Маргарет Этвуд - The Testaments

We went up a hill and there were bright lights and people with television cameras, and a voice said, “Give us a smile.” And then I blacked out.

They airlifted us to the Campobello Refugee Medical Centre and stuffed antibiotics into me, so when I woke up my arm wasn’t so puffy and sore.

My sister, Agnes, was there beside the bed, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt that said RUN FOR OUR LIFE, HELP FIGHT LIVER CANCER. I thought that was funny because that’s what we’d been doing: running for our lives. She was holding my hand. Ada was there beside her, and Elijah, and Garth. They were all grinning like mad.

My sister said to me, “It’s a miracle. You saved our lives.”

“We’re really proud of both of you,” said Elijah. “Though I’m sorry about the inflatable—they were supposed to take you into the harbour.”

“You’re all over the news,” said Ada. “ ‘Sisters defy the odds.’ ‘Baby Nicole’s daring escape from Gilead.’ ”

“Also the document cache,” said Elijah. “That’s been on the news too. It’s explosive. So many crimes, among the top brass in Gilead—it’s much more than we’ve ever hoped for. The Canadian media are releasing one disruptive secret after another, and pretty soon heads will roll. Our Gilead source really came through for us.”

“Is Gilead gone?” I said. I felt happy but also unreal, as if it hadn’t been me doing the things we’d done. How could we have taken those risks? What had carried us through?

“Not yet,” said Elijah. “But it’s the beginning.”

“Gilead News is saying it’s all fake,” said Garth. “A Mayday plot.”

Ada gave a short growly laugh. “Of course that’s what they’d say.”

“Where’s Becka?” I asked. I was feeling dizzy again, so I closed my eyes.

“Becka’s not here,” Agnes said gently. “She didn’t come with us. Remember?”

“She did come. She was there on the beach,” I whispered. “I heard her.”

I think I went to sleep. Then I was awake again. “Does she still have a fever?” said a voice.

“What happened?” I said.

“Shh,” said my sister. “It’s all right. Our mother is here. She’s been so worried about you. Look, she’s right beside you.”

I opened my eyes, and it was very bright, but there was a woman standing there. She looked sad and happy, both at once; she was crying a little. She looked almost like the picture in the Bloodlines file, only older.

I felt it must be her, so I reached up my arms, the good one and the healing one, and our mother bent over my hospital bed, and we gave each other a one-armed hug. She only used the one arm because she had her other arm around Agnes, and she said, “My darling girls.”

She smelled right. It was like an echo, of a voice you can’t quite hear.

And she smiled a little and said, “Of course you don’t remember me. You were too young.”

And I said, “No. I don’t. But it’s okay.”

And my sister said, “Not yet. But I will.”

Then I went back to sleep.

Our time together is drawing short, my reader. Possibly you will view these pages of mine as a fragile treasure box, to be opened with the utmost care. Possibly you will tear them apart, or burn them: that often happens to words.

Perhaps you’ll be a student of history, in which case I hope you’ll make something useful of me: a warts-and-all portrait, a definitive account of my life and times, suitably footnoted; though if you don’t accuse me of bad faith I will be astonished. Or, in fact, not astonished: I will be dead, and the dead are hard to astonish.

I picture you as a young woman, bright, ambitious. You’ll be looking to make a niche for yourself in whatever dim, echoing caverns of academia may still exist by your time. I situate you at your desk, your hair tucked back behind your ears, your nail polish chipped—for nail polish will have returned, it always does. You’re frowning slightly, a habit that will increase as you age. I hover behind you, peering over your shoulder: your muse, your unseen inspiration, urging you on.

You’ll labour over this manuscript of mine, reading and rereading, picking nits as you go, developing the fascinated but also bored hatred biographers so often come to feel for their subjects. How can I have behaved so badly, so cruelly, so stupidly? you will ask. You yourself would never have done such things! But you yourself will never have had to.

And so we come to my end. It’s late: too late for Gilead to prevent its coming destruction. I’m sorry I won’t live to see it—the conflagration, the downfall. And it’s late in my life. And it’s late at night: a cloudless night, as I observed while walking here. The full moon is out, casting her equivocal corpse-glow over all. Three Eyes saluted me as I passed them: in moonlight their faces were skulls, as mine must have been to them.

They will come too late, the Eyes. My messengers have flown. When worst comes to worst—as it will very soon—I’ll make a quick exit. A needleful or two of morphine will do it. Best that way: if I allowed myself to live, I would disgorge too much truth. Torture is like dancing: I’m too old for it. Let the younger ones practise their bravery. Though they may not have a choice about that, since they lack my privileges.

But now I must end our conversation. Goodbye, my reader. Try not to think too badly of me, or no more badly than I think of myself.

In a moment I’ll slot these pages into Cardinal Newman and slide it back onto my shelf. In my end is my beginning, as someone once said. Who was that? Mary, Queen of Scots, if history does not lie. Her motto, with a phoenix rising from its ashes, embroidered on a wall hanging. Such excellent embroiderers, women are.

The footsteps approach, one boot after another. Between one breath and the next the knock will come.

HISTORICAL NOTES

Being a partial transcript of the proceedings of the Thirteenth Symposium on Gileadean Studies, International Historical Association Convention, Passamaquoddy, Maine, June 29–30, 2197.

CHAIR: Professor Maryanne Crescent Moon, President, Anishinaabe University, Cobalt, Ontario.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Professor James Darcy Pieixoto, Director, Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Archives, Cambridge University, England .

CRESCENT MOON: First, I would like to acknowledge that this event is taking place on the traditional territory of the Penobscot Nation, and I thank the elders and ancestors for permitting our presence here today. I would also like to point out that our location—Passamaquoddy, formerly Bangor—was not only a crucial jumping-off point for refugees fleeing Gilead but was also a key hub of the Underground Railroad in antebellum times, now more than three hundred years ago. As they say, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.

What a pleasure to welcome you all here to the Thirteenth Symposium on Gileadean Studies! How our organization has grown, and with such good reason. We must continue to remind ourselves of the wrong turnings taken in the past so we do not repeat them.

A little housekeeping: for those who would like some Penobscot River fishing, there are two excursions planned; please remember your sunscreen and insect repellent. Details of these expeditions, and of the Gilead Period town architectural tour, are in your symposium files. We have added a Recreational Gilead Period Hymn Sing at the Church of Saint Jude, in company with three of the town’s school choirs. Tomorrow is Period Costume Re-enactment Day, for those who have come equipped. I do ask you not to get carried away, as happened at the Tenth Symposium.