Margaret Atwood - Stone Mattress - Nine Tales

Has he ever been adored like that since, purely adored, with no ulterior motives? Because he wasn’t famous then, not even famous with the moderate in-group fame accorded to poets. He hadn’t won anything, any prizes; he hadn’t published any thin, meritorious, envied collections. He had the freedom of a nobody, with a blank future unrolling before him on which anything at all might be written. She’d adored him only for himself. His inner core.

“I could eat you all up,” he’d say to her. Mmm, mmm. Rrrr, rrrr. Oh yes!

“Excuse me?” says Naveena.

He snaps back into the present. Was he making a noise? A yum-yummy noise, a growling noise? And if so, so what? He’s earned his noises. He’ll make all the noises he wants.

But soft you, the fair Naveena. Nymph, in thy glossaries be all my puns remembered. Some more practical remark is called for.

“Are those boots comfortable?” he says cordially. Best to ease into this: let her talk about something she knows, such as boots, because pretty soon she’ll be in over her depth.

“What?” says Naveena, startled. “Boots?” Is that a blush?

“Don’t they pinch your toes?” he says. “They look very fashionable, but how can you walk?” He would like to ask her to get up and prance across the room — it’s one of the functions of high heels to tilt the woman’s pelvis so that her butt curves out behind and her tits thrust forward, lending her the serpentine curve of beauty — but he won’t ask her to do that. She is after all a total stranger.

“Oh,” says Naveena. “These. Yes, they’re comfortable, though maybe I shouldn’t wear them when there’s ice on the sidewalks.”

“There isn’t any ice on the sidewalks,” says Gavin. Not too bright, this nymph.

“Oh no, not here,” she says. “I mean, it’s Florida, right? I meant back home.” She giggles nervously. “Ice.”

Gavin, watching the television weather, has noted with interest the polar vortex gripping the north, the east, the centre. He’s seen the pictures of the blizzards, the ice storms, the overturned cars and broken trees. That’s where Constance must be right now: in the eye of the storm. He imagines her holding out her arms to him, clothed in nothing but snow, with an unearthly radiance streaming out from around her. His lady of the moonglow. He’s forgotten why they broke up. It was a trivial thing; nothing that should have mattered to her. Some other woman he’d gone to bed with. Melanie, Megan, Marjorie? It wasn’t really anything, the woman had practically jumped on him out of a tree. He’d tried to explain that to Constance, but she hadn’t understood his predicament.

Why couldn’t the two of them have gone on and on forever? Himself and Constance, sun and moon, each one of them shining, though in different ways. Instead of which he’s here, forsaken by her, abandoned. In time, which fails to sustain him. In space, which fails to cradle him.

“Florida. Yes? What’s your point?” he says, too sharply. What was this Naveena nattering on about?

“There isn’t any ice here,” she says in a small voice.

“Right, of course, but you’re going back soon,” he says. He must show her that he isn’t drifting away, losing the plot. “Back to — where is it? Indiana? Idaho? Iowa? Lots of ice there! So if you do fall, don’t put out your hand,” he says, assuming an instructive and fatherly tone. “Try to hit with your shoulder. That way you won’t break your wrist.”

“Oh,” says Naveena again. “Thank you.” There’s an awkward pause. “Could we maybe talk about you?” she says. “And, you know, your, well, your work — when you were doing your early work. I’ve got my tape recorder; can I turn it on? And I brought some video clips we could maybe watch, and you could tell me about the, about who, about the context. If you wouldn’t mind.”

“Fire away,” he says, settling back. Where the crap is Reynolds? Where’s his tea? And the cookie: he’s earned it.

“Okay, so, what I’m working on is, well, kind of the Riverboat years. The mid-’60s. When you wrote that sequence called Sonnets for My Lady .” She’s setting up some other technical doodad now: one of those tablets. Reynolds has just bought a green one. Naveena’s is red, with a cunning triangular stand.

Gavin puts his hand in front of his eyes in mock embarrassment. “Don’t remind me,” he says. “ Sonnets — that was apprentice work. Flabby, amateur garbage. I was only twenty-six. Can’t we move on to something more substantial?” In point of fact those sonnets were noteworthy, first of all because they were sonnets in name only — how daring of him! — and secondly because they broke new ground and pushed the boundaries of language. Or so it said on the back of the book. In any case, that book snagged his first-ever prize. He’d pretended to view it with indifference, even disdain — what were prizes but one more level of control imposed on Art by the establishment? — but he’d cashed the cheque.

“Keats died when he was twenty-six,” Naveena says severely, “and look what he accomplished!” A rebuke, a palpable rebuke! How dare she? He was already middle-aged when she was born! He could have been her father! He could have been her child molester!

“Byron called Keats’s stuff ‘Johnny-wet-your-bed poetry,’” he says.

“I know, right?” says Naveena. “I guess he was jealous. Anyway, those sonnets are great! ‘My lady’s mouth on me’. . It’s so simple, it’s so sweet and direct.” She doesn’t seem to realize that the subject is a blowjob. Very different from “My lady’s mouth on mine”: back then, “me” in such a context was a disguised reference to “cock.” The first time Reynolds read that mouth line she laughed out loud: no such pure-mindedness in his very own festering lily.

“So you’re working on the ‘Lady’ sonnets,” he says. “Let me know if there are any points you’d like me to elucidate for you. Something from the horse’s mouth, to flesh out your thesis. As it were.”

“Well, it’s not exactly them I’m working on,” she says. “They’ve been done quite a lot.” She looks down at the coffee table; now she’s blushing in earnest. “As a matter of fact, I’m doing my thesis on C. W. Starr. You know, Constance Starr, though I realize that Starr wasn’t her real name — on her Alphinland series, and, well, you knew her at that time. At the Riverboat, and all of that.”

Gavin feels as if cold mercury has been poured through his veins. Who let this creature in? This defacer, this violator! Reynolds, that’s who. Was treacherous Reynolds aware of the harpy’s true mission? If so, he’ll pull out her molars.

But he’s cornered. He can’t pretend this matters to him — to be cast as a mere secondary source in the main action, the main action being Constance. Constance the fluffball, with her idiotic gnome stories. Constance the flake. Constance the bubblehead. To show anger would be to reveal his soft underbelly, to pile more humiliation upon the primary humiliation. “Oh yes.” He laughs indulgently, as if recalling a joke. “ And all of that is right! So much all , and so much that ! It was all and that from morning to night! But I had the stamina for it then.”

“Excuse me?” says Naveena. Her eyes are shining: she’s getting some of the blood she came for. But she won’t get all of it.

“My dear child,” says Gavin. “Constance and I lived together. We shacked up . It was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. And though that age hadn’t fully dawned, we were very busy all the same. We spent a lot more time taking our clothes off than putting them on. She was. . amazing.” He allows himself a reminiscent smile. “But don’t tell me you’re doing serious academic work on Constance! What she wrote wasn’t in any way. .”