made of steel. Inside it there's a concrete-block corridor lit with fluorescent overhead lights; some kind of functional tunnel.
838"Here," the Commander says. He slips around my wrist a tag, purple, on an elastic band, like the tags for airport luggage. "If anyone asks you, say you're an evening rental," he says. He takes me by the bare upper arm and steers me forward. What I want is a mirror, to see if my lipstick is all right, whether the feathers are too ridiculous, too frowzy. In this light I must look lurid. Though it's too late now.
839Idiot, says Moira.
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849We go along the corridor and through another flat gray door and along another corridor, softly lit and carpeted this time, in a mushroom color, browny pink. Doors open off it, with numbers on them: a hundred and one, a hundred and two, the way you count during a thunderstorm, to see how close you are to being struck. It's a hotel then. From behind one of the doors comes laughter, a man's and also a woman's. It's a long time since I've heard that.
850We emerge into a central courtyard. It's wide and also high: it goes up several stories to a skylight at the top. There's a fountain in the middle of it, a round fountain spraying water in the shape of a dandelion gone to seed. Potted plants and trees sprout here and there, vines hang down from the balconies. Oval-sided glass elevators slide up and down the walls like giant mollusks.
851I know where I am. I've been here before: with Luke, in the afternoons, a long time ago. It was a hotel, then. Now it's full of women.
852I stand still and stare at them. I can stare, here, look around me, there are no white wings to keep me from it. My head, shorn of them, feels curiously light; as if a weight has been removed from it, or substance.
853The women are sitting, lounging, strolling, leaning against one another. There are men mingled with them, a lot of men, but in their dark uniforms or suits, so similar to one another, they form only a kind of background. The women on the other hand are tropical, they are dressed in all kinds of bright festive gear. Some of them have on outfits like mine, feathers and glister, cut high up the thighs, low over the breasts. Some are in olden-days lingerie, shor-tie nightgowns, baby-doll pajamas, the occasional see-through negligee. Some are in bathing suits, one piece or bikini; one, I see, is wearing a crocheted affair, with big scallop shells covering the tits. Some are in jogging shorts and sun halters, some in exercise costumes like the ones they used to show on television, body-tight, with knitted pastel leg warmers. There are even a few in cheerleaders' outfits, little pleated skirts, outsized letters across the chest. I guess they've had to fall back on a melange, whatever they could scrounge or salvage. All wear make-up, and I realize how unaccustomed I've become to seeing it, on women, because their eyes look too big to me, too dark and shimmering, their mouths too red, too wet, blood-dipped and glistening; or, on the other hand, too clownish.
854At first glance there's a cheerfulness to this scene. It's like a masquerade party; they are like oversize children, dressed up in togs they've rummaged from trunks. Is there joy in this? There could be, but have they chosen it? You can't tell by looking.
855There are a great many buttocks in this room. I am no longer used to them.
856"It's like walking into the past," says the Commander. His voice sounds pleased, delighted even. "Don't you think?"
857I try to remember if the past was exactly like this. I'm not sure, now. I know it contained these things, but somehow the mix is different. A movie about the past is not the same as the past.
858"Yes," I say. What I feel is not one simple thing. Certainly I am not dismayed by these women, not shocked by them. I recognize them as truants. The official creed denies them, denies their very existence, yet here they are. That is at least something.
859"Don't gawk," says the Commander. "You'll give yourself away. Just act natural." Again he leads me forward. Another man has spotted him, has greeted him and set himself in motion towards us. The Commander's grip tightens on my upper arm. "Steady," he whispers. "Don't lose your nerve."
860All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard.
861The Commander does the talking for me, to this man and to the others who follow him. He doesn't say much about me, he doesn't need to. He says I'm new, and they look at me and dismiss me and confer together about other things. My disguise performs its function.
862He retains hold of my arm, and as he talks his spine straightens imperceptibly, his chest expands, his voice assumes more and more the sprightliness and jocularity of youth. It occurs to me he is showing off. He is showing me off, to them, and they understand that, they are decorous enough, they keep their hands to themselves, but they review my breasts, my legs, as if there's no reason why they shouldn't. But also he is showing off to me. He is demonstrating, to me, his mastery of the world. He's breaking the rules, under their noses, thumbing his nose at them, getting away with it. Perhaps he's reached that state of intoxication which power is said to inspire, the state in which you believe you are indispensable and can therefore do anything, absolutely anything you feel like, anything at all. Twice, when he thinks no one is looking, he winks at me.
863It's a juvenile display, the whole act, and pathetic; but it's something I understand.
864When he's done enough of this he leads me away again, to a puffy flowered sofa of the kind they once had in hotel lobbies; in this lobby, in fact, it's a floral design I remember, dark blue background, pink art nouveau flowers. "I thought your feet might be getting tired," he says, "in those shoes." He's right about that, and I'm grateful. He sits me down, and sits himself down beside me. He puts an arm around my shoulders. The fabric is raspy against my skin, so unaccustomed lately to being touched.
865"Well?" he says. "What do you think of our little club?"
866I look around me again. The men are not homogeneous, as I first thought. Over by the fountain there's a group of Japanese, in lightish-gray suits, and in the far corner there's a splash of white: Arabs, in those long bathrobes they wear, the headgear, the striped sweat-bands.
867"It's a club?" I say.
868"Well, that's what we call it, among ourselves. The club."
869"I thought this sort of thing was strictly forbidden," I say.
870"Well, officially," he says. "But everyone's human, after all."
871I wait for him to elaborate on this, but he doesn't, so I say, "What does than mean?"
872"It means you can't cheat Nature," he says. "Nature demands variety, for men. It stands to reason, it's part of the procreational strategy. It's Nature's plan." I don't say anything, so he goes on. "Women know that instinctively. Why did they buy so many different clothes, in the old days? To trick the men into thinking they were several different women. A new one each day."
873He says this as if he believes it, but he says many things that way. Maybe he believes it, maybe he doesn't, or maybe he does both at the same time. Impossible to tell what he believes.
874"So now that we don't have different clothes," I say, "you merely have different women." This is irony, but he doesn't acknowledge it.
875"It solves a lot of problems," he says, without a twitch.
876I don't reply to this. I am getting fed up with him. I feel like freezing on him, passing the rest of the evening in sulky wordlessness. But I can't afford that and I know it. Whatever this is, it's still an evening out.
877What I'd really like to do is talk with the women, but I see scant chance of that.
878"Who are these people?" I ask him.
879"It's only for officers," he says. "From all branches; and senior officials. And trade delegations, of course. It stimulates trade. It's a good place to meet people. You can hardly do business without it. We try to provide at least as good as they can get elsewhere. You can overhear things too; information. A man will sometimes tell a woman things he wouldn't tell another man."
880"No," I say, "I mean the women."
881"Oh," he says. "Well, some of them are real pros. Working girls"-he laughs-"from the time before. They couldn't be assimilated; anyway, most of them prefer it here."
882"And the others?"
883"The others?" he says. "Well, we have quite a collection. That one there, the one in green, she's a sociologist. Or was. That one was a lawyer, that one was in business, an executive position; some sort of fast-food chain or maybe it was hotels. I'm told you can have quite a good conversation with her if all you feel like is talking. They prefer it here, too."
884"Prefer it to what?" I say.
885"To the alternatives," he says. "You might even prefer it yourself, to what you've got." He says this coyly, he's fishing, he wants to be complimented, and I know that the serious part of the conversation has come to an end.
886"I don't know," I say, as if considering it. "It might be hard work."
887"You'd have to watch your weight, that's for sure," he says. "They're strict about that. Gain ten pounds and they put you in Solitary." Is he joking? Most likely, but I don't want to know.
888"Now," he says, "to get you into the spirit of the place, how about a little drink?"
889"I'm not supposed to," I say. "As you know."
890"Once won't hurt," he says. "Anyway, it wouldn't look right if' you didn't. No nicotine-and-alcohol taboos here! You see, they do have some advantages here."
891"All right," I say. Secretly I like the idea, I haven't had a drink for years.
892"What'll it be, then?" he says. "They've got everything here. Imported."
893"A gin and tonic," I say. "But weak, please. I wouldn't want to disgrace you."
894"You won't do that," he says, grinning. He stands up, then, surprisingly, takes my hand and kisses it, on the palm. Then he moves off, heading for the bar. He could have called over a waitress, there are some of these, in identical black miniskirts with pompoms on their breasts, but they seem busy and hard to flag down.
895Then I see her. Moira. She's standing with two other women, over near the fountain. I have to look hard, again, to make sure it's her; I do this in pulses, quick flickers of the eyes, so no one will notice. She's dressed absurdly, in a black outfit of once-shiny satin that looks the worse for wear. It's strapless, wired from the inside, pushing up the breasts, but it doesn't quite fit Moira, it's too large, so that one breast is plumped out and the other one isn't. She's'tugging absent-mindedly at the top, pulling it up. There's a wad of cotton attached to the back, I can see it as she half turns; it looks like a sanitary pad that's been popped like a piece of popcorn. I realize that it's supposed to be a tail. Attached to her head are two ears, of a rabbit or deer, it's not easy to tell; one of the ears has lost its starch or wiring and is flopping halfway down. She has a black bow tie around her neck and is wearing black net stockings and black high heels. She always hated high heels.
896The whole costume, antique and bizarre, reminds me of something from the past, but I can't think what. A stage play, a musical comedy? Girls dressed for Easter, in rabbit suits. What is the significance of it here, why are rabbits supposed to be sexually attractive to men? How can this bedraggled costume appeal?
897Moira is smoking a cigarette. She takes a drag, passes it to the woman on her left, who's in red spangles with a long pointed tail attached, and silver horns; a devil outfit. Now she has her arms folded across her front, under her wired-up breasts. She stands on one foot, then the other, her feet must hurt; her spine sags slightly. She gazes without interest or speculation around the room. This must be familiar scenery.
898I will her to look at me, to see me, but her eyes slide over me as if I'm just another palm tree, another chair. Surely she must turn, I'm willing so hard, she must look at me, before one of the men comes over to her, before she disappears. Already the other women with her, the blonde in the short pink bed jacket with the tatty fur trim, has been appropriated, has entered the glass elevator, has ascended out of sight. Moira swivels her head around again, checking perhaps for prospects. It must be hard to stand there unclaimed, as if she's at a high school dance, being looked over. This time her eyes snag on me. She sees me. She knows enough not to react.
899We stare at one another, keeping our faces blank, apathetic. Then she makes a small motion of her head, a slight jerk to the right. She takes the cigarette back from the woman in red, holds it to her mouth, lets her hand rest in the air a moment, all five fingers outspread. Then she turns her back on me.
900Our old signal. I have five minutes to get to the women's wash room, which must be somewhere to her right. I look around: no sign of it. Nor can I risk getting up and walking anywhere, without the Commander. I don't know enough, I don't know the ropes, I might be challenged.
