The Tent Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  I.

  Life Stories

  Clothing Dreams

  Bottle

  Impenetrable Forest

  Encouraging the Young

  Voice

  No More Photos

  Orphan Stories

  Gateway

  Bottle II

  II.

  Winter's Tales

  It's Not Easy Being Half-Divine

  Salome Was a Dancer

  Plots for Exotics

  Resources of the Ikarians

  Our Cat Enters Heaven

  Chicken Little Goes Too Far

  Thylacine Ragout

  The Animals Reject Their Names and

  Things Return to Their Origins

  Three Novels I Won't Write Soon

  Take Charge

  Post-Colonial

  Heritage House

  Bring Back Mom: An Invocation

  III.

  Horatio's Version

  King Log in Exile

  Faster

  Eating the Birds

  Something Has Happened

  Nightingale

  Warlords

  The Tent

  Time Folds

  Tree Baby

  But It Could Still

  Acknowledgements

  Also by Margaret Atwood

  Copyright Page

  For Graeme

  Life Stories

  Why the hunger for these? If it is a hunger. Maybe it's more like bossiness. Maybe we just want to be in charge, of the life, no matter who lived it.

  It helps if there are photos. No more choices for the people in them - pick this one, dump that one. The livers of the lives in question had their chances, most of which they blew. They should have spotted the photographer in the bushes, they shouldn't have chewed with their mouths open, they shouldn't have worn the strapless top, they shouldn't have yawned, they shouldn't have laughed: so unattractive, the candid denture. So that's what she looked like, we say, connecting the snapshot to the year of the torrid affair. Face like a half-eaten pizza, and is that him, gaping down her front? What did he see in her, besides cheap lunch? He was already going bald. What was all the fuss about?

  I'm working on my own life story. I don't mean I'm putting it together; no, I'm taking it apart. It's mostly a question of editing. If you'd wanted the narrative line you should have asked earlier, when I still knew everything and was more than willing to tell. That was before I discovered the virtues of scissors, the virtues of matches.

  I was born, I would have begun, once. But snip, snip, away go mother and father, white ribbons of paper blown by the wind, with grandparents tossed out for good measure. I spent my childhood. Enough of that as well. Goodbye dirty little dresses, goodbye scuffed shoes that caused me such anguish, goodbye well-thumbed tears and scabby knees, and sadness worn at the edges.

  Adolescence can be discarded too, with its salty tanned skin, its fecklessness and bad romance and leakages of seasonal blood. What was it like to breathe so heavily, as if drugged, while rubbing up against strange leather coats in alleyways? I can't remember.

  Once you get started it's fun. So much free space opens up. Rip, crumple, up in flames, out the window. I was born, I grew up, I studied, I loved, I married, I procreated, I said, I wrote, all gone now. I went, I saw, I did. Farewell crumbling turrets of historic interest, farewell icebergs and war monuments, all those young stone men with eyes upturned, and risky voyages teeming with germs, and dubious hotels, and doorways opening both in and out. Farewell friends and lovers, you've slipped from view, erased, defaced: I know you once had hairdos and told jokes, but I can't recall them. Into the ground with you, my tender fur-brained cats and dogs, and horses and mice as well: I adored you, dozens of you, but what were your names?

  I'm getting somewhere now, I'm feeling lighter. I'm coming unstuck from scrapbooks, from albums, from diaries and journals, from space, from time. Only a paragraph left, only a sentence or two, only a whisper.

  I was born.

  I was.

  I.

  Clothing Dreams

  Oh no. Not this again. It's the clothing dream. I've been having it for fifty years. Aisle after aisle, closetful after closetful, metal rack after metal rack of clothing, stretching into the distance under the glare of the fluorescent tubing - as gaudy and ornate and confusing, and finally as glum and oppressive, as the dreams of a long-time opium smoker. Why am I compelled to riffle through these outfits, tangling up the hangers, tripping on the ribbons, snagging myself on a hook or button while feathers and sequins and fake pearls drop to the floor like ants from a burning tree? What is the occasion? Who do I need to impress?

