Nick in Margaret Atwood’s Canon: Every Appearance, Word for Word (updated)
A Guardian detailed to the Commander does the heavy digging; the Commander's Wife directs, pointing with her stick.
I open the white picket gate and continue, past the front lawn and towards the front gate. In the driveway, one of the Guardians assigned to our household is washing the car. That must mean the Commander is in the house, in his own quarters, past the dining room and beyond, where he seems to stay most of the time.
The car is a very expensive one, a Whirlwind; better than the Chariot, much better than the chunky, practical Behemoth. It's black, of course, the color of prestige or a hearse, and long and sleek. The driver is going over it with a chamois, lovingly.
This at least hasn't changed, the way men caress good cars.
He's wearing the uniform of the Guardians, but his cap is tilted at a jaunty angle and his sleeves are rolled to the elbow, showing his forearms, tanned but with a stipple of dark hairs, He has a cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth, which shows that he too has something he can trade on the black market.
I know this man's name: Nick. I know this because I've heard Rita and Cora talking about him, and once I heard the Commander speaking to him: Nick, I won't be needing the car.
He lives here, in the household, over the garage. Low status: he hasn't been issued a woman, not even one. He doesn't rate: some defect, lack of connections.
But he acts as if he doesn't know this, or care, He's too casual, he's not servile enough. It may be stupidity, but I don't think so. Smells fishy, they used to say; or, I smell a rat. Misfit as odor. Despite myself, I think of how he might smell. Not fish or decaying rat; tanned skin, moist in the sun, filmed with smoke. I sigh, inhaling.
He looks at me, and sees me looking. He has a French face, lean, whimsical, all planes and angles, with creases around the mouth where he smiles. He takes a final puff of the cigarette, lets it drop to the driveway, and steps on it. He begins to whistle.
I drop my head and turn so that the white wings hide my face, and keep walking.
He's just taken a risk, but for what? What if I were to report him?
Perhaps he was merely being friendly. Perhaps he saw the look on my face and mistook it for something else. Really what I wanted was the cigarette.
Perhaps it was a test, to see what I would do. Perhaps he is an Eye.
The Guardians aren’t real soldiers. Theyre used for routine policing and other menial functions, digging up the Commander’s Wife’s garden for instance, and they’re either stupid or older or disabled or very young, apart from the ones that are Eyes incognito.
(...) because none of this is the faul of these men, they´re too young.
In the driveway, Nick is polishing the Whirlwind again. He’s reached the chrome at the back. I put my gloved hand on the latch of the gate, open it, push inward. The gate clicks behind me. The tulips along the border are redder than ever, opening, no longer winecups but chalices; thrusting themselves up, to what end? They are, after all, empty. When they are old they turn themselves inside out, then explode slowly, the petals thrown out like shards.
Nick looks up and begins to whistle. Then he says, “Nice walk?”
I nod, but do not answer with my voice. He isn’t supposed to speak to me.
The Commander stoops, gets into the car, disappears, and Nick shuts the door. A moment later the car moves backwards, down the driveway and onto the street, and vanishes behind the hedge.
Nick walks in, nods to all three of us, looks around the room. He too takes his place behind me, standing. He’s so close that the tip of his boot is touching my foot. Is this on purpose? Whether it is or not we are touching, two shapes of leather. I feel my shoe soften, blood flows into it, it grows warm, it becomes a skin. I move my foot slightly, away.
“Wish he’d hurry up,” says Cora.
“Hurry up and wait,” says Nick. He laughs, moves his foot so it’s touching mine again. No one can see, beneath the folds of my outspread skirt. I shift, it’s too warm in here, the smell of stale perfume makes me feel a little sick. I move my foot away.
We hear Serena coming, down the stairs, along the hall, the muffled tap of her cane on the rug, thud of the good foot. She hobbles through the doorway, glances at us, counting but not seeing. She nods, at Nick, but says nothing.
But there’s someone in the room, behind me.
I hear the step, quiet as mine, the creaking of the same floorboard.
The door closes behind me, with a little click, cutting the light. I freeze: white was a mistake. I’m snow in moonlight, even in the dark.
Then a whisper: “Don’t scream. It’s all right.”
As if I’d scream, as if it’s all right. I turn: a shape, that’s all, dull glint of cheekbone, devoid of colour.
