Margaret Atwood - The Robber Bride

Her mother walks into the darkening room, the heels of her shoes ticking on the floor, wearing her maroon hat with the spotted veil. She sits down on the piano bench beside Tony; her face glimmers, obscured, its features blurring. Her leather hand, cool as mist, brushes Tony’s face, and Tony turns and holds onto her, holds on ferociously because she knows what happens next; but out of the front of her dress her mother takes an egg, an egg that smells like seaweed. If Tony can have this egg and keep it safe, the burning in the house will stop, the future can be avoided. But her mother lifts the egg up into the air, teasingly overhead, and Tony isn’t tall enough to reach it. “Poor thing, poor thing,” says her mother; or is it poor twin? Her voice is like a pigeon cooing, soothing and inexorable and infinitely mournful.

Somewhere out of sight the flowers have grown out of control and the house is on fire. Unless Tony can stop it, everything that once was will burn. The unseen flames make a fluttering sound, like ruffling feathers. A tall man is standing in the corner. It’s West, but why is he wearing those clothes, why is his hair black, why does he have a hat? There’s a suitcase beside him on the floor. He picks it up and opens it: it’s full of sharpened pencils. Reverof, he says sadly; though what he means is Farewell, because Zenia is there at the door, wound in a silk shawl with a long fringe. In her neck there’s a pinkish grey gash, as if her throat’s been cut; but as Tony watches, it opens, then closes moistly, and she can see that Zenia has gills.

But West is going, he’s putting his arm around Zenia. he’s turning his back. Outside, the taxi is waiting to take them to the snowy hill.

Tony needs to stop them. She holds out her hand once more and her mother puts the egg into it, but the egg is too hot now because of the fire and Tony drops it. It rolls onto a newspaper and breaks open, and time runs out of it, wet and dark red. There are gunshots, coming from the back of the house, and marching boots, and shouting in a foreign language. Where is her father? Frantically she looks around for him but he is nowhere to be seen, and the soldiers are already here to take her mother away.

Charis is lying in her white vine-covered bed, arms at her sides, palms open, eyes closed. Behind her eyes she is fully aware. She feels her astral body rise out of her, rise straight up and hang suspended above her like a mask lifted from a face. It too is wearing a white cotton nightgown.

How tenuously—we inhabit our bodies, she thinks. In her body of light—clear, like gelatin—she glides out through the window and across the harbour: Below her is the ferry; she swoops and follows in its wake. Around her she hears the rushing of wings. She looks, expecting seagulls, and is surprised to see a flock of chickens flying through the air.

She reaches the other shore and floats along over the city. Ahead of her is a large window, the window of a hotel. She fetches up against the glass and beats her arms for a moment, like a moth. Then the window melts like ice and she passes through.

Zenia is in here, sitting in a chair, wearing a white nightgown just like Charis’s, brushing her cloudy hair in front of the mirror. The hair twists like flames, like the branches of dark cypresses licking heavenwards, it crackles with static electricity; blue sparks play from the tips. Zenia sees Charis and motions to her, and Charis goes close and then closer, and she sees the two of them side by side in the mirror. Then Zenia’s edges dissolve like a watercolour in the rain and Charis merges into her. She slides her on like a glove, she slips into her like a flesh dress, she looks out through her eyes. What she sees is herself, herself in the mirror, herself with power. Her nightgown ripples in an invisible wind. Beneath her face are the bones, darker and darker through the glass, like an X-ray; now she can see into things, now she can change herself into energy and pass’ through solid objects. Possibly she’s dead .. It’s hard to remember. Possibly this is rebirth. She spreads the fingers of her new hands, wondering what they will do.

She drifts to the window and looks out. Down below, among the fiery lights and many lives, there’s a slow smouldering; the smell of it permeates the room. Everything burns eventually, even stone can burn. In the room behind her is the depth of outer space, where the atoms are blown like ashes, borne on the restless interstellar winds, the banished souls, atoning ...

There’s a knock at the door. She goes to open, because it will be a maid with towels. But it isn’t, it’s Billy, in striped pyjamas, his body grown older, bloated, his face raw meat. If he touches her she will fall apart like a bundle of rotted leather. It’s her new eyes doing this. She rubs and pulls at her face, trying to get out of these eyes, these dark eyes she no longer wants. But Zenia’s eyes, won’t come off; they’re stuck to her own eyes like the scales of a fish. Like smoked glass, they darken everything.

Roz is walking through the forest, through the shattered trunks and spiky undergrowth, wearing a sailor dress that is too big for her. She knows this dress isn’t hers, she never had a dress like this. Her feet are bare, and cold too; pain shoots through them, because the ground is covered with snow. There’s a track ahead of her: a red footprint, a white footprint, a red footprint. To the side there’s a clump of trees. Many people have been that way; they’ve dropped the things they were carrying, a lamp, a book, a watch, a suitcase fallen open, a leg with a shoe, a shoe with a diamond buckle. Paper money blows here and there, like candy-bar wrappers tossed away. The footprints lead in among the trees but none come out. She knows not to follow them; there’s something in there, something frightening she doesn’t want to see.

She’s safe though because here is her garden, the delphiniums drooping, black with mildew, forlorn in the snow. There are white chrysanthemums too but they aren’t planted, they’re in big cylindrical silver vases and she’s never seen them before. Nevertheless this is her house. The back window is shattered, the door swings loose but she goes in anyway, she walks through the white kitchen where nothing moves, past the table with three chairs. Dust covers everything. She’ll have to clean this up, because her mother is no longer here.

She climbs up the back stairs, her thawing feet tingling with pins and needles. The upstairs hallway is empty and silent; there is no music. Where are her children? They must be grown up, they must have gone away, they must be living elsewhere. But how can that be, how can she have grown-up children? She’s too young for that, she’s too small. There’s something wrong with time.

Then she hears the sound of the shower. Mitch must be here, which fills her with joy because he has been away so long. She wants to run inside, to greet him. Through the open bedroom door steam billows.

But she can’t go in, because a man in an overcoat is blocking her way. Orange light pours from his mouth and nostrils. He opens his coat and there is his sacred heart, orange too like a glowing jack-o’-lantern, flickering in the wind that has sprung up suddenly. He holds up his left hand to stop her. Nun, he says. Despite appearances, despite everything, she knows this man is Zenia. From the ceiling it begins to rain.

It’s after dark. There’s a fine chilly drizzle, and the storefronts with their lit-up windows and the black streets with their red neon reflections have the slick, wet look that Tony associates with plastic raincoats and greased hair and freshly applied lipstick—a dubious, exciting look. Cars sizzle past, filled with strangers, going somewhere unknown. Tony walks.