901A minute, two. Moira begins to saunter off, not glancing around. She can only hope I've understood her and will follow.
902The Commander comes back, with two drinks. He smiles down at me, places the drinks on the long black coffee table in front of the sofa, sits. "Enjoying yourself?" he says. He wants me to. This after all is a treat.
903I smile at him. "Is there a washroom?" I say.
904"Of course," he says. He sips at his drink. He does not volunteer directions.
905"I need to go to it." I am counting in my head now, seconds, not minutes.
906"It's over there." He nods.
907"What if someone stops me?"
908"Just show them your tag," he says. "It'll be all right. They'll know you're taken."
909I get up, wobble across the room. I lurch a little, near the fountain, almost fall. It's the heels. Without the Commander's arm to steady me I'm off balance. Several of the men look at me, with surprise I think rather than lust. I feel like a fool. I hold my left arm conspicuously in front of me, bent at the elbow, with the tag turned outward. Nobody says anything.
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913
914
915
91638
917
918
919I find the entrance to the women's washroom. It still says Ladies, in scrolly gold script. There's a corridor leading in to the door, and a woman seated at a table beside it, supervising the entrances and exits. She's an older woman, wearing a purple caftan and gold eyeshadow, but I can tell she is nevertheless an Aunt. The cattle prod's on the table, its thong around her wrist. No nonsense here.
920"Fifteen minutes," she says to me. She gives me an oblong of purple cardboard from a stack of them on the table. It's like a fitting room, in the department stores of the time before. To the woman behind me I hear her say, "You were just here."
921"I need to go again," the woman says.
922"Rest break once an hour," says the Aunt. "You know the rules."
923The woman begins to protest, in a whiny desperate voice. I push open the door.
924I remember this. There's a rest area, gently lit in pinkish tones, with several easy chairs and a sofa, in a lime-green bamboo-shoot print, with a wall clock above it in a gold filigree frame. Here they haven't removed the mirror, there's a long one opposite the sofa. You need to know, here, what you look like. Through an archway beyond there's the row of toilet cubicles, also pink, and washbasins and more mirrors.
925Several women are sitting in the chairs and on the sofa, with their shoes off, smoking. They stare at me as I come in. There's perfume in the air and stale smoke, and the scent of working flesh.
926"You new?" one of them says.
927"Yes," I say, looking around for Moira, who is nowhere in sight.
928The women don't smile. They return to their smoking as if it's serious business. In the room beyond, a woman in a cat suit with a tail made of orange fake fur is redoing her make-up. This is like backstage: grease paint, smoke, the materials of illusion.
929I stand hesitant, not knowing what to do. I don't want to ask about Moira, I don't know whether it's safe. Then a toilet flushes and Moira comes out of a pink cubicle. She teeters towards me; I wait for a sign.
930"It's all right," she says, to me and to the other women. "I know her." The others smile now, and Moira hugs me. My arms go around her, the wires propping up her breasts dig into my chest. We kiss each other, on one cheek, then the other. Then we stand back.
931"Godawful," she says. She grins at me. "You look like the Whore of Babylon."
932"Isn't that what I'm supposed to look like?" I say. "You look like something the cat dragged in."
933"Yes," she says, pulling up her front, "not my style and this thing is about to fall to shreds. I wish they'd dredge up someone who still knows how to make them. Then I could get something halfway decent."
934"You pick that out?" I say. I wonder if maybe she'd chosen it, out of the others, because it was less garish. At least it's only black and white.
935"Hell no," she says. "Government issue. I guess they thought it was me."
936I still can't believe it's her. I touch her arm again. Then I begin to cry.
937"Don't do that," she says. "Your eyes'll run. Anyway there isn't time. Shove over." This she says to the two women on the sofa, her usual peremptory rough-cut slapdash manner, and as usual she gets away with it.
938"My break's up anyway," says one woman, who's wearing a baby-blue laced-up Merry Widow and white stockings. She stands up, shakes my hand. "Welcome," she says.
939The other woman obligingly moves over, and Moira and I sit down. The first thing we do is take off our shoes.
940"What the hell are you doing here?" Moira says then. "Not that it isn't great to see you. But it's not so great for you. What'd you do wrong? Laugh at his dick?"
941I look up at the ceiling. "Is it bugged?" I say. I wipe around my eyes, gingerly, with my fingertips. Black comes off.
942"Probably," says Moira. "You want a cig?"
943"I'd love one," I say.
944"Here," she says to the woman next to her. "Lend me one, will you?"
945The woman hands over, ungrudging. Moira is still a skillful borrower. I smile at that.
946"On the other hand, it might not be," says Moira. "I can't imagine they'd care about anything we have to say. They've already heard most of it, and anyway nobody gets out of here except in a black van. But you must know that, if you're here."
947I pull her head over so I can whisper in her ear. "I'm temporary," I tell her. "It's just tonight. I'm not supposed to be here at all. He smuggled me in."
948"Who?" she whispers back. "That shit you're with? I've had him, he's the pits."
949"He's my Commander," I say.
950She nods. "Some of them do that, they get a kick out of it. It's like screwing on the altar or something: your gang are supposed to be such chaste vessels. They like to see you all painted up. Just another crummy power trip."
951This interpretation hasn't occurred to me. I apply it to the Commander, but it seems too simple for him, too crude. Surely his motivations are more delicate than that. But it may only be vanity that prompts me to think so.
952"We don't have much time left," I say. "Tell me everything."
953Moira shrugs. "What's the point?" she says. But she knows there is a point, so she does.
954This is what she says, whispers, more or less. I can't remember exactly, because I had no way of writing it down. I've filled it out for her as much as I can: we didn't have much time so she just gave the outlines. Also she told me this in two sessions, we managed a second break together. I've tried to make it sound as much like her as I can. It's a way of keeping her alive.
955"I left that old hag Aunt Elizabeth tied up like a Christmas turkey behind the furnace. I wanted to kill her, I really felt like it, but now I'm just as glad I didn't or things would be a lot worse for me. I couldn't believe how easy it was to get out of the Center. In that brown outfit I just walked right through. I kept on going as if I knew where I was heading, till I was out of sight. I didn't have any great plan; it wasn't an organized thing, like they thought, though when they were trying to get it out of me I made up a lot of stuff. You do that, when they use the electrodes and the other things. You don't care what you say.
956"I kept my shoulders back and chin up and marched along, trying to think of what to do next. When they busted the press they'd picked up a lot of the women I knew, and I thought they'd most likely have the rest by now. I was sure they had a list. We were dumb to think we could keep it going the way we did, even underground, even when we'd moved everything out of the office and into people's cellars and back rooms. So I knew better than to try any of those houses.
957"I had some sort of an idea of where I was in relation to the city, though I was walking along a street I couldn't remember having seen before. But I figured out from the sun where north was. Girl Scouts was some use after all. I thought I might as well head that way, see if I could find the Yard or the Square or anything around it. Then I would know for sure where I was. Also I thought it would look better for me to be going in towards the center of things, rather than away. It would look more plausible.
958"They'd set up more checkpoints while we were inside the Center, they were all over the place. The first one scared the shit out of me. I came on it suddenly around a corner. I knew it wouldn't look right if I turned around in full view and went back, so I bluffed it through, the same as I had at the gate, putting on that frown and keeping myself stiff and pursing my lips and looking right through them, as if they were festering sores. You know the way the Aunts look when they say the word man. It worked like a charm, and it did at the other checkpoints, too.
959"But the insides of my head were going around like crazy. I only hud so much time, before they found the old bat and sent out the alarm. Soon enough they'd be looking for me: one fake Aunt, on foot. I tried to think of someone, I ran over and over the people I knew. At last I tried to remember what I could about our mailing list. We'd destroyed it, of course, early on; or we didn't destroy it, we divided it up among us and each one of us memorized a section, and then we destroyed it. We were still using the mails then, but we didn't put our logo on the envelopes anymore. It was getting far too risky.
960"So I tried to recall my section of the list. I won't tell you the name I chose, because I don't want them to get in trouble, if they haven't already. It could be I've spilled all this stuff, it's hard to remember what you say when they're doing it. You'll say anything.
961"I chose them because they were a married couple, and those were safer than anyone single and especially anyone gay. Also I remembered the designation beside their name. Q, it said, which meant Quaker. We had the religious denominations marked where there were any, for marches. That way you could tell who might turn out to what. It was no good calling on the C's to do abortion stuff, for instance; not that we'd done much of that lately. I remembered their address, too. We'd grilled each other on those addresses, it was important to remember them exactly, zip code and all.
962"By this time I'd hit Mass. Ave. and I knew where I was. And I knew where they were too. Now I was worrying about something else: when these people saw an Aunt coming up the walk, wouldn't they just lock the door and pretend not to be home? But I had to try it anyway, it was my only chance. I figured they weren't likely to shoot me. It was about five o'clock by this time. I was tired of walking, especially that Aunt's way like a goddamn soldier, poker up the ass, and I hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast.
963"What I didn't know of course was that in those early days the Aunts and even the Center were hardly common knowledge. It was all secret at first, behind barbed wire. There might have been objections to what they were doing, even then. So although people had seen the odd Aunt around, they weren't really aware of what they were for. They must have thought they were some kind of army nurse. Already they'd stopped asking questions, unless they had to.
964"So these people let me in right away. It was the woman who came to the door. I told her I was doing a questionnaire. I did that so she wouldn't look surprised, in case anyone was watching. Bui as soon as I was inside the door, I took off the headgear and told them who I was. They could have phoned the police or whatever, I know I was taking a chance, but like I say there wasn't any choice. Anyway they didn't. They gave me some clothes, a dress of hers, and burned the Aunt's outfit and the pass in their furnace; they knew that had to be done right away. They didn't like having me there, that much was clear, it made them very nervous. They had two little kids, both under seven. I could see their point.
965"I went to the can, what a relief that was. Bathtub full of plastic fish and so on. Then I sat upstairs in the kids' room and played with them and their plastic blocks while their parents stayed downstairs and decided what to do about me. I didn't feel scared by then, in fact I felt quite good. Fatalistic, you could say. Then the woman made me a sandwich and a cup of coffee and the man said he'd take me to another house. They hadn't risked phoning.
966"The other house was Quakers too, and they were pay dirt, because they were a station on the Underground Femaleroad. After the first man left, they said they'd try to get me out of the country. I won't tell you how, because some of the stations may still be operating. Each one of them was in contact with only one other one, always the next one along. There were advantages to that-it was better if you were caught-but disadvantages too, because if one station got busted the entire chain backed up until they could make contact with one of their couriers, who could set up an alternate route. They were better organized than you'd think, though. They'd infiltrated a couple of useful places; one of them was the post office. They had a driver there with one of those handy little trucks. I made it over the bridge and into the city proper in a mail sack. I can tell you that now because they got him, soon after that. He ended up on the Wall. You hear about these things; you hear a lot in here, you'd be surprised. The Commanders tell us themselves, I guess they figure why not, there's no one we can pass it on to, except each other, and that doesn't count.