He steps towards me. Nick.
“What are you doing in here?”
I don’t answer. He too is illegal, here, with me, he can’t give me away.
Nor I him; for the moment we’re mirrors. He puts his hand on my arm, pulls me against him, his mouth on mine, what else comes from such denial? Without a word. Both of us shaking, how I’d like to. In Serena’s parlour, with the dried flowers, on the Chinese carpet, his thin body. A man entirely unknown. It would be like shouting, it would be like shooting someone. My hand goes down, how about that, I could unbutton, and then. But it’s too dangerous, he knows it, we push each other away, not far. Too much trust, too much risk, too much already.
“I was coming to find you,” he says, breathes, almost into my ear. I want to reach up, taste his skin, he makes me hungry. His fingers move, feeling my arm under the nightgown sleeve, as if his hand won’t listen to reason. It’s so good, to be touched by someone, to be felt so greedily, to feel so greedy. Luke, you’d know, you’d understand. It’s you here, in another body.
“Why?” I say. Is it so bad, for him, that he’d take the risk of coming to my room at night? I think of the hanged men, hooked on the Wall. I can hardly stand up. I have to get away, back to the stairs, before I dissolve entirely. His hand’s on my shoulder now, held still, heavy, pressing down on me like warm lead. Is this what I would die for? I’m a coward, I hate the thought of pain.
“He told me to,” Nick says. “He wants to see you. In his office.”
“What do you mean?” I say. The Commander, it must be. See me?
What does he mean by see? Hasn’t he had enough of me?
“Tomorrow,” he says, just audible. In the dark parlour we move away from each other, slowly, as if pulled towards each other by a force, current, pulled apart also by hands equally strong.
I find the door, turn the knob, fingers on cool porcelain, open. It’s all I can do.
I visit the Commander two or three nights a week, always after dinner, but only when I get the signal. The signal is Nick. If he’s polishing the car when I set out for the shopping, or when I come back, and if his hat is on askew or not on at all, then I go. If he isn’t there or if he has his hat on straight, then I stay in my room in the ordinary way. On Ceremony nights, of course, none of this applies.
Someone has come out of the house. I hear the distant closing of a door, around at the side, footsteps on the walk. It’s Nick, I can see him now; he’s stepped off the path, onto the lawn, to breathe in the humid air which stinks of flowers, of pulpy growth, of pollen thrown into the wind in handfuls, like oyster spawn into the sea. All this prodigal breeding. He stretches in the sun, I feel the ripple of muscles go along him, like a cat’s back arching. He’s in his shirt sleeves, bare arms sticking shamelessly out from the rolled cloth. Where does the tan end? I haven’t spoken to him since that one night, dreamscape in the moon-filled sitting room. He’s only my flag, my semaphore. Body language.
Right now his cap’s on sideways. Therefore I am sent for.
What does he get for it, his role as page boy? How does he feel, pimping in this ambiguous way for the Commander? Does it fill him with disgust, or make him want more of me, want me more? Because he has no idea what really goes on in there, among the books. Acts of perversion, for all he knows. The Commander and me, covering each other with ink, licking it off, or making love on stacks of forbidden newsprint. Well, he wouldn’t be far off at that.
But depend on it, there’s something in it for him. Everyone’s on the take, one way or another. Extra cigarettes? Extra freedoms, not allowed to the general run? Anyway, what can he prove? It’s his word against the Commander’s, unless he wants to head a posse. Kick in the door, and what did I tell you? Caught in the act, sinfully Scrabbling. Quick, eat those words.
Maybe he just likes the satisfaction of knowing something secret. Of having something on me, as they used to say. It’s the kind of power you can use only once.
I would like to think better of him.
Down there on the lawn, someone emerges from the spill of darkness under the willow, steps across the light, his long shadow attached sharply to his heels. Is it Nick, or is it someone else, someone of no importance? He stops, looks up at this window, and I can see the white oblong of his face. Nick. We look at each other. I have no rose to toss, he has no lute. But it’s the same kind of hunger.
Which I can’t indulge. I pull the left-hand curtain so that it falls between us, across my face, and after a moment he walks on, into the invisibility around the corner.
What the Commander said is true. One and one and one and one doesn’t equal four. Each one remains unique, there is no way of joining them together. They cannot be exchanged, one for the other. They cannot replace each other. Nick for Luke or Luke for Nick. Should does not apply.