  There's a smell of stale underarms. Everything's been worn before. Nothing fits. Too small, too big, too magenta. These flounces, hoops, ruffles, wired collars, cut-velvet capes - none of these disguises is mine. How old am I in this dream? Do I have tits? Whose life am I living? Whose life am I failing to live?

  Bottle

  - I only want to be like everyone else, I said.

  - You're not, though, was what he told me. You're not like them.

  - Why not? I said. I was inclined to listen to him. He had a persuasive manner.

  - Because I love you.

  - Is that all?

  - I'm not just anyone, he said.

  - Nobody is, I said.

  - You see, he said, that's what I mean, you're not like everyone else. You notice the details, you take the distinguishing characteristics into account, you pick out the tendencies. These are the qualities I'm looking for.

  - Is this a seduction? I said.

  - No. The seduction took place a while ago; you didn't even notice it. We're past that. We're at the hiring stage. We've come to the bargaining.

  - What do I have to do? I said.

  - Sleep with me, that goes without saying. I'll make it worth your while.

  - What else?

  - I value loyalty. Remember, you're not a lawyer: don't fuck the clients.

  - I wouldn't anyway. They always have bad karma. What else?

  - Just what you're already doing, he said. Some routine chores. Inhale some smoke, chew selected plant materials, tell a couple of riddles, write things on leaves. Do the odd incantation; lead a few sightseeing tours of hell. Keep up the tone of the establishment.

  - No fooling around with snakes? I can't, if there's snakes. I have a phobia.

  - Snakes were last year.

  - Good. Where do I sign? Just a minute - what do I get in return?

  - Women are so mercenary.

  - No, but seriously?

  - You'll get wise. Wiser than you are, I mean.

  - It's not enough.

  - All right: you can have some immortality. Here it is. It's inside this bottle. See it?

  - That little heap of dust?

  - Look harder.

  - Oh. Yes. Does it always sparkle like that?

  - Only at first.

  - Are you sure this is immortality?

  - Trust me. With some of this, you'll always have a voice.

  - Have a voice, or be a voice?

  - One or the other.

  - Well, okay, thanks a lot then.

  - Don't drop the bottle. Be careful with it. You have to watch those things, they have a habit of getting bigger. They can get as big as the sky. You can be sucked into them before you know it. It's the vacuum effect. Now set it down, over there in the corner, dump that bulky mantle, and put your arms . . .

  - I feel dizzy. This is getting a little intense. I ate too much at lunch. I think I should go home and lie down.

  - Lie down right here! You owe me, remember? No time like the present. Slit a throat, pour a libation, empty your mind, cl
ose your eyes, clear a space for me, think about caves . . .

  - Ouch. Let go! I need to breathe. I can't, right now. How about next week?

  - Don't you love me?

  - It's not that. It's just - are you really who you say you are?

  - I am what I am. I'm also who you say I am. That's the way it is with gods, and I'm a god, after all.

  - So there's nothing to you. You're only in my head. You're just a - you're nothing.

  - More or less.

  - That's what I thought. Wait, come back!

  - I'm not stupid, I recognize no when I hear it.

  - I didn't mean to be abrupt. Let's talk.

  - You can't talk with nothing.

  - But -

  Impenetrable Forest

  The person you have in mind is lost. That's the picture I'm getting. He believes he is lost in the middle of an impenetrable forest. His head is full of trees. Branches he's bumping into. Brambles he's tangled up in. Paths that lead nowhere. Animals that jeer at him and run away. Here and there the glimpse of an elusive maiden, wearing a dress of what appears to be white cheesecloth. I'm getting some insects too, the stinging variety. This is not pleasant. The sun is sinking. The shadows are darkening. Things could hardly be worse.

