Margaret Atwood - Hag-Seed

His last stop is at a women’s swimwear boutique. “I’d like a bathing cap,” he says to the elegant middle-aged woman who’s presiding. “Blue, if you have one.”

“For your wife?” says the woman, smiling. “Going on a cruise?” Felix is tempted to tell her it’s for a convicted criminal inside a prison who’s playing the part of a magic flying blue alien, but he thinks better of it.

“Yes,” he says. “In March. To the Caribbean,” he elaborates.

“That sounds lovely,” says the woman a little wistfully. It’s her fate to provide for cruises but never to go on one.

He views and rejects several bathing caps: one with daisies, one with a pattern of pink roses on aqua, one with waterproof bows. “She likes them really plain,” he says. The best he can do is an impish cap with overlapping rubber scale-shaped scallops on it. “Do you have a larger size?” he asks. “The largest. She has a big head and a lot of hair,” he feels compelled to explain.

“She must be quite tall,” says the clerk.

“Statuesque,” says Felix.

Maybe there will be some way of stretching the cap, he hopes. He doesn’t want 8Handz to look ridiculous, with a tiny blue cap perched on his head like a mushroom.

The same day.

Felix returns to Makeshiweg on the train, then wheels his big suitcase through the station parking lot to his car. More snow is falling; once he’s back at the laneway leading to his hovel, it’s a struggle to lug the suitcase through the fresh drifts to his door.

Despite the local flurries the sun is setting, far to the southwest, in clouds the color of apricot. On the edge of the drifted field the shadows cast by the trees are bluish. Once, not so long ago, Miranda would have been outside at this time, taking advantage of the last rays of light to play in the snow, throwing handfuls of it into the air or making snow angels. He looks for footprints: no, she hasn’t gone out recently. But he reminds himself that she doesn’t leave footprints, so lightly does she tread.

There’s an earthy, ashen smell inside the house, as often when the fire’s gone out. He turns on the heater. It whirs; there’s the ping of warming metal. “Miranda?” he says.

At first he thinks she isn’t there, and his heart plummets. Then he detects her: she’s over by their table, in the gathering shadows. She’s waiting by the chess set, ready to resume their lesson. He’s been teaching her some mid-game developments. When he opens the new suitcase, however, she leaves the table and comes over to look wonderingly at what he’s brought.

Such riches — the gold fabric, the blue rubber bathing cap, the little boats! The three Disney Princesses in their tawdry finery: she finds them enchanting.

What is each thing? she wants to know. Where did it come from, what is it for? A bathing cap? Ski goggles? What is bathing, what is skiing? Of course these items are unknown to her: she knows so little about the outside world.

“They’re for the play,” Felix tells her. Then he has to explain what a play is, what acting is, why people pretend to be someone they’re not. He’s never talked to her about the theatre; in fact, up until this time she has shown scant interest in where he goes when he’s not in their two shoddy rooms, but now she listens attentively.

When he gets back from Fletcher Correctional on the Monday, exhausted after six hours of thrashing through Act II scene by scene, he finds she’s read The Tempest. He shouldn’t have left his spare playbook lying around so carelessly. Now that she’s seen it, she’s been seized by it. He should have known.

He’s never wanted her to go into the theatre. It’s too hard a life, it’s too rough on the ego. There are so many rejections, so many disappointments, so many failures. You need a heart of iron, a skin of steel, the willpower of a tiger, and more of these as a woman. It would be an especially difficult vocation for a girl like her: she’s so tender-hearted, so sensitive. She’s been protected from the worst in human nature: how would she cope, once brought face to face with that worst? She ought to choose a safer career path, such as medicine, or perhaps dentistry. And marry a stable and loving husband eventually, of course. She shouldn’t fritter herself away on a world of illusions — of vanishing rainbows, of bursting bubbles, of cloud-capped towers — the way he himself has done.

But the theatre must be in her blood, because now she’s determined. She insists on being in the production. Worse, she wants to play Miranda. She feels the part is right for her, she tells him. It makes her so happy to think about it! She can hardly wait to meet the person who’ll be playing Ferdinand. She knows they’ll be spectacular together.

“You can’t play Miranda,” he says as firmly as he can. “It’s not possible.” This is the first time he’s opposed her directly in anything. How to tell her that no one but he himself would be able to see her? She’d never believe it. And if she did believe it, if she were forced to believe it, what would become of her then?

Why not? she persists. Why can’t she be Miranda? He’s being so mean! He doesn’t understand! He’s treating her as if—

“What, moody?” he says to her.

Is that a pout? Her arms crossed in defiance? But why? she wants to know. Why can’t I?

“Because I already have an actress for Miranda,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

She’s sad about that, which makes him sad as well. He hates to hurt her feelings; it wrings his heart.

She disappears — is she outside, walking in the dark, in the snow? Is she in her room, sulking on her bed, as teenage girls do?

But she doesn’t have a room, he reminds himself. She has no bed. She never sleeps.

Monday, February 25, 2013.

Now that they have costumes to try on the cast has become more energized. The play’s becoming real for them. They spend a lot of time in front of the mirrors in Room Two, now renamed the Green Room, looking at themselves from various angles, making faces, trying out their lines. Doing the warmup exercises he’s taught them.

Tip of the tongue, top of the teeth, he can hear them saying. Ar, ar, ar: Repentance! El, el, el: Loss! Liberty! Ess, ess, ess: Sweet sprites! Pee, pee, pee: Perfection! Those who are to sing warm up their voices, chanting as Anne-Marie has taught them: Om Om Om! Bones! Gone! Ding dong bell!

The keyboard arrives; after some wrangling, it’s allowed past Security. Felix designates Room Four as the Music Room. Anne-Marie is working with the dancers. Before every session they warm up: she has them doing pushups and floor exercises. Patrolling the hallway of his little kingdom, eavesdropping, Felix can hear her:

“Keep the beat! One-two, hit it on the two ! Shake it! Shake it! Shake it or break it! From the core! Count! Move that pelvis! Yes!”

One day 8Handz is elbows-deep in cables, the next it’s mini-cameras. After that he’s installing some tiny microphones and speakers, wireless ones: it would be contraindicated to drill holes in the walls.

Felix has set up a folding screen in the corner of the main room, the one they’ll use for the video viewing. Behind the screen are a desk with a computer screen and keyboard, and two chairs, one for 8Handz, one for himself. Felix can now snoop on any point in his domain.