Alias Grace

by Margaret Atwood

  "You have read the accounts I sent you?"

  Simon nods. "I can see your dilemma," he says. "It is difficult to know what to believe. Grace appears to have told one story at the inquest, another one at the trial, and, after her death sentence had been commuted, yet a third. In all three, however, she denied ever having laid a finger on Nancy Montgomery. But then, some years later, we have Mrs. Moodie's account, which amounts to a confession by Grace, of having actually done the deed; and this story is in accordance with James McDermott's dying words, just before he was hanged. Since her return from the Asylum, however, you say she denies it."

  Reverend Verringer sips at his coffee. "She denies the memory of it," he says.

  "Ah yes. The memory of it," says Simon. "A proper distinction."

  "She could well have been convinced by others that she had done something of which she is innocent," says Reverend Verringer. "It has happened before. The so-called confession in the Penitentiary, of which Mrs. Moodie has given such a colourful description, took place after several years of incarceration, and during the long regime of Warden Smith. The man was notoriously corrupt, and most unfit for his position. He was accused of behaviour of the most shocking and brutal kind; his son, for instance, was permitted to use the convicts for target practice, and on one occasion actually put out an eye. There was talk of his abusing the female prisoners also, in ways you may well imagine, and I am afraid there is no doubt about it; a full enquiry was held. It is to Grace Marks' mistreatment at his hands that I attribute her interlude of insanity."

  "There are some who deny that she was in fact insane," says Simon.

  Reverend Verringer smiles. "You have heard from Dr. Bannerling, I suppose. He has been against her from the beginning. We on the Committee have appealed to him - a favourable report from him would have been invaluable to our cause - but he is intransigent. A Tory, of course, of the deepest dye - he would have all the poor lunatics chained up in straw, if he had his way; and all hanged who look sideways. I am sorry to say that I consider him to have been a part of the same corrupt system that was responsible for the appointment of a coarse and profane man such as Warden Smith. I understand that there were irregularities at the Asylum as well - so much so that Grace Marks, upon her return from it, was suspected of being in a delicate condition. Happily these rumours were unfounded; but how craven - how callous! - to attempt to take advantage of those who are not in control of themselves! I have spent much time in prayer with Grace Marks, attempting to heal the wounds caused to her by these unfaithful and blameworthy betrayers of the public trust."

  "Deplorable," says Simon. It might be considered prurient to ask for more details.

  A sudden and illuminating thought strikes him - Reverend Verringer is in love with Grace Marks! Hence his indignation, his fervour, his assiduousness, his laborious petitions and committees; and above all, his desire to believe her innocent. Does he wish to winkle her out of jail, vindicated as a spotless innocent, and then marry her himself? She's still a good-looking woman, and would no doubt be touchingly grateful to her rescuer. Abjectly grateful; abject gratitude in a wife being, no doubt, a prime commodity on Verringer's spiritual exchange.

  "Fortunately there was a change of government," says Reverend Verringer. "But even so, we do not wish to proceed with our present Petition, until we know ourselves to be on absolutely firm ground; which is why we have taken the step of calling upon you. I must tell you frankly that not all the members of our Committee were in favour of it, but I succeeded in convincing them of the need for an informed and objective viewpoint. A diagnosis of latent insanity at the time of the murders, for instance - however, the utmost caution and rectitude must be observed. There is still a widespread feeling against Grace Marks; and this is a most partisan country. The Tories appear to have confused Grace with the Irish Question, although she is a Protestant; and to consider the murder of a single Tory gentleman - however worthy the gentleman, and however regrettable the murder - to be the same thing as the insurrection of an entire race."

  "Every country is plagued by factionalism," says Simon tactfully.

  "Even apart from that," says Reverend Verringer, "we are caught between the notion of a possibly innocent woman, whom many believe to be guilty, and a possibly guilty woman, whom some believe to be innocent. We would not want the opponents of reform to be given an opportunity of crowing over us. But, as our Lord says, 'The truth shall make you free.' "

  "The truth may well turn out to be stranger than we think," says Simon. "It may be that much of what we are accustomed to describe as evil, and evil freely chosen, is instead an illness due to some lesion of the nervous system, and that the Devil himself is simply a malformation of the cerebrum."