967"I'm making this sound easy but it wasn't. I nearly shat bricks the whole time. One of the hardest things was knowing that these other people were risking their lives for you when they didn't have to. But they said they were doing it for religious reasons and I shouldn't take it personally. That helped some. They had silent prayers every evening. I found that hard to get used to at first, because it reminded me too much of that shit at the Center. It made me feel sick to my stomach, to tell you the truth. I had to make an effort, tell myself that this was a whole other thing. I hated it at first. But I figure it was what kept them going. They knew more or less what would happen to them if they got caught. Not in detail, but they knew. By that time they'd started putting some of it on (he TV, the trials and so forth.
968"It was before the sectarian roundups began in earnest. As long as you said you were some sort of a Christian and you were married, for the first time that is, they were still leaving you pretty much alone. They were concentrating first on the others. They got them more or less under control before they started in on everybody else.
969"I was underground it must have been eight or nine months. I was taken from one safe house to another, there were more of those then. They weren't all Quakers, some of them weren't even religious. They were just people who didn't like the way things were going.
970"I almost made it out. They got me up as far as Salem, then in a truck full of chickens to Maine. I almost puked from the smell; you ever thought what it would be like to be shat on by a truckload of chickens, all of them carsick? They were planning to get me across the border there; not by car or truck, that was already too difficult, but by boat, up the coast. I didn't know that until the actual night, they never told you the next step until right before it was happening. They were careful that way.
971"So I don't know what happened. Maybe somebody got cold feet about it, or somebody outside got suspicious. Or maybe it was the boat, maybe they thought the guy was out in his boat at night too much. By that time it must have been crawling with Eyes up there, and everywhere else close to the border. Whatever it was, they picked us up just as we were coming out the back door to go down to the dock. Me and the guy, and his wife too. They were an older couple, in their fifties. He'd been in the lobster business, back before all that happened to the shore fishing there. I don't know what became of them after that, because they took me in a separate van.
972"I thought it might be the end, for me. Or back to the Center and the attentions of Aunt Lydia and her steel cable. She enjoyed that, you know. She pretended to do all that love-the-sinner, hate-the-sin stuff, but she enjoyed it. I did consider offing myself, and maybe I would have if there'd been any way. But they had two of them in the back of the van with me, watching me like a hawk; didn't say a hell of a lot, just sat and watched me in that walleyed way they have. So it was no go.
973"We didn't end up at the Center though, we went somewhere else. I won't go into what happened after that. I'd rather not talk about it. All I can say is they didn't leave any marks.
974"When that was over they showed me a movie. Know what it was about? It was about life in the Colonies. In the Colonies, they spend their time cleaning up. They're very clean-minded these days. Sometimes it's just bodies, after a battle. The ones in city ghettos are the worst, they're left around longer, they get rottener. This bunch doesn't like dead bodies lying around, they're afraid of a plague or something. So the women in the Colonies there do the burning. The other Colonies are worse, though, the toxic dumps and the radiation spills. They figure you've got three years maximum, at those, before your nose falls off and your skin pulls away like rubber gloves. They don't bother to feed you much, or give you protective clothing or anything, it's cheaper not to. Anyway they're mostly people they want to get rid of. They say there're other Colonies, not so bad, where they do agriculture: cotton and tomatoes and all that. But those weren't the ones they showed me the movie about.
975"It's old women-I bet you've been wondering why you haven't seen too many of those around anymore-and Handmaids who've screwed up their three chances, and incorrigibles like me. Discards, all of us. They're sterile, of course. If they aren't that way to begin with, they are after they've been there for a while. When they're unsure, they do a little operation on you, so there won't be any mistakes. I'd say it's about a quarter men in the Colonies, too. Not all of those Gender Traitors end up on the Wall.
976"All of them wear long dresses, like the ones at the Center, only gray. Women and the men too, judging from the group shots. I guess it's supposed to demoralize the men, having to wear a dress. Shit, it would demoralize me enough. How do you stand it? Everything considered, I like this outfit better.
977"So after that, they said I was too dangerous to be allowed the privilege of returning to the Red Center. They said I would be a corrupting influence. I had my choice, they said, this or the Colonies. Well, shit, nobody but a nun would pick the Colonies. I mean, I'm not a martyr. If I'd had my tubes tied years ago, I wouldn't even have needed the operation. Nobody in here with viable ovaries either, you can see what kind of problems it would cause.
978"So here I am. They even give you face cream. You should figure out some way of getting in here. You'd have three or four good years before your snatch wears out and they send you to the bone-yard. The food's not bad and there's drink and drugs, if you want it, and we only work nights."
979"Moira," I say. "You don't mean that." She is frightening me now, because what I hear in her voice is indifference, a lack of volition. Have they really done it to her then, taken away something-what?-that used to be so central to her? And how can I expect her to go on, with my idea of her courage, live it through, act it out, when I myself do not?
980I don't want her to be like me. Give in, go along, save her skin. That is what it comes down to. I want gallantry from her, swashbuckling, heroism, single-handed combat. Something I lack.
981"Don't worry about me," she says. She must know some of what I'm thinking. "I'm still here, you can see it's me. Anyway, look at it this way: it's not so bad, there's lots of women around. Butch paradise, you might call it."
982Now she's teasing, showing some energy, and I feel better. "Do they let you?" I say.
983"Let, hell, they encourage it. Know what they call this place among themselves? Jezebel's. The Aunts figure we're all damned anyway, they've given up on us, so it doesn't matter what sort of vice we get up to, and the Commanders don't give a piss what we do in our off time. Anyway, women on women sort of turns them on."
984"What about the others?" I say.
985"Put it this way," she says, "they're not too fond of men." She shrugs again. It might be resignation.
986Here is what I'd like to tell. I'd like to tell a story about how Moira escaped, for good this time. Or if I couldn't tell that, I'd like to say she blew up Jezebel's, with fifty Commanders inside it. I'd like her to end with something daring and spectacular, some outrage, something that would befit her. But as far as I know that didn't happen. I don't know how she ended, or even if she did, because I never saw her again.
987
988
989
990
991
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99339
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995
996The Commander has a room key. He got it from the front desk, while I waited on the flowered sofa. He shows it to me, slyly. I am to understand.
997We ascend in the glass half egg of the elevator, past the vine-draped balconies. I am to understand also that I am on display.
998He unlocks the door of the room. Everything is the same, the very same as it was, once upon a time. The drapes are the same, the heavy flowered ones that match the bedspread, orange poppies on royal blue, and the thin white ones to draw against the sun; the bureau and bedside tables, square-cornered, impersonal; the lamps; the pictures on the walls: fruit in a bowl, stylized apples, flowers in a vase, buttercups and devil's paintbrushes keyed to the drapes. All is the same.
999I tell the Commander just a minute, and go into the bathroom. My ears are ringing from the smoke, the gin has filled me with lassitude. I wet a washcloth and press it to my forehead. After a while I look to see if there are any little bars of soap in individual wrappers. There are. The kind with the gypsy on them, from Spain.
1000I breathe in the soap smell, the disinfectant smell, and stand in the white bathroom, listening to the distant sounds of water running, toilets being flushed. In a strange way I feel comforted, at home. There is something reassuring about the toilets. Bodily functions at least remain democratic. Everybody shits, as Moira would say.
1001I sit on the edge of the bathtub, gazing at the blank towels. Once they would have excited me. They would have meant the aftermath, of love.
1002I saw your mother, Moira said.
1003Where? I said. I felt jolted, thrown off. I realized I'd been thinking of her as dead.
1004Not in person, it was in that film they showed us, about the Colonies. There was a close-up, it was her all right. She was wrapped up in one of those gray things but I know it was her.
1005Thank God, I said.
1006Why, thank God? said Moira.
1007I thought she was dead.
1008She might as well be, said Moira. You should wish it for her.
1009I can't remember the last time I saw her. It blends in with all the others; it was some trivial occasion. She must have dropped by; she did that, she breezed in and out of my house as if I were the mother and she were the child. She still had that jauntiness. Sometimes, when she was between apartments, just moving into one or just moving out, she'd use my washer-dryer for her laundry. Maybe she'd come over to borrow something, from me: a pot, a hair dryer. That too was a habit of hers.
1010I didn't know it would be the last time or else I would have remembered it better. I can't even remember what we said.
1011A week later, two weeks, three weeks, when things had become suddenly so much worse, I tried to call her. But there was no answer, and no answer when I tried again.
1012She hadn't told me she was going anywhere, but then maybe she wouldn't have; she didn't always. She had her own car and she wasn't too old to drive.
1013Finally I got the apartment superintendent on the phone. He said he hadn't seen her lately.
1014I was worried. I thought maybe she'd had a heart attack or a stroke, it wasn't out of the question, though she hadn't been sick that I knew of. She was always so healthy. She still worked out at
1015Nautilus and went swimming every two weeks. I used to tell my friends she was healthier than I was and maybe it was true.
1016Luke and I drove across into the city and Luke bullied the superintendent into opening up the apartment. She could be dead, on the floor, Luke said. The longer you leave it the worse it'll be. You thought of the smell? The superintendent said something about needing a permit, but Luke could be persuasive. He made it clear we weren't going to wait or go away. I started to cry. Maybe that was what finally did it.
1017When the man got the door open what we found was chaos. There was furniture overturned, the mattress was ripped open, bureau drawers upside-down on the floor, their contents strewn and mounded. But my mother wasn't there.
1018I'm going to call the police, I said. I'd stopped crying; I felt cold from head to foot, my teeth were chattering.
1019Don't, said Luke.
1020Why not? I said. I was glaring at him, I was angry now. He stood there in the wreck of the living room, just looking at me. He put his hands into his pockets, one of those aimless gestures people make when they don't know what else to do.
1021Just don't, is what he said.
1022Your mother's neat, Moira would say, when we were at college. Later: she's got pizzazz. Later still: she's cute.
1023She's not cute, I would say. She's my mother.
1024Jeez, said Moira, you ought to see mine.
1025I think of my mother, sweeping up deadly toxins; the way they used to use up old women, in Russia, sweeping dirt. Only this dirt will kill her. I can't quite believe it. Surely her cockiness, her optimism and energy, her pizzazz, will get her out of this. She will think of something.
1026But I know this isn't true. It is just passing the buck, as children do, to mothers.
1027I've mourned for her already. But I will do it again, and again.
1028I bring myself back, to the here, to the hotel. This is where I need to be. Now, in this ample mirror under the white light, I take a look at myself.
1029It's a good look, slow and level. I'm a wreck. The mascara has smudged again, despite Moira's repairs, the purplish lipstick has bled, hair trails aimlessly. The molting pink feathers are tawdry as carnival dolls and some of the starry sequins have come off. Probably they were off to begin with and I didn't notice. I am a travesty, in bad make-up and someone else's clothes, used glitz.
1030I wish I had a toothbrush.
1031I could stand here and think about it, but time is passing.