You can’t help what you feel, Moira said once, but you can help how you behave.
Context is all; or is it ripeness? One or the other.
There’s Nick, hat askew; today he doesn’t even look at me. He must have been waiting around for me though, to deliver his silent message, because as soon as he knows I’ve seen him he gives the Whirlwind one last swipe with the chamois and walks briskly off towards the garage door.
“Your time’s running out,” she says. Not a question, a matter of fact.
She’s lighting another cigarette, fumbling with the lighter. Definitely her hands are getting worse. But it would be a mistake to offer to do it for her, she’d be offended. A mistake to notice weakness in her.
“Maybe he can’t,” she says.
I don’t know who she means. Does she mean the Commander, or God?
If it’s God, she should say won’t. Either way it’s heresy. It’s only women who can’t, who remain stubbornly closed, damaged, defective.
“No,” I say. “Maybe he can’t.”
I look up at her. She looks down. It’s the first time we’ve looked into each other’s eyes in a long time. Since we met. The moment stretches out between us, bleak and level. She’s trying to see whether or not I’m up to reality.
“Maybe,” she says, holding the cigarette, which she has failed to light.
“Maybe you should try it another way.”
Does she mean on all fours? “What other way?” I say. I must keep serious.
“You know I can’t,” I say, careful not to let my irritation show. “It’s against the law. You know the penalty.”
“Yes,” she says. She’s ready for this, she’s thought it through. “I know you can’t officially. But it’s done. Women do it frequently. All the time.”
“With doctors, you mean?” I say, remembering the sympathetic brown eyes, the gloveless hand. The last time I went it was a different doctor.
Maybe someone caught the other one out, or a woman reported him. Not that they’d take her word, without evidence.
“Some do that,” she says, her tone almost affable now, though distanced; it’s as if we’re considering a choice of nail polish. “That’s how Ofwarren did it. The wife knew, of course.” She pauses to let this sink in.
“I would help you. I would make sure nothing went wrong.”
I think about this. “Not with a doctor,” I say.
“No,” she agrees, and for this moment at least we are cronies, this could be a kitchen table, it could be a date we’re discussing, some girlish stratagem of ploys and flirtation. “Sometimes they blackmail. But it doesn’t have to be a doctor. It could be someone we trust.”
“I was thinking of Nick,” she says, and her voice is almost soft. “He’s been with us a long time. He’s loyal. I could fix it with him.”
So that’s who does her little black-market errands for her. Is this what he always gets, in return?
“What about the Commander?” I say.
“Well,” she says, with firmness; no, more than that, a clenched look, like a purse snapping shut. “We just won’t tell him, will we?”
This idea hangs between us, almost visible, almost palpable: heavy, formless, dark; collusion of a sort, betrayal of a sort. She does want that baby.
“It’s a risk,” I say. “More than that.” It’s my life on the line; but that’s where it will be sooner or later, one way or another, whether I do or don’t. We both know this.
“You might as well,” she says. Which is what I think too.
“All right,” I say. “Yes.”
Through the tunnel made by the hood I can see the back of Nick’s head. His hat is on straight, he’s sitting up straight, his neck is straight, he is all very straight. His posture disapproves of me, or am I imagining it? Does he know what I’ve got on under this cloak, did he procure it? And if so, does this make him angry or lustful or envious or anything at all? We do have something in common: both of us are supposed to be invisible, both of us are functionaries. I wonder if he knows this. When he opened the door of the car for the Commander, and, by extension, for me, I tried to catch his eye, make him look at me, but he acted as if he didn’t see me.
Why not? It’s a soft job for him, running little errands, doing little favours, and there’s no way he’d want to jeopardize it.
The checkpoints are no problem, everything goes as smoothly as the Commander said it would, despite the heavy pounding, the pressure of blood in my head. Chickenshit, Moira would say.
Past the second checkpoint, Nick says, “Here, Sir?” and the Commander says “Yes.”
The car pulls over and the Commander says, “Now I’ll have to ask you to get down onto the floor of the car.”
“We have to go through the gateway,” he says, as if this means something to me. I tried to ask him where we were going, but he said he wanted to surprise me. “Wives aren’t allowed.”
