The Blind Assassin

by Margaret Atwood

  I myself made off with an ashtray.

  The man with his head on fire

  Last night I took one of the pills the doctor prescribed for me. It put me to sleep all right, but then I dreamed, and this dream was no improvement on the kind I'd been having without benefit of medication.

  I was standing on the dock at Avilion, with the broken, greenish ice of the river tinkling all around like bells, but I wasn't wearing a winter coat - only a cotton print dress covered with butterflies. Also a hat made of plastic flowers in lurid colours - tomato red, a hideous lilac - that was lit up from inside by tiny light bulbs.

  Where's mine? said Laura, in her five-year-old's voice. I looked down at her, but then we were not children any longer. Laura had grown old, like me; her eyes were little dried raisins. This was horrifying to me, and I woke up.

  It was three in the morning. I waited until my heart had stopped protesting, then groped my way downstairs and made myself a hot milk. I should have known better than to rely on pills. You can't buy unconsciousness quite so cheaply.

  But to continue.

  Once off the Queen Mary, our family party spent three days in New York. Richard had some business to conclude; the rest of us could sightsee, he said.

  Laura did not want to go to the Rockettes, or up to the top of the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building. Nor did she want to shop. She just wanted to walk around and look at things on the street, she said, but that was too dangerous a thing for her to do by herself, said Richard, so I went with her. She was not lively company - a relief after Winifred, who was determined to be as lively as was humanly possible.

  After that we spent several weeks in Toronto, while Richard caught up on his affairs. After that we went to Avilion. We would go sailing there, said Richard. His tone implied that this was the only thing the place was good for; also that he was happy to make the sacrifice of his own time in order to indulge our whims. Or, more gently put, to please us - to please me, but to please Laura too.

  It seemed to me that he'd come to regard Laura as a puzzle, one that it was now his business to solve. I'd catch him looking at her at odd moments, in much the same way as he looked at the stock-market pages - searching out the grip, the twist, the handle, the wedge, the way in. According to his view of life, there was such a grip or twist for everything. Either that, or a price. He wanted to get Laura under his thumb, he wanted her neck under his foot, however lightly placed. But Laura didn't have that kind of neck. So after each of his attempts he was left standing with one leg in the air, like a bear-hunter posing in a picture from which the slain bear has vanished.

  How did Laura do it? Not by opposing him, not any longer: by this time she avoided clashing with him head-on. She did it by stepping back, and turning away, and throwing him off balance. He was always lunging in her direction, always grabbing, always grabbing air.

  What he wanted was her approval, her admiration even. Or simply her gratitude. Something like that. With some other young girl he might have tried presents - a pearl necklace, a cashmere sweater - things that sixteen-year-olds were supposed to long for. But he knew better than to foist anything of this sort on Laura.

  Blood from a stone, I thought. He'll never figure her out. And she doesn't have a price, because there's nothing he has that she wants. In any contest of wills, with anyone at all, I was still betting on Laura. In her own way she was stubborn as a pig.

  I did think she'd jump at the chance to spend some time at Avilion - she'd been so reluctant to leave it - but when the plan was mentioned, she seemed indifferent. She was unwilling to give Richard credit for anything, or this was my reading. "At least we'll see Reenie," was all she said.

  "I regret to say that Reenie is no longer in our employ," said Richard. "She was asked to leave."

  When was that? A while ago. A month, several months? Richard was vague. It was a question, he said, of Reenie's husband, who had been drinking too much. Therefore the repairs to the house had not been carried out in what any reasonable person would consider a timely and satisfactory manner, and Richard did not see any point in paying out good money for laziness, and for what could only be termed insubordination.

  "He didn't want her here at the same time as us," said Laura. "He knew she'd take sides."

  We were wandering around on the main floor of Avilion. The house itself appeared to have dwindled in size; the furniture was covered with dust cloths, or what was left of the furniture - some of the bulkier, darker pieces had been removed, on Richard's orders I suppose. I could imagine Winifred saying that nobody should be expected to live with a sideboard festooned with such chunky, unconvincing wooden grapes. The leather-bound books were still in the library, but I had a feeling that they might not be there much longer. The portraits of the prime ministers with Grandfather Benjamin had been deleted: someone - Richard, no doubt - must finally have noticed their pastel faces.