1032I must be back at the house before midnight; otherwise I'll turn into a pumpkin, or was that the coach? Tomorrow's the Ceremony, according to the calendar, so tonight Serena wants me serviced, and if I'm not there she'll find out why, and then what?
1033And the Commander, for a change, is waiting; I can hear him pacing in the main room. Now he pauses outside the bathroom door, clears his throat, a stagy ahem. I turn on the hot water tap, to signify readiness or something approaching it. I should get this over with. I wash my hands. I must beware of inertia.
1034When I come out he's lying down on the king-size bed, with, I note, his shoes off. I lie down beside him, I don't have to be told. I would rather not; but it's good to lie down, I am so tired.
1035Alone at last, I think. The fact is that I don't want to be alone with him, not on a bed. I'd rather have Serena there too. I'd rather play Scrabble.
1036But my silence does not deter him. "Tomorrow, isn't it?" he says softly. "I thought we could jump the gun." He turns towards me.
1037"Why did you bring me here?" I say coldly.
1038He's stroking my body now, from stem as they say to stern, cat stroke along the left flank, down the left leg. He stops at the foot, his fingers encircling the ankle, briefly, like a bracelet, where the tattoo is, a Braille he can read, a cattle brand. It means ownership.
1039I remind myself that he is not an unkind man; that, under other circumstances, I even like him.
1040His hand pauses. "I thought you might enjoy it for a change." He knows that isn't enough. "I guess it was a sort of experiment." That isn't enough either. "You said you wanted to know."
1041He sits up, begins to unbutton. Will this be worse, to have him denuded, of all his cloth power? He's down to the shirt; then, under it, sadly, a little belly. Wisps of hair.
1042He pulls down one of my straps, slides his other hand in among the feathers, but it's no good, I lie there like a dead bird. He is not a monster, I think. I can't afford pride or aversion, there are all kinds of things that have to be discarded, under the circumstances.
1043"Maybe I should turn the lights out," says the Commander, dismayed and no doubt disappointed. I see him for a moment before he does this. Without his uniform he looks smaller, older, like something being dried. The trouble is that I can't be, with him, any different from the way I usually am with him. Usually I'm inert. Surely there must be something here for us, other than this futility and bathos.
1044Fake it, I scream at myself inside my head. You must remember how. Let's get this over with or you'll be here all night. Bestir yourself. Move your flesh around, breathe audibly. It's the least you can do.
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1053XIII Night
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1063The heat at night is worse than the heat in daytime. Even with the fan on, nothing moves, and the walls store up warmth, give it out like a used oven. Surely it will rain soon. Why do I want it? It will only mean more dampness. There's lightning far away but no thunder. Looking out the window I can see it, a glimmer, like the phosphorescence you get in stirred seawater, behind the sky, which is overcast and too low and a dull gray infrared. The searchlights are off, which is not usual. A power failure. Or else Serena Joy has arranged it.
1064I sit in the darkness; no point in having the light on, to advertise the fact that I'm still awake. I'm fully dressed in my red habit again, having shed the spangles, scraped off the lipstick with toilet paper. I hope nothing shows, I hope I don't smell of it, or of him either.
1065She's here at midnight, as she said she'd be. I can hear her, a faint tapping, a faint shuffling on the muffling rug of the corridor, before her light knock comes. I don't say anything, but follow her back along the hall and down the stairs. She can walk faster, she's stronger than I thought. Her left hand clamps the banister, in pain maybe but holding on, steadying her. I think: she's biting her lip, she's suffering. She wants it all right, that baby. I see the two of us, a blue shape, a red shape, in the brief glass eye of the mirror as we descend. Myself, my obverse.
1066We go out through the kitchen. It's empty, a dim night-light's left on; it has the calm of empty kitchens at night. The bowls on the counter, the canisters and stoneware jars loom round and heavy through the shadowy light. The knives are put away into their wooden rack.
1067"I won't go outside with you," she whispers. Odd, to hear her whispering, as if she is one of us. Usually Wives do not lower their voices. "You go out through the door and turn right. There's another door, it's open. Go up the stairs and knock, he's expecting you. No one will see you. I'll sit here." She'll wait for me then, in case there's trouble; in case Cora and Rita wake up, no one knows why, come in from their room at the back of the kitchen. What will she say to them? That she couldn't sleep. That she wanted some hot milk. She'll be adroit enough to lie well, I can see that.
1068"The Commander's in his bedroom upstairs," she says. "He won't come down this late, he never does." That's what she thinks.
1069I open the kitchen door, step out, wait a moment for vision. It's so long since I've been outside, alone, at night. Now there's thunder, the storm's moving closer. What has she done about the Guardians? I could be shot for a prowler. Paid them off somehow, I hope: cigarettes, whiskey, or maybe they know all about it, her stud farm, maybe if this doesn't work she'll try them next.
1070The door to the garage is only steps away. I cross, feet noiseless on the grass, and open it quickly, slip inside. The stairway is dark, darker than I can see. I feel my way up, stair by stair: carpet here, I think of it as mushroom-colored. This must have been an apartment once, for a student, a young single person with a job. A lot of the big houses around here had them. A bachelor, a studio, those were the names for that kind of apartment. It pleases me to be able to remember this. Separate entrance, it would say in the ads, and that meant you could have sex, unobserved.
1071I reach the top of the stairs, knock on the door there. He opens it himself, who else was I expecting? There's a lamp on, only one but enough light to make me blink. I look past him, not wanting to meet his eyes. It's a single room, with a fold-out bed, made up, and a kitchenette counter at the far end, and another door that must lead to the bathroom. This room is stripped down, military, minimal. No pictures on the walls, no plants. He's camping out. The blanket on the bed is gray and says U.S.
1072He steps back and aside to let me pass. He's in his shirt sleeves, and is holding a cigarette, lit. I smell the smoke on him, in the warm air of the room, all over. I'd like to take off my clothes, bathe in it, rub it over my skin.
1073No preliminaries; he knows why I'm here. He doesn't even say anything, why fool around, it's an assignment. He moves away from me, turns off the lamp. Outside, like punctuation, there's a flash of lightning; almost no pause and then the thunder. He's undoing my dress, a man made of darkness, I can't see his face, and I can hardly breathe, hardly stand, and I'm not standing. His mouth is on me, his hands, I can't wait and he's moving, already, love, it's been so long, I'm alive in my skin, again, arms around him, falling and water softly everywhere, never-ending. I knew it might only be once.
1074I made that up. It didn't happen that way. Here is what happened.
1075I reach the top of the stairs, knock on the door. He opens it himself. There's a lamp on; I blink. I look past his eyes, it's a single room, the bed's made up, stripped down, military. No pictures but the blanket says U.S. He's in his shirt sleeves, he's holding a cigarette.
1076"Here," he says to me, "have a drag." No preliminaries, he knows why I'm here. To get knocked up, to get in trouble, up the pole, those were all names for it once. I take the cigarette from him, draw deeply in, hand it back. Our fingers hardly touch. Even that much smoke makes me dizzy.
1077He says nothing, just looks at me, unsmiling. It would be better, more friendly, if he would touch me. I feel stupid and ugly, although I know I am not either. Still, what does he think, why doesn't he say something? Maybe he thinks I've been slutting around, at Jezebel's, with the Commander or more. It annoys me that I'm even worrying about what he thinks. Let's be practical.
1078"I don't have much time," I say. This is awkward and clumsy, it isn't what I mean.
1079"I could just squirt it into a bottle and you could pour it in," he says. He doesn't smile.
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1088XIV Salvaging
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1098I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilized. I wish it showed me in a better light, if not happier, then at least more active, less hesitant, less distracted by trivia. I wish it had more shape. I wish it were about love, or about sudden realizations important to one's life, or even about sunsets, birds, rainstorms, or snow.
1099Maybe it is about those things, in a way; but in the meantime there is so much else getting in the way, so much whispering, so much speculation about others, so much gossip that cannot be verified, so many unsaid words, so much creeping about and secrecy. And there is so much time to be endured, time heavy as fried food or thick fog; and then all at once these red events, like explosions, on streets otherwise decorous and matronly and somnambulent.
1100I'm sorry there is so much pain in this story. I'm sorry it's in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it.
1101I've tried to put some of the good things in as well. Flowers, for instance, because where would we be without them?
1102Nevertheless it hurts me to tell it over, over again. Once was enough: wasn't once enough for me at the time? But I keep on going with this sad and hungry and sordid, this limping and mutilated story, because after all I want you to hear it, as I will hear yours too if I ever get the chance, if I meet you or if you escape, in the future or in heaven or in prison or underground, some other place. What they have in common is that they're not here. By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you, I believe you're there, I believe you into being. Because I'm telling you this story I will your existence. I tell, therefore you are.
1103So I will go on. So I will myself to go on. I am coming to a part you will not like at all, because in it I did not behave well, but I will try nonetheless to leave nothing out. After all you've been through, you deserve whatever I have left, which is not much but includes the truth.
1104This is the story, then.
1105I went back to Nick. Time after time, on my own, without Serena knowing. It wasn't called for, there was no excuse. I did not do it for him, but for myself entirely. I didn't even think of it as giving myself to him, because what did I have to give? I did not feel munificent, but thankful, each time he would let me in. He didn't have to.
1106In order to do this I became reckless, I took stupid chances. After being with the Commander I would go upstairs in the usual way, but then I would go along the hall and down the Marthas' stairs at the back and through the kitchen. Each time I would hear the kitchen door click shut behind me and I would almost turn back, it sounded so metallic, like a mousetrap or a weapon, but I would not turn back. I would hurry across the few feet of illuminated lawn-the searchlights were back on again, expecting at any moment to feel the bullets rip through me even in advance of their sound. I would make my way by touch up the dark staircase and come to rest against the door, the thud of blood in my ears. Fear is a powerful stimulant. Then I would knock softly, a beggar's knock. Each time I would expect him to be gone; or worse, I would expect him to say I could not come in. He might say he wasn't going to break any more rules, put his neck in the noose, for my sake. Or even worse, tell me he was no longer interested. His failure to do any of these things I experienced as the most incredible benevolence and luck.
1107I told you it was bad.
1108Here is how it goes.
1109He opens the door. He's in his shirt sleeves, his shirt untucked, hanging loose; he's holding a toothbrush, or a cigarette, or a glass with something in it. He has his own little stash up here, black-market stuff I suppose. He's always got something in his hand, as if he's been going about his life as usual, not expecting me, not waiting. Maybe he doesn't expect me, or wait. Maybe he has no notion of the future, or does not bother or dare to imagine it.
1110"Is it too late?" I say.
1111He shakes his head for no. It is understood between us by now that it is never too late, but I go through the ritual politeness of asking. It makes me feel more in control, as if there is a choice, a decision that could be made one way or the other. He steps aside and I move past him and he closes the door. Then he crosses the room and closes the window. After that he turns out the light. There is not much talking between us anymore, not at this stage. Already I am half out of my clothes. We save the talking for later.