So I flatten myself and the car starts again, and for the next few minutes I see nothing. Under the cloak it’s stifling hot. It’s a winter cloak, not a cotton summer one, and it smells of mothballs. He must have borrowed it from storage, knowing she wouldn’t notice. He has considerately moved his feet to give me room. Nevertheless my forehead is against his shoes. I have never been this close to his shoes before.
They feel hard, unwinking, like the shells of beetles: black, polished, inscrutable. They seem to have nothing to do with feet.
We pass through another checkpoint. I hear the voices, impersonal, deferential, and the window rolling electrically down and up for the passes to be shown. This time he won’t show mine, the one that’s supposed to be mine, as I’m no longer in official existence, for now.
Then the car starts and then it stops again, and the Commander is helping me up.
“We’ll have to be fast,” he says. “This is a back entrance. You should leave the cloak with Nick. On the hour, as usual,” he says to Nick. So this too is something he’s done before.
He helps me out of the cloak; the car door is opened. I feel air on my almost bare skin, and realize I’ve been sweating. As I turn to shut the car door behind me I can see Nick looking at me through the glass. He sees me now. Is it contempt I read, or indifference, is this merely what he expected of me?
I reach the top of the stairs, knock on the door there. He opens it himself, who else was I expecting? There’s a lamp on, only one but enough light to make me blink. I look past him, not wanting to meet his eyes. It’s a single room, with a fold-out bed, made up, and a kitchenette counter at the far end, and another door that must lead to the bathroom.
This room is stripped down, military, minimal. No pictures on the walls, no plants. He’s camping out. The blanket on the bed is grey and says U.S.
He steps back and aside to let me past. He’s in his shirt sleeves, and is holding a cigarette, lit. I smell the smoke on him, in the warm air of the room, all over. I’d like to take off my clothes, bathe in it, rub it over my skin.
No preliminaries; he knows why I’m here. He doesn’t even say anything, why fool around, it’s an assignment. He moves away from me, turns off the lamp. Outside, like punctuation, there’s a flash of lightning; almost no pause and then the thunder. He’s undoing my dress, a man made of darkness, I can’t see his face, and I can hardly breathe, hardly stand, and I’m not standing. His mouth is on me, his hands, I can’t wait and he’s moving, already, love, it’s been so long, I’m alive in my skin, again, arms around him, falling and water softly everywhere, neverending.
I knew it might only be once.
I made that up. It didn’t happen that way. Here is what happened.
I reach the top of the stairs, knock on the door. He opens it himself.
There’s a lamp on; I blink. I look past his eyes, it’s a single room, the bed’s made up, stripped down, military. No pictures but the blanket says U.S. He’s in his shirt sleeves, he’s holding a cigarette.
“Here,” he says to me, “have a drag.” No preliminaries, he knows why I’m here. To get knocked up, to get in trouble, up the pole, those were all names for it once. I take the cigarette from him, draw deeply in, hand it back. Our fingers hardly touch. Even that much smoke makes me dizzy.
He says nothing, just looks at me, unsmiling. It would be better, more friendly, if he would touch me. I feel stupid and ugly, although I know I am not either. Still, what does he think, why doesn’t he say something?
Maybe he thinks I’ve been slutting around, at Jezebel’s, with the Commander or more. It annoys me that I’m even worrying about what he thinks. Let’s be practical.
“I don’t have much time,” I say. This is awkward and clumsy, it isn’t what I mean.
“I could just squirt it into a bottle and you could pour it in,” he says.
“There’s no need to be brutal,” I say. Possibly he feels used. Possibly he wants something from me, some emotion, some ackowledgement that he too is human, is more than just a seedpod. “I know it’s hard for you,”
He shrugs. “I get paid,” he says, punk surliness. But still makes no move.
I get paid, you get laid, I rhyme in my head. So that’s how we’re going to do it. He didn’t like the makeup, the spangles. We’re going to be tough.
“And what’s a nice girl like me doing in a spot like this,” I reply. We both smile: this is better. This is an acknowledgement that we are acting, for what else can we do in such a setup?
“Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder.” We’re quoting from late movies, from the time before. And the movies then were from a time before that: this sort of talk dates back to an era well before our own.