  Avilion had once had an air of stability that amounted to intransigence - a large, dumpy boulder plunked down in the middle of the stream of time, refusing to be moved for anybody - but now it was dogeared, apologetic, as if it were about to collapse in on itself. It no longer had the courage of its own pretensions.

  So demoralizing, said Winifred, how dusty everything was, and there were mice in the kitchen, she'd seen the droppings, and silverfish as well. But the Murgatroyds were arriving later that day, by train, along with a couple of other, newer servants who'd been added to our entourage, and then everything would soon be shipshape, except of course (she said with a laugh) the ship itself, by which she meant the Water Nixie. Richard was down in the boathouse right now, looking her over. She was supposed to have been scraped down and repainted under the supervision of Reenie and Ron Hincks, but this was yet another thing that had not taken place. Winifred failed to see what Richard wanted with that old tub - if Richard really longed to sail, he should scuttle that old dinosaur of a boat and buy a new one.

  "I suppose he thinks it has sentimental value," I said. "For us, I mean. Laura and me."

  "And does it?" said Winifred, with that amused smile of hers.

  "No," said Laura. "Why would it? Father never took us sailing in it. Only Callie Fitzsimmons." We were in the dining room; at least the long table was still there. I wondered what decision Richard, or rather Winifred, would make about Tristan and Iseult and their glassy, outmoded romance.

  "Callie Fitzsimmons came to the funeral," said Laura. We were alone together; Winifred had gone upstairs for what she called her beauty rest. She put cotton pads dampened with witch hazel on her eyes for this, and covered her face with a preparation of expensive green mud.

  "Oh? You didn't tell me."

  "I forgot. Reenie was furious with her."

  "For coming to the funeral?

  "For not coming earlier. She was quite rude to her. She said,'You're an hour too late and a dime too short.'"

  "But she hated Callie! She always hated it when she came to stay! She thought she was a slut!"

  "I guess she hadn't been enough of a slut to suit Reenie. She'd been lazy at it, she'd fallen down on the job."

  "Of being a slut?"

  "Well, Reenie felt she ought to have followed through. At least she should have been there, when Father was in such difficulties. Taken his mind off things."

  "Reenie said all that?"

  "Not exactly, but you could tell what she meant."

  "What did Callie do?"

  "Pretended she didn't understand. After that, she did what everyone does at funerals. Cried and told lies."

  "What lies?" I said.

  "She said even if they didn't always see eye to eye from a political point of view, Father was a fine, fine person. Reenie said political point of view my fanny, but behind her back."

  "I think he tried to be," I said. "Fine, I mean."

  "Well, he didn't try hard enough," said Laura. "Don't you remember what he used to say? That we'd been left on his hands, as if we were some kind of a smear."

 
"He tried as hard as he could," I said.

  "Remember the Christmas he dressed up as Santa Claus? It was before Mother died. I'd just turned five."

  "Yes," I said. "That's what I mean. He tried."

  "I hated it," said Laura. "I always hated those kinds of surprises."

  We'd been told to wait in the cloak room. The double doors to the hall had gauzy curtains on the inside, so we couldn't see through into the square front hall, which had a fireplace, in the old manner; that was where the Christmas tree had been set up. We were perched on the cloak-room settee, with the oblong mirror behind it. Coats were hanging on the long rack - Father's coats, Mother's coats, and the hats too, above them - hers with large feathers, his with small ones. There was a smell of rubber overshoes, and of fresh pine resin and cedar from the garlands wreathed around the front-stair banisters, and of wax on warm floorboards, because the furnace was on: the radiators hissed and clanked. From under the windowsill came a cold draught, and the pitiless, uplifting scent of snow.

