Margaret Atwood

by The Tent

  Salome didn’t come to a good end either. Tried out for ballet school, Modern Dance was what she thought would suit her, show a lot of skin, centre your thoughts on the pelvis, bare feet, fling yourself about, but she didn’t get in. Left home after some sort of blowup between the mom and the stepdad, midnight yelling about Miss Princess and her goings-on, furniture was thrown. After that she took to stripping in bars, just to annoy them I bet. Got whacked in her dressing room one night, right before the show, too bad for Management, someone clobbered her over the head with a vase, nothing on but her black leather macramé bikini and that steel-studded choke collar, used to get the clients all worked up, not that I’d know personally. Saw two guys running out the stage door in bicycle-courier outfits, some sort of uniform anyway, never caught them though. Hit men set on by the stepdad is one rumour, wild with jealousy. Guys get like that when their hair falls out. It was all the mother’s fault, if you ask me.

  Plots for Exotics

  From an early age I knew my ambition was to be in a plot. Or several plots – I thought of it as a career. But no plots came my way. You have to apply for them, a friend of mine told me. He’d been around, though he hadn’t been in any plots himself, so I took his advice and went down to the plot factory. As for everything else, there was an interview. So, said the youngish bored man behind the desk, you think you’ve got what it takes to be in a plot. What sort of character did you have in mind? He was fiddling with a list, running his felt-tip pen down it. Character? I said. Yes, that’s what we do here. Plots and characters. You can’t have one without the other. Well, I said, I might as well try out for the main character. Or one of them – I suppose every plot needs more than one. You can’t be a main character, he said bluntly. Why not? I said. Look in the mirror, he said. You’re an exotic. What do you mean, an exotic? I said. I’m a respectable person. I don’t do kinky dancing. Exotic, he said in his bored voice. Consult the dictionary. Alien, foreign, coming in from the outside. Not from here. But I am from here, I said. Do I have a funny accent or something? I don’t make the rules, he said. Maybe you are, I’m not denying it, but your appearance is against it. If we were in some other place you wouldn’t look as if you’d come in from the outside, because you’d already be outside, and so would everyone else there. Then I’d be the exotic, wouldn’t I? He gave a short laugh. But we’re here, aren’t we. Here we are. And there you are. I wasn’t ready to argue about who looked like where, so I said, Okay then, not the main character. What else have you got? For exotics, he said, flipping through the pages of his list. Let me see. There didn’t used to be much of a choice. You could be a jovial, well-meaning exotic, or a stupid, drunken, wife-beating abuser of an exotic, or a hostile exotic falling off a horse, or a clever, malevolent exotic with some kind of big evil plan. If you were a woman, you could be a sexy exotic – a smouldering, beautiful, amoral degenerate. On the other hand, you could be a comical servant. That was it. That was it? I said. I was dismayed. But there’s more options now, he said. His manner was warming up. You could be the best friend, he said. You wouldn’t get the girl, but at least you’d get a girl of some sort. Or you could be the next-door neighbour, drop by for friendly chats. Or you could be some guy with lore – sort of like a coach. Teach the main character how to slice off heads, one-handed, with a sword. We can always use those. Or you could be a wise person; you could have, like, an ancient religion, or you could say meaningful but obscure things, issue what-do-you-call thems. Portents, I said. Yes, he said, like that. Once you only had to be a woman to get those wise parts, any kind of a woman, but then women started having jobs and no one could believe they were wise any more. Nowadays if you’re a wise woman you have to be an exotic woman. You can have wisdom if you’re a man, but you have to be old as well. Beards help. Can you sing? Not particularly, I said. Too bad, he said. The opera’s out, then. Lots of plots there. I could’ve put you in the chorus. They don’t care what anyone looks like. They all wear those exotic outfits anyway. Listen, I said. None of this sounds like me. It doesn’t exactly call out. How about getting me a job in the plot factory? I think I’d be good at that. What? he said. He sounded alarmed. I’d get the hang of it really fast, I said. I could make up some new plots, or give a twist or two to the old ones – move the characters around a few slots. Give some other people a crack at playing the drunken idiots and the comic servants and so on. Increase their dramatic range. What I was really thinking was, I’d be able to rope off a main character or two for myself. Fulfill my childhood dreams. Or I could do a whole plot with nothing in it but exotics. Exotics wall to wall. Then I’d be the main character for sure, no question.