Not even my mother talked like that, not when I knew her. Possibly nobody ever talked like that in real life, it was all a fabrication from the beginning. Still, it’s amazing how easily it comes back to mind, this corny and falsely gay sexual banter. I can see now what it’s for, what it was always for: to keep the core of yourself out of reach, enclosed, protected.
I’m sad now, the way we’re talking is infinitely sad: faded music, faded paper flowers, worn satin, an echo of an echo. All gone away, no longer possible. Without warning I begin to cry.
At last he moves forward, puts his arms around me, strokes my back, holds me that way, for comfort.
“Come on,” he says. “We haven’t got much time.” With his arm around my shoulders he leads me over to the fold-out bed, lies me down.
He even turns down the blanket first. He begins to unbutton, then to stroke, kisses beside my ear. “No romance,” he says. “Okay?”
That would have meant something else, once. Once it would have meant: no strings. Now it means: no heroics. It means: don’t risk yourself for me, if it should come to that.
I knew it might only be once. Goodbye, I thought, even at the time, goodbye.
There wasn’t any thunder though, I added that in. To cover up the sounds, which I am ashamed of making.
It didn’t happen that way either. I’m not sure how it happened; not exactly. All I can hope for is a reconstruction: the way love feels is always only approximate.
Partway through, I thought about Serena Joy, sitting down there in the kitchen. Thinking: cheap. They’ll spread their legs for anyone. All you need to give them is a cigarette.
And I thought afterwards: this is a betrayal. Not the thing itself but my own response. If I knew for certain he was dead, would that make a difference?
I would like to be without shame. I would like to be shameless. I would like to be ignorant. Then I would not know how ignorant I was.
I went back to Nick. Time after time, on my own, without Serena knowing. It wasn’t called for, there was no excuse. I did not do it for him, but for myself entirely. I didn’t even think of it as giving myself to him, because what did I have to give? I did not feel munificent, but thankful, each time he would let me in. He didn’t have to.
In order to do this I became reckless, I took stupid chances. After being with the Commander I would go upstairs in the usual way, but then I would go along the hall and down the Marthas’ stairs at the back and through the kitchen. Each time I would hear the kitchen door click shut behind me and I would almost turn back, it sounded so metallic, like a mousetrap or a weapon, but I would not turn back. I would hurry across the few feet of illuminated lawn, the searchlights were back on again, expecting at any moment to feel the bullets rip through me even in advance of their sound. I would make my way by touch up the dark staircase and come to rest against the door, the thud of blood in my ears.
Fear is a powerful stimulant. Then I would knock softly, a beggar’s knock. Each time I would expect him to be gone; or worse, I would expect him to say I could not come in. He might say he wasn’t going to break any more rules, put his neck in the noose, for my sake. Or even worse, tell me he was no longer interested. His failure to do any of these things I experienced as the most incredible benevolence and luck.
He opens the door. He’s in his shirt sleeves, his shirt untucked, hanging loose; he’s holding a toothbrush, or a cigarette or a glass with something in it. He has his own little stash up here, black-market stuff I suppose. He’s always got something in his hand, as if he’s been going about his life as usual, not expecting me, not waiting. Maybe he doesn’t expect me, or wait. Maybe he has no notion of the future, or does not bother or dare to imagine it.
He shakes his head for no. It is understood between us by now that it is never too late, but I go through the ritual politeness of asking. It makes me feel more in control, as if there is a choice, a decision that could be made one way or the other. He steps aside and I move past him and he closes the door. Then he crosses the room and closes the window.
After that he turns out the light. There is not much talking between us any more, not at this stage. Already I am half out of my clothes. We save the talking for later.
With the Commander I close my eyes, even when I am only kissing him goodnight. I do not want to see him up close. But now, here, each time, I keep my eyes open. I would like a light on somewhere, a candle perhaps, stuck into a bottle, some echo of college, but anything like that would be too great a risk; so I have to make do with the searchlight, the glow of it from the grounds below, filtered through his white curtains which are the same as mine. I want to see what can be seen, of him, take him in, memorize him, save him up so I can live on the image, later: the lines of his body, the texture of his flesh, the glisten of sweat on his pelt, his long sardonic unrevealing face. I ought to have done that with Luke, paid more attention, to the details, the moles and scars, the singular creases; I didn’t and he’s fading. Day by day, night by night he recedes, and I become more faithless.
