Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin

There's a snapshot of my mother at the Normal School, in London, Ontario, taken with two other girls; all three are standing on the front steps of their boarding house, laughing, their arms entwined. The winter snow lies heaped to either side; icicles drip from the roof. My mother is wearing a sealskin coat; from underneath her hat the ends of her fine hair crackle. She must already have acquired the pince-nez that preceded the owlish glasses I remember-she was near-sighted early-but in this picture she doesn't have them on. One of her feet in its fur-topped boot is visible, the ankle turned coquettishly. She looks courageous, dashing even, like a boyish buccaneer.

After graduating, she'd accepted a position at a one-room school, further west and north, in what was then the back country. She'd been shocked by the experience-by the poverty, the ignorance, the lice. The children there had been sewn into their underwear in the fall and not unsewn until the spring, a detail that has remained in my mind as particularly squalid. Of course, said Reenie, it was no place for a lady like your mother.

But my mother felt she was accomplishing something-doing something-for at least a few of those unfortunate children, or she hoped she was; and then she'd come home for the Christmas holidays. Her pallor and thinness were commented upon: roses were required in her cheeks. So there she was at the skating party, on the frozen mill pond, in company with my father. He'd laced up her skates for her first, kneeling on one knee.

They'd known each other for some time through their respective fathers. There had been previous, decorous encounters. They'd acted together, in the last of Adelia's garden theatricals-he'd been Ferdinand, she Miranda, in a bowdlerised version of The Tempest in which both sex and Caliban had been minimised. In a dress of shell pink, said Reenie, with a wreath of roses; and she spoke the words out perfect, just like an angel. O brave new world, that has such people in't! And the unfocused gaze of her dazzled, limpid, myopic eyes. You could see how it all came about.

My father could have looked elsewhere, for a wife with more money, but he must have wanted the tried and true: someone he could depend on. Despite his high spirits-he'd had high spirits once, apparently-he was a serious young man, said Reenie, implying that otherwise my mother would have rejected him. They were both in their own ways earnest; they both wanted to achieve some worthy end or other, change the world for the better. Such alluring, such perilous ideals!

After they had skated around the pond several times, my father asked my mother to marry him. I expect he did it awkwardly, but awkwardness in men was a sign of sincerity then. At this instant, although they must have been touching at shoulder and hip, neither one was looking at the other; they were side by side, right hands joined across the front, left hands joined at the back. (What was she wearing? Reenie knew this too. A blue knitted scarf, a tarn and knitted gloves to match. She'd knitted them herself. A winter coat of walking length, hunting green. A handkerchief tucked into her sleeve-an item she never forgot, according to Reenie, unlike some she could name.)

What did my mother do at this crucial moment? She studied the ice. She did not reply at once. This meant yes.

All around them were the snow-covered rocks and the white icicles-everything white. Under their feet was the ice, which was white also, and under that the river water, with its eddies and undertows, dark but unseen. This was how I pictured that time, the time before Laura and I were born-so blank, so innocent, so solid to all appearances, but thin ice all the same. Beneath the surfaces of things was the unsaid, boiling slowly.

Then came the ring, and the announcement in the papers; and then-once Mother had returned from completing the teaching year, which it was her duty to do-there were formal teas. Beautifully set out they were, with rolled asparagus sandwiches and sandwiches with watercress in them, and three kinds of cake-a light, a dark, and a fruit-and the tea itself in silver services, with roses on the table, white or pink or perhaps a pale yellow, but not red. Red was not for engagement teas. Why not? You'll find out later, said Reenie.

Then there was the trousseau. Reenie enjoyed reciting the details of this-the nightgowns, the peignoirs, the kinds of lace on them, the pillowcases embroidered with monograms, the sheets and petticoats. She spoke of cupboards and of bureau drawers and linen closets, and of what sorts of things should be kept in them, neatly folded. There was no mention of the bodies over which all these textiles would eventually be draped: weddings, for Reenie, were mostly a question of cloth, at least on the face of it.

Then there was the list of guests to be compiled, the invitations to be written, the flowers to be selected, and so on up to the wedding.

And then, after the wedding, there was the war. Love, then marriage, then catastrophe. In Reenie's version, it seemed inevitable.

The war began in the August of 1914, shortly after my parents' marriage. All three brothers enlisted at once, no question about it. Amazing to consider now, this lack of question. There's a photo of them, a fine trio in their uniforms, with grave, naive foreheads and tender moustaches, their smiles nonchalant, their eyes resolute, posing as the soldiers they had not yet become. Father is the tallest. He always kept this photo on his desk.

They joined the Royal Canadian Regiment, the one you always joined if you were from Port Ticonderoga. Almost immediately they were posted to Bermuda to relieve the British regiment stationed there, and so, for the war's first year, they spent their time going on parade and playing cricket. Also chafing at the bit, or so their letters claimed.

Grandfather Benjamin read these letters avidly. As time wore on without a victory for either side, he became more and more jittery and uncertain. This was not the way things ought to have gone. The irony was that his business was booming. He'd recently expanded into celluloid and rubber, for the buttons that is, which allowed for higher volumes; and due to the political contacts Adelia had helped him to make, his factories received a great many orders to supply the troops. He was as honest as he'd always been, he didn't deliver shoddy goods, he was not a war profiteer in that sense. But it cannot be said that he did not profit.

War is good for the button trade. So many buttons are lost in a war, and have to be replaced-whole boxfuls, whole truckloads of buttons at a time. They're blown to pieces, they sink into the ground, they go up in flames. The same can be said for undergarments. From a financial point of view, the war was a miraculous fire: a huge, alchemical conflagration, the rising smoke of which transformed itself into money. Or it did for my grandfather. But this fact no longer delighted his soul or propped up his sense of his own rectitude, as it might have done in earlier, more self-satisfied years. He wanted his sons back. Not that they'd gone anywhere dangerous yet: they were still in Bermuda, marching around in the sun.

Following their honeymoon (to the Finger Lakes, in New York State), my parents had been staying at Avilion until they could set up their own establishment, and Mother remained there to supervise my grandfather's household. They were short-staffed, because all able hands were needed either for the factories or for the army, but also because it was felt that Avilion should set an example by reducing expenditures. Mother insisted on plain meals-pot roast on Wednesdays, baked beans on a Sunday evening-which suited my grandfather fine. He'd never really been comfortable with Adelia's fancy menus.

In August of 1915, the Royal Canadian Regiment was ordered back to Halifax, to equip for France. It stayed in port for over a week, taking on supplies and new recruits and exchanging tropical uniforms for warmer clothing. The men were issued with Ross rifles, which would later jam in the mud, leaving them helpless.