Margaret Atwood - Stone Mattress - Nine Tales

“They have oil drums,” he says. “With fires inside. They’re cooking hot dogs. And drinking beer, I suspect.” Wilma would like a hot dog herself. She can picture walking out there and asking politely whether they might be inclined to share. But she can also picture the answer.

Around five o’clock a scanty clutch of Ambrosia Manor inhabitants musters outside the front door. Only about fifteen, says Tobias. They’re arranging themselves in a double line, as if for a procession: twos, and the odd three. The crowd outside stills: they’re watching. Someone among the Ambrosiads has found a megaphone: Jo-Anne, says Tobias. Orders are given, indecipherable through the window glass. The line moves forward, haltingly.

“Have they reached the gate?” asks Wilma. How she wishes she could see this! It’s like a football game, back when she was an undergraduate! The tension, the opposing teams, the megaphones. She was always in the audience, never in the game, because girls did not play football: their role was to gasp. And to be fuzzy about the rules, as she is now.

The suspense is making her heart beat faster. If Jo-Anne’s group can make it through, the rest of them can get organized and try the same thing.

“Yes,” says Tobias. “But something has happened. There has been an incident.”

“What do you mean?” says Wilma.

“It’s not good. Now they’re coming back.”

“Are they running?” says Wilma.

“As much as possible,” says Tobias. “We will wait until dark. Then we must leave quickly.”

“But we can’t leave!” Wilma almost wails. “They won’t let us!”

“We can leave the building,” says Tobias, “and wait in the grounds. Until they go away. Then we will be unimpeded.”

“But they aren’t going away!” says Wilma.

“They will go away when it’s over,” says Tobias. “Now we will eat something. I will open this can of baked beans. Humanity’s failure to invent a can opener that actually functions has never ceased to dismay me. The design of the can opener has not been improved since the war.”

What do you mean by over ? Wilma wants to ask; but doesn’t.

Wilma prepares herself for the proposed excursion. Tobias has told her they may be outside for some hours, or possibly days; it all depends. She puts on a cardigan, and takes a shawl and a packet of biscuits; also her jeweller’s loupe and the e-reader, which is light enough to be portable. She worries about trifles; she knows they’re trifles, but still, where is she going to put her teeth tonight? Her expensive teeth. And what about clean underwear? They can’t carry much with them, says Tobias.

Now they will venture forth, like mice in moonlight. It is the right time, says Tobias. He leads her by the hand, down the back stairs, then through the corridor to the kitchen, then through the storage area and past the trash bins. He names each stage of their journey so she will know where they are; he pauses at each threshold. “Do not worry,” he says. “There is no one here. They have all departed.”

“But I heard something,” she whispers, and she did: a scuttling, a rustling. A squeaking, as of tiny, shrill voices: are the little people talking to her at last? Her heartbeat is annoyingly rapid. Is that a smell, a fetid animal smell like overheated scalps, like unwashed armpits?

“It’s rats,” he says. “There are always rats in places like this, in hiding. They know when it is safe for them to come out. They are smarter than us, I think. Take my arm, there is a step down.”

Now they’ve gone through the back entrance; they’re outside. There are distant voices, there is chanting — it must be coming from the crowd at the front gate. What is it they’re saying? Time to Go. Fast Not Slow. Burn Baby Burn. It’s Our Turn . An ominous rhythm.

But it’s coming from afar; here at the back of the building it’s quiet. The air is fresh, the night is cool. Wilma worries that they’ll be seen, mistaken for intruders or for escapees from Advanced Living, though surely there’s no one around. No men with beagles. Tobias uses his flashlight to guide his own steps and by extension hers, switching it on and then off again.

“Are there fireflies?” Wilma whispers. She hopes so, for if not, what are those sparkles of light at the edges of her vision, pulsing like signals? Is it some new neural anomaly, her brain short-circuiting like a toaster dropped into the bath?

“Many fireflies,” Tobias whispers back.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see,” he says, “when we get there.”

Wilma has an unworthy and then a frightening thought. What if Tobias has made the whole thing up? What if there are no crowds of baby-faced protesters at the gates? What if it’s a mass hallucination, like statues that weep blood or Virgin Marys in the clouds? Or worse: what if it’s all been an elaborate ruse designed to lure her out here where Tobias can strangle her to death? What if he’s a thrill killer?

But the radio broadcasts? Easily faked. But Noreen and Jo-Anne, their soup kitchen? Paid actors. And the chanting she can hear right now? A recording. Or a group of student recruits — they’d be happy to chant for minimum wage. Nothing like that would be impossible for a well-organized lunatic with money.

Too many murder mysteries, Wilma, she tells herself. If he wanted to kill you he could have done it earlier. And even if she’s right, she can’t go back: she wouldn’t have the least idea of where back is.

“Here we are,” says Tobias. “Grandstand seats. We’ll be quite comfortable here.”

They’re in one of the gazebos, the one to the extreme left. It’s on the far side of the ornamental pond, and commands, according to Tobias, a partial view of Ambrosia Manor’s main entrance. He’s brought the binoculars.

“Have some peanuts,” he says. There’s a crackle — the package — and he transfers a clutch of ovoids into the cusp of her hand. How reassuring they are! Her panic ebbs. He stashed a blanket in the gazebo earlier in the day, and two thermoses of coffee. He produces them now, and they settle down to their unusual picnic. And, just as in earlier, dimly remembered picnics she’d been on with young men — campfire events, with hot dogs and beer — an arm solidifies out of the darkness and slides itself confidently but shyly around her shoulders. Is it really there, that arm, or is she imagining it?

“You are safe with me, dear lady,” says Tobias. Everything’s relative, thinks Wilma.

“What are they doing now?” she asks with a little shiver.

“Milling around,” says Tobias. “Milling around is first. Then people get carried away.” He draws the blanket around her solicitously. There’s a line of little people, men and women both, in dull red velvet costumes, richly textured and patterned in gold; they must be on the railing of the gazebo, which she can’t see. They’re involved in a stately promenade, arm in arm, couple by couple; they walk forward, stop, turn, bow and curtsey, then walk forward again, golden toes pointed. The women have flowery butterfly-wing crowns; the men have mitres, like bishops. There must be music playing for them, at a range beyond the human.

“There,” says Tobias. “The first flames. They have torches. No doubt they have explosives as well.”

“But the others. .” says Wilma.

“There is nothing I can do for the others,” says Tobias.

“But Noreen. But Jo-Anne. They’re still inside. They’ll be. .” She’s clutching — she notices — her own hands. They feel like somebody else’s.

“It was always that way,” he says mournfully. Or is it coldly? She can’t tell.

The rumbling from the crowd is swelling. “They’ve come inside the walls now,” says Tobias. “They’re piling objects against the door of the building. The side door too, I suppose. To prevent exit, or entrance as well. And the back door; they will be thorough. They are rolling the oil drums inside the gate, and they have driven a car up onto the front steps, to block any attempt.”