The Handmaid's Tale

by Margaret Atwood

Let her take the weight, she can say to herself. Maybe she’s withdrawn from him, almost completely; maybe that’s her version of freedom. But even so, and stupidly enough, I’m happier than I was before. It’s something to do, for one thing. Something to fill the time, at night, instead of sitting alone in my room. It’s something else to think about. I don’t love the Commander or anything like it, but he’s of interest to me, he occupies space, he is more than a shadow. And I for him. To him I’m no longer merely a usable body. To him I’m not just a boat with no cargo, a chalice with no wine in it, an oven—to be crude—minus the bun. To him I am not merely empty.

The machines talk as they print out the prayers; if you like, you can go inside and listen to them, the toneless metallic voices repeating the same thing over and over. Once the prayers have been printed out and said, the paper rolls back through another slot and is recycled into fresh paper again. There are no people inside the building: the machines run by themselves. You can’t hear the voices from outside; only a murmur, a hum, like a devout crowd, on its knees. Each machine has an eye painted in gold on the side, flanked by two small golden wings.

I got a better apartment after that, where I lived for the two years it took Luke to pry himself loose.

It’s strange, now, to think about having a job. Job. It’s a funny word.

It seems so primitive, totemistic even, like cowry shells.

I guess that’s how they were able to do it, in the way they did, all at once, without anyone knowing beforehand. If there had still been portable money, it would have been more difficult.

It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time.

to breathe in the humid air which stinks of flowers, of pulpy growth, of pollen thrown into the wind in handfuls, like oyster spawn into the sea. All this prodigal breeding.

He doesn’t mind this, I thought. He doesn’t mind it at all. Maybe he even likes it. We are not each other’s, anymore. Instead, I am his.

Commander likes it when I distinguish myself, show precocity, like an attentive pet, prick-eared and eager to perform.

In fact he is positively daddyish.

This watching is a curiously sexual act, and I feel undressed while he does it.

“Whatever there is to know,” I say; but that’s too flippant. “What’s going on.”

Night has fallen, then. I feel it pressing down on me like a stone. No breeze. I sit by the partly open window, curtains tucked back because there’s no one out there, no need for modesty, in my nightgown, long-sleeved even in summer, to keep us from the temptations of our own flesh, to keep us from hugging ourselves, bare-armed.

She wanted us to look like something Anglo-Saxon, carved on a tomb; or Christmas card angels, regimented in our robes of purity.

What we prayed for was emptiness, so we would be worthy to be filled: with grace, with love, with self-denial, semen and babies.

But You will do as well as anything.

You might even provide a Heaven for them. We need You for that. Hell we can make for ourselves.

The Fall was a fall from innocence to knowledge.

Better never means better for everyone, he says. It always means worse, for some.

“She thinks it’s her fault,” Ofglen whispers. “Two in a row. For being sinful. She used a doctor, they say, it wasn’t her Commander’s at all.”

But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No plot.

Those years were just an anomaly, historically speaking, the Commander said. Just a fluke. All we’ve done is return things to Nature’s norm.

Saved by childbearing, I think. What did we suppose would save us, in the time before?

Freedom, like everything else, is relative.

Separate entrance, it would say in the ads, and that meant you could have sex, unobserved.

His mouth is on me, his hands, I can’t wait and he’s moving, already, love, it’s been so long, I’m alive in my skin, again, arms around him, falling and water softly everywhere, never-ending. I knew it might only be once.

I’m sad now, the way we’re talking is infinitely sad: faded music, faded paper flowers, worn satin, an echo of an echo. All gone away, no longer possible. Without warning I begin to cry.

It didn’t happen that way either. I’m not sure how it happened; not exactly. All I can hope for is a reconstruction: the way love feels is always only approximate.

I would like to be without shame. I would like to be shameless. I would like to be ignorant. Then I would not know how ignorant I was.

By telling you anything at all I’m at least believing in you, I believe you’re there, I believe you into being. Because I’m telling you this story I will your existence. I tell, therefore you are.

I went back to Nick. Time after time, on my own, without Serena knowing. It wasn’t called for, there was no excuse. I did not do it for him, but for myself entirely. I didn’t even think of it as giving myself to him, because what did I have to give? I did not feel munificent, but thankful, each time he would let me in. He didn’t have to.

Impossible to think that anyone for whom I feel such gratitude could betray me.

I feel, for the first time, their true power.

Faith is only a word, embroidered.