  Reverend Verringer smiles. "Oh, I doubt it will go so far as that," he says. "No matter what science may accomplish in the future, the Devil will always be at large. I believe you have been invited to the Governor's house on Sunday afternoon?"

  "I have had that honour," says Simon politely. He has been intending to make his excuses.

  "I look forward to seeing you there," says Reverend Verringer. "I myself arranged the invitation for you. The Governor's excellent wife is an invaluable member of our Committee."

  11.

  At the Governor's residence, Simon is directed to the parlour, which is almost large enough to be called a drawing room. All possible surfaces of it are upholstered; the colours are those of the inside of the body - the maroon of kidneys, the reddish purple of hearts, the opaque blue of veins, the ivory of teeth and bones. He imagines the sensation it would produce if he were to announce this apercu out loud.

  He is greeted by the Governor's wife. She is a handsome woman of forty-five or so, of an obvious respectability, but dressed in the hectic manner of the provinces, where the ladies appear to feel that if one row of lace and ruching is good, three must be better. She has the alarmed, slightly pop-eyed look that signals either an overly nervous disposition or a disease of the thyroid.

  "I am so glad you could honour us," she says. She tells him that the Governor is regrettably away on business, but that she herself is deeply interested in the work he is doing; she has such a respect for modern science, and especially for modern medicine; such a number of advances have been made. Especially the ether, which has spared so much distress. She fixes him with a deep and meaningful gaze, and Simon sighs inwardly. He is familiar with that expression: she is about to make him an unsolicited gift of her symptoms.

  When he first received his medical degree, he was unprepared for the effect it would have on women; women of the better classes, married ladies especially, with blameless reputations. They seemed drawn to him as if he possessed some priceless but infernal treasure. Their interest was innocent enough - they had no intention of sacrificing their virtue to him - yet they longed to entice him into shadowy corners, to converse with him in lowered voices, to confide in him - timorously, and with quavers, because he also inspired fear. What was the secret of his allure? The face he saw in the mirror, which was neither ugly nor handsome, could scarcely account for it.

  After a time he thought he knew. It was knowledge they craved; yet they could not admit to craving it, because it was forbidden knowledge - knowledge with a lurid glare to it; knowledge gained through a descent into the pit. He has been where they could never go, seen what they could never see; he has opened up women's bodies, and peered inside. In his hand, which has just raised their own hands towards his lips, he may once have held a beating female heart.

  Thus he is one of the dark trio - the doctor, the judge, the executioner - and shares with them the powers of life and death. To be rendered unconscious; to lie exposed, without shame, at the mercy of others; to be touched, incised, plundered, remade - this is what they are thinking of when they look at him, with their widening eyes and slightly parted lips.

  "I suffer so terribly," the Governor's wife's voice begins. Coyly, as if displaying an ankle, she relates a symptom - agitated breathing, a
constriction around the ribs - with a hint of more and richer ones to follow. She has a pain - well, she doesn't like to say exactly where. Whatever could be the cause of it?

  Simon smiles, and says he is no longer practising general medicine.

  After a momentary thwarted frown, the Governor's wife smiles too, and says she would like him to meet Mrs. Quennell, the celebrated Spiritualist and advocate of an enlarged sphere for women, and the leading light of our Tuesday discussion circle, as well as of the spiritual Thursdays; such an accomplished person, and so widely travelled, in Boston and elsewhere. Mrs. Quennell, in her huge crinoline-supported skirt, resembles a lavender-coloured Bavarian cream; her head appears to be topped with a small grey poodle. In her turn she presents Simon to Dr. Jerome DuPont, of New York, who is visiting just now, and who has promised to give a demonstration of his remarkable powers. He is well known, says Mrs. Quennell, and has stayed with Royalty in England. Or not exactly Royalty; but aristocratic families, all the same.