1112With the Commander I close my eyes, even when I am only kissing him good-night. I do not want to see him up close. But now, here, each time, I keep my eyes open. I would like a light on somewhere, a candle perhaps, stuck into a bottle, some echo of college, but anything like that would be too great a risk; so I have to make do with the searchlight, the glow of it from the grounds below, filtered through his white curtains which are the same as mine. I want to see what can be seen, of him, take him in, memorize him, save him up so I can live on the image, later: the lines of his body, the texture of his flesh, the glisten of sweat on his pelt, his long sardonic unrevealing face. I ought to have done that with Luke, paid more attention, to the details, the moles and scars, the singular creases; I didn't and he's fading. Day by day, night by night he recedes, and I become more faithless.
1113For this one I'd wear pink feathers, purple stars, if that were what he wanted; or anything else, even the tail of a rabbit. But he does not require such trimmings. We make love each time as if we know beyond the shadow of a doubt that there will never be any more, for either of us, with anyone, ever. And then when there is, that too is always a surprise, extra, a gift.
1114Being here with him is safety; it's a cave, where we huddle together while the storm goes on outside. This is a delusion, of course.
1115This room is one of the most dangerous places I could be. If I were caught there would be no quarter, but I'm beyond caring. And how have I come to trust him like this, which is foolhardy in itself? How can I assume I know him, or the least thing about him and what he really does?
1116I dismiss these uneasy whispers. I talk too much. I tell him things I shouldn't. I tell him about Moira, about Ofglen; not about Luke though. I want to tell him about the woman in my room, the one who was there before me, but I don't. I'm jealous of her. If she's been here before me too, in this bed, I don't want to hear about it.
1117I tell him my real name, and feel that therefore I am known. I act like a dunce. I should know better. I make of him an idol, a cardboard cutout.
1118He on the other hand talks little: no more hedging or jokes. He barely asks questions. He seems indifferent to most of what I have to say, alive only to the possibilities of my body, though he watches me while I'm speaking. He watches my face.
1119Impossible to think that anyone for whom I feel such gratitude could betray me.
1120Neither of us says the word love, not once. It would be tempting fate; it would be romance, bad luck.
1121Today there are different flowers, drier, more denned, the flowers of high summer: daisies, black-eyed Susans, starting us on the long downward slope to fall. I see them in the gardens, as I walk with Ofglen, to and fro. I hardly listen to her, I no longer credit her. The things she whispers seem to me unreal. What use are they, for me, now?
1122You could go into his room at night, she says. Look through his desk. There must be papers, notations.
1123The door is locked, I murmur.
1124We could get you a key, she says. Don't you want to know who he is, what he does?
1125But the Commander is no longer of immediate interest to me. I have to make an effort to keep my indifference towards him from showing.
1126Keep on doing everything exactly the way you were before, Nick says. Don't change anything. Otherwise they'll know. He kisses me. watching me all the time. Promise? Don't slip up.
1127I put his hand on my belly. It's happened, I say. I feel it has. A couple of weeks and I'll be certain.
1128This I know is wishful thinking.
1129He'll love you to death, he says. So will she.
1130But it's yours, I say. It will be yours, really. I want it to be.
1131We don't pursue this, however.
1132I can't, I say to Ofglen. I'm too afraid. Anyway I'd be no good at that, I'd get caught.
1133I scarcely take the trouble to sound regretful, so lazy have I become.
1134We could get you out, she says. We can get people out if we really have to, if they're in danger. Immediate danger.
1135The fact is that I no longer want to leave, escape, cross the border to freedom. I want to be here, with Nick, where I can get at him.
1136Telling this, I'm ashamed of myself. But there's more to it than that. Even now, I can recognize this admission as a kind of boasting. There's pride in it, because it demonstrates how extreme and therefore justified it was, for me. How well worth it. It's like stories of illness and near-death, from which you have recovered; like stories of war. They demonstrate seriousness.
1137Such seriousness, about a man, then, had not seemed possible to me before.
1138Some days I was more rational. I did not put it, to myself, in terms of love. I said, I have made a life for myself, here, of a sort. That must have been what the settlers' wives thought, and women who survived wars, if they had a man. Humanity is so adaptable, my mother would say. Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.
1139It won't be long now, says Cora, doling out my monthly stack of sanitary napkins. Not long now, smiling at me shyly but also knowingly. Does she know? Do she and Rita know what I'm up to, creeping down their stairs at night? Do I give myself away, daydreaming, smiling at nothing, touching my face lightly when I think they aren't watching?
1140Ofglen is giving up on me. She whispers less, talks more about the weather. I do not feel regret about this. I feel relief.
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1150The bell is tolling; we can hear it from a long way off. It's morning, and today we've had no breakfast. When we reach the main gate we file through it, two by two. There's a heavy contingent of guards, special-detail Angels, with riot gear-the helmets with the bulging dark Plexiglas visors that make them look like beetles, the long clubs, the gas-canister guns-in cordon around the outside of the Wall. That's in case of hysteria. The hooks on the Wall are empty.
1151This is a district Salvaging, for women only. Salvagings are always segregated. It was announced yesterday. They tell you only the day before. It's not enough time, to get used to it.
1152To the tolling of the bell we walk along the paths once used by students, past buildings that were once lecture halls and dormitories. It's very strange to be in here again. From the outside you can't tell that anything's changed, except that the blinds on most of the windows are drawn down. These buildings belong to the Eyes now.
1153We file onto the wide lawn in front of what used to be the library. The white steps going up are still the same, the main entrance is unaltered. There's a wooden stage erected on the lawn, something like the one they used every spring, for commencement, in the time before. I think of hats, pastel hats worn by some of the mothers, and of the black gowns the students would put on, and the red ones. But this stage is not the same after all, because of the three wooden posts that stand on it, with the loops of rope.
1154At the front of the stage there is a microphone; the television camera is discreetly off to the side.
1155I've only been to one of these before, two years ago. Women's Salvagings are not frequent. There is less need for them. These days we are so well behaved.
1156I don't want to be telling this story.
1157We take our places in the standard order: Wives and daughters on the folding wooden chairs placed towards the back, Econowives and Marthas around the edges and on the library steps, and Handmaids at the front, where everyone can keep an eye on us. We don't sit on chairs, but kneel, and this time we have cushions, small red velvet ones with nothing written on them, not even Faith.
1158Luckily the weather is all right: not too hot, cloudy bright. It would be miserable kneeling here in the rain. Maybe that's why they leave it so late to tell us: so they'll know what the weather will be like. That's as good a reason as any.
1159I kneel on my red velvet cushion. I try to think about tonight, about making love, in the dark, in the light reflected off the white walls. I remember being held.
1160There's a long piece of rope that winds like a snake in front of the first row of cushions, along the second, and back through the lines of chairs, bending like a very old, very slow river viewed from the air, down to the back. The rope is thick and brown and smells of tar. The front end of the rope runs up onto the stage. It's like a fuse, or the string of a balloon.
1161On the stage, to the left, are those who are to be salvaged: two Handmaids, one Wife. Wives are unusual, and despite myself I look at this one with interest. I want to know what she has done.
1162They have been placed here before the gates were opened. All of them sit on folding wooden chairs, like graduating students who are about to be given prizes. Their hands rest in their laps, looking as if they are folded sedately. They sway a little, they've probably been given injections or pills, so they won't make a fuss. It's better if things go smoothly. Are they attached to their chairs? Impossible to say, under all that drapery.
1163Now the official procession is approaching the stage, mounting the steps at the right: three women, one Aunt in front, two Salvagers in their black hoods and cloaks a pace behind her. Behind them are the other Aunts. The whisperings among us hush. The three arrange themselves, turn towards us, the Aunt flanked by the two black-robed Salvagers.
1164It's Aunt Lydia. How many years since I've seen her? I'd begun to think she existed only in my head, but here she is, a little older. I have a good view, I can see the deepening furrows to either side of her nose, the engraved frown. Her eyes blink, she smiles nervously, peering to left and right, checking out the audience, and lifts a hand to fidget with her headdress. An odd strangling sound comes over the PA system: she is clearing her throat.
1165I've begun to shiver. Hatred fills my mouth like spit.
1166The sun comes out, and the stage and its occupants light up like a Christmas creche. I can see the wrinkles under Aunt Lydia's eyes, the pallor of the seated women, the hairs on the rope in front of me on the grass, the blades of grass. There is a dandelion, right in front of me, the color of egg yolk. I feel hungry. The bell stops tolling.
1167Aunt Lydia stands up, smooths down her skirt with both hands, and steps forward to the mike. "Good afternoon, ladies," she says, and there is an instant and earsplitting feedback whine from the PA system. From among us, incredibly, there is laughter. It's hard not to laugh, it's the tension, and the look of irritation on Aunt Lydia's face as she adjusts the sound. This is supposed to be dignified.
1168"Good afternoon, ladies," she says again, her voice now tinny and flattened. It's ladies instead of girls because of the Wives. "I'm sure we are all aware of the unfortunate circumstances that bring us all here together on this beautiful morning, when I am certain we would all rather be doing something else, at least I speak for myself, but duty is a hard taskmaster, or may I say on this occasion taskmistress, and it is in the name of duty that we are here today."
1169She goes on like this for some minutes, but I don't listen. I've heard this speech, or one like it, often enough before: the same platitudes, the same slogans, the same phrases: the torch of the future, the cradle of the race, the task before us. It's hard to believe there will not be polite clapping after this speech, and tea and cookies served on the lawn.
1170That was the prologue, I think. Now she'll get down to it.
1171Aunt Lydia rummages in her pocket, produces a crumpled piece of paper. This she takes an undue length of time to unfold and scan. She's rubbing our noses in it, letting us know exactly who she is, making us watch her as she silently reads, flaunting her prerogative. Obscene, I think. Let's get this over with.
1172"In the past," says Aunt Lydia, "it has been the custom to precede the actual Salvagings with a detailed account of the crimes of which the prisoners stand convicted. However, we have found that such a public account, especially when televised, is invariably followed by a rash, if I may call it that, an outbreak I should say, of exactly similar crimes. So we have decided in the best interests of all to discontinue this practice. The Salvagings will proceed without further ado."
1173A collective murmur goes up from us. The crimes of others are a secret language among us. Through them we show ourselves what we might be capable of, after all. This is not a popular announcement. But you would never know it from Aunt Lydia, who smiles and blinks as if washed in applause. Now we are left to our own devices, our own speculations. The first one, the one they're now raising from her chair, black-gloved hands on her upper arms: Reading? No, that's only a hand cut off, on the third conviction. Unchastity, or an attempt on the life of her Commander? Or the Commander's Wife, more likely. That's what we're thinking. As for the Wife, there's mostly just one thing they get salvaged for. They can do almost anything to us, but they aren't allowed to kill us, not legally. Not with knitting needles or garden shears, or knives purloined from the kitchen, and especially not when we are pregnant. It could be-adultery, of course. It could always be that.
