Read Online Wilderness Tips by Margaret Atwood - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Margaret Atwood
Tags: Contemporary, Adult
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deranged monkey. He hated those kinds of assumptions about men, about dip-stick sex and slobbery, pea-brained arousal. He felt like punching her. She must have been at least fifty.
The age he now is himself, Richard notes dejectedly. That’s one thing Selena has escaped. He thinks of it as an escape.
There was a musical interlude, as there always was on Tuesdays. A girl with long, straight, dark hair parted in the middle sat on a high stool, an autoharp across her knees, and sang several mournful folksongs in a high, clear voice. Richard was worrying about how to remove the woman poet’s hand from his arm without being ruder than he wanted to be. (She was senior, she’d published books, she knew people.) He thought he might excuse himself and go to the washroom; but the washroom was just a cubicle that opened directly on to the main room. It had no lock, and Max was in the habit of opening the door when you were in there. Unless you turned out the light and pissed in the dark, you were likely to be put on exhibit, brightly lit as a Christmas crèche, hands fumbling at your crotch.
He held a knife against her breast
,
As into his arms she pressed
,
sang the girl. I could just leave, thought Richard. But he didn’t want to do that.
Oh Willy Willy, don’t you murder me
,
I’m not prepared for eternity
.
Sex and violence, he thinks now. A lot of the songs were about that. We didn’t even notice. We thought it was art.
It was right after this that Selena came on. He hadn’t seen her in the room before. It was as if she’d materialized out of nowhere, on the tiny stage, under the single spotlight.
She was slight, almost wispy. Like the singer, she had long, dark hair with a centre part. Her eyes were outlined in black, as was becoming the fashion. She was wearing a long-sleeved, high-necked black dress, over which was draped a shawl embroidered with what looked like blue and green dragonflies.
Oh jeez, thought Richard, who like his father still used the laundered blasphemies of the schoolyard. Another jeezly poetess. I suppose now we’ll have more pudenda, he added, from his graduate-school vocabulary.
Then the voice hit him. It was a warm, rich voice, darkly spiced, like cinnamon, and too huge to be coming from such a small person. It was a seductive voice, but not in any blunt way. What it offered was an entrée to amazement, to a shared and tingling secret; to splendours. But there was an undercurrent of amusement too, as if you were a fool for being taken in by its voluptuousness; as if there were a cosmic joke in the offing, a simple, mysterious joke, like the jokes of children.
What she read was a series of short connected lyrics. “Isis in Darkness.” The Egyptian Queen of Heaven and Earth was wandering in the Underworld, gathering up the pieces of the murdered and dismembered body of her lover Osiris. At the same time, it was her own body she was putting back together; and it was also the physical universe. She was creating the universe by an act of love.
All of this was taking place, not in the ancient Middle Kingdom of the Egyptians, but in flat, dingy Toronto, on Spadina Avenue, at night, among the darkened garment factories and delicatessens and bars and pawnshops. It was a lament, and a celebration. Richard had never heard anything like it.
He sat back in his chair, fingering his patchy beard, trying as hard as he could to find this girl and her poetry trivial, overdone and pretentious. But he couldn’t manage it. She was brilliant, and he was frightened. He felt his own careful talent shrivelling to the size of a dried bean.
The espresso machine did not go off once. After she’d finished there was a silence, before the applause. The silence was because people didn’t know what to make of it, how to take it, this thing, whatever it was, that had been done to them. For a moment she had transformed reality, and it took them a breath to get it back.
Richard stood up, pushing past the bared
The age he now is himself, Richard notes dejectedly. That’s one thing Selena has escaped. He thinks of it as an escape.
There was a musical interlude, as there always was on Tuesdays. A girl with long, straight, dark hair parted in the middle sat on a high stool, an autoharp across her knees, and sang several mournful folksongs in a high, clear voice. Richard was worrying about how to remove the woman poet’s hand from his arm without being ruder than he wanted to be. (She was senior, she’d published books, she knew people.) He thought he might excuse himself and go to the washroom; but the washroom was just a cubicle that opened directly on to the main room. It had no lock, and Max was in the habit of opening the door when you were in there. Unless you turned out the light and pissed in the dark, you were likely to be put on exhibit, brightly lit as a Christmas crèche, hands fumbling at your crotch.
He held a knife against her breast
,
As into his arms she pressed
,
sang the girl. I could just leave, thought Richard. But he didn’t want to do that.
Oh Willy Willy, don’t you murder me
,
I’m not prepared for eternity
.
Sex and violence, he thinks now. A lot of the songs were about that. We didn’t even notice. We thought it was art.
It was right after this that Selena came on. He hadn’t seen her in the room before. It was as if she’d materialized out of nowhere, on the tiny stage, under the single spotlight.
She was slight, almost wispy. Like the singer, she had long, dark hair with a centre part. Her eyes were outlined in black, as was becoming the fashion. She was wearing a long-sleeved, high-necked black dress, over which was draped a shawl embroidered with what looked like blue and green dragonflies.
Oh jeez, thought Richard, who like his father still used the laundered blasphemies of the schoolyard. Another jeezly poetess. I suppose now we’ll have more pudenda, he added, from his graduate-school vocabulary.
Then the voice hit him. It was a warm, rich voice, darkly spiced, like cinnamon, and too huge to be coming from such a small person. It was a seductive voice, but not in any blunt way. What it offered was an entrée to amazement, to a shared and tingling secret; to splendours. But there was an undercurrent of amusement too, as if you were a fool for being taken in by its voluptuousness; as if there were a cosmic joke in the offing, a simple, mysterious joke, like the jokes of children.
What she read was a series of short connected lyrics. “Isis in Darkness.” The Egyptian Queen of Heaven and Earth was wandering in the Underworld, gathering up the pieces of the murdered and dismembered body of her lover Osiris. At the same time, it was her own body she was putting back together; and it was also the physical universe. She was creating the universe by an act of love.
All of this was taking place, not in the ancient Middle Kingdom of the Egyptians, but in flat, dingy Toronto, on Spadina Avenue, at night, among the darkened garment factories and delicatessens and bars and pawnshops. It was a lament, and a celebration. Richard had never heard anything like it.
He sat back in his chair, fingering his patchy beard, trying as hard as he could to find this girl and her poetry trivial, overdone and pretentious. But he couldn’t manage it. She was brilliant, and he was frightened. He felt his own careful talent shrivelling to the size of a dried bean.
The espresso machine did not go off once. After she’d finished there was a silence, before the applause. The silence was because people didn’t know what to make of it, how to take it, this thing, whatever it was, that had been done to them. For a moment she had transformed reality, and it took them a breath to get it back.
Richard stood up, pushing past the bared
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