Margaret Atwood - Alias Grace

Should you nonetheless decide to examine Grace Marks at her current place of abode, be pleased to consider yourself amply warned. Many older and wiser heads have been enmeshed in her toils, and you would do well to stop your ears with wax, as Ulysses made his sailors do, to escape the Sirens. She is as devoid of morals as she is of scruples, and will use any unwitting tool that comes to hand.

I should alert you also to the possibility that, once having involved yourself in her case, you will be besieged by a crowd of well-meaning but feeble-minded persons of both sexes, as well as clergymen, who have busied themselves on her behalf. They pester the Government with petitions for her release, and will attempt in the name of charity to waylay and conscript you. I have had repeatedly to beat them away from my door, whilst informing them that Grace Marks has been incarcerated for a very good reason, namely the vicious acts which she has committed, and which were inspired by her degenerate character and morbid imagination. To let her loose upon an unsuspecting public would be irresponsible to the last degree, as it would merely afford her the opportunity of gratifying her bloodthirsty tastes.

I am confident that, should you choose to explore the matter further, you will arrive at the same conclusions as have already been arrived at, by,

Your obedient servant,

(Dr.) Samuel Bannerling, M.D.

Chapter 10

This morning Simon is to meet with Reverend Verringer. He’s not looking forward to it: the man has studied in England, and is bound to give himself airs. There is no fool like an educated fool, and Simon will have to trot out his own European credentials, and flourish his erudition, and justify himself. It will be a trying interview, and Simon will be tempted to start drawling, and saying I reckon, and acting the British Colonial version of the wooden-nutmeg-peddling Yankee, just to annoy. He must restrain himself, however; too much depends on his good behaviour. He keeps forgetting he is no longer rich, and therefore no longer entirely his own man.

He stands in front of his looking glass, attempting to tie his stock. He hates cravats and stocks, and wishes them at the Devil; he resents his trousers as well, and all stiff and proper clothing generally. Why does civilized man see fit to torture his body by cramming it into the strait-jacket of gentlemanly dress?

Perhaps it is a mortification of the flesh, like a hair shirt. Men ought to be born in little woollen suits which would grow with them over the years, thus avoiding the whole business of tailors, with their endless fussing and snobberies.

At least he isn’t a woman, and thus not obliged to wear corsets, and to deform himself with tight lacing. For the widely held view that women are weak-spined and jelly-like by nature, and would slump to the floor like melted cheese if not roped in, he has nothing but contempt. While a medical student, he dissected a good many women — from the labouring classes, naturally — and their spines and musculature were on the average no feebler than those of men, although many suffered from rickets. He’s wrestled his stock into the semblance of a bow. It’s lopsided, but the best he can do; he can no longer afford a valet. He brushes down his unruly hair, which rebounds instantly. Then he takes up his topcoat, and on second thought his umbrella. There’s weak sunlight making its way in through the windows, but it’s too much to hope that it won’t rain. Kingston in the spring is a watery place. He makes his way stealthily down the front stairs, but not stealthily enough: his landlady has taken to waylaying him on some trivial matter or another, and she glides out from the parlour now, in her faded black silk and lace collar, clutching her customary handkerchief in one thin hand, as if tears are never far off. She was obviously a beauty not so long ago, and could still be one if she would take the trouble to be so, and if the centre parting in her fair hair were not quite so severe. Her face is heart-shaped, her skin milky, her eyes large and compelling; but although her waist is slender, there is something metallic about it, as if she is using a short length of stove-pipe instead of stays. Today she wears her habitual expression of strained anxiety; she smells of violets, and also of camphor — she is doubtless prone to headaches —

and of something else he can’t quite place. A hot dry smell. A white linen sheet being ironed?

As a rule, Simon avoids her type of attenuated and quietly distraught female, although doctors attract such women like magnets. Still, there’s a severe and unadorned elegance about her — like a Quaker meeting house — which has its appeal; an appeal which, for him, is aesthetic only. One does not make love to a minor religious edifice.

“Dr. Jordan,” she says. “I wanted to ask you…” She hesitates. Simon smiles, prompting her to get on with it. “Your egg this morning — was it satisfactory? This time I cooked it myself.”

Simon lies. To do otherwise would be unpardonably rude. “Delicious, thank you,” he says. In reality the egg had the consistency of the excised tumour a fellow medical student once slipped into his pocket for a joke — both hard and spongy at the same time. It takes a perverse talent to maltreat an egg so completely.

“I am so glad,” she says. “It is so difficult to get good help. You are going out?”

The fact is so obvious that Simon merely inclines his head.

“There is another letter for you,” she says. “The servant mislaid it, but I have found it again. I have placed it on the hall table.” She says this tremulously, as if any letter for Simon must be tragic in content. Her lips are full, but fragile, like a rose on the verge of collapse.

Simon thanks her, says goodbye, picks up his letter — it’s from his mother — and leaves. He doesn’t wish to encourage long conversations with Mrs. Humphrey. She’s lonely — as well she might be, married to the sodden and straying Major — and loneliness in a woman is like hunger in a dog. He has no wish to be the recipient of dolorous afternoon confidences, behind drawn curtains, in the parlour. Nonetheless she’s an interesting study. Her idea of herself, for instance, is much more exalted than her present circumstances warrant. Surely there was a governess in her childhood: the set of her shoulders proclaims it. So fastidious and stern was she when he was arranging for the rooms, that he’d found it embarrassing to ask whether washing was included. Her manner had implied that she was not in the habit of discussing the state of men’s personal items with them, such painful matters being best left to the servants.

She’d made it clear, although indirectly, that it was much against her will that she’d been forced to let lodgings. This was the first time she’d done so; it was due to an encumbrance which would surely prove temporary. Moreover, she was very particular — A gentleman of quiet habits, if willing to take meals elsewhere, her notice had read. When, after an inspection of the rooms, Simon had said he wished to take them, she’d hesitated, and then asked for two months’ rent in advance. Simon had seen the other lodgings on offer, which were either too expensive for him or much dirtier, so he’d agreed. He’d had the sum with him in ready cash. He’d noted with interest the blend of reluctance and eagerness she’d displayed, and the nervous flush this conflict had brought to her cheeks. The subject was distasteful to her, almost indecent; she hadn’t wanted to touch his money in a naked state, and would have preferred it to be enclosed in an envelope; yet she’d had to restrain herself from snatching at it. It was much the same attitude — the coyness about fiscal exchange, the pretence that it hadn’t really taken place, the underlying avidity — that characterized the better class of French whore, although the whores were less gauche about it. Simon doesn’t consider himself an authority in this area, but he would have failed in his duty to his vocation if he’d refused to profit by the opportunities Europe afforded —