For this one I’d wear pink feathers, purple stars, if that were what he wanted; or anything else, even the tail of a rabbit. But he does not require such trimmings. We make love each time as if we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there will never be any more, for either of us, with anyone, ever. And then when there is, that too is always a surprise, extra, a gift.
Being here with him is safety; it’s a cave, where we huddle together while the storm goes on outside. This is a delusion, of course. This room is one of the most dangerous places I could be. If I were caught there would be no quarter, but I’m beyond caring. And how have I come to trust him like this, which is foolhardy in itself? How can I assume I know him, or the least thing about him and what he really does?
I dismiss these uneasy whispers. I talk too much. I tell him things I shouldn’t. I tell him about Moira, about Ofglen; not about Luke though. I want to tell him about the woman in my room, the one who was there before me, but I don’t. I’m jealous of her. If she’s been here before me too, in this bed, I don’t want to hear about it.
I tell him my real name, and feel that therefore I am known. I act like a dunce. I should know better. I make of him an idol, a cardboard cutout.
He on the other hand talks little: no more hedging or jokes. He barely asks questions. He seems indifferent to most of what I have to say, alive only to the possibilities of my body, though he watches me while I’m speaking. He watches my face.
Impossible to think that anyone for whom I feel such gratitude could betray me.
Neither of us says the word love, not once. It would be tempting fate; it would be romance, bad luck.
But the Commander is no longer of immediate interest to me. I have to make an effort to keep my indifference towards him from showing.
Keep on doing everything exactly the way you were before, Nick says.
Don’t change anything. Otherwise they’ll know. He kisses me, watching me all the time. Promise? Don’t slip up.
I put his hand on my belly. It’s happened, I say. I feel it has. A couple of weeks and I’ll be certain.
This I know is wishful thinking.
He’ll love you to death, he says. So will she.
But it’s yours, I say. It will be yours, really. I want it to be.
We don’t pursue this, however.
Nobody moves forward. The women are looking at him with horror; as if he’s a half-dead rat dragging itself across a kitchen floor. He’s squinting around at us, the circle of red women. One corner of his mouth moves up, incredible – a smile?
I try to look inside him, inside the trashed face, see what he must really look like. I think he’s about thirty. It isn’t Luke.
But it could have been, I know that. It could be Nick. I know that whatever he’s done I can’t touch him.
I go out the back door, along the path. Nick is washing the car, his hat on sideways. He doesn’t look at me. We avoid looking at each other, these days. Surely we’d give something away by it, even out here in the open, with no one to see.
Dear God, I think, I will do anything you like. Now that you’ve let me off, I’ll obliterate myself, if that’s what you really want; I’ll empty myself, truly, become a chalice. I’ll give up Nick, I’ll forget about the others, I’ll stop complaining. I’ll accept my lot. I’ll sacrifice. I’ll repent.
I’ll abdicate. I’ll renounce.
“Pick up that disgusting thing and get to your room. Just like the other one. A slut.
I stoop, gather. Behind my back Nick has stopped whistling.
I want to turn, run to him, throw my arms around him. This would be foolish. There is nothing he can do to help. He too would drown.
I walk to the back door, into the kitchen, set down my basket, go upstairs. I am orderly and calm.
I could walk at a steady pace down the stairs and out the front door and along the street, trying to look as if I knew where I was going, and see how far I could get. Red is so visible.
I could go to Nick’s room, over the garage, as we have done before. I could wonder whether or not he would let me in, give me shelter. Now that the need is real.
I expect a stranger, but it’s Nick who pushes open the door, flicks on the light. I can’t place that, unless he’s one of them. There was always that possibility. Nick, the private Eye. Dirty work is done by dirty people.
You shit, I think. I open my mouth to say it, but he comes over, close to me, whispers.
“It’s all right. It’s Mayday. Go with them.” He calls me by my real name. Why should this mean anything?
“Them?” I say. I see the two men standing behind him, the overhead light in the hallway making skulls of their heads. “You must be crazy.”
My suspicion hovers in the air above him, a dark angel warning me away. I can almost see it. Why shouldn’t he know about Mayday? All the Eyes must know about it; they’ll have squeezed it, crushed it, twisted it out of enough bodies, enough mouths by now.
“Trust me,” he says; which in itself has never been a talisman, carries no guarantee.
But I snatch at it, this offer. It’s all I’m left with.
