The Blind Assassin

by Margaret Atwood

Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. Solid flesh can never live up to the bright shadow cast by its absence. Time and distance blur the edges; then suddenly the beloved has arrived, and it’s noon with its merciless light, and every spot and pore and wrinkle and bristle stands clear.

How could she fail to understand his need for it, under the circumstances? She did understand, or at least she understood that she was supposed to understand. She understood, and said nothing about it, and prayed for the power to forgive, and did forgive.

he can’t have found living with her forgiveness all that easy. Breakfast in a haze of forgiveness: coffee with forgiveness, porridge with forgiveness, forgiveness on the buttered toast. He would have been helpless against it, for how can you repudiate something that is never spoken?

the other side of selflessness: its tyranny.

Do I mean to say he didn’t love her? Not at all. He loved her; in some ways he was devoted to her. But he couldn’t reach her, and it was the same on her side. It was as if they’d drunk some fatal potion that would keep them forever apart, even though they lived in the same house, ate at the same table, slept in the same bed.

How do I know all these things? I don’t know them, not in the usual sense of knowing. But in households like ours there’s often more in silences than in what is actually said – in the lips pressed together, the head turned away, the quick sideways glance. The shoulders drawn up as if carrying a heavy weight. No wonder we took to listening at doors,

It took Laura a long time to get herself born into this world, said Reenie. It was like she couldn’t decide whether or not it was really such a smart idea. Then she was sickly at first, and we almost lost her – I guess she was still making up her mind. But in the end she decided to give it a try, and so she took ahold of life, and got some better.

Reenie believed that people decided when it was their time to die; similarly, they had a voice in whether or not they would be born. Once I’d reached the talking-back age, I used to say, I never asked to be born, as if that were a clinching argument; and Reenie would retort, Of course you did. Just like everyone else. Once alive you were on the hook for it, as far as Reenie was concerned.

After Laura’s birth my mother was more tired than usual. She lost altitude; she lost resilience. Her will faltered; her days took on a quality of trudging. She had to rest more, said the doctor. She was not a well woman, said Reenie to Mrs. Hillcoate, who came in to help with the laundry. It was as if my former mother had been stolen away by the elves, and this other mother – this older and greyer and saggier and more discouraged one – had been left behind in her place. I was only four then, and was frightened by the change in her, and wanted to be held and reassured; but my mother no longer had the ener...

I soon found that if I could keep quiet, without clamouring for attention, and above all if I could be helpful – especially with the baby, with Laura, watching beside her and rocking her cradle so she would sleep, not a thing she did easily or for long – I would be permitted to remain in the same room with my mother. If n...

She told us she had eyes in the back of her head, and that was how she knew when we’d done something wrong.

A shame, but he’ll have to get rid of her. He’ll ruin her husband financially – do him the honour of dining at his house, with all of his most trusted courtiers, until the poor idiot’s resources are exhausted. Then the woman will be sold into slavery to pay the debt. It might even do her good – firm up her muscles.

people always forget about prophecies unless they come true.

Perceived softness is as bad for public order as actual softness.

She said never to use the telephone during a thunderstorm or the lightning would come right through into your ear and then you’d be deaf. She said never to take a bath then either, because the lightning could run out of the tap like water. She said if the hair stood up on the back of your neck you should jump into the air, because that was the only thing that could save you.

Who am I anyway, to deserve such a miraculous outcome? How can I expect it? I do expect it though. Against all reason.

What you don’t know won’t hurt you

She began to fret about God’s exact location. It was the Sunday-school teacher’s fault: God is everywhere, she’d said, and Laura wanted to know: was God in the sun, was God in the moon, was God in the kitchen, the bathroom, was he under the bed? (“I’d like to wring that woman’s neck,” said Reenie.) Laura didn’t want God popping out at her unexpectedly, not hard to understand considering his recent behaviour.

God never slept, it said in the hymn – No careless slumber shall His eyelids close. Instead he roamed around the house at night, spying on people – seeing if they’d been good enough, or sending plagues to finish them off, or indulging in some other whim. Sooner or later he was bound to do something unpleasant, as he’d often done in the Bible.

Children believe that everything bad that happens is somehow their fault, and in this I was no exception; but they also believe in happy endings, despite all evidence to the contrary, and I was no exception in that either.

A woman jumped off the Jubilee Bridge above the rapids and the body wasn’t found for two days. It was fished out downstream, and was far from a pretty sight because going down those rapids was like being run through a meat grinder. Not the best way to depart this earth, said Reenie – not if you were interested in your looks, though most likely you wouldn’t be at such a time.

no sense in shutting the barn door with the horse gone.”

I could hardly remember that, or what she’d really looked like: now she looked only like her photographs.

I did remember the wrongness of her bed when she was suddenly no longer in it: how empty it had seemed.

I have no desire to become an object of attention to the local hopheads and amateur second-storey men, with their bloodshot eyes and twitchy fingers.

is never much fun to watch other people dance when you can’t do it yourself.)

They wanted their own name printed at the bottom, but Father shamed them out of it. The War Memorial was for the dead, he told them – not for those who’d remained alive, much less reaped the benefits.

a dead Catholic soldier was just as dead as a dead Protestant one.

“Why is it called a memorial?” said Laura. “It’s for us to remember the dead,” said Reenie. “Why?” said Laura. “What for? Do they like it?”

You’ll understand when you’re older.” Laura was always being told this, and discounted it. She wanted to understand now.

“God doesn’t want you to be dead,” I said. “That would make him very mad! If he wanted Mother to be alive, he could do it anyway, without you drowning yourself.” This was the only way to talk to Laura when she got into such moods: you had to pretend you knew something about God that she didn’t.

More and more I feel like a letter – deposited here, collected there. But a letter addressed to no one.