Margaret Atwood - The Robber Bride

“Rented you to who?” says Tony.

“Men,” says Zenia. “Oh, not out on the street! Not just anyone! Old generals and whatnot. She was a White Russian; I guess the family had money, once—back in Russia, I suppose. She claimed to be some sort of a countess, though God knows Russian countesses were a dime a dozen. There was a whole bunch of White Russians in Paris; they’d been there since the revolution. She liked to say she was used to good things, though I don’t know when that would have been.”

Tony hasn’t known this—that Zenia’s mother was Russian. She has only known Zenia’s story of recent years: her foreground. Her life at the university, her life with West, and with the man before him and the one before that. Brutes, both of them, who wore leather jackets and drank; and hit her.

She examines the cast of Zenia’s high cheekbones: Slavic, she supposes. Then there’s her slight accent, her air of scornful superiority, her touch of superstition. The Russians go in for icons and so forth. It all makes sense.

“Rented?” she says. “But how old were you?”

“Who knows?” says Zenia. “It must’ve started when I was five, six, earlier maybe. Really I can’t remember. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have some man’s hand in my pants:”

Tony’s mouth opens. “Five?” she says. She is horrified. At the same time she admires Zenia’s candour. Zenia doesn’t seem to get embarrassed by anything. Unlike Tony, she is not a prude.

Zenia laughs. “Oh, it wasn’t obvious, at first,” she says. “It was all very polite! They would come over and sit on the sofa—God, she was proud of that sofa. she kept a silk shawl draped over it, embroidered with roses—and she would tell me to sit beside the nice man, and after a while she’d just go out of the room. It wasn’t real sex, at first. Just a lot of feeling up. Sticky fingers. She saved the big bang till I was what she called grown up. Eleven, twelve ... I think she did fairly well on that one, though not many of those men were filthy rich. Penny-pinching shabby genteel, with a little put by, or some shady trade. They were all in the black market, they all had an angle, they lived in between the walls, you know? Like rats. She bought me a new dress for the occasion, on the black market too, I guess. I made my debut on the sittingroom rug—she never let them use the bed. His name was Major Popov, if you can believe it, just like something out of Dostoevsky, with brown crusts up his nose from taking snuff:He didn’t even take off his pants, he was in such a hurry. I stared at those embroidered roses on the fucking shawl the whole time. I offered up the pain to God. It isn’t as though I was sinning for fun! I was very religious, at the time; Orthodox, of course. They still have the best churches, don’t you think? I hope she got a hefty slice out of old Popov. Some men will give up a lot of lunches, for a virgin:’

Zenia tells this story as if it’s a piece of casual gossip, and Tony listens, electrified. She has never heard of such a thing. Correction: she has heard of such things, more or less, but she has heard of them only in books. Such baroque, such complicated European things don’t happen to real people, or to people she might meet. But how would she know? These activities might be going on all around her, but she doesn’t see them because she wouldn’t know where to look. Zenia would know. Zenia is older than Tony, in years not so much, but in other ways a lot. Beside Zenia, Tony is a child, ignorant as an egg. “You must have hated her,” says Tony.

“Oh, no,” says Zenia seriously. “That wasn’t until later. She was very nice to mei When I was little she made me special meals. She never raised her voice. She was beautiful to look at, she had long dark hair braided and wound around her head like a saint, and big sorrowful eyes. I used to sleep with her in her big white feather bed. I loved her, I adored her, I would have done anything for her! I didn’t want her to be so sad. That’s how she was able to get away with it.”

“How terrible,” says Tony.

“Oh well,” says Zenia, “who gives a shit? Anyway it wasn’t only me—she rented herself out, too. She was a sort of bargainbasement mistress, I suppose. For gentlemen down on their luck. Only Russians though, and nobody below the rank of major. She had her standards. She helped them with their pretensions, they helped her with hers. But she wasn’t very successful at the sex part, maybe because she didn’t really like it. She preferred suffering. There was quite a turnover of men. Also she was sick a lot of the time. Coughing, just like an opera! Blood in the hankie. Her breath smelled worse and worse, she used to wear a lot of perfume, when she could get it. I suppose it was TB, and that’s what killed her. What a corny death!”

“You were very lucky not to get it yourself,” says Tony. All of this seems so archaic. Surely nobody gets TB any more. It’s a vanished illness, like smallpox.

“Yes, wasn’t I?” says Zenia. “But I was long gone by the time she finally croaked. As I got older I didn’t love her any more. I did most of the work, she kept most of the money, and that was hardly fair! And I couldn’t stand listening to her coughing, and crying to herself at night. She was so hopeless; I think she was stupid, as well. So I ran away. It was a mean thing to do, I suppose; she didn’t have anybody by that time, any man; only me. But it was her or me. I had to choose:’

“What about your father?” says Tony. Zenia laughs. “What father?”

“Well, you must have had one,” says Tony.

“I did better,” says Zenia. “I had three! My mother had several versions—minor Greek royalty, a general in the Polish cavalry, an Englishman of good family. She had a photograph of him, just the one man—but three stories. The story about him changed, depending on how she felt; though in all three. of the stories he died in the war. She used to show me where, on the map: a different place, a different death for each. Charging the German tanks on horseback, behind the French lines in a parachute, machine-gunned in a palace. When she could afford it she would put a single rose in front of the picture; sometimes she would light a candle. God knows whose photo it was really! A young man in a jacket, with a knapsack, sort of blurry, looking over his shoulder; not even in uniform. Pre-war. Maybe she bought it. Myself, I think she got raped, by a bunch of soldiers or something, but she didn’t want to tell me. It would’ve been too much—for me to discover that my father was someone like that. But it would figure, wouldn’t it? A woman with no money, on the run from one place to another, by herself—no protection. Women like that were fair game! Or else she had a Nazi lover, some German thug. Who can tell? She was quite a liar, so I’ll never know. Anyway, she’s dead now”

Tony’s own little history has dwindled considerably. Beside Zenia’s, it seems no more than an incident, minor, grey, suburban; a sedate parochial anecdote; a footnote. Whereas Zenia’s life sparkles—no, it glares, in the lurid although uncertain light cast by large and portentous world events. (White Russians!) So far Tony has seen Zenia as very different from herself, but now she sees her as similar too, for aren’t they both orphans? Both motherless, both war babies, making their way in the world by themselves, trudging onwards with their baskets over their arms, baskets containing their scant, their only worldly possessions—one brain apiece, for what else do they have to rely on? She admires Zenia tremendously, not least for keeping her cool. Right now, for instance, when other women might be crying, Zenia is actually srruling—smiling at Tony, with perhaps a hint of mockery, which Tony chooses to interpret as a touching gallantry, a steely courage in the face of adverse destiny. Zenia has been through horrors, and has emerged victorious. Tony pictures her on a horse, cloak flying, sword-arm raised; or as a bird, a silver and miraculous bird, rising triumphant and unscathed from the cinders of burning and plundered Europe.