  Then there's you. Where do you come into it? You're not one to resist an opportunity, the sort of opportunity he presents. Some would call it meddling, but you think of it as helpfulness. I apologize for being so frank but I'm just the messenger. Here you come, descending in our pinkish cloud, glowing like a low-wattage light bulb or an aquarium in a chintzy bar. Feathers sprout from your shoulders, rays of light shoot out from you, silver-and-gold confetti wafts down from you like metallic dandruff. It does not occur to you that your dress is covered with tiny fish hooks. On some of them scraps of bait are still hanging: cricket wings, worm torsos, old bank deposit slips.

  There there, you say. A whisk here, a flick there, with your magic wand - transparent plastic, with a miniature motorcar in it that slides up and down in a sparkly fluid when shaken - and the brambles vanish. The sun reverses direction, the paths straighten out, dawn occurs.

  Voila! you say. Your debts are paid, your emotional problems are solved, your illnesses are cured. Not only that, but your childhood sorrows - the ones that held you back and bogged you down - they've been erased. Now you can get on with it.

  He looks at you without gratitude. What is this it I'm supposed to be getting on with? he says.

  You don't know? you ask, with an irritation you try to conceal. I've come down into this stupid woodlot, gone to major trouble, cleared away a lifetime of junk for you, and you still don't know?

  You don't understand much, he says. Why do you think I was lost in the impenetrable forest in the first place?

  Encouraging the Young

  I have decided to encourage the young. Once I wouldn't have done this, but now I have nothing to lose. The young are not my rivals. Fish are not the rivals of stones.

  So I will encourage them open-handedly, I will encourage them en masse. I'll fling encouragement over them like rice at a wedding. They are the young, a collective noun, like the electorate. I'll encourage them indiscriminately, whether they deserve it or not. Anyway, I can't tell them apart.

  So I will stand cheering generally, like a blind person at a football game: noise is what is required, waves of it, invigorating yelps to inspire them to greater efforts, and who cares on what side and to what ends?

  I don't mean the very young, those who can still display their midriffs without attracting derision. Boredom's their armour: to them I'm a voice balloon with nothing in it.

  No. It's the newly conscious young I mean, the ones with ambition and fresh diffidence, those who've learned the hard way that reach exceeds grasp nine times out of ten. How disappointed they are! And if and when they succeed for the first time, how anxious it makes them! They develop insomnia, or claustrophobia, or bulimia, or fear of heights. Now they will have to live up to themselves. Bummer.

  Here I am, happy to help! I'll pass round the encouragement, a cookie's worth for each. There you are, young! What is a big, stupid, clumsy mess like the one you just made - let me rephrase that - what is an understandable human error, but a learning experience? Try again! Follow your dream! You can do it!

  What a fine and shining person I am, so much kinder than when I'd just finished being young myself. I was severe then; my standards were exacting. The young - I felt - were allowed to get away with far too much, as I had been. But now I'm generosity itself. Affably I smile and dole.

  On second thought, my motives are less pure than they appear. They are murkier. They are lurkier. I catch sight of myself, in that inward eye that is not always the bliss of solitude, and I see that I am dubious. I scuttle from bush to bush, at the edge of the dark woods, peering out. Yoo hoo! Young! Over here! I call, beckoning with my increasingly knobbly forefinger. That's it! Now, here's a lavish gingerbread house, decorated with your name in lights. Wouldn't you like to walk into it, claim it as your own, stuff your face on sugary fame? Of course you would!

  I won't fatten them in cages, though. I won't ply them with poisoned fruit items. I won't change them into clockwork images or talking shadows. I won't drain out their life's blood. They can do all those things for themselves.

  Voice

  I was given a voice. That's what people said about me. I cultivated my voice, because it would be a shame to waste such a gift. I pictured this voice as a hothouse plant, something luxuriant, with glossy foliage and the word tuberous in the name, and a musky scent at night. I made sure the voice was provided with the right temperature, the right degree of humidity, the right ambience. I soothed its fears; I told it not to tremble. I nurtured it, I trained it, I watched it climb up inside my neck like a vine.

