Read Online Life Before Man by Margaret Atwood - Free Book Online
Authors: Margaret Atwood
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script:
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a Tree.
A Tree whose hungry mouth is pressed
Against the Earth’s sweet flowing breast.…
Elizabeth reads this far, then stops. Even the idealized tree in the plaster oblong looks like a kind of squid, its roots intertwined like tentacles, sticking itself onto that rounded bulge of earth, sucking, voracious. Nancy started biting her in the sixth month, with the first tooth.
The doctor twiddles buttons on the machine attached by wires to Elizabeth’s headphone, producing first high science-fiction sounds, then low vibrations, rumors.
“I can hear it,” Elizabeth says each time the sound changes. She can tell what kinds of things this woman would have in her living room: chintz slipcovers, lamps with bases made of porcelain nymphs. Ceramic poodles on her mantelpiece, like Nate’s mother. An ashtray with ladybird beetles on the rim, in natural colors. This whole room is a time warp.
The doctor removes Elizabeth’s headphones and asks her to go back to the outer office. They both sit down. The doctor smiles benignly, indulgently, as if she’s about to tell Elizabeth she has cancer of the ears.
“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with your hearing,” she says. “Your ears are clear and your range is normal. Perhaps you may have a very slight residual infection that causes plugging from time to time. When that happens, just hold your nose and blow, as you’d do in an airplane. The pressure will clear your ears.”
(“I think I’m going deaf,” Elizabeth said.
“Maybe,” said Nate, “there are just some things you don’t want to hear.”)
Elizabeth thinks the receptionist looks at her strangely when she says she won’t be needing another appointment. “Nothing wrong with me,” she says, explaining. She goes down in the elevator and walks through the archaic brass and marble lobby, still marching. By the time she reaches the outer door the humming has begun again, high-pitched, constant, like a mosquito or a child’s tuneless song, or a power line in winter. Electricity somewhere. She remembers a story she read once, in
Reader’s Digest
, while sitting in the dentist’s waiting room, about an old woman who started hearing angel voices in her head and thought she was going mad. After a long time and several investigations they discovered she was picking up a local radio station through the metal in her bridgework.
Reader’s Digest
repeated this story as a joke.
It’s almost five, darkening; the sidewalk and road are slick with drizzle. Traffic packs the lanes. Elizabeth steps across the gutter and begins to walk diagonally across the street, in front of one stationary car, behind another. A green delivery truck jams to a stop in the moving lane, three feet from her. The driver leans on his horn, shouting.
“You idiot, you wanna get yourself killed?”
Elizabeth continues across the road, ignoring him, her pace steady, marching. Does she want to get herself killed. The hum in her right ear shuts off like a cut connection.
There’s nothing wrong with her ears. The sound is coming from somewhere else. Angel voices.
Monday, November 15, 1976
LESJE
L esje is having lunch with Elizabeth’s husband, the husband belonging to Elizabeth. Possessive, or, in Latin, genitive. This man doesn’t seem like Elizabeth’s husband, or anyone else’s for that matter. But especially not Elizabeth’s. Elizabeth, for instance, would never have chosen the Varsity Restaurant. Either he has no money, which is possible considering the frayings and ravelings everywhere on his surface, patchy, like rock lichen; or he doesn’t think she’ll base her opinion of him on his choice of restaurants. It’s a restaurant left over when others like it became classy, preserving its fifties furnishings, its grubby menus, its air of cheesy resignation.
Ordinarily Lesje would never eat here, partly because she associates the Varsity Restaurant with being a student and
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a Tree.
A Tree whose hungry mouth is pressed
Against the Earth’s sweet flowing breast.…
Elizabeth reads this far, then stops. Even the idealized tree in the plaster oblong looks like a kind of squid, its roots intertwined like tentacles, sticking itself onto that rounded bulge of earth, sucking, voracious. Nancy started biting her in the sixth month, with the first tooth.
The doctor twiddles buttons on the machine attached by wires to Elizabeth’s headphone, producing first high science-fiction sounds, then low vibrations, rumors.
“I can hear it,” Elizabeth says each time the sound changes. She can tell what kinds of things this woman would have in her living room: chintz slipcovers, lamps with bases made of porcelain nymphs. Ceramic poodles on her mantelpiece, like Nate’s mother. An ashtray with ladybird beetles on the rim, in natural colors. This whole room is a time warp.
The doctor removes Elizabeth’s headphones and asks her to go back to the outer office. They both sit down. The doctor smiles benignly, indulgently, as if she’s about to tell Elizabeth she has cancer of the ears.
“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with your hearing,” she says. “Your ears are clear and your range is normal. Perhaps you may have a very slight residual infection that causes plugging from time to time. When that happens, just hold your nose and blow, as you’d do in an airplane. The pressure will clear your ears.”
(“I think I’m going deaf,” Elizabeth said.
“Maybe,” said Nate, “there are just some things you don’t want to hear.”)
Elizabeth thinks the receptionist looks at her strangely when she says she won’t be needing another appointment. “Nothing wrong with me,” she says, explaining. She goes down in the elevator and walks through the archaic brass and marble lobby, still marching. By the time she reaches the outer door the humming has begun again, high-pitched, constant, like a mosquito or a child’s tuneless song, or a power line in winter. Electricity somewhere. She remembers a story she read once, in
Reader’s Digest
, while sitting in the dentist’s waiting room, about an old woman who started hearing angel voices in her head and thought she was going mad. After a long time and several investigations they discovered she was picking up a local radio station through the metal in her bridgework.
Reader’s Digest
repeated this story as a joke.
It’s almost five, darkening; the sidewalk and road are slick with drizzle. Traffic packs the lanes. Elizabeth steps across the gutter and begins to walk diagonally across the street, in front of one stationary car, behind another. A green delivery truck jams to a stop in the moving lane, three feet from her. The driver leans on his horn, shouting.
“You idiot, you wanna get yourself killed?”
Elizabeth continues across the road, ignoring him, her pace steady, marching. Does she want to get herself killed. The hum in her right ear shuts off like a cut connection.
There’s nothing wrong with her ears. The sound is coming from somewhere else. Angel voices.
Monday, November 15, 1976
LESJE
L esje is having lunch with Elizabeth’s husband, the husband belonging to Elizabeth. Possessive, or, in Latin, genitive. This man doesn’t seem like Elizabeth’s husband, or anyone else’s for that matter. But especially not Elizabeth’s. Elizabeth, for instance, would never have chosen the Varsity Restaurant. Either he has no money, which is possible considering the frayings and ravelings everywhere on his surface, patchy, like rock lichen; or he doesn’t think she’ll base her opinion of him on his choice of restaurants. It’s a restaurant left over when others like it became classy, preserving its fifties furnishings, its grubby menus, its air of cheesy resignation.
Ordinarily Lesje would never eat here, partly because she associates the Varsity Restaurant with being a student and
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