1174Or attempted escape.
1175"Ofcharles," Aunt Lydia announces. No one I know. The woman is brought forward; she walks as if she's really concentrating on it, one foot, the other foot, she's definitely drugged. There's a groggy off-center smile on her mouth. One side of her face contracts, an uncoordinated wink, aimed at the camera. They'll never show it of course, this isn't live. The two Salvagers tie her hands, behind her back.
1176From behind me there's a sound of retching.
1177That's why we don't get breakfast.
1178"Janine, most likely," Ofglen whispers.
1179I've seen it before, the white bag placed over the head, the woman helped up onto the high stool as if she's being helped up the steps of a bus, steadied there, the noose adjusted delicately around the neck, like a vestment, the stool kicked away. I've heard the long sigh go up, from around me, the sigh like air coming out of an air mattress, I've seen Aunt Lydia place her hand over the mike, to stifle the other sounds coming from behind her, I've leaned forward to touch the rope in front of me, in time with the others, both hands on it, the rope hairy, sticky with tar in the hot sun, then placed my hand on my heart to show my unity with the Salvagers and my consent, and my complicity in the death of this woman. I have seen the kicking feet and the two in black who now seize hold of them and drag downward with all their weight. I don't want to see it anymore. I look at the grass instead. I describe the rope.
1180
1181
1182
1183
1184
1185
118643
1187
1188
1189The three bodies hang there, even with the white sacks over their heads looking curiously stretched, like chickens strung up by the necks in a meatshop window; like birds with their wings clipped, like flightless birds, wrecked angels. It's hard to take your eyes off them. Beneath the hems of the dresses the feet dangle, two pairs of red shoes, one pair of blue. If it weren't for the ropes and the sacks it could be a kind of dance, a ballet, caught by flash-camera: midair. They look arranged. They look like show biz. It must have been Aunt Lydia who put the blue one in the middle.
1190"Today's Salvaging is now concluded," Aunt Lydia announces into the mike. "But…"
1191We turn to her, listen to her, watch her. She has always known how to space her pauses. A ripple runs over us, a stir. Something else, perhaps, is going to happen.
1192"But you may stand up, and form a circle." She smiles down upon us, generous, munificent. She is about to give us something. Bestow. "Orderly, now."
1193She is talking to us, to the Handmaids. Some of the Wives are leaving now, some of the daughters. Most of them stay, but they stay behind, out of the way, they watch merely. They are not part of the circle.
1194Two Guardians have moved forward and are coiling up the thick rope, getting it out of the way. Others move the cushions. We are milling around now, on the grass space in front of the stage, some jockeying for position at the front, next to the center, many pushing just as hard to work their way to the middle where they will be shielded. It's a mistake to hang back too obviously in any group like this; it stamps you as lukewarm, lacking in zeal. There's an energy building here, a murmur, a tremor of readiness and anger. The bodies tense, the eyes are brighter, as if aiming.
1195I don't want to be at the front, or at the back either. I'm not sure what's coming, though I sense it won't be anything I want to see up close. But Ofglen has hold of my arm, she tugs me with her, and now we're in the second line, with only a thin hedge of bodies in front of us. I don't want to see, yet I don't pull back either. I've heard rumors, which I only half believed. Despite everything I already know, I say to myself: they wouldn't go that far.
1196"You know the rules for a Particicution," Aunt Lydia says. "You will wait until I blow the whistle. After that, what you do is up to you, until I blow the whistle again. Understood?"
1197A noise comes from among us, a formless assent.
1198"Well then," says Aunt Lydia. She nods. Two Guardians, not the same ones that have taken away the rope, come forward now from behind the stage. Between them they half carry, half drag a third man. He too is in a Guardian's uniform, but he has no hat on and the uniform is dirty and torn. His face is cut and bruised, deep reddish-brown bruises; the flesh is swollen and knobby, stubbled with unshaven beard. This doesn't look like a face but like an unknown vegetable, a mangled bulb or tuber, something that's grown wrong. Even from where I'm standing I can smell him: he smells of shit and vomit. His hair is blond and falls over his face, spiky with what? Dried sweat?
1199I stare at him with revulsion. He looks drunk. He looks like a drunk that's been in a fight. Why have they brought a drunk in here?
1200"This man," says Aunt Lydia, "has been convicted of rape." Her voice trembles with rage, and a kind of triumph. "He was once a Guardian. He has disgraced his uniform. He has abused his position of trust. His partner in viciousness has already been shot. The penalty for rape, as you know, is death. Deuteronomy 22:23-29. I might add that this crime involved two of you and took place at gunpoint. It was also brutal. I will not offend your ears with any details, except to say that one woman was pregnant and the baby died."
1201A sigh goes up from us; despite myself I feel my hands clench. It is too much, this violation. The baby too, after what we go through. It's true, there is a bloodlust; I want to tear, gouge, rend.
1202We jostle forward, our heads turn from side to side, our nostrils flare, sniffing death, we look at one another, seeing the hatred. Shooting was too good. The man's head swivels groggily around: has he even heard her?
1203Aunt Lydia waits a moment; then she gives a little smile and raises her whistle to her lips. We hear it, shrill and silver, an echo from a volleyball game of long ago.
1204The two Guardians let go of the third man's arms and step back. He staggers-is he drugged?-and falls to his knees. His eyes are shriveled up inside the puffy flesh of his face, as if the light is too bright for him. They've kept him in darkness. He raises one hand to his cheek, as though to feel if he is still there. All of this happens quickly, but it seems to be slowly.
1205Nobody moves forward. The women are looking at him with horror, as if he's a half-dead rat dragging itself across a kitchen floor. He's squinting around at us, the circle of red women. One corner of his mouth moves up, incredible-a smile?
1206I try to look inside him, inside the trashed face, see what he must really look like. I think he's about thirty. It isn't Luke.
1207But it could have been, I know that. It could be Nick. I know that whatever he's done I can't touch him.
1208He says something. It comes out thick, as if his throat is bruised, his tongue huge in his mouth, but I hear it anyway. He says, "I didn't…"
1209There's a surge forward, like a crowd at a rock concert in the former time, when the doors opened, that urgency coming like a wave through us. The air is bright with adrenaline, we are permitted anything and this is freedom, in my body also, I'm reeling, red spreads everywhere, but before that tide of cloth and bodies hits him Ofglen is shoving through the women in front of us, propelling herself with her elbows, left, right, and running towards him. She pushes him down, sideways, then kicks his head viciously, one, two, three times, sharp painful jabs with the foot, well aimed. Now there are sounds, gasps, a low noise like growling, yells, and the red bodies tumble forward and I can no longer see, he's obscured by arms, fists, feet. A high scream comes from somewhere, like a horse in terror.
1210I keep back, try to stay on my feet. Something hits me from behind. I stagger. When I regain my balance and look around, I see the Wives and daughters leaning forward in their chairs, the Aunts on the platform gazing down with interest. They must have a better view from up there.
1211He has become an it.
1212Ofglen is back beside me. Her face is tight, expressionless.
1213"I saw what you did," I say to her. Now I'm beginning to feel again: shock, outrage, nausea. Barbarism. "Why did you do that? You! I thought you…"
1214"Don't look at me," she says. "They're watching."
1215"I don't care," I say. My voice is rising, I can't help it.
1216"Get control of yourself," she says. She pretends to brush me off, my arm and shoulder, bringing her face close to my ear. "Don't be stupid. He wasn't a rapist at all, he was a political. He was one of ours. I knocked him out. Put him out of his misery. Don't you know what they're doing to him?"
1217One of ours, I think. A Guardian. It seems impossible.
1218Aunt Lydia blows her whistle again, but they don't stop at once. The two Guardians move in, pulling them off, from what's left. Some lie on the grass where they've been hit or kicked by accident. Some have fainted. They straggle away, in twos and threes or by themselves. They seem dazed.
1219"You will find your partners and re-form your line," Aunt Lydia says into the mike. Few pay attention to her. A woman comes towards us, walking as if she's feeling her way with her feet, in the dark: Janine. There's a smear of blood across her cheek, and more of it on the white of her headdress. She's smiling, a bright diminutive smile. Her eyes have come loose.
1220"Hi there," she says. "How are you doing?" She's holding something, tightly, in her right hand. It's a clump of blond hair. She gives a small giggle.
1221"Janine," I say. But she's let go, totally now, she's in free fall, she's in withdrawal.
1222"You have a nice day," she says, and walks on past us, towards the gate.
1223I look after her. Easy out, is what I think. I don't even feel sorry for her, although I should. I feel angry. I'm not proud of myself for this, or for any of it. But then, that's the point.
1224My hands smell of warm tar. I want to go back to the house and up to the bathroom and scrub and scrub, with the harsh soap and the pumice, to get every trace of this smell off my skin. The smell makes me feel sick.
1225But also I'm hungry. This is monstrous, but nevertheless it's true. Death makes me hungry. Maybe it's because I've been emptied; or maybe it's the body's way of seeing to it that I remain alive, continue to repeat its bedrock prayer: I am, I am. I am, still.
1226I want to go to bed, make love, right now.
1227I think of the word relish.
1228I could eat a horse.
1229
1230
1231
1232
1233
1234
123544
1236
1237
1238Things are back to normal.
1239How can I call this normal? But compared with this morning, it is normal.
1240For lunch there was a cheese sandwich, on brown bread, a glass of milk, celery sticks, canned pears. A schoolchild's lunch. I ate everything up, not quickly, but reveling in the taste, the flavors lush on my tongue. Now I am going shopping, the same as usual. I even look forward to it. There's a certain consolation to be taken from routine.
1241I go out the back door, along the path. Nick is washing the car, his hat on sideways. He doesn't look at me. We avoid looking at each other, these days. Surely we'd give something away by it, even out here in the open, with no one to see.
1242I wait at the corner for Ofglen. She's late. At last I see her coming, a red and white shape of cloth, like a kite, walking at the steady pace we've all learned to keep. I see her and notice nothing at first. Then, as she comes nearer, I think that there must be something wrong with her. She looks wrong. She is altered in some indefinable way; she's not injured, she's not limping. It's as if she has shrunk.
1243Then when she's nearer still I see what it is. She isn't Ofglen.
1244She's the same height, but thinner, and her face is beige, not pink. She comes up to me, stops.
1245"Blessed be the fruit," she says. Straight-faced, straight-laced.
1246"May the Lord open," I reply. I try not to show surprise.
1247"You must be Offred," she says. I say yes, and we begin our walk.
1248Now what, I think. My head is churning, this is not good news, what has become of her, how do I find out without showing too much concern? We aren't supposed to form friendships, loyalties, among one another. I try to remember how much time Ofglen has to go at her present posting.
1249"We've been sent good weather," I say.
1250"Which I receive with joy." The voice placid, flat, unrevealing.
