Margaret Atwood - Stone Mattress - Nine Tales

Wilma switches off: that’s enough intelligence for today.

As she’s rummaging around for a teabag — risky, making tea, she might scald herself, but she’ll be very careful — her big-numbers phone rings. It’s the old kind of phone, with a receiver; she can’t manage a cellphone any more. She locates the phone in her peripheral vision, ignores the ten or twelve little people who are skating on the kitchen counter in long fur-bordered velvet cloaks and silver muffs, and picks it up.

“Oh, thank god,” says Alyson. “I’ve seen what’s going on, they showed your building on TV with all those people outside and the overturned laundry van, I’ve been so worried! I’m getting on a plane right now, and. .”

“No,” says Wilma. “It’s fine. I’m fine. It’s under control. Stay where you. .” Then the line goes dead.

So now they’re cutting the wires. Any minute now the electricity will go off. But Ambrosia Manor has a generator, so that will hold things in place for a while.

As she’s drinking her tea the door opens, but it’s not Tobias: no scent of Brut. There’s a rush of footsteps, a smell of salt and damp cloth, a gust of weeping. Wilma is enfolded in a strong, dishevelling embrace. “They say I must leave you! They say I must! We are told to leave the building, all workers, all healthcares, all of us, or they will. .”

“Katia, Katia,” says Wilma. “Calm down.” She disengages the arms, one at a time.

“But you are like a mother to me!” Wilma knows a little too much about Katia’s tyrannical mother to find this complimentary, but it’s kindly meant.

“I’ll be fine,” she says.

“But who will make your bed, and bring your fresh towels, and clean up the things you have broken, and place upon your pillow the chocolate, in the night. .” More sobbing.

“I can manage,” Wilma says. “Now, be a good girl and don’t cause trouble. They’re sending the army. The army will help.” It’s a lie, but Katia needs to leave. Why should she be trapped inside what’s looking more and more like a besieged fortress?

Wilma asks Katia to bring her purse, then gives her all the petty cash left inside it. Someone might as well get the use out of it; she herself won’t be going on a shopping spree any time soon. She tells Katia to add the stash of wrapped floral-scented soaps from the bathroom, leaving two of them for Wilma just in case.

“Why is there water in the bath?” Katia asks. At least she’s stopped weeping. “It is cold water! I will make it hot!”

“It’s all right,” says Wilma. “Leave it there. Now, hurry along. What if they barricade the doors? You don’t want to be late.”

When Katia has gone, Wilma shuffles into the living area, knocking something off a bookshelf in the process — the pencil jar, there’s a sound of wooden sticks — and collapses into the armchair. She intends to take stock of her situation, review her life or something of the sort, but first she’ll try to wend her way through another sentence or two of Gone with the Wind on the big-print e-reader. She gets the thing turned on and finds her place, a wonder in itself. Is it time for her to learn Braille? Yes, but that’s unlikely now.

Oh, Ashley, Ashley, she thought, and her heart beat faster. . Idiot, thinks Wilma. Destruction is at hand and you’re mooning over that wimp? Atlanta will burn. Tara will be gutted. Everything will be swept away.

Before she knows it, she’s nodded off.

She’s wakened by Tobias, gently shaking her arm. Was she snoring, was her mouth open, is her bridge in place? “What time is it?” she says.

“It is time for lunch,” says Tobias.

“Did you find any food?” Wilma asks, sitting up straight.

“I have acquired some dried noodles,” says Tobias. “And a can of baked beans. But the kitchen was occupied.”

“Oh,” says Wilma. “Some of them stayed? The cooking staff?” That would be consoling news: she notes that she’s hungry.

“No, they are all gone,” says Tobias. “It is Noreen and Jo-Anne, and some of the others. They have made a soup. Shall we descend?”

The dining room is in full swing, judging from the noise: everyone’s getting into the spirit of things, whatever that spirit may be. Hysteria, would be Wilma’s best guess. They must be carrying the soup in from the kitchen, acting as waiters. There’s a crash; much laughter.

Noreen’s voice looms up, right behind her ear. “Isn’t this something?” she says. “Everyone’s just rolling up their sleeves and pitching in! It’s like summer camp! I suppose they thought we couldn’t cope!”

“What do you think of our soup?” Jo-Anne, this time. The question is not addressed to Wilma but to Tobias. “We made it in a cauldron!”

“Delicious, dear lady,” Tobias says politely.

“We raided the freezer! We put in everything!” says Jo-Anne. “Everything but the kitchen sink! Eye of newt! Toe of frog! Finger of birth-strangled babe!” She giggles.

Wilma is attempting to identify the ingredients. A piece of sausage, a fava bean, a mushroom?

“The state of that kitchen is disgraceful,” says Noreen. “I don’t know what we were paying them for, the so-called staff! Certainly not for cleaning! I saw a rat.”

“Shhh,” says Jo-Anne. “What they don’t know won’t hurt them!” They both laugh gleefully.

“I am not alarmed by a simple rat,” says Tobias. “I have seen worse.”

“But it’s awful, about the Advanced Living wing,” says Noreen. “We went to see if we could bring them some soup, but the connecting doors are locked.”

“We couldn’t open them,” says Jo-Anne. “And the staff are all gone. That means. .”

“It’s terrible, it’s terrible,” says Noreen.

“There is nothing to be done,” says Tobias. “The people in this room could not care for those other people, in any case. It is beyond our powers.”

“But they must be so confused in there,” says Noreen in a small voice.

“Well,” says Jo-Anne. “Once we’ve had lunch, I think all of us should just stiffen our will power and form up into a double line and march right out of here! Then we can tell the authorities, and they’ll come in and get the doors open and move those poor people into a proper location. This whole thing is beyond disgraceful! As for those stupid baby face masks they’ve got on. .”

“They will not let you through,” says Tobias.

“But we’ll all go together! The press will be there. They wouldn’t dare stop us, not with the whole world watching!”

“I would not count on that,” says Tobias. “The whole world has an appetite for ringside seats at such events. Witch-burnings and public hangings were always well attended.”

“Now you’re frightening me,” says Jo-Anne. She doesn’t sound very frightened.

“I’m going to have a nap first,” says Noreen. “Gather my strength. Before we march out. At least we don’t have to do the dishes in that filthy kitchen, since we won’t be here much longer.”

Tobias has done a circuit of the grounds: the back gate is besieged as well, he says, as of course it would be. He spends the rest of the afternoon in Wilma’s apartment, availing himself of her binoculars. More people are gathering outside the lion gate; they’re brandishing their usual signs, he says, plus some new ones: TIMES UP. TORCH THE DUSTIES. HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME.

Nobody ventures inside the perimeter wall, or nobody Tobias has spotted. The day is overcast, which makes for lower visibility. It’s going to be an unusually chilly evening for this time of year, or that’s what the TV was saying before it went silent. His cellphone is now inoperative, he tells Wilma: the young people out there, although lazy and communistic, are adept at manipulating digital technology. They tunnel secretly here and there inside the Internet, like termites. They must have got hold of a list of Ambrosia’s inhabitants and accessed their accounts, and switched them all off.