Margaret Atwood - The Testaments

Finally the time was up and I could go home. I walked along the polished hall towards the front door of the school and stepped outside. There was a light drizzle; I didn’t have my raincoat. I scanned the street: Melanie wasn’t waiting in her car.

All of a sudden Ada appeared beside me, in her black leather jacket. “Come on. Let’s get in the car,” she said.

“What?” I said. “Why?”

“It’s about Neil and Melanie.” I looked at her face, and I could tell: something really bad must have happened. If I’d been older I would’ve asked what it was right away, but I didn’t because I wanted to postpone the moment when I would know what it was. In stories I’d read, I’d come across the words nameless dread . They’d just been words then, but now that’s exactly what I felt.

Once we were in the car and she’d started driving, I said, “Did someone have a heart attack?” It was all I could think of.

“No,” Ada said. “Listen carefully and don’t freak out on me. You can’t go back to your house.”

The awful feeling in my stomach got worse. “What is it? Was there a fire?”

“There’s been an explosion,” she said. “It was a car bomb. Outside The Clothes Hound.”

“Shit. Is the store wrecked?” I said. First the break-in, and now this.

“It was Melanie’s car. She and Neil were both in it.”

I sat there for a minute without speaking; I couldn’t make sense of this. What kind of maniac would want to kill Neil and Melanie? They were so ordinary.

“So they’re dead?” I said finally. I was shivering. I tried to picture the explosion, but all I could see was a blank. A black square.

V

Van

The Ardua Hall Holograph

12

Who are you, my reader? And when are you? Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps fifty years from now, perhaps never.

Possibly you are one of our Aunts from Ardua Hall, stumbling across this account by chance. After a moment of horror at my sinfulness, will you burn these pages to preserve my pious image intact? Or will you succumb to the universal thirst for power and scuttle off to the Eyes to snitch on me?

Or will you be a snoop from outside our borders, rooting through the archives of Ardua Hall once this regime has fallen? In which case, the stash of incriminating documents I’ve been hoarding for so many years will have featured not only at my own trial—should fate prove malicious, and should I live to feature at such a trial—but at the trials of many others. I’ve made it my business to know where the bodies are buried.

—

By now you may be wondering how I’ve avoided being purged by those higher up—if not in the earlier days of Gilead, at least as it settled into its dog-eat-dog maturity. By then a number of erstwhile notables had been hung on the Wall, since those on the topmost pinnacle took care that no ambitious challengers would displace them. You might assume that, being a woman, I would be especially vulnerable to this kind of winnowing, but you would be wrong. Simply by being female I was excluded from the lists of potential usurpers, since no woman could ever sit on the Council of the Commanders; so on that front, ironically, I was safe.

But there are three other reasons for my political longevity. First, the regime needs me. I control the women’s side of their enterprise with an iron fist in a leather glove in a woollen mitten, and I keep things orderly: like a harem eunuch, I am uniquely placed to do so. Second, I know too much about the leaders—too much dirt—and they are uncertain as to what I may have done with it in the way of documentation. If they string me up, will that dirt somehow be leaked? They might well suspect I’ve taken backup precautions, and they would be right.

Third, I’m discreet. Each one of the top men has always felt that his secrets are safe with me; but—as I’ve made obliquely clear—only so long as I myself am safe. I have long been a believer in checks and balances.

Despite these security measures, I do not allow myself to be lulled. Gilead is a slippery place: accidents happen frequently. Someone has already written my funeral eulogy, it goes without saying. I shiver: whose feet are walking on my grave?

Time, I plead to the air, just a little more time. That’s all I need.

—

Yesterday I received an unexpected invitation to a private meeting with Commander Judd. It’s not the first such invitation I’ve received. Some of the earlier encounters were unpleasant; others, of a more recent date, have been mutually profitable.

As I set out across the swatch of feeble grass that covers the ground between Ardua Hall and the headquarters of the Eyes, and climbed—somewhat laboriously—the hillside of imposing white stairs that leads to the many-pillared main entrance, I was wondering which kind this meeting would prove to be. I must admit that my heart was beating faster than usual, and not only from the stairs: not everyone who has gone in through that particular doorway has come out again.

The Eyes hold sway in a former grand library. It now shelters no books but their own, the original contents having been either burned or, if valuable, added to the private collections of various sticky-fingered Commanders. Being now thoroughly instructed in Scripture, I can quote chapter and verse on the hazards of snatching loot forbidden by the Lord, but discretion is the better part of valour, so I do not.

I am pleased to relate that no one has erased the murals on either side of this building’s interior staircase: since they depict dead soldiers, angels, and wreaths of victory, they are pious enough to have been deemed acceptable, although the flag of the erstwhile United States of America in the right-hand one has been painted over with that of Gilead.

Commander Judd has risen in the world since I first knew him. Straightening out Gilead’s women offered little real scope for his ego and garnered insufficient respect. But as the Commander in charge of the Eyes, he is now universally feared. His office is at the back of the building, in a space once consecrated to book storage and research cubicles. A large Eye with a real crystal in the pupil is centred on the door. That way he can see who is about to knock.

“Come in,” he said as I was raising my hand. The two junior Eyes who’d been escorting me took this as their signal to depart.

“Dear Aunt Lydia,” he said, beaming from behind his enormous desk. “Thank you for gracing my humble office. You are well, I hope?”

He did not hope that, but I let it pass. “Praise be,” I said. “And you? And your Wife?” This Wife has lasted longer than usual. His Wives have a habit of dying: Commander Judd is a great believer in the restorative powers of young women, as were King David and assorted Central American drug lords. After each respectable period of mourning, he has let it be known that he is in the market for another child bride. To be clear: he has let it be known to me.

“I and my Wife are both well, thanks be,” he said. “I have wonderful news for you. Please sit down.” I did so, and prepared to listen attentively. “Our agents in Canada have succeeded in identifying and eliminating two of the most active Mayday operatives. Their cover was a used clothing store in a seedy area of Toronto. A preliminary search of the premises suggested that they’d been playing a key role in aiding and abetting the Underground Femaleroad.”

“Providence has blessed us,” I said.

“Our enthusiastic young Canadian agents carried out the operation, but your Pearl Girls pointed the way. So useful of you to share their intuitive female gleanings.”