1251We pass the first checkpoint without saying anything further. She's taciturn, but so am I. Is she waiting for me to start something, reveal myself, or is she a believer, engrossed in inner meditation?
1252"Has Ofglen been transferred, so soon?" I ask. But I know she hasn't. I saw her only this morning. She would have said.
1253"I am Ofglen," the woman says. Word perfect. And of course she is, the new one, and Ofglen, wherever she is, is no longer Ofglen. I never did know her real name. That is how you can get lost, in a sea of names. It wouldn't be easy to find her, now.
1254We go to Milk and Honey, and to All Flesh, where I buy chicken and the new Ofglen gets three pounds of hamburger. There are the usual lines. I see several women I recognize, exchange with them the infinitesimal nods with which we show each other we are known, at least to someone, we still exist. Outside All Flesh I say to the new Ofglen, "We should go to the Wall." I don't know what I expect from this; some way of testing her reaction, perhaps. I need to know whether or not she is one of us. If she is, if I can establish that, perhaps she'll be able to tell me what has really happened to Ofglen.
1255"As you like," she says. Is that indifference, or caution?
1256On the Wall hang the three women from this morning, still in their dresses, still in their shoes, still with the white bags over their heads. Their arms have been untied and are stiff and proper at their sides.
1257The blue one is in the middle, the two red ones on either side, though the colors are no longer as bright; they seem to have faded, grown dingy, like dead butterflies or tropical fish drying on land. The gloss is off them. We stand and look at them in silence.
1258"Let that be a reminder to us," says the new Ofglen finally.
1259I say nothing at first, because I am trying to make out what she means. She could mean that this is a reminder to us of the unjust-ness and brutality of the regime. In that case I ought to say yes. Or she could mean the opposite, that we should remember to do what we are told and not get into trouble, because if we do we will be rightfully punished. If she means that, I should say praise be. Her voice was bland, toneless, no clues there.
1260I take a chance. "Yes," I say.
1261To this she does not respond, although I sense a flicker of white at the edge of my vision, as if she's looked quickly at me.
1262After a moment we turn away and begin the long walk back, matching our steps in the approved way, so that we seem to be in unison.
1263I think maybe I should wait before attempting anything further. It's too soon to push, to probe. I should give it a week, two weeks, maybe longer, watch her carefully, listen for tones in her voice, unguarded words, the way Ofglen listened to me. Now that Ofglen is gone I am alert again, my sluggishness has fallen away, my body is no longer for pleasure only but senses its jeopardy. I should not be rash, I should not take unnecessary risks. But I need to know. I hold back until we're past the final checkpoint and there are only blocks to go, but then I can no longer control myself.
1264"I didn't know Ofglen very well," I say. "I mean the former one."
1265"Oh?" she says. The fact that she's said anything, however guarded, encourages me.
1266"I've only known her since May," I say. I can feel my skin growing hot, my heart speeding up. This is tricky. For one thing, it's a lie. And how do I get from there to the next vital word? "Around the first of May I think it was. What they used to call May Day."
1267"Did they?" she says, light, indifferent, menacing. "That isn't a term I remember. I'm surprised you do. You ought to make an effort…" She pauses. "To clear your mind of such…" She pauses again. "Echoes."
1268Now I feel cold, seeping over my skin like water. What she is doing is warning me.
1269She isn't one of us. But she knows.
1270I walk the last blocks in terror. I've been stupid, again. More than stupid. It hasn't occurred to me before, but now I see: if Of-glen's been caught, Ofglen may talk, about me among others. She will talk. She won't be able to help it.
1271But I haven't done anything, I tell myself, not really. All I did was know. All I did was not tell.
1272They know where my child is. What if they bring her, threaten something to her, in front of me? Or do it. I can't bear to think what they might do. Or Luke, what if they have Luke. Or my mother or Moira or almost anyone. Dear God, don't make me choose. I would not be able to stand it, I know that; Moira was right about me. I'll say anything they like, I'll incriminate anyone. It's true, the first scream, whimper even, and I'll turn to jelly, I'll confess to any crime, I'll end up hanging from a hook on the Wall. Keep your head down, I used to tell myself, and see it through. It's no use.
1273This is the way I talk to myself, on the way home.
1274At the corner we turn to one another in the usual way.
1275"Under His Eye," says the new, treacherous Ofglen.
1276"Under His Eye," I say, trying to sound fervent. As if such playacting could help, now that we've come this far.
1277Then she does an odd thing. She leans forward, so that the stiff white blinkers on our heads are almost touching, so that I can see her pale beige eyes up close, the delicate web of lines across her cheeks, and whispers, very quickly, her voice faint as dry leaves. "She hanged herself," she says. "After the Salvaging. She saw the van coming for her. It was better."
1278Then she's walking away from me down the street.
1279
1280
1281
1282
1283
1284
128545
1286
1287
1288I stand a moment, emptied of air, as if I've been kicked.
1289So she's dead, and I am safe, after all. She did it before they came. I feel a great relief. I feel thankful to her. She has died that I may live. I will mourn later.
1290Unless this woman is lying. There's always that.
1291I breathe in, deeply, breathe out, giving myself oxygen. The space in front of me blackens, then clears. I can see my way.
1292I turn, open the gate, keeping my hand on it a moment to steady myself, walk in. Nick is there, still washing the car, whistling a little. He seems very far away.
1293Dear God, I think, I will do anything you like. Now that you've let me off, I'll obliterate myself, if that's what you really want; I'll empty myself, truly, become a chalice. I'll give up Nick, I'll forget about the others, I'll stop complaining. I'll accept my lot. I'll sacrifice. I'll repent. I'll abdicate. I'll renounce.
1294I know this can't be right but I think it anyway. Everything they taught at the Red Center, everything I've resisted, comes flooding in. I don't want pain. I don't want to be a dancer, my feet in the air, my head a faceless oblong of white cloth. I don't want to be a doll hung up on the Wall, I don't want to be a wingless angel. I want to keep on living, in any form. I resign my body freely, to the uses of others. They can do what they like with me. I am abject.
1295I feel, for the first time, their true power.
1296I go along past the flower beds, the willow tree, aiming for the back door. I will go in, I will be safe. I will fall on my knees, in my room, gratefully breathe in lungfuls of the stale air, smelling of furniture polish.
1297Serena Joy has come out of the front door; she's standing on the steps. She calls to me. What is it she wants? Does she want me to go into the sitting room and help her wind gray wool? I won't be able to hold my hands steady, she'll notice something. But I walk over to her anyway, since I have no choice.
1298On the top step she towers above me. Her eyes flare, hot blue against the shriveled white of her skin. I look away from her face, down at the ground; at her feet, the tip of her cane.
1299"I trusted you," she says. "I tried to help you."
1300Still I don't look up at her. Guilt pervades me, I've been found out, but for what? For which of my many sins am I accused? The only way to find out is to keep silent. To start excusing myself now, for this or that, would be a blunder. I could give away something she hasn't even guessed.
1301It might be nothing. It might be the match hidden in my bed. I hang my head.
1302"Well?" she asks. "Nothing to say for yourself?"
1303I look up at her. "About what?" I manage to stammer. As soon as it's out it sounds impudent.
1304"Look," she says. She brings her free hand from behind her back. It's her cloak she's holding, the winter one. "There was lipstick on it," she says. "How could you be so vulgar? I told him…" She drops the cloak, she's holding something else, her hand all bone. She throws that down as well. The purple sequins fall, slithering down over the step like snakeskin, glittering in the sunlight. "Behind my back," she says. "You could have left me something." Does she love him, after all? She raises her cane. I think she is going to hit me, but she doesn't. "Pick up that disgusting thing and get to your room. Just like the other one. A slut. You'll end up the same."
1305I stoop, gather. Behind my back Nick has stopped whistling.
1306I want to turn, run to him, throw my arms around him. This would be foolish. There is nothing he can do to help. He too would drown.
1307I walk to the back door, into the kitchen, set down my basket, go upstairs. I am orderly and calm.
1308
1309
1310
1311
1312
1313
1314
1315
1316XV Night
1317
1318
1319
1320
1321
1322
132346
1324
1325
1326I sit in my room, at the window, waiting. In my lap is a handful of crumpled stars.
1327This could be the last time I have to wait. But I don't know what I'm waiting for. What are you waiting for? they used to say. That meant hurry up. No answer was expected. For what are you waiting is a different question, and I have no answer for that one either.
1328Yet it isn't waiting, exactly. It's more like a form of suspension. Without suspense. At last there is no time.
1329I am in disgrace, which is the opposite of grace. I ought to feel worse about it.
1330But I feel serene, at peace, pervaded with indifference. Don't let the bastards grind you down. I repeat this to myself but it conveys nothing. You might as well say, Don't let there be air; or, Don't be.
1331I suppose you could say that.
1332There's nobody in the garden. I wonder if it will rain.
1333Outside, the light is fading. It's reddish already. Soon it will be dark. Right now it's darker. That didn't take long.
1334There are a number of things I could do. I could set fire to the house, for instance. I could bundle up some of my clothes, and the sheets, and strike my one hidden match. If it didn't catch, that would be that. But if it did, there would at least be an event, a signal of some kind to mark my exit. A few flames, easily put out. In the meantime I could let loose clouds of smoke and die by suffocation.
1335I could tear my bedsheet into strips and twist it into a rope of sorts and tie one end to the leg of my bed and try to break the window. Which is shatterproof.
1336I could go to the Commander, fall on the floor, my hair disheveled, as they say, grab him around the knees, confess, weep, implore. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, I could say. Not a prayer. I visualize his shoes, black, well shined, impenetrable, keeping their own counsel.
1337Instead I could noose the bedsheet round my neck, hook myself up in the closet, throw my weight forward, choke myself off.
1338I could hide behind the door, wait until she comes, hobbles along the hall, bearing whatever sentence, penance, punishment, jump out at her, knock her down, kick her sharply and accurately in the head. To put her out of her misery, and myself as well. To put her out of our misery.
1339It would save time.
1340I could walk at a steady pace down the stairs and out the front door and along the street, trying to look as if I knew where I was going, and see how far I could get. Red is so visible.
1341I could go to Nick's room, over the garage, as we have done before. I could wonder whether or not he would let me in, give me shelter. Now that the need is real.
1342I consider these things idly. Each one of them seems the same size as all the others. Not one seems preferable. Fatigue is here, in my body, in my legs and eyes. That is what gets you in the end. Faith is only a word, embroidered.
1343I look out at the dusk and think about its being winter. The snow falling, gently, effortlessly, covering everything in soft crystal, the mist of moonlight before a rain, blurring the outlines, obliterating color. Freezing to death is painless, they say, after the first chill. You lie back in the snow like an angel made by children and go to sleep.
1344Behind me I feel her presence, my ancestress, my double, turning in midair under the chandelier, in her costume of stars and feathers, a bird stopped in flight, a woman made into an angel, waiting to be found. By me this time. How could I have believed I was alone in here? There were always two of us. Get it over, she says. I'm tired of this melodrama, I'm tired of keeping silent. There's no one you can protect, your life has value to no one. I want it finished.