  There was a single overhead light in the room; it had a yellow silk shade. In the glass doors I could see us reflected: our royal blue velvet dresses with the lace collars, our white faces, our pale hair parted in the middle, our pale hands folded in our laps. Our white socks, our black Mary Janes. We'd been taught to sit with one foot crossed over the other - never the knees - and that is how we were sitting. The mirror rose behind us like a glass bubble coming out of the tops of our heads. I could hear our breathing, going in and out: the breath of waiting. It sounded like someone else breathing - someone large but invisible, hiding inside the muffling coats.

  All at once the double doors swung open. There was a man in red, a red giant towering upwards. Behind him was the night darkness, and a blaze of flame. His face was covered with white smoke. His head was on fire. He lurched forward: his arms were outstretched. Out of his mouth came a sound of hooting, or of shouting.

  I was startled for a moment, but I was old enough to know what it was supposed to be. The sound was meant to be laughter. It was only Father, pretending to be Santa Claus, and he wasn't burning - it was only the tree lit up behind him, it was only the wreath of candles on his head. He had his red brocade dressing gown on, backwards, and a beard made out of cotton batten.

  Mother used to say he never knew his own strength: he never knew how big he was in relation to everyone else. He wouldn't have known how frightening he might seem. He was certainly frightening to Laura.

  "You screamed and screamed," I said now. "You didn't understand he was just pretending."

  "It was worse than that," said Laura. "I thought he was pretending the rest of the time."

  "What do you mean?"

  "That this was what he was really like," said Laura patiently. "That underneath, he was burning up. All the time."

  The Water Nixie

  This morning I slept in, exhausted after a night of dark wanderings. My feet were swollen, as if I'd been walking long distances over hard ground; my head felt porous and damp. It was Myra knocking at the door that woke me up. "Rise and shine," she trilled through the letter slot. Out of perversity, I didn't answer. Maybe she'd think I was dead - croaked in my sleep! No doubt she was already fussing over which of my floral prints she'd lay me out in, and was planning the eats for the post-funeral reception. It wouldn't be called a wake, nothing so barbaric. A wake was to wake you up, because it's just as well to make sure the dead are really dead before you shovel the mulch over them.

  I smiled at that. Then I remembered Myra had a key. I thought of pulling the sheet up over my face to give her at least a minute of pleasurable horror, but decided better not. I levered myself upright and out of the bed, and pulled on my dressing gown.

  "Hold your horses," I called down the stairwell.

  But Myra was already inside, and with her was the woman: the cleaning woman. She was a hefty creature with a Portuguese look to her: no way to stave her off. She set to work at once with Myra's vacuum cleaner - they'd thought of everything - while I followed her around like a banshee, wailing, Don't touch that! Leave that there! I can do that myself! Now I'll never find anything! At least I got to the kitchen ahead of them, and had time to shove my pile of scribbled pages into the oven. They'd be unlikely to tackle that on the first day of cleaning. In any case it's not too dirty, I never bake anything.

  "There," said Myra, when the woman had finished. "All clean and tidy. Doesn't that make you feel better?"

  She'd brought me a fresh do-dad from The Gingerbread House - an emerald-green crocus planter, only a little bit chipped, in the shape of a coyly smiling girl's head. The crocuses are supposed to grow out through the holes in the top and burst into a halo of bloom, her words exactly. All I have to do is water it, says Myra, and pretty soon it'll be cute as a button.

  God works in his mysterious ways his wonders to perform, as Reenie used to say. Could it be that Myra is my designated guardian angel? Or is she instead a foretaste of Purgatory? And how do you tell the difference?

  On our second day at Avilion, Laura and I went off to see Reenie. It wasn't hard to find out where she was living: everyone in town knew. Or the people in Betty's Luncheonette did, because that's where she was working now, three days a week. We didn't tell Richard and Winifred where we were going, because why add to the unpleasant atmosphere around the breakfast table? We could not be absolutely prohibited, but we would be certain to attract an annoying measure of subdued scorn.

  We took the teddy bear I'd bought for Reenie's baby, at Simpsons, in Toronto. It wasn't a very cuddly teddy bear - it was stern and tightly stuffed and stiff. It looked like a minor civil servant, or a civil servant of those days. I don't know what they look like now. Most likely they wear jeans.

