Margaret Atwood - MaddAddam

Little Blackbeard is tugging at her hand. “Please, Oh Toby, what is clichés ?” he says.

Toby hardly knows what she answers, because now the truth is hitting him: Oryx and Crake are these skeletons. He heard Jimmy say that; it registered. He turns his frightened face up to her: she can see the sudden fall, the crash, the damage.

“Oh Toby, is this Oryx, and is this Crake?” he says. “Snowman-the-Jimmy said! But they are a smelly bone, they are many smelly bones! Oryx and Crake must be beautiful! Like the stories! They cannot be a smelly bone!” He begins to cry as if his heart will break.

Toby kneels, folds her arms around him, hugs him tight. What to say? How to comfort him? In the face of this terminal sorrow.

Toby cannot tell the story tonight. She is too sad, because of the dead ones. The ones who became dead, in the battle. So now I will try to tell this story to you. I will tell it in the right way, if I can.

First I am putting the red hat on my head, the hat of Snowman-the-Jimmy. These markings on it — look, it is a voice, and it is saying: RED. And it is saying: SOX.

SOX is a special word of Crake. We do not know what it means. Toby does not know either. Maybe we will know later.

But see — the red hat is on my head, and it does not hurt me. I am not growing an extra skin, I have my own skin, the same. I can take the hat off, I can put it back on again. It does not stick to my head.

Now I will eat the fish. We do not eat a fish, or a smelly bone; that is not what we eat. It is a hard thing to do, eating a fish. But I must do it. Crake did many hard things for us, when he was on the earth in the form of a person. He cleared away the chaos for us, and …

You do not have to sing.

… and he did many other hard things, so I will try to do this hard thing of eating the smelly bone fish. It is cooked. It is very small. Perhaps it will be enough for Crake if I put it into my mouth and take it out again.

There.

I am sorry for making the noises of a sick person.

Please take the fish away and throw it into the forest. The ants will be happy. The maggots will be happy. The vultures will be happy.

Yes, it does taste very bad. It tastes like the smell of a smelly bone, or the smell of a dead one. I will chew many leaves to get rid of that taste. But if I did not do the hard thing with the bad taste, I would not be able to hear the story Crake is telling me, and then tell it to you. That is the way it was with Snowman-the-Jimmy, and that is the way it is with Toby. The hard thing of eating the fish, the smelly bone taste — that is what needs to be done. First the bad things, then the story.

Thank you for the purring. I am not feeling so sick now.

This is the Story of the Battle. It tells how Zeb and Toby and Snowman-the-Jimmy and the other two-skinned ones and the Pig Ones cleared away the bad men, just as Crake cleared away the people in the chaos to make a good and safe place for us to live.

And Toby and Zeb and Snowman-the-Jimmy and the two-skinned ones and the Pig Ones needed to clear away the bad men, because if they did not do it, our place would never be safe. The bad men would kill us as they killed the Pig One baby, with a knife. Or with a stick that makes holes with blood coming out. So that is why.

Toby told this reason to me. It is a good reason.

And the Pig Ones helped them, because they did not want any more of their Pig One babies to be killed with a knife. Or a stick thing. Or in any other way, such as a rope.

The Pig Ones can smell better than any. We can smell better than the ones with two skins, but the Pig Ones can smell better than us. So they helped, by smelling the footprints of the bad men, and showing where they had gone. And by helping to chase after them.

And I was there too, so that I could tell the others what the Pig Ones were saying. I had shoes on my feet. You see those shoes, they are here, see? They have lights on them, and wings. They are a special thing from Crake, and I am grateful for having them, and I say, Thank you. But I do not need to put them on unless there is danger, and other bad men that must be cleared away. So I do not have them on my feet right now. But I have them here beside me, because they are part of the story.

But that time I put those shoes on my feet, and we walked a long way, into the place where the buildings are, where we do not go because they can fall down. But I went there that time, and I saw many things.

I saw things left over from the chaos, many. I saw empty buildings, many. I saw empty skins, many. I saw metal and glass things, many. And the Pig Ones carried Snowman-the-Jimmy.

Then the Pig Ones were following the bad men with their noses, and they found where they had gone. And the bad men went into the Egg, even though the Egg should only be for making, not for killing. And some of the Pig Ones went into the Egg also, to the room where the killing things were, so the bad men could not get those things. So the bad men were running, and they were hiding inside the Egg, in the hallways of the Egg. And at first we could not see them.

The Egg was dark, not light, as it used to be. We could see when we were inside the Egg, I do not mean that kind of dark. The Egg had a dark feeling. It had a dark smell.

And Snowman-the-Jimmy went into the first doorway of the Egg, and he found a pile of smelly bones and another pile of smelly bones, all mixed together, and he was very sad, and he fell down onto his knees, and he cried. And Toby wanted to purr on him, but he said, “Leave me alone!”

And then he took a pink twisty thing from the hair of one of the smelly bone piles, and he held it in his hands, and he said, “Oryx. Oh God.” And then he said, “You fucker, Crake! You didn’t have to kill her!”

And Toby and Zeb were there. And Zeb said, “Maybe she was already sick. Maybe he couldn’t live without her.” And Snowman-the-Jimmy said, “Oh Fuck, spare me the fucking clichés!”

And I said to Toby, “What is clichés ?” And Toby said that it was a word to help people get through a trouble when they couldn’t think of anything else. And I hoped that Fuck was flying very quickly to help Snowman-the-Jimmy, because he was in very much trouble.

And I was in very much trouble too, because Snowman-the-Jimmy said these bone piles were Oryx and Crake. And I felt a very bad feeling, and I was frightened. And I said, “Oh Toby, is this Oryx, and is this Crake? But they are a smelly bone, they are many smelly bones! Oryx and Crake must be beautiful! Like the stories! They cannot be a smelly bone!” And I cried, because they were dead ones, very dead ones, and all fallen apart.

But Toby said the bone piles were not the real Oryx and Crake any more, they were only husks, like an eggshell.

And the Egg wasn’t the real Egg, the way it is in the stories. It was only an eggshell, like the shells that are broken and left behind when the birds hatch out of them. And we ourselves were like the birds, so we did not need the broken eggshell any more, did we?

And Oryx and Crake had different forms now, not dead ones, and they are good and kind. And beautiful. The way we know, from the stories.

So I felt better then.

Please do not sing yet.

And then after that we went all the way into the Egg. It was not bright there but it was not dark either, because the sun shone through the eggshell. But the feeling of darkness was all the way through the air. And then they were having a battle. A battle is when some wish to clear others away, and the others want to clear them away as well.

We do not have battles. We do not eat a fish. We do not eat a smelly bone. Crake made us that way. Yes, good, kind Crake.