  He narrowed his eyes. Maybe he was reading my mind: I’m not very devious, I’ve always been bad at concealing things. I don’t know, he said. We have standards to keep up. I don’t think it would work.

  Resources of the Ikarians

  A country needs a resource, and ours does not have one. No oil wells, no mineral deposits, no diamonds, no forests, no rich topsoil, no fast-running rivers available for electrical power. How could we have such resources, stuck far out in the ocean on a barren goat-infested lump of geology at a point equidistant from all places of importance?

  We have, it is true, some history. In the old days, before radar, a lot of ships were wrecked on our shifting reefs and unreliable shoals. Our ancestors did quite well out of that, moving the beacons around, raiding the shattered holds, robbing the corpses. We’ve tried to make this history into a resource, without much result. The distances tourists must travel in order to view the narrow, stone-covered beaches where these deplorable outrages occurred are too great, the prices therefore too high. We’ve erected a few ruins, but they are not convincing, even from a distance.

  Some accounts of us – in the more outmoded and spurious travel books – cite a legend according to which our island came into being – through the act of some god or other – at the point where the Icarus famed in Greek myth plunged into the sea, once his artificial wax wings had melted. This mistake arose from the name of our island: a word not, in fact, even faintly Greek. It means – in our language – simply “wad of mud.” But the resorts – or the former resorts, built by hopeful foreign investors – resorts that invariably closed down halfway into their second season, after which we locals nicked the toilets – these resorts tried to capitalize on the romantic falsehood, and stuck a boy with wings on their notepaper. A scorched boy in the act of plummeting to his death, I should add. As a logo it was not well thought out.

  What are we to do? The child sex trade is not for us: our children are unattractive and rude, and – due to their knowledge of our history – have a bad habit of mugging prospective customers and shoving them over cliffs. We’ve tried to work up some local handicrafts: we taught the old women to do tatting – they had a vestigial memory of it – but who wants tatting nowadays? Not even our line of tatted bikinis was successful. We took a crack at Internet telemarketing, which allowed us to raid carelessly guarded credit-card accounts; we’ve always been hard to get at, legally, being so far away from anything resembling a court of law. We also had a period of virtual airline reservation booking, shut down after too many rage-fuelled manslaughters in the business-class lounge; and we tried a fast-food chain specializing in goatburgers, for which we failed to create a vogue. Also we ran out of goats. So what now, we ask ourselves? Our labour force is not numerous, and is in any case averse to labouring. What we would really like is some offshore banks, or else a penal institution, but those do not grow on trees.

  In our desperation we’ve fallen back on the idea of artists. Surely we have enough misery in store to produce a crop of these. Out of the pain we’ve taken care to inflict on them during their childhoods and at random intervals thereafter, out of the poverty we can guarantee, the artists will make art. They will write or paint or sing and then they will die early, and after that we can cash in. Postcards will be ours, black-and-white ones in which the artist frowns or scowls; pilgrim
ages too, and places of interest (the artist’s birthplace, with a blue enamel plaque on it; his local bar, ditto; his favourite sleeping ditch); tasteless figurines of the artist made out of wire coat-hangers; perhaps – is it too much to ask? – a coffee-table book. In the far distance, a film, in which the artist suffers and scowls and drinks and dies young all over again. But this plan hasn’t worked out yet.

  We did have a poet who almost won a prize. He kicked the bucket last year, helped along by drink and drugs, and also by some of us. We may have been in too much of a hurry – perhaps we should have let him ripen a bit longer – but a living impoverished poet is a drain on the economy, whereas a dead one has potential.