  "Remarkable powers?" says Simon politely. He would like to know what they are. Possibly the fellow claims to levitate, or personifies a dead Indian, or produces spirit rappings, like the celebrated Fox sisters. Spiritualism is the craze of the middle classes, the women especially; they gather in darkened rooms and play at table-tilting the way their grandmothers played at whist, or they emit voluminous automatic writings, dictated to them by Mozart or Shakespeare; in which case being dead, thinks Simon, has a remarkably debilitating effect on one's prose style. If these people were not so well-to-do, their behaviour would get them committed. Worse, they populate their drawing rooms with fakirs and mountebanks, all of them swathed in the grubby vestments of a self-proclaimed quasi-holiness, and the rules of society dictate that one must be polite to them.

  Dr. Jerome DuPont has the deep liquid eyes and intense gaze of a professional charlatan; but he smiles ruefully, and gives a dismissive shrug. "Not very remarkable, I'm afraid," he says. He has a trace of a foreign accent. "Such things are merely another language; if one speaks it, one takes it simply for granted. It is others who find it remarkable."

  "You converse with the dead?" asks Simon, his mouth twitching.

  Dr. DuPont smiles. "Not I," he says. "I am what you might call a medical practitioner. Or an investigative scientist, like yourself. I am a trained Neuro-hypnotist, of the school of James Braid."

  "I have heard of him," says Simon. "A Scotsman, isn't he? A noted authority on clubfoot and strabismus, I believe. But surely professional medicine does not recognize these other claims of his. Is not this Neuro-hypnotism simply the reanimated corpse of Mesmer's discredited Animal Magnetism?"

  "Mesmer posited a magnetic fluid encircling the body, which was certainly erroneous," says Dr. DuPont. "Braid's procedures involve the nervous system alone. I might add that those who dispute his methods have not tried them. They are more accepted in France, where the doctors are less prone to craven orthodoxies. They are more useful in hysterical cases, than in others, of course; they cannot do much for a broken leg. But in cases of amnesia" - he gives a faint smile - "they have frequently produced astounding, and, I may say, very rapid results."

  Simon feels at a disadvantage, and changes the subject. "DuPont - is it a French name?"

  "The family was French Protestant," says Dr. DuPont. "But only on the father's side. He was an amateur of chemistry. I myself am an American. I have visited France professionally, of course."

  "Perhaps Dr. Jordan would like to make one of our party," says Mrs. Quennell, breaking in. "On our spiritual Thursdays. Our dear Governor's wife finds them such a comfort, to know that her little one, now on the other side, is so well and happy. I am sure Dr. Jordan is a sceptic - but we always welcome sceptics!" The tiny bright eyes beneath the doggy coiffure twinkle roguishly at him.

  "Not a sceptic," says Simon, "only a medical doctor." He has no intention of being lured into some compromising and preposterous rigmarole. He wonders what Verringer is thinking of, to include such a woman on his Committee. But evidently she is wealthy.

  "Physician, heal thyself," says Dr. DuPont. He seems to be making a joke.

  "Where do you stand on the Abolitionist question, Dr. Jordan?" says Mrs. Quennell. Now the woman is turning intellectual, and will insist on a belligerent discussion of politics, and will doubtless order him to abolish slavery in the South at once. Simon finds it tiresome to be constantly accused, in his individual person, of all the sins of his country, and especially by these Britishers, who seem to think that a conscience recently discovered excuses them for not having had any conscience at all at an earlier period. On what was their present wealth founded, but on the slave trade; and where would their great mill towns be without Southern cotton?

  "My grandfather was a Quaker," he says. "As a boy, I was taught never to open cupboard doors, in case some poor fugitive might be concealed within. He always felt that to put his own safety at risk was worth a good deal more than barking at others from behind the protection of a fence."

  "Stone walls do not a prison make," says Mrs. Quennell gaily.

  "But all scientists must keep an open mind," says Dr. DuPont. He appears to be back in their previous conversation.

  "I am sure Dr. Jordan's mind is as open as a book," says Mrs. Quennell. "You are looking into our Grace, we are told. From the spiritual point of view."

  Simon can see that if he tries to explain the difference between the spirit, in her sense of the word, and the unconscious mind, in his, he will get hopelessly tangled; so he merely smiles and nods.