1345As I'm standing up I hear the black van. I hear it before I see it; blended with the twilight, it appears out of its own sound like a solidification, a clotting of the night. It turns into the driveway, stops. I can just make out the white eye, the two wings. The paint must be phosphorescent. Two men detach themselves from the shape of it, come up the front steps, ring the bell. I hear the bell toll, ding-dong, like the ghost of a cosmetics woman, down in the hall.
1346Worse is coming, then.
1347I've been wasting my time. I should have taken things into my own hands while I had the chance. I should have stolen a knife from the kitchen, found some way to the sewing scissors. There were the garden shears, the knitting needles; the world is full of weapons if you're looking for them. I should have paid attention.
1348But it's too late to think about that now, already their feet are on the dusty-rose carpeting of the stairs; a heavy muted tread, pulse in the forehead. My back's to the window.
1349I expect a stranger, but it's Nick who pushes open the door, flicks on the light. I can't place that, unless he's one of them. There was always that possibility. Nick, the private Eye. Dirty work is done by dirty people.
1350You shit, I think. I open my mouth to say it, but he comes over, close to me, whispers. "It's all right. It's Mayday. Go with them." He calls me by my real name. Why should this mean anything?
1351"Them?" I say. I see the two men standing behind him, the overhead light in the hallway making skulls of their heads. "You must be crazy." My suspicion hovers in the air above him, a dark angel warning me away. I can almost see it. Why shouldn't he know about Mayday? All the Eyes must know about it; they'll have squeezed it, crushed it, twisted it out of enough bodies, enough mouths by now.
1352"Trust me," he says; which in itself has never been a talisman, carries no guarantee.
1353But I snatch at it, this offer. It's all I'm left with.
1354One in front, one behind, they escort me down the stairs. The pace is leisurely, the lights are on. Despite the fear, how ordinary it is. From here I can see the clock. It's no time in particular.
1355Nick is no longer with us. He may have gone down the back stairs, not wishing to be seen.
1356Serena Joy stands in the hallway, under the mirror, looking up, incredulous. The Commander is behind her, the sitting room door is open. His hair is very gray. He looks worried and helpless, but already withdrawing from me, distancing himself. Whatever else I am to him, I am also at this point a disaster. No doubt they've been having a fight, about me; no doubt she's been giving him hell. I still have it in me to feel sorry for him. Moira is right, I am a wimp.
1357"What has she done?" says Serena Joy. She wasn't the one who called them, then. Whatever she had in store for me, it was more private.
1358"We can't say, ma'am," says the one in front of me. "Sorry."
1359"I need to see your authorization," says the Commander. "You have a warrant?"
1360I could scream now, cling to the banister, relinquish dignity. I could stop them, at least for a moment. If they're real they'll stay, if not they'll run away. Leaving me here.
1361"Not that we need one, sir, but all is in order," says the first one again. "Violation of state secrets."
1362The Commander puts his hand to his head. What have I been saying, and to whom, and which one of his enemies has found out? Possibly he will be a security risk, now. I am above him, looking down; he is shrinking. There have already been purges among them, there will be more. Serena Joy goes white.
1363"Bitch," she says. "After all he did for you."
1364Cora and Rita press through from the kitchen. Cora has begun to cry. I was her hope, I've failed her. Now she will always be childless.
1365The van waits in the driveway, its double doors stand open. The two of them, one on either side now, take me by the elbows to help me in. Whether this is my end or a new beginning I have no way of knowing: I have given myself over into the hands of strangers, because it can't be helped.
1366And so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light.
1367
1368
1369
1370
1371
1372
1373
1374
1375Historical Notes
1376
1377
1378Jezebels
1379Historical Notes on The Handmaid's Tale
1380Being a partial transcript of the proceedings of the Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies, held as part of the International Historical Association Convention held at the University of Denay, Nunavit, on June 25, 2195.
1381Chair: Professor Maryann Crescent Moon, Department of Caucasian Anthropology, University of Denay, Nunavit.
1382Keynote Speaker: Professor James Darcy Pieixoto, Director, Twentieth and Twenty-first-Century Archives, Cambridge University, England.
1383CRESCENT MOON: I am delighted to welcome you all here this morning, and I'm pleased to see that so many of you have turned out lor Professor Pieixoto's, I am sure, fascinating and worthwhile talk. We of the Gileadean Research Association believe that this period well repays further study, responsible as it ultimately was for redrawing the map of the world, especially in this hemisphere.
1384But before we proceed, a few announcements. The fishing expedition will go forward tomorrow as planned, and for those of you who have not brought suitable rain gear and insect repellent, these are available for a nominal charge at the Registration Desk. The nature walk and Outdoor Period-Costume Sing-Song have been rescheduled for the day after tomorrow, as we are assured by our own infallible Professor Johnny Running Dog of a break in the weather at that time.
1385Let me remind you of the other events sponsored by the Gilead ean Research Association that are available to you at this convention, as part of our Twelfth Symposium. Tomorrow afternoon, Professor Gopal Chatterjee, of the Department of Western Philosophy, University of Baroda, India, will speak on "Krishna and Kali Elements in the State Religion of the Early Gilead Period," and there is a morning presentation on Thursday by Professor Sieg-linda Van Buren from the Department of Military History at the University of San Antonio, Republic of Texas. Professor Van Buren will give what I am sure will be a fascinating illustrated lecture on "The Warsaw Tactic: Policies of Urban Core Encirclement in the Gileadean Civil Wars." I am sure all of us will wish to attend these.
1386I must also remind our keynote speaker-although I am sure it is not necessary-to keep within his time period, as we wish to leave space for questions, and I expect none of us wants to miss lunch, as happened yesterday. (Laughter.)
1387Professor Pieixoto scarcely needs any introduction, as he is well known to all of us, if not personally then through his extensive publications. These include "Sumptuary Laws Through the Ages: An Analysis of Documents" and the well-known study "Iran and Gilead: Two Late-Twentieth-Century Monotheocracies, as Seen Through Diaries." As you all know, he is the co-editor, with Professor Knotly Wade, also of Cambridge, of the manuscript under consideration today, and was instrumental in its transcription, annotation, and publication. The title of his talk is "Problems of Authentication in Reference to The Handmaid's Tale."
1388Professor Pieixoto.
1389Applause.
1390PIEIXOTO: Thank you. I am sure we all enjoyed our charming Arctic Char last night at dinner, and now we are enjoying an equally charming Arctic Chair. I use the word "enjoy" in two distinct senses, precluding, of course, the obsolete third. (Laughter.)
1391But let me be serious. I wish, as the title of my little chat implies, to consider some of the problems associated with the soi-disant manuscript which is well known to all of you by now, and which goes by the title of The Handmaid's Tale. I say soi-disant because what we have before us is not the item in its original form. Strictly speaking, it was not a manuscript at all when first discovered and bore no title. The superscription "The Handmaid's Tale" was ap pended to it by Professor Wade, partly inhomage to the great Geoffrey Chaucer; but those of you who know Professor Wade in-formally, as I do, will understand when I say hat i am sure all puns were intentional, particularly that having to do with the ar-chaic vulgar signification of the word tail; that being, In some extent, the bone, as it were, of contention, in that phase of Gileadean society of which our saga treats. (Laughter, applause.)
1392This item-I hesitate to use the word document-was uncurl hod on the site of what was once the city of Bangor, in what, at the time prior to the inception of the Gileadean regime, would have been the state of Maine. We know that this city was a prominent way station on what our author refers to as "The Underground Fe-maleroad," since dubbed by some of our historical wags "The Underground Frailroad." (Laughter, groans.) For this reason, our association has taken a particular interest in it.
1393The item in its pristine state consisted of a metal footlocker, U.S. Army issue, circa perhaps 1955. This fact of itself need have no significance, as it is known that such footlockers were frequently sold as "army surplus" and must therefore have been widespread. Within this footlocker, which was sealed with tape of the kind once used on packages to be sent by post, were approximately thirty tape cassettes, of the type that became obsolete sometime in the eighties or nineties with the advent of the compact disc.
1394I remind you that this was not the first such discovery. You are doubtless familiar, for instance, with the item known as "The A.B. Memoirs," located in a garage in a suburb of Seattle, and with the Diary of P.," excavated by accident during the erection of a new meeting house in the vicinity of what was once Syracuse, New York.
1395Professor Wade and I were very excited by this new discovery. Luckily we had, several years before, with the aid of our excellent resident antiquarian technician, reconstructed a machine capable of playing such tapes, and we immediately set about the painstaking work of transcription.
1396There were some thirty tapes in the collection altogether, with varying proportions of music to spoken word. In general, each tape begins with two or three songs, as camouflage no doubt; then the music is broken off and the speaking voice takes over. The voice is a woman's, and, according to our voice-print experts, the same one throughout. The labels on the cassettes were authentic period labels, dating, of course, from some time before the inception of the early Gilead era, as all such secular music was banned under the regime. There were, for instance, four tapes entitled "Elvis Presley's Golden Years," three of "Folk Songs of Lithuania," three of "Boy George Takes It Off," and two of "Mantovani's Mellow Strings," as well as some titles that sported a mere single tape each: "Twisted Sisters at Carnegie Hall" is one of which I am particularly fond.
1397Although the labels were authentic, they were not always appended to the tape with the corresponding songs. In addition, the tapes were arranged in no particular order, being loose at the bottom of the locker; nor were they numbered. Thus it was up to Professor Wade and myself to arrange the blocks of speech in the order in which they appeared to go; but, as I have said elsewhere, all such arrangements are based on some guesswork and are to be regarded as approximate, pending further research.
1398Once we had the transcription in hand-and we had to go over it several times, owing to the difficulties posed by accent, obscure referents, and archaisms-we had to make some decision as to the nature of the material we had thus so laboriously acquired. Several possibilities confronted us. First, the tapes might be a forgery. As you know, there have been several instances of such forgeries, for which publishers have paid large sums, wishing to trade no doubt on the sensationalism of such stories. It appears that certain periods of history quickly become, both for other societies and for those that follow them, the stuff of not especially edifying legend and the occasion for a good deal of hypocritical self-congratulation. If I may be permitted an editorial aside, allow me to say that in my opinion we must be cautious about passing moral judgment upon the Gil-eadeans. Surely we have learned by now that such judgments are of necessity culture-specific. Also, Gileadean society was under a good deal of pressure, demographic and otherwise, and was subject to factors from which we ourselves are happily more free. Our job is not to censure but to understand. (Applause.)
1399To return from my digression: tape like this, however, is very difficult to fake convincingly, and we were assured by the experts who examined them that the physical objects themselves are genuine. Certainly the recording itself, that is, the superimposition of voice upon music tape, could not have been done within the past hundred and fifty years.
1400Supposing, then, the tapes to be genuine, what of the nature of the account itself? Obviously, it could not have been recorded