  We have hopes, however. Our greatest resource is surely our optimism: a tribute to the human spirit, you might call it. Already the T-shirt makers have swung into action. All is not lost.

  Our Cat Enters Heaven

  Our cat was raptured up to heaven. He’d never liked heights, so he tried to sink his claws into whatever invisible snake, giant hand, or eagle was causing him to rise in this manner, but he had no luck.

  When he got to heaven, it was a large field. There were a lot of little pink things running around that he thought at first were mice. Then he saw God sitting in a tree. Angels were flying here and there with their fluttering white wings; they were making sounds like doves. Every once in a while God would reach out with its large furry paw and snatch one of them out of the air and crunch it up. The ground under the tree was littered with bitten-off angel wings.

  Our cat went politely over to the tree.

  Meow, said our cat.

  Meow, said God. Actually it was more like a roar.

  I always thought you were a cat, said our cat, but I wasn’t sure.

  In heaven all things are revealed, said God. This is the form in which I choose to appear to you.

  I’m glad you aren’t a dog, said our cat. Do you think I could have my testicles back?

  Of course, said God. They’re over behind that bush.

  Our cat had always known his testicles must be somewhere. One day he’d woken up from a fairly bad dream and found them gone. He’d looked everywhere for them – under sofas, under beds, inside closets – and all the time they were here, in heaven! He went over to the bush, and, sure enough, there they were. They reattached themselves immediately.

  Our cat was very pleased. Thank you, he said to God.

  God was washing its elegant long whiskers. De rien, said God.

  Would it be possible for me to help you catch some of those angels? said our cat.

  You never liked heights, said God, stretching itself out along the branch, in the sunlight. I forgot to say there was sunlight.

  True, said our cat. I never did. There were a few disconcerting episodes he preferred to forget. Well, how about some of those mice?

  They aren’t mice, said God. But catch as many as you like. Don’t kill them right away. Make them suffer.

  You mean, play with them? said our cat. I used to get in trouble for that.

  It’s a question of semantics, said God. You won’t get in trouble for that here.

  Our cat chose to ignore this remark, as he did not know what “semantics” was. He did not intend to make a fool of himself. If they aren’t mice, what are they? he said. Already he’d pounced on one. He held it down under his paw. It was kicking, and uttering tiny shrieks.

  They’re the souls of human beings who have been bad on Earth, said God, half-closing its yellowy-green eyes. Now if you don’t mind, it’s time for my nap.

  What are they doing in heaven then? said our cat.

  Our heaven is their hell, said God. I like a balanced universe.

  Chicken Little Goes Too Far

  Chicken Little read too many newspapers. He listened to the radio too much, and he watched too much television. One day something snapped. What was the final straw? Hard to say, but whatever it was it shouldn’t have made him hysterical. Most folks take such things in stride because whining is so unattractive, but not Chicken Little. He always had a short fuse. He went running down the street, cheeping at the top of his lungs. The sky is falling! he cheeped.

  Oh for heavens’ sakes, said Henny Penny, who was loading groceries into her four-wheel-drive supervan. Chicken Little, this is a public place. You’re making a nuisance of yourself.

  But the sky is falling! said Chicken Little. I’m sounding the alarm.

  You sounded the exact same alarm last year, said Henny Penny, and the sky is still in place. Last time I looked, she added, with heavy irony.

  “The sky is falling” is a metaphor, said Chicken Little huffily. It’s true that the sky really is falling, but the falling of the sky represents all sorts of other things that are falling as well. Falling down, and falling apart. You should wake up!

  Go home, have a beer, do some meditation, said Henny Penny. Whatever. You’ll feel better tomorrow.

  But the next day came and Chicken Little did not feel better. He dropped in on his old friend Turkey Lurkey, who taught at an institution of higher learning.

  The sky is falling, said Chicken Little.

  That’s one analysis, said Turkey Lurkey. But there’s data to show it isn’t the sky that’s falling. It’s the earth that’s rising. The rising of the earth is simply displacing the sky. It’s due to natural geocyclical causes and is not the result of human activity, and therefore there is nothing we can do about it.