  "What approach are you taking?" says Dr. DuPont. "To restore her vanished memory."

  "I have begun," says Simon, "with a method based on suggestion, and the association of ideas. I am attempting, gently and by degrees, to re-establish the chain of thought, which was broken, perhaps, by the shock of the violent events in which she was involved."

  "Ah," says Dr. DuPont, with a superior smile. "Slow but steady wins the race!" Simon would like to kick him.

  "We are sure she is innocent," says Mrs. Quennell. "All of us on the Committee! We are convinced of it! Reverend Verringer is getting up a Petition. It is not the first, but we are in hopes that this time we will be successful. 'Once more unto the breach' is our motto." She gives a girlish wiggle. "Do say you are on our side!"

  "If at first you don't succeed," says Dr. DuPont solemnly.

  "I have not drawn any conclusions, as yet," says Simon. "In any case, I am less interested in her guilt or innocence, than in ..."

  "Than in the mechanisms at work," says Dr. DuPont.

  "That is not quite how I would put it," says Simon.

  "It is not the tune played by the musical box, but the little cogs and wheels within it, that concern you."

  "And you?" says Simon, who is beginning to find Dr. DuPont more interesting.

  "Ah," says DuPont. "For me it is not even the box, with its pretty pictures on the outside. For me, it is only the music. The music is played by a physical object; and yet the music is not that object. As Scripture says, 'The wind bloweth where it listeth.' "

  "St. John," says Mrs. Quennell. " 'That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.' "

  " 'And that which is born of the flesh is flesh,' " says DuPont. The two of them peer at him with an air of gentle but unanswerable triumph, and Simon feels as if he is suffocating under a mattress.

  "Dr. Jordan," says a soft voice at his elbow. It is Miss Lydia, one of the Governor's wife's two daughters. "Mama sent me to ask if you have yet seen her scrapbook."

  Simon inwardly blesses his hostess, and says he has not had that pleasure. The prospect of murky engravings of the beauty spots of Europe, their borders decorated with paper fern fronds, is not usually alluring to him, but at the moment it beckons like an escape. He smiles and nods, and is led away.

  Miss Lydia places him on a tongue-coloured settee, then fetches a heavy book from the adjacent table and arranges herself beside him. "She thought you might find it of interest, because of whate
ver it is you are doing with Grace."

  "Oh?" says Simon.

  "It has got all of the famous murders in it," Miss Lydia explains. "My mother cuts them out and pastes them in, and the hangings, too."

  "Does she indeed?" asks Simon. The woman must be a ghoul as well as a hypochondriac.

  "It helps her to make up her mind, as to which among the prisoners may be worthy objects of charity," says Miss Lydia. "Here is Grace." She opens the book across their knees and leans in his direction, gravely instructive. "I take an interest in her; she has remarkable abilities."

  "Like Dr. DuPont?" Simon says.

  Miss Lydia stares. "Oh, no. I do not go in for any of that. I would never let myself be hypnotized, it is so immodest! I mean that Grace has remarkable abilities as a dressmaker."

  There is a subdued recklessness about her, thinks Simon; when she smiles, both bottom and top teeth show. But at least she is healthy-minded, unlike the mother. A healthy young animal. Simon is conscious of her white throat, encircled with a modest ribbon ornamented with a rosebud, as befits an unmarried girl. Through layers of delicate fabric, her arm presses against his. He is not an insensible block, and although Miss Lydia's character, like that of all such girls, must be unformed and childish, she has a very small waist. A cloud of scent rises from her, lily of the valley, enveloping him in olfactory gauze.

  But Miss Lydia must be unconscious of the effect she is producing on him, being necessarily ignorant of the nature of such effects. He crosses his legs.

  "Here is the execution," says Miss Lydia. "Of James McDermott. It was in several of the newspapers. This one is The Examiner."

  Simon reads:

  What a morbid appetite for such sights, must exist in society, when so large an assemblage, in the present state of our roads, had collected, to witness the dying agony, of an unfortunate but criminal fellow being! Can it be supposed that public morals are improved, or the tendency to the commission of flagrant crimes repressed, by such public sights as these.