The Blind Assassin

by Margaret Atwood

There was word of censoring it. People snuck off to Stratford or London or Toronto even, and obtained their copies on the sly, as was the custom then with condoms. Back at home they drew the curtains and read, with disapproval, with relish, with avidity and glee – even the ones who’d never thought of opening a novel before. There’s nothing like a shovelful of dirt to encourage literacy.

Adelia died in 1913, of cancer – an unnamed and therefore most likely gynecological variety.

Boats are female for Walter, as are busted car engines and broken lamps and radios – items of any kind that can be fiddled with by men adroit with gadgetry, and restored to a condition as good as new.

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.

sag vibes

She understood, and said nothing about it, and prayed for the power to forgive, and did forgive. But 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.

However, a much worse thing had happened: my father was now an atheist. Over the trenches God had burst like a balloon, and there was nothing left of him but grubby little scraps of hypocrisy.

(The good leg, the bad leg – these terms are of interest to me. What has the bad leg done, to be called bad? Is its hidden, mutilated state a punishment?)

(What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us to stick pins into, crude diagrams. We deny them an existence of their own, we make them up to suit ourselves – our own hungers, our own wishes, our own deficiencies. Now that I’ve been one myself, I know.)

This was the first time a man would expect more from me than I was capable of giving, but it would not be the last.

Men like that are always called X. Names are no use to them, names only pin them down. Anyway, X is for X-ray – if you’re X, you can pass through solid walls and see through women’s clothing.

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.

A man would be more deliberate. They would hang themselves from the crossbeams of their barns, or blow their heads off with their shot-guns; or if intending to drown, they would attach rocks, or other heavy objects – axe-heads, bags of nails. They didn’t like to take any chances on a serious thing like that. But it was a woman’s way just to walk in and resign herself, and let the water take her.

It’s the first week of October. Season of woollen garments taken out of mothballs; of nocturnal mists and dew and slippery front steps, and late-blooming slugs; of snapdragons having one last fling; of those frilly ornamental pink-and-purple cabbages that never used to exist, but are all over everywhere now.

People cry at weddings for the same reason they cry at happy endings: because they so desperately want to believe in something they know is not credible.

did not yet know that my lack of enjoyment – my distaste, my suffering even – would be considered normal and even desirable by my husband. He was one of those men who felt that if a woman did not experience sexual pleasure this was all to the good, because then she would not be liable to wander off seeking it elsewhere.

The three of them were beautiful, in the way all girls of that age are beautiful. It can’t be helped, that sort of beauty, nor can it be conserved; it’s a freshness, a plumpness of the cells, that’s unearned and temporary, and that nothing can replicate. None of them was satisfied with it, however; already they were making attempts to alter themselves, to improve and distort and diminish, to cram themselves into some impossible, imaginary mould, plucking and pencilling away at their faces. I didn’t blame them, having done the same once myself.

Having experienced both, I am not sure which is worse: intense feeling, or the absence of it.

After having imposed itself on us like the egomaniac it is, clamouring about its own needs, foisting upon us its own sordid and perilous desires, the body’s final trick is simply to absent itself. Just when you need it, just when you could use an arm or a leg, suddenly the body has other things to do. It falters, it buckles under you; it melts away as if made of snow, leaving nothing much.

Don’t misunderstand me. I am not scoffing at goodness, which is far more difficult to explain than evil, and just as complicated. But sometimes it’s hard to put up with.

On impulse he might die for her, but living for her would be quite different.

She’ll wish to talk with them, but she won’t because any interest from her would be sure to be misunderstood. Her body as usual would get in the way of free speech. Therefore she will only eavesdrop.

A violent sound, but soothing; alluring, almost. You can see how people are drawn to it. To waterfalls, to high places, to deserts and deep lakes – places of no return.

Please don’t mistake this rambling angst for stoicism. I take my pills, I take my halting walks, but there’s nothing I can do for dread.

It came from his having too much money, too much presence in the world – you were tempted to expect more from him than was there, and so what was average in him seemed like deficiency.