Margaret Atwood - Cat's eye

The last painting is Unified Field Theory. It’s a vertical oblong, larger than the other paintings. Cutting across it a little over a third up is a wooden bridge. To either side of the bridge are the tops of trees, bare of leaves, with a covering of snow on them, as after a heavy moist snowfall. This snow is also on the railing and struts of the bridge.

Positioned above the top railing of the bridge, but so her feet are not quite touching it, is a woman dressed in black, with a black hood or veil covering her hair. Here and there on the black of her dress or cloak there are pinpoints of light. The sky behind her is the sky after sunset; at the top of it is the lower half of the moon. Her face is partly in shadow.

She is the Virgin of Lost Things. Between her hands, at the level of her heart, she holds a glass object: an oversized cat’s eye marble, with a blue center.

Underneath the bridge is the night sky, as seen through a telescope. Star upon star, red, blue, yellow, and white, swirling nebulae, galaxy upon galaxy: the universe, in its incandescence and darkness. Or so you think. But there are also stones down there, beetles and small roots, because this is the underside of the ground.

At the lower edge of the painting the darkness pales and merges to a lighter tone, the clear blue of water, because the creek flows there, underneath the earth, underneath the bridge, down from the cemetery. The land of the dead people.

I go to the bar, ask for another glass of wine. It’s better quality than the rotgut we used to buy for such affairs.

I walk the room, surrounded by the time I’ve made; which is not a place, which is only a blur, the moving edge we live in; which is fluid, which turns back upon itself, like a wave. I may have thought I was preserving something from time, salvaging something; like all those painters, centuries ago, who thought they were bringing Heaven to earth, the revelations of God, the eternal stars, only to have their slabs of wood and plaster stolen, mislaid, burnt, hacked to pieces, destroyed by rot and mildew. A leaky ceiling, a match and some kerosene would finish all this off. Why does this thought present itself to me, not as a fear but as a temptation?

Because I can no longer control these paintings, or tell them what to mean. Whatever energy they have came out of me. I’m what’s left over.

Chapter 72

N ow Charna hustles toward me in mauve leather, clanking with ersatz gold. She whisks me into the back office: she doesn’t want me dangling around in the empty gallery, at loose ends while the first revelers trickle in, she doesn’t want me looking unsuccessful and too eager. She will make an entrance with me, later, when the noise level is high enough.

“You can relax here,” she says; which is unlikely. In her office I drink my second drink, pacing the empty space. This is like birthday parties, with streamers and balloons at the ready and the hot dogs waiting in the kitchen, but what if nobody comes? Which will be worse: if they don’t come, or if they do? Soon the door will open, and in will crowd a horde of snide and treacherous little girls, whispering and pointing, and I will be servile, grateful.

My hands begin to sweat. I think another drink will calm me down, which is a bad sign. I will go out there and flirt, just for the hell of it, to see if I can still interest anyone. But there may not be anyone to flirt with. In which case I will get drunk. Maybe I will throw up in the toilet, with or without the excess alcohol. I’m not like this in other places, not this bad. I shouldn’t have come back here, to this city that has it in for me. I thought I could stare it down. But it still has power; like a mirror that shows you only the ruined half or your face.

I think about escaping, out the back way. I could send a telegram later, claiming illness. That would start a good rumor: a lingering, invisible illness, which would get me out of such things forever. But Charna reappears through the door in time, flushed with excitement. “There’s lots of people here already,” she says. “They’re dying to meet you. We’re all very proud of you.” This is so much like what a family would say, a mother or an aunt, that I’m thrown off guard. Who is this family, and whose family is it? I’ve been framed: the recalcitrant child before the piano recital, or, more like it, the bullet-scarred war horse, veteran of early, barely remembered battles, about to be presented with a gold watch and a handshake and a heartfelt vote of thanks. A fading halo of blue ink clings round me. Suddenly Charna reaches over to me, gives me a quick metallic hug. Maybe that warmth is genuine, maybe I should be ashamed of my dour, cynical thoughts. Maybe she really does like me, wish me well. I can almost believe it.

I stand in the main gallery, black from neck to toes, with my third glass of red wine. Charna is off now, rummaging in the crowd for people who are dying to meet me. I am at her disposal. I crane my neck, peering through the crowd, which has blotted out the paintings; only a few tops of heads are visible, a few skies, a few backgrounds and clouds. I keep expecting, or fearing, that people I should know, have known, will appear, and I will only half recognize them. They will stride forward, hands outstretched, girls from high school bloated or diminished, skins crinkled, frowns permanent, smooth-fleshed boyfriends of thirty years ago who’ve gone bald or grown mustaches or shrunk. Elaine! What the beck! Good to see you! They will have the advantage of me, it’s my face on the poster. My smile will be welcoming, my mind frantic as I scramble through the past, trying to locate their names. Really it’s Cordelia I expect, Cordelia I want to see. There are things I need to ask her. Not what happened, back then in the time I lost, because now I know that. I need to ask her why. If she remembers. Perhaps she’s forgotten the bad things, what she said to me, what she did. Or she does remember them, but in a minor way, as if remembering a game, or a single prank, a single trivial secret, of the kind girls tell and then forget.

She will have her own version. I am not the center of her story, because she herself is that. But I could give her something you can never have, except from another person: what you look like from outside. A reflection. This is the part of herself I could give back to her.

We are like the twins in old fables, each of whom has been given half a key. Cordelia will walk toward me through the opening crowd, a woman of wavering age, dressed in Irish tweed of a muted green, mother-of-pearl earrings circled with gold, beautiful shoes; well-groomed, soignée as they used to say. Taking care of herself, as I am. Her hair will be gently frosted, her smile quizzical. I won’t know who she is.

There are a lot of women in this room, several other painters, some rich people. Mostly it’s the rich people Charna drags over. I shake their hands, watch their mouths move. Elsewhere I have more stamina for these things, these acts of self-exposure; I could brazen them out. But here I feel scraped naked. In the gap between rich people, a young girl pushes her way through. She’s a painter, it goes without saying, but she says it anyway. She’s in a miniskirt and tight leggings and flat clumpy black shoes with laces, her hair is shaved up the back the way my brother’s used to be, a late forties squareboy’s cut. She is post everything, she is what will come after post. She is what will come after me.

“I loved your early work,” she says. “ Falling Women, I loved that. I mean, it sort of summed up an era, didn’t it?” She doesn’t mean to be cruel, she doesn’t know she’s just relegated me to the dust heap along with crank telephones and whalebone stays. In former days I would have said something annihilating to her, some scabby, scalding remark, but I can’t think of anything right off the bat. I’m out of training, I’m losing my nerve. In any case, what purpose would it serve? Her past-tense admiration is sincere. I should be gracious. I stand there, my grin turning to stone, institutionalized. Eminence creeps like gangrene up my legs.