  The voice bloomed. People said I had grown into my voice. Soon I was sought after, or rather my voice was. We went everywhere together. What people saw was me, what I saw was my voice, ballooning out in front of me like the translucent greenish membrane of a frog in full trill.

  My voice was courted. Bouquets were thrown to it. Money was bestowed on it. Men fell on their knees before it. Applause flew around it like flocks of red birds.

  Invitations to perform cascaded over us. All the best places wanted us, and all at once, for, as people said - though not to me - my voice would thrive only for a certain term. Then, as voices do, it would begin to shrivel. Finally it would drop off, and I would be left alone, denuded - a dead shrub, a footnote.

  It's begun to happen, the shrivelling, Only I have noticed it so far. There's the barest pucker in my voice, the barest wrinkle. Fear has entered me, a needleful of ether, constricting what in someone else would be my heart.

  Now it's evening; the neon lights come on, excitement quickens in the streets. We sit in this hotel room, my voice and I; or rather in this hotel suite, because it's still nothing but the best for us. We're gathering our strength together. How much of my life do I have left? Left over, that is: my voice has used up most of it. I've given it all my love, but it's only a voice, it can never love me in return.

  Although it's begun to decay, my voice is still as greedy as ever. Greedier: it wants more, more and more, more of everything it's had so far. It won't let go of me easily.

  Soon it will be time for us to go out. We'll attend a luminous occasion, the two of us, chained together as always. I'll put on its favourite dress, its favourite necklace. I'll wind a fur around it, to protect it from the drafts. Then we'll descend to the foyer, glittering like ice, my voice attached like an invisible vampire to my throat.

  No More Photos

  No more photos. Surely there are enough. No more shadows of myself thrown by light onto pieces of paper, onto squares of plastic. No more of my eyes, mouths, noses, moods, bad angles. No more yawns, teeth, wrinkles. I suffer from my own multiplicity. Two or three images would have been enough, or four, or five. That would have allowed for a firm idea: This is she. As it is, I'm
watery, I ripple, from moment to moment I dissolve into my other selves. Turn the page: you, looking, are newly confused. You know me too well to know me. Or not too well: too much.

  Orphan Stories

  i) How swiftly the orphans set sail! No sooner does the starting gun fire than they're flying! Their yachts are slimmer, their lines trimmer than ours - than our stodgy barges. They drag no anchors, they haul no ballast, they toss all baggage overboard, and the one flag they ever hoist is blank. No wonder they pull out of the bay ahead of the rest, no wonder they round the cape so briskly! But what now? They won't stay on course, they won't play by the well-wrought rules, they despise the prize. They're headed for the open sea. They're sailing into the sun. They're gone.

  ii) Orphans have bad experiences: in barns, in cellars, in automobiles, in woodsheds, in vacant fields, in empty classrooms. It's because they're so tempting. It's because they're so damaged. It's because they're so scrawny. It's because they're so easily broken. It's because they're so available. It's because they're so erotic. It's because no one will believe what they say.

  iii) The orphans line up for their gruel. All kinds of orphans - car-crash orphans, boat-accident orphans, heart-attack orphans, unwed-mother orphans, war orphans - for all of these gruel is provided, out of the goodness of our hearts. They don't get much, a dollop here, a dollop there, but such is the way, in orphanages. They wait for their dollops, standing quietly in their cheap grey uniforms, provided by us as well. How kind we are, how virtuous we feel! One day the orphans start banging with their cheap tin spoons, on their cheap tin plates. They've been told to be thankful, to be grateful, not to be greedy, but they want more. They want more and more and more. They want what we have! How dare they? How dare they brandish their hunger at us like a sword?

  iv) What are their names? Names are arbitrary, but orphans' names are more arbitrary than most. They make up their names as they go along. Call me Ishmael, they say. Or else: Call me Ishmael, but call me often. Or else: Don't call me Ishmael, call me Anonymous. Call me No-name. Call me In Vain. Orphans are such flirts, they'll hook up with anyone, then they tear up their phone books, they discard at random. They show no mercy.