  Reenie and her husband were living in one of the small limestone row-house cottages originally built for the factory workmen - two floors, pointed roof, privy at the back of the narrow garden - not so very far from where I live now. They had no telephone, so we could not alert Reenie to the fact that we were coming. When she opened the door and saw the two of us standing there, she smiled broadly, and then began to cry. After a moment, so did Laura. I stood holding the teddy bear, feeling left out because I wasn't crying too.

  "Bless you," said Reenie to both of us. "Come in and see the baby."

  We went along the linoleum-floored corridor into the kitchen. Reenie had painted it white and added yellow curtains, the same shade of yellow as the curtains at Avilion. I noticed a set of canisters, white as well, with yellow stencilling: Flour, Sugar, Coffee, Tea. I didn't need to be told that Reenie had done these decorations herself. Those, and the curtains, and anything else she could lay her hands on. She was making the best of it.

  The baby - that's you, Myra, you have now entered the story - was lying in a wicker laundry basket, staring at us with round, unblinking eyes that were even bluer than babies' eyes usually are. I have to say she looked like a suet pudding, but then most babies do.

  Reenie insisted on making us a cup of tea. We were young ladies now, she said; we could have real tea, and not just milk with a little tea in it, the way we used to. She had gained weight; the undersides of her arms, once so firm and strong, wobbled a little, and as she walked across to the stove she almost waddled. Her hands were puffy, the knuckles dimpled.

  "You eat for two and then you forget to stop," she said. "See my wedding ring? I couldn't get it off unless they cut it off. I'll have to be buried in it." She said this with a sigh of complacency. Then the baby began to fuss, and Reenie picked it up and set it on her knee, and looked across the table at us almost defiantly. The table (plain, cramped, with an oilcloth covering printed in yellow tulips) was like a great chasm - on one side of it the two of us, on the other, immensely far away now, Reenie and her baby, with no regrets.

  Regrets for what? For her abandonment of us. Or that is what it felt like to me.

  There was something odd in Reenie's manner, not towards the baby but towards us in relation to it - almost as i
f we'd found her out. I've since wondered - and you'll have to excuse me for mentioning it, Myra, but really you shouldn't be reading this, and curiosity killed the cat - I've since wondered whether this baby's father was not Ron Hincks at all, but Father himself. There was Reenie, the only servant left at Avilion, after I'd gone off on my honeymoon, and all around Father's head the towers were crashing down. Wouldn't she have applied herself to him like a poultice, in the same spirit in which she'd bring him a cup of warm soup or a hot-water bottle? Comfort, against the cold and dark.

  In that case, Myra, you are my sister. Or my half-sister. Not that we'll ever know, or I myself will never know. I suppose you could have me dug up, and take a sample of my hair or bone or whatever they use, and send it off to be analysed. But I doubt that you'd go that far. The only other possible proof would be Sabrina - you could get together, compare snippets of yourselves. But in order for that to happen, Sabrina would have to come back, and God only knows whether she ever will. She could be anywhere. She could be dead. She could be at the bottom of the sea.

  I wonder if Laura knew about Reenie and Father, if indeed there was anything to know. I wonder if that is among the many things she knew, but never told. Such a thing is entirely possible.

  The days at Avilion did not pass quickly. It was still too hot, it was still too humid. The water levels in the two rivers were low: even the Louveteau's rapids were sluggish, and an unpleasant smell was coming off the Jogues.

  I stayed inside the house most of the time, sitting in the leather-backed chair in Grandfather's library with my legs over its arm. The husks of last winter's dead flies were still encrusting the windowsills: the library was not a top priority for Mrs. Murgatroyd. Grandmother Adelia's portrait was still presiding.

  I spent the afternoons with her scrapbooks, with their clippings about teas and the visiting Fabians, and the explorers with their magic lantern shows and their accounts of quaint native customs. I don't know why anyone found it strange that they decorated the skulls of their ancestors, I thought. We do that too.