Margaret Atwood - Hag-Seed

No harm in looking. So Felix looked.

He parked his car on the roadside, then walked down the laneway, damp grass and weeds swishing at his pant legs. The door creaked when he opened it wider, but a drop of oil on the hinges would fix that. The ceiling was low, with beams made of poles, whitewashed at one time, now spiderwebbed. The interior smelled not too unpleasantly of earth and wood, with a hint of ash: that was from the iron stove, with two burners and a small oven, rusty but still intact. Two rooms, the main room and another room that must have been the bedroom. It had a skylight — the glass looked somewhat new — and a side door, hooked shut. Felix unhooked the door and opened it. There was an overgrown path, then an outhouse. Thankfully he would not be reduced to the digging of a latrine: others had done that for him.

There was no furniture apart from a heavy old wooden armoire in the bedroom and a Formica-topped kitchen table, red with silver swirls. No chairs. There was a wide-planked floor: at least it wasn’t mud. There was even a sink, with a hand pump. There was an electric light, and, miraculously, it turned on. Someone must have lived here more recently than, say, 1830.

It held less than the bare essentials, but if he could locate the owner, strike a deal, fix the place up a bit, it would do.

By choosing this shack and the privations that would come with it, he would of course be sulking. He’d be hair-shirting himself, playing the flagellant, the hermit. Watch me suffer . He recognized his own act, an act with no audience but himself. It was childish, this self-willed moping. He was not being grown-up.

But in reality what were his options? He was too notorious to be able to find another job; not one of equal stature, not one he’d want. And Sal O’Nally, with his hand on the treasure chest of grants, would subtly block any senior appointment: Tony wouldn’t want a rival, with Felix outdoing the Makeshiweg Festival from some other vantage point. Tony and Sal, working together as they obviously had already, would make sure his head stayed underwater. So why give them the satisfaction of trying?

He drove back to Makeshiweg the way he’d come and parked in front of the small brick cottage that he’d sublet for the current season. Ever since that unthinkable stretch of time…ever since he’d no longer had a family, he’d chosen not to own a house. He’d rented the homes of others. He still had a few pieces of furniture: a bed, a desk, a lamp, two old wooden chairs that he and Nadia had picked up at a yard sale. Personal bric-à-brac. Things left over from what had once been a complete life.

And the photo of his Miranda, of course. He always kept it near him, where he could look at it if he felt himself starting to slip down into the dark. He’d taken that picture himself, when Miranda was almost three. It was her first time on a swing. Her head was tipped back; she was laughing with joy; she was flying through the air; her small fists gripped the ropes; the morning light aureoled her hair. The frame around her was painted silver, a silver window frame. On the other side of that magical window she was still alive.

And now she would have to stay locked behind the glass, because, with the destruction of his Tempest , the new Miranda — the Miranda he’d been intending to create, or possibly to resurrect — was dead in the water.

Tony hadn’t even had the decency to allow him to meet with the staff, the technical support, the actors. To say goodbye. To voice his regret that his Tempest would not happen. He’d been hustled off like a criminal. Were Tony and his minions afraid of him? Afraid of a general rebellion, a counter-coup? Did they seriously think Felix had that much power?

He called a moving company and asked how soon they could come. It was an emergency, he said; he needed everything packed up and stored as quickly as possible; he’d pay extra for the rush. He wrote a cheque to the owner of his sublet, covering the balance of the term. He went to the bank, deposited Tony’s shitty kiss-off money, informed the manager that he would shortly have a different address and would notify them by letter.

Luckily he had some savings. He could remain invisible to the world at large, for now.

His next task was to locate the owner of the hillside dwelling. He drove back out to the gravel road, then tried the nearest farmhouse. A woman answered the door; middle-aged, middling looks, of middle height, with neutral hair scraped back into a ponytail. Jeans and a sweatshirt; behind her on the linoleum-tile floor, a child’s plastic toy. Felix’s heart gave a tiny lurch.

The woman crossed her arms and stood blocking the doorway. “I seen your car before,” she said. “Up at the shanty there.”

“Yes,” said Felix with what he considered his most charming manner. “I was wondering. Do you know who owns it?”

“Why?” said the woman. “Not us. We’re not paying no tax on it. That old thing, worth nothing. Left over from the pioneers or whatever, before they had any money. I told Bert it should’ve been burned down years ago.”

Ah, thought Felix. A deal can be made. “I have been ill,” he said, which wasn’t entirely a lie. “I need a rest in the country. I think the air would do me good.”

“Air,” said the woman with a snort. “There’s a lot of air around here, if that’s what you want. It’s free, last time I looked. Help yourself.”

“I would like to live in the little cottage,” Felix said, smiling in a harmless manner. He wished to give the impression that he was dotty, but not too dotty. A loony but not a maniac. “I would pay rent, of course. In cash,” he added.

That changed everything, and Felix was asked to come in and sit at the kitchen table, and they got down to business. The woman wanted the money, she made no secret of it. Bert — the husband — couldn’t make enough off the alfalfa and was driving the propane route to make ends meet, plus he cleared driveways in winter. He was away a lot, leaving her to cope with everything. Another snort, a toss of the head: “everything” included loonies like Felix.

She said that folks had lived in the shanty off and on, the latest being “two hippies, him a painter, her whatever you’d call what shacks up with painters”—that was a year ago. Before then, a poor uncle of hers; and before that, an aunt of Bert’s who was a few bricks short of a load and had to be put away. Earlier than that she didn’t know, because it was before her time. Some folks said the little house was haunted, but Felix should pay no attention to that rumor, she said derisively, because those people were ignorant and it wasn’t true. (She clearly thought it was.)

It was agreed that Felix would have the use of the shanty, and could make whatever improvements he wanted. Bert would plow the laneway in winter so Felix wouldn’t have to walk through the snow all the way up. Maude — the wife — would handle the cash, in an envelope every first of the month, and if anyone asked it never happened, because Felix was her uncle and was living there for free. She and Bert would supply the wood for the stove: their teenage son could haul it over on the tractor. She’d already figured the cost of that into the price. If Felix liked, she could do his wash for him, extra.

Felix thanked her, and said they should wait and see. On his part, he stipulated that she not tell anyone about him. He was lying low, he said. He had his own reasons, but they were not criminal ones.

She looked sideways at him; she didn’t believe him about the criminality, but she didn’t care about it either. “Trust me on that,” she said. Oddly, he did trust her.