One in front, one behind, they escort me down the stairs. The pace is leisurely, the lights are on. Despite the fear, how ordinary it is. From here I can see the clock. It’s no time in particular.
Nick is no longer with us. He may have gone down the back stairs, not wishing to be seen.
As for the subversive Waterford was accused of harbouring, this could have been “Offred” herself, as her flight would have placed her in this category. More likely it was “Nick,” who, by the evidence of the very existence of the tapes, must have helped “Offred” to escape. The way in which he was able to do this marks him as a member of the shadowy Mayday underground, which was not identical with the Underground Femaleroad but had connections with it. The latter was purely a rescue operation, the former quasi-military. A number of Mayday operatives are known to have infiltrated the Gileadean power structure at the highest levels, and the placement of one of their members as chauffeur to Waterford would certainly have been a coup; a double coup, as “Nick” must have been at the same time a member of the Eyes, as such chauffeurs and personal servants often were. Waterford would, of course, have been aware of this, but as all high-level Commanders were automatically directors of the Eyes, he would not have paid a great deal of attention to it and would not have let it interfere with his infraction of what he considered to be minor rules. Like most early Gilead Commanders who were later purged, he considered his position to be above attack. The style of Middle Gilead was more cautious.
We can only deduce, also, the motivations for “Nick’s” engineering of her escape. We can assume that once her companion Ofglen’s association with Mayday had been discovered, he himself was in some jeopardy, for as he well knew, as a member of the Eyes, Offred herself was certain to be interrogated. The penalties for unauthorized sexual activity with a Handmaid were severe, nor would his status as an Eye necessarily protect him. Gilead society was Byzantine in the extreme, and any transgression might be used against one by one’s undeclared enemies within the regime. He could, of course, have assassinated her himself, which might have been the wiser course, but the human heart remains a factor, and, as we know, both of them thought she might be pregnant by him. What male of the Gilead period could resist the possibility of fatherhood, so redolent of status, so highly prized? Instead, he called in a rescue team of Eyes, who may or may not have been authentic but in any case were under his orders. In doing so he may well have brought about his own downfall. This too we shall never know.
“My other parents. My real ones. Who were they? Are they dead too?”
“I’ll make more coffee,” said Ada. She got up and went into the kitchen.
“They’re still alive,” said Elijah. “Or they were yesterday.”
I stared at him. I wondered if he was lying, but why would he have done that? If he’d wanted to make things up, he could have made up better things.
“I don’t believe any of this,” I said. “I don’t know why you’re even saying it.”
Ada came back into the room with a mug of coffee and said did anyone else want one, help yourself, and maybe I should have some time to myself to think things over.
Think what over? What was there to think? My parents had been murdered, but they weren’t my real parents, and a different set of parents had appeared in their place.
“What things?” I said. “I don’t know enough to think anything.”
“What would you like to know?” said Elijah in a kind but tired voice.
“How did it happen?” I said. “Where are my real…my other mother and father?”
“Do you know much about Gilead?” Elijah asked.
“Of course. I watch the news. We took it in school,” I said sullenly. “I went to that protest march.” Right then I wanted Gilead to evaporate and leave us all alone.
“That’s where you were born,” he said. “In Gilead.”
“You were smuggled out by your mother and Mayday. They’d risked their lives. Gilead made a big fuss about it; they wanted you back. They said your so-called legal parents had the right to claim you. Mayday hid you; there were a lot of people looking for you, plus a media blitz.”
“Like Baby Nicole,” I said. “I wrote an essay about her at school.”
Elijah looked down at the floor again. Then he looked straight at me. “You are Baby Nicole.”
I thought about that, sitting in the dark among the plumbing supplies. “So where is she now? My mother?”
“Sealed document,” said Ada. “The less people who know that, the better.”
“She just walked off and left me?”
“She was up to her neck in it,” said Ada. “You’re lucky you’re alive. She’s lucky too, they’ve tried to kill her twice that we know of. They’ve never forgotten how she outsmarted them about Baby Nicole.”
“Same story. He’s so deep underground he needs a breathing tube.”
“I guess she doesn’t remember me,” I said dolefully. “She doesn’t give a fuck.”
“Nobody is any authority on the fucks other people give,” said Ada. “She stayed away from you for your own good. She didn’t want to put you at risk.
