Margaret Atwood - Cat's eye

“I’m glad,” I manage. When in doubt, lie through your teeth. I’m lucky I still have teeth to lie through. I’m standing back to the wall, with a new, full glass of wine. I crane my neck, peering through the crowd, over the well-arranged heads: it’s time for Cordelia to appear, but she has not appeared. Disappointment is building in me, and impatience; and then anxiety. She must have set out, in this direction. Something must have happened to her on the way here.

This goes on while I shake more hands and say more things, and the room gradually clears.

“That went off very well,” says Charna, with a sigh, of relief I think. “You were wonderful.” She’s happy because I haven’t bitten anyone or spilled my drink down their legs, or otherwise acted like an artist.

“How about dinner, with all of us?”

“No,” I say. “No thank you. I’m bone-tired. I think I’ll just go back.” I look around once more: Cordelia is not here.

Bone-tired, an old phrase, of my mother’s. Though bones as such do not get tired. They’re strong, they have a lot of stamina; they can go on for years and years, after the rest of the body has quit. I’m headed for a future in which I sprawl propped in a wheelchair, shedding hair and drooling, while some young stranger spoons mushed food into my mouth and I stand in the snow under the bridge, and stand and stand. While Cordelia vanishes and vanishes.

I go out, into the sidewalk twilight, outside the gallery. I want to take a taxi, but I can barely lift my hand. I’ve been prepared for almost anything; except absence, except silence.

Chapter 73

I take a taxi back to the studio, climb the four flights of stairs, dimly lit as they are at night, resting on the landings. I listen to my heart, going dull and fast in there under the layers of cloth. A flawed heart, in decline. I shouldn’t have drunk all that wine. It’s cold here, they’ve been skimping on the heat. The sound of my breath comes to me, a disembodied gasping, as if it’s someone else breathing. Cordelia has a tendency to exist.

I fumble the key into the keyhole, grope for the light switch. I could do without all the fake body parts around here. I make my way to the kitchenette, shambling a little, keeping my coat on because of the cold.

Coffee is what I need. I make some, wrap my hands around the warm cup, carry it to the workbench, clearing a space for my elbows among the wire and sharp-edged tools. Tomorrow I’m out of this city, and not a moment too soon. There’s too much old time here.

So, Cordelia. Got you back.

Never pray for justice, because you might get some.

I drink my coffee, holding the shaking cup, hot liquid slopping down my chin. It’s a good thing I’m not in a restaurant. It isn’t chic for women to be drunk. Men drunks are more excusable, more easily absolved, but why? It must be thought they have better reasons.

I wipe my arm with the coat sleeve across my face, which is wet because I’m crying. This is the kind of thing I should look out for: crying without reason, making a spectacle of myself. I feel it’s a spectacle, even though no one’s watching.

You’re dead, Cordelia.

No I’m not.

Yes you are. You’re dead.

Lie down.

Fifteen - Bridge

Chapter 74

I ‘m light-headed, as if convalescing. I slept rolled up in the duvet, still in my black dress, which I did not have the energy to take off. I woke at noon, with a large, cottony skull, pulsing with hangover, to discover I’d missed my plane. It’s a long time since I’ve drunk that much of anything. As with many things, I should know better.

Now it’s late afternoon. The sky is soft and gray, low, damp and blurred like wet blotting paper. The day feels vacant, as if everyone has moved out of it; as if there’s nothing more to come. I pace along the sidewalk, away from the demolished school. My old direction, I could still do it blindfolded. As always on these streets I feel disliked.

Down below me is the bridge. From here it looks neutral. I stand at the top of the hill, take a breath. Then I start down.

It’s surprising how little has changed. The houses on either side are the same, although the muddy path is gone: in its place is a neat little hand railing, a trim cement walk. The smell of the fallen leaves is still here, the burning smell of their slow decay, but the nightshade vines with their purple flowers and red blood-drop berries and the weeds and random debris have been cleared away, and everything is pruned and civic.

Nevertheless there’s a rustling, a rank undertone of cats and their huntings and furtive scratchings, still going on behind the deceptive tidiness. Another, wilder and more tangled landscape rising up, from beneath the surface of this one.

We remember through smells, as dogs do.

The willow trees overhanging the path are the same. Although they’ve grown, I’ve grown also, so the distance between us remains constant. The bridge itself is different, of course; it’s made of concrete and lighted up at night, not wooden and falling apart and rotten-smelling. Nevertheless it’s the same bridge. Stephen’s jar of light is buried down there somewhere.

At this time of year the day darkens early. It’s silent, no voices of children; only the monotonous cawing of a crow, and behind it the sea sound of distant traffic. I rest my arms on the concrete wall and look down through the bare branches that are like dry coral. I used to think that if I jumped over, it would not be like falling, it would be more like diving; that if I died that way it would be soft, like drowning. Though far below, on the ground, there’s a pumpkin, tossed over and smashed open, looking unpleasantly like a head.

The ravine is more filled in with bushes and trees than it used to be. In among them is the creek, running with clear water unsafe to drink. They’ve cleaned up the junk, the rusted car parts and discarded tires; this is no longer an unofficial garbage dump but a joggers’ route. The neatly graveled runners’ path beneath me leads uphill to the distant road and to the cemetery, where the dead people wait, forgetting themselves atom by atom, melting away like icicles, flowing downhill into the river. That was where I fell into the water, there is the bank where I scrambled up. That’s where I stood, with the snow falling on me, unable to summon the will to move. That’s where I heard the voice. There was no voice. No one came walking on air down from the bridge, there was no lady in a dark cloak bending over me. Although she has come back to me now in absolute clarity, acute in every detail, the outline of her hooded shape against the lights from the bridge, the red of her heart from within the cloak, I know this didn’t happen. There was only darkness and silence. Nobody and nothing. There’s a sound: a shoe against loose rock.

It’s time to go back. I push away from the cement wall, and the sky moves sideways. I know that if I turn, right now, and look ahead of me along the path, someone will be standing there. At first I think it will be myself, in my old jacket, my blue knitted hat. But then I see that it’s Cordelia. She’s standing halfway up the hill, gazing back over her shoulder. She’s wearing her gray snowsuit jacket but the hood is back, her head is bare. She has the same green wool knee socks, sloppily down around her ankles, the brown school brogues scuffed at the toes, one lace broken and knotted, the yellowish-brown hair with the bangs falling into her eyes, the eyes gray-green.

It’s cold, colder. I can hear the rustle of the sleet, the water moving under the ice. I know she’s looking at me, the lopsided mouth smiling a little, the face closed and defiant. There is the same shame, the sick feeling in my body, the same knowledge of my own wrongness, awkwardness, weakness; the same wish to be loved; the same loneliness; the same fear. But these are not my own emotions any more. They are Cordelia’s; as they always were.