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Authors: Margaret Atwood
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the corridor where they kept the stuffed owls and the other large birds. Specimens, two of each kind, in little pull-out metal drawers, like an animal morgue. She would bring coffee for both of them and drink hers while he worked, putting the shapes together with wood and Styrofoam. They guessed together about certain details: eyes, colors. It was odd, watching such a massive man concentrate himself on meticulous details. Chris wasn’t unusually tall; he wasn’t even overly muscular. But he gave an impression ofmass, as though he would weigh more than anyone else the same size, as if his cells were closer together, squeezed inward by some irresistible gravitational force. Lesje never thought about whether she liked him or not. You don’t like or dislike a boulder.
Now he’s dead and therefore immediately more remote, more mysterious. His death baffles her: she can’t imagine ever doing anything like that herself, and she can’t imagine anyone she knows doing it. Chris seemed like the last person who would. To her at any rate. Though people aren’t her field, so she’s no judge.
But Nate; she hasn’t thought much about Nate. He doesn’t look like a betrayed husband. Right now he’s talking about the election in Quebec, which is taking place at this very moment. He bites into a piece of turkey, chews; gravy traces his chin. The Separatists, he feels, ought to win, because the other government is so corrupt. Also because of the notorious behavior of the Federal Government in 1970. Lesje vaguely remembers that some people were arrested, after the kidnappings. She was working very hard on her Invertebrates course at the time; fourth year, and every mark counted.
Does he think it would be a good thing in the long run? Lesje asks. That isn’t the point, Nate says. The point is a moral one.
If William had said this Lesje would have found it pompous. She doesn’t find it pompous now. Nate’s long face (surely he used to have a beard; she recalls a beard, at parties and when he’d come with his children to pick Elizabeth up after work; but the face is hairless, pale), his body hanging from his shoulders like a suit from a hanger, nonchalant, impresses her. He’s older, he must know things, things she can only guess at; he must have accumulated wisdom. His body would be wrinkled, his face has bones. Unlike William’s. William has put on weight since they’ve been living together; his bones are retreating back into his head, behind the soft barricades of his cheeks.
William is against the Parti Québécois because of their wish to flood James Bay and sell the electrical power.
“But the other side is doing that, too,” Lesje said.
“If I lived there I wouldn’t vote for either of them,” William said purely.
Lesje herself doesn’t know how she would vote. She thinks she would probably move, instead. Nationalism of any kind makes her uneasy. In her parents’ house it was a forbidden subject. How could it be otherwise, with the grandmothers both lurking, questioning her separately, waiting to pounce? They’d never met. Both had refused to go to her parents’ wedding, which had been a civil ceremony. But the grandmothers had focused their rage not on their offending children but on each other. As for her, they’d both loved her, she supposes; and both had mourned over her as if she were in some way dead. It was her damaged gene pool. Impure, impure. Each thought she should scrap half her chromosomes, repair herself, by some miracle. Her Ukrainian grandmother, standing in the kitchen behind Lesje while she sat in a chrome and plastic chair reading
The Young People’s Book of Stalactites and Stalagmites
, brushing her hair, talking to her mother in a language she didn’t understand. Brushing and weeping silently.
“Mum, what’s she saying?”
“She says your hair is very black.”
The Ukrainian grandmother bending to hug her, consoling her for a pain Lesje didn’t yet know she had. She’d been
Now he’s dead and therefore immediately more remote, more mysterious. His death baffles her: she can’t imagine ever doing anything like that herself, and she can’t imagine anyone she knows doing it. Chris seemed like the last person who would. To her at any rate. Though people aren’t her field, so she’s no judge.
But Nate; she hasn’t thought much about Nate. He doesn’t look like a betrayed husband. Right now he’s talking about the election in Quebec, which is taking place at this very moment. He bites into a piece of turkey, chews; gravy traces his chin. The Separatists, he feels, ought to win, because the other government is so corrupt. Also because of the notorious behavior of the Federal Government in 1970. Lesje vaguely remembers that some people were arrested, after the kidnappings. She was working very hard on her Invertebrates course at the time; fourth year, and every mark counted.
Does he think it would be a good thing in the long run? Lesje asks. That isn’t the point, Nate says. The point is a moral one.
If William had said this Lesje would have found it pompous. She doesn’t find it pompous now. Nate’s long face (surely he used to have a beard; she recalls a beard, at parties and when he’d come with his children to pick Elizabeth up after work; but the face is hairless, pale), his body hanging from his shoulders like a suit from a hanger, nonchalant, impresses her. He’s older, he must know things, things she can only guess at; he must have accumulated wisdom. His body would be wrinkled, his face has bones. Unlike William’s. William has put on weight since they’ve been living together; his bones are retreating back into his head, behind the soft barricades of his cheeks.
William is against the Parti Québécois because of their wish to flood James Bay and sell the electrical power.
“But the other side is doing that, too,” Lesje said.
“If I lived there I wouldn’t vote for either of them,” William said purely.
Lesje herself doesn’t know how she would vote. She thinks she would probably move, instead. Nationalism of any kind makes her uneasy. In her parents’ house it was a forbidden subject. How could it be otherwise, with the grandmothers both lurking, questioning her separately, waiting to pounce? They’d never met. Both had refused to go to her parents’ wedding, which had been a civil ceremony. But the grandmothers had focused their rage not on their offending children but on each other. As for her, they’d both loved her, she supposes; and both had mourned over her as if she were in some way dead. It was her damaged gene pool. Impure, impure. Each thought she should scrap half her chromosomes, repair herself, by some miracle. Her Ukrainian grandmother, standing in the kitchen behind Lesje while she sat in a chrome and plastic chair reading
The Young People’s Book of Stalactites and Stalagmites
, brushing her hair, talking to her mother in a language she didn’t understand. Brushing and weeping silently.
“Mum, what’s she saying?”
“She says your hair is very black.”
The Ukrainian grandmother bending to hug her, consoling her for a pain Lesje didn’t yet know she had. She’d been
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