But she’s kept up with you as much as she could, under the circumstances.”
Transcript of Witness Testimony 369B
CHAPTER THIRTY
My mother was a Handmaid? And my father…"So my father's one of those?" I said. "A Commander?"
The idea of part of him being part of me—being inside my actual body—made me shiver.
"Luckily not," said Elijah. "Or not according to your mother, though she doesn't wish to endanger your real father by saying so, as he may still be in Gilead. But Gilead is staking its claim to you via your official father. It's on those grounds they've always demanded your return. The return of Baby Nicole," he clarified.
Transcript of Witness Testimony 369A
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
“Now that we’re sisters,” I said, “you can call me Agnes when we’re
alone.”
“Okay, I’ll try,” Nicole said.
We went into the main room.
“I have something I want to share with you,” I said. “Just a minute.”
I went upstairs. I’d been keeping the two pages from the Bloodlines files under my mattress, folded up small. When I returned, I unfolded them carefully and flattened them out. Once I’d laid them out on the table, Nicole—like me—couldn’t resist placing her hand on the picture of our mother.
“This is amazing,” she said. She took her hand off, studied the picture
again. “Do you think she looks like me?”
“I wondered the same thing,” I said.
“Can you remember her at all? I must’ve been too young.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Sometimes I think I can. I do seem to remember something. Was there a different house? Did I travel somewhere? But maybe it’s wishful thinking.”
“What about our fathers?” she said. “And why did they blank out the
names?”
“Maybe they were trying to protect us in some way,” I said.
“Thanks for showing me,” said Nicole. “But I don’t think you should keep these around. What if you get caught with them?”
“I know. I tried to put the pages back, but the file wasn’t there anymore.”
In the end, we decided to tear the pages up into small pieces and flush them down the toilet.
Transcript of Witness Testimony 369A
"Do you think we'll ever see our mother?"
"I have faith that we will."
"Do you think she'll like us?"
"She will love us," I said to soothe her. "And we will love her."
"Just because people are related to you doesn't mean you love them," she murmured.
"Love is a discipline, like prayer," I said. "I'd like to pray for you, so you'll feel better. Would you mind?"
"It won't work. I won't feel any better."
"But I will feel better," I said. So she said yes.
"Dear God," I said, "may we accept the past with all its flaws, may we move forward into a better future in forgiveness and loving kindness. And may we each be thankful for our sister, and may we both see our mother again, and our two different fathers as well. And may we remember Aunt Lydia, and may she be forgiven for her sins and faultts, as we hope we may be forgiven for ours. And may we always feel gratitude to our sister Becka, wherever she may be. Please bless all of them. Amen."
By the time I'd finished, Nicole was asleep.
I will conclude with one more fascinating piece of the puzzle.
The group of slides I am about to show you portrays a statue located at present on the Boston Common. Its provenance suggests it is not from the Gilead period: the name of the sculptor corresponds to that of an artist who was active in Montreal some decades after the collapse of Gilead, and the statue must have been transferred to its present position some years after the post-Gilead chaos and subsequent Restoration of the United States of America.
The inscription would appear to name the principal actors cited in our materials. If this is so, our two young messengers must indeed have lived not only to tell their tale but also to be reunited with their mother and their respective fathers, and to have children and grandchildren of their own.
I myself take this inscription to be a convincing testament to the authenticity of our two witness transcripts.
Here is the inscription. The lettering is weathered and difficult to read on the slide, so I took the liberty of transcribing it on the following slide, here.
And on this last note I will close.
IN LOVING MEMORY OF BECKA, AUNT IMMORTELLE
THIS MEMORIAL WAS ERECTED BY HER SISTERS AGNES AND NICOLE AND THEIR MOTHER, THEIR TWO FATHERS, THEIR CHILDREN AND THEIR GRANDCHILDREN.
AND IN RECOGNITION OF THE INVALUABLE SERVICES PROVIDED BY A.L.
A BIRD OF THE AIR SHALL CARRY THE VOICE, AND THAT WHICH HATH WINGS SHALL TELL THE MATTER.
LOVE IS AS STRONG AS DEATH.
All excerpts are taken from The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments by Margaret Atwood.
These texts are the copyrighted property of the author and publisher. This compilation is shared for educational, archival, and commentary purposes only. No copyright infringement is intended.
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