  I don’t see that it makes a blind bit of difference whether the earth is rising or the sky is falling, said Chicken Little, as the end result in either case will be that we are minus a sky.

  That is a simple-minded view, said Turkey Lurkey, with offensive condescension.

  Chicken Little slammed Turkey Lurkey’s office door, causing Turkey Lurkey’s corkboard decorated with clever newspaper cartoons to fall onto the floor. Then he took himself off to Goosey Loosey, his old roommate, who was now the editor of a major newspaper.

  The sky is falling, said Chicken Little. It’s your duty to write an editorial about it!

  If you’d said, “The stock market is falling,” that would be news, said Goosey Loosey. Granted the sky is falling, in parts. We’re not unaware of it, but the experts are working on it. They’ll have a fix very soon. Meanwhile, no need to trigger a panic.

  Chicken Little went away, disconsolate. He took refuge in a bar. He had a few drinks.

  Drowning your sorrows? said the bartender, whose name was Skunky Punky.

  The sky is falling, said Chicken Little.

  They all say that, said Skunky Punky. The bitch not treating you right? So get a different chick, if you want my opinion. Play some golf. Work off some energy. Do you good.

  Golf greens have toxic chemicals on them that will give you cancer of the gonads, said Chicken Little.

  What sort of bullshit tree-hugging crapola you giving me? said Skunky Punky, who was tired of his job and wanted to pick a fight.

  Excuse me, said Ducky Lucky, who’d been eavesdropping. I couldn’t help overhearing. I’m the president of a lobby group dedicated to solving the very same sky-oriented deficiencies that appear to be disturbing you. It’s not something you can take on alone. Together we can make a difference! Got your chequebook handy?

  Chicken Little rejected this kind offer of assistance. He formed a group of his own, called tsif – an acronym for The Sky Is Falling, as he had to explain carefully to journalists, at first. He launched a Web site. Soon he had a dedicated pack of disciples. They were mostly woodchucks and muskrats, but who cared? They picketed political gatherings. They blocked highways. They disrupted summit conferences. They carried big signs: Take Back the Sky! No Sky, No Pie, No Sweet Bye and Bye! The Sky’s Our Limit!

  This is getting serious, said Hoggy Groggy, who was head of a large development company that sold retirement-home properties in the sky. He himself lived in a bunker designed to protect him from the large chunks of sky that were now falling at random intervals and in unpredictable loca
tions.

  He called in Foxy Loxy. Foxy Loxy moved in the shadow world. He did nasty things for a price, and was a devotee of zero accountability. Guy’s gotta put food on the table, was his motto. Not that he bothered much with tables. As far as he was concerned they were a frill.

  This Chicken What’s-his-name twerp is making a dent, Hoggy Groggy told Foxy Loxy. He’s giving me a headache. He’s against progress. You should put him out of his misery.

  I eat guys like that for breakfast, said Foxy Loxy. It’s the best method. There’s no mess except maybe a couple of feathers, and they never find the body. What’ll you pay me?

  The sky’s the limit, said Hoggy Groggy.

  And so it was.

  Thylacine Ragout

  They cloned the Thylacine. They got some DNA out of a bone and they emptied the nucleus out of the egg of a Tasmanian devil and they put the Thylacine bone DNA into the egg, and it grew, and they implanted it, and it didn’t work, and they did it again, and it didn’t work, and they did it again, again, again, and they tried it a little differently, and they tweaked it this way and that, and finally they cloned the Thylacine. Out it came, the baby Thylacine, and they nurtured it tenderly and with great interest and there it was, running around with stripes on, frantic, as in the only remaining film of it, where it runs and paces and utters silent yelps because the film is a silent film, and it stops to gaze into the camera with an expression both poignant and severe. It was a Thylacine all right, or it looked like one, or it looked like our idea of one, because it was an animal no one still alive had ever actually seen. Anyway, what they got was close enough. Why quibble?