Margaret Atwood - Stone Mattress - Nine Tales

In the past Gavin had always taken a certain pleasure in humiliating Constance in public, with the sardonic, ironic remarks that were one of his poetic specialties: it was a form of compliment, she felt, since it made her the focus of his attention. He was showing her off in a sense, and since that turned him on, she meekly let the humiliation wash over her. But now he stopped humiliating her. Instead, he was ignoring her, which was much worse. When they were alone in their two rented rooms, he no longer kissed her neck and tore off her clothes and threw her onto their mattress in a flamboyant display of uncontrollable lust. Instead he’d complain of a back spasm, and suggest — more than that, demand — that she compensate for his pain and immobility by giving him a blowjob.

This was not her favourite form of activity. She was unpractised at it, in addition to which there was a long list of other things she would rather put into her mouth.

By contrast, no one in Alphinland ever demanded a blowjob. But then, no one in Alphinland had a toilet either. Toilets weren’t necessary. Why waste time on that kind of routine bodily function when there were giant scorpions invading the castle? Alphinland did have bathtubs though, or rather, square pools sunk in jasmine-scented gardens and heated by underground springs. Some of the more depraved Alphinlanders bathed in the blood of their captives, who were chained to stakes around the pool to watch as their life drained slowly away into the scarlet bubbles.

Constance stopped going to the group gatherings at the Riverboat because the others were giving her pitying looks, and also asking leading questions, such as “Where did Gavin get to? He was here just a minute ago.” They knew more than she did. They could see that things were coming to a head.

The new Lady’s name turned out to be Marjorie. A name, thinks Constance now, that has all but disappeared: the Marjories are going extinct, and not a moment too soon for her. Marjorie was the dark-haired, dark-eyed, lanky-legged part-time volunteer bookkeeper at the Riverboat, given to vibrant African textiles wound around her waist, and to dangling handmade bead earrings, and to a braying guffaw that suggested a mule with bronchitis.

Or suggested it to Constance; though obviously not to Gavin. Constance walked in on Gavin and Marjorie while they were in full hump, with no back spasm anywhere on view. Wineglasses littered the table, clothes littered the floor, and Marjorie’s hair littered the pillow: the pillow of Constance. Gavin had groaned, either in orgasm or in disgust at Constance’s bad timing. Marjorie, on the other hand, had brayed, at Constance or Gavin or else the general situation. It was a derisive bray. It was not kindly, and it rankled.

What was left for Constance to say except, You owe me half the rent ? She never got it, though; Gavin was nothing if not cheap, a feature of the poets then. Shortly after she’d moved out, taking her electric kettle with her, she’d signed her first Alphinland book contract. Once the rumours of her gnome-generated affluence — her comparative affluence — had spread around the Riverboat, Gavin had appeared at her new three-room apartment — an apartment sporting a genuine bed, shared with one of the folksingers, though that didn’t last long either — and had tried to make up with her. Marjorie was a fluke, he said. An accident. Nothing serious. It wouldn’t happen again. His real truelove was Constance: surely she too realized that they belonged together!

That move was more than tawdry on the part of Gavin, and Constance told him so. Did he have no sense of shame, no honour? Did he grasp what a leech he was, how lacking in initiative, how selfish? In return for which Gavin, astonished at first by the scrappiness displayed by his erstwhile mild moon-maid, gathered his sarcasm together and told her that she was a flake, that her poems were worthless, that her blowjobs were inept, that her idiotic Alphinland was juvenile pablum, and that he had more talent in his bumhole than she had in her entire tiny powder-puff of a brain.

So much for true and love .

But Gavin had never grasped the inner significance of Alphinland. It was a dangerous place, and — granted — preposterous in some ways, but it was not sordid. The denizens of it had standards. They understood gallantry, and courage, and also revenge.

Therefore Marjorie is not stored in the deserted winery where Gavin has been parked. Instead she’s immobilized by runic spells inside a stone beehive belonging to Frenosia of the Fragrant Antennae. This demigoddess is eight feet tall and covered with tiny golden hairs, and has compound eyes. Luckily she’s a close friend of Constance and is thus happy to assist in her plans and devices in return for the insect-related charms that Constance has the ability to bestow. So every day at twelve noon sharp, Marjorie is stung by a hundred emerald and indigo bees. Their stings are like white-hot needles combined with red-hot chili sauce, and the pain is beyond excruciating.

In the world outside Alphinland, Marjorie parted ways both with Gavin and with the Riverboat, and went to business college, and then became something in an advertising company. So said the grapevine. She was last seen by Constance striding along Bloor Street in a beige power suit with big shoulder pads, during the ’80s. That suit was amazingly ugly, and so were the clunky shit-kicking shoes that went with it.

Marjorie didn’t see Constance, though. Or she pretended not to. Just as well.

There’s an alternate version stashed in Constance’s inner filing cabinet, in which Constance and Marjorie recognized each other that day with cries of delight, and went for a coffee, and had a big bray over Gavin and his poems and his yen for blowjobs. But that never happened.

Constance descends the path, crosses the bridge with the dim, egg-shaped lamps, and enters the dark wood. Hush! It’s important to go quietly. There’s the trail of ashes, up ahead. Now for the charm. Constance types:

It mashes, it smashes

And sometimes it gnashes;

The dread tooth of Time

Will turn all to ashes .

But that’s a description, she decides; it’s not a charm. Something more like an incantation is needed:

Norg, Smithert, Zurpash ,

Bright Teldarine ,

Let light be seen ,

Avaunt the evil in this ash .

By the Mauve Blood of. .

The phone rings. It’s one of the boys, the one who lives in Paris; or rather, it’s his wife. They’ve seen the ice storm on television, they were concerned about Constance, they wanted to make sure she’s all right.

What time is it there? she asks them. What are they doing up so late? Of course she’s all right! It’s only a little ice! Nothing to get into a twist about. Love to the kids, now you get some sleep. Everything’s fine.

She hangs up as quickly as she can: she resents the interruption. Now she’s forgotten the name of the god whose Mauve Blood is so efficacious. Luckily, on her computer she has a list of all the Alphinland deities and their attributes and oath words, alphabetized for easy reference. There are a lot of deities by now; they’ve accumulated over the years, and she had to make up some extra ones for the animated series of a decade ago, and then even more of them — bigger, scarier, with enhanced violence — for the video game they’re currently putting the final touches on. If she’d foreseen that Alphinland was going to last so long and be so successful, she would have planned it better. It would have had a shape, a more defined structure; it would have had boundaries. As it is, it’s grown like urban sprawl.

Not only that, she wouldn’t have called it Aphinland. The name sounds too much like Elfinland, when what she’d really had at the back of her mind was Alph the sacred river, out of the Coleridge poem, with its measureless caverns. That, and Alpha, the first letter of the alphabet. A smart-alecky young interviewer had once asked her if her “constructed world” was called Alphinland because it was so full of alpha males. She’d responded with the slightly fey laugh she’d cultivated for defensive purposes once that smarty-pants kind of journalist had decided she was worth an interview. That was around the time all the books they were now lumping together as genre were getting some attention from the press. Or at least the big sellers were.