Margaret Atwood - Hag-Seed

He could become one of those aimless late-middle-aged men — past the snares of romanticism, past ambition — wandering here and there on the earth. He could take himself on trips: he could more or less afford it. But they would not be numerous, these trips, or interesting to him, because where did he want to go? He could hook up with some lonely woman and have a fling, and make both of them miserable. Starting a new family was out of the question, because no one could supply the place of the lost, the vanished one. He could join a bridge club, a camera club, a watercolor painting club. But he hated bridge, he no longer wanted to take photographs, and he couldn’t paint to save his life.

But did he want to save his life? And if not, what then?

He could hang himself. He could blow his brains out. He could drown himself in Lake Huron, which was not that far away.

Idle speculation. He wasn’t serious.

Therefore?

He required a focus, a purpose. He gave this much thought while sitting in his deck chair. Eventually he concluded that there were two things thing left for him — two projects that could still hold satisfaction. After a time he began to see more clearly what they were.

First, he needed to get his Tempest back. He had to stage it, somehow, somewhere. His reasons were beyond theatrical; they had nothing to do with his reputation, his career — none of that. Quite simply, his Miranda must be released from her glass coffin; she must be given a life. But how to do it, where to find the actors? Actors did not grow on trees, numerous though the trees were around his hovel.

Second, he wanted revenge. He longed for it. He daydreamed about it. Tony and Sal must suffer. His present woeful situation was their doing, or a lot of it was. They’d treated him shabbily. But what form could such revenge possibly take?

Those were the two things he wanted. He wanted them more each day. But he didn’t know how to go about getting them.

His Tempest would be forced to wait, faute de mieux : he didn’t have the wherewithal. So first he would concentrate on the revenge.

How would it work? Would he lure Tony down into a dank cellar with the promise of a cask of Amontillado, then brick him up in the wall? But Tony wasn’t a foodie. He wasn’t much interested in gourmet eats and drinks for their own sakes: they pleased him only as status markers. And he would never be so stupid as to go down into a dark place with Felix unsupported by a couple of armed guards, since he would be well aware of Felix’s justified resentment.

Would Felix seduce Tony’s wife or, better, hint that some young stud had seduced her? But Tony’s wife was a showpiece made of frozen alabaster: she was most likely a robot, and unseducible. And, even suppose her invisible chastity belt could be safe-cracked, why be unfair to the innocent young stud, whoever he might be? Why bring down upon him the ire of Tony, now the wielder of considerable career-incinerating weaponry? Young studs had a half-life and should be allowed to enjoy their prime time in the swimming pools and scented sheets of the demi-matronly while that time was still theirs to enjoy. Before wilt set in, before drooping, and an inability to focus.

Would he sneak into Tony’s house/office/favorite restaurant and spike Tony’s lunch with a toxic agent that would give Tony an incurable illness or inflict upon him a lingering and painful death? Then Felix could disguise himself as a doctor and appear in Tony’s hospital room and gloat. He’d read a murder mystery in which the victim had died from eating daffodil bulbs. They’d been disguised in an onion soup, as he recalled.

No, no. Mere fantasizing. Such revenges were far too melodramatic, and in any case well beyond his capabilities. He would have to be more subtle.

Know thine enemy, all the best authorities advised. He began to trace the movements of Tony: where he went, what he was doing, his pronouncements, his television appearances. His list of achievements; Tony liked accumulating achievements, and was careful to ensure that they were acknowledged.

At first this indirect stalking was easy: all Felix needed to do was get the Makeshiweg papers — of which, in those days, there were two — and look up the theatrical news and the social notes. Tony had been much in demand for soirées and fundraisers at that time, and was an affable granter of interviews. Felix ground his teeth over the Arts Entrepreneur of the Year Award, then over the Scholastic Outreach Award, given to Tony for the Festival program that bussed kids in from the surrounding area and made them sit through Hamlet , whispering and giggling, as the bodies piled up onstage. That program had been Felix’s idea. In fact, most of the items Tony was getting awards for had originated in the brain of Felix.

In Year Five of Felix’s exile, here was another award: the Order of Ontario. La-de-da, Felix growled to himself. Another dingbat to wear on your lapel. Imposter!

In Year Six, Tony changed direction. He resigned from the Festival and ran for political office, right in the town of Makeshiweg, where he was a familiar face in public life, and he won a seat in the provincial legislature and became an Honorable. The Heritage Minister was still Sal O’Nally, so now they were both in the same nest, no doubt assiduously feathering it. How cozy for both of them.

It wouldn’t be long before Tony would wiggle his way into Cabinet, thought Felix. Already he was being spoken of as up-and-coming. In his photographs, he had a ministerial air.

Then technology added a new telescope to Felix’s meager arsenal of spyware: the snoop gremlin, Google. Felix had once had a computer, but it had belonged to the Festival and had been impounded when Felix was deposed. For a while he’d lurked around in the Internet café in Wilmot, following Tony’s activities as best he could. He’d closed his work email account when he’d left the Festival — how galling it would have been to receive all those hypocritical messages of commiseration on it — but now he opened two new accounts, one for himself and another one for Mr. Duke, who had acquired a couple of credit cards. He thought about getting Mr. Duke a driver’s licence, but that would’ve been pushing it.

He felt he was becoming too visible in the Wilmot café—he might be suspected of watching porn — so he bought a cheap personal computer, second-hand. He had a telephone line run into his hovel from the Maude household and used dial-up. But after a while cable was installed along his back road, so he upgraded to an Ethernet connection and a router, which increased both the speed and the privacy of his Internet access.

It was amazing how much you could learn about a person over the Net. There was Felix, alone in his neglected corner reading the Google Alerts, and there were Tony and Sal, bustling about in the world, not suspecting that they had a shadower; a watcher, a waiter, an Internet stalker.

What was Felix waiting for? He hardly knew. A chance opening, a lucky break? A pathway toward a moment of confrontation? A moment when the balance of power would lie with him. It was an impossible thing to wish for, but suppressed rage sustained him. That, and his thirst for justice.

He realized that his spying was a little deranged, though only a little. But he’d gradually been opening another space in his life that verged on full-blown lunacy.

It began when he was counting time by how old Miranda would be, had she lived. She’d be five, then six; she’d be losing her baby teeth; she’d be learning to write. That sort of thing. Wistful daydreaming at first.