Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood

  I went back into the main room to put on one of my baggy dresses. I no longer needed the scarf with the pink Mounties: I'd dyed my hair the day after I'd gone to Rome, and it was now mud brown. It had none of the promised sparkling highlights. In fact it looked terrible. Why hadn't I bought a wig instead? I knew why not, they were too hot, I'd cook my head. But a nice gray wig would've looked better than the hair dye.

  I walked up the hill to the market square. The road was scattered with handbills; perhaps there was an election going on, I'd heard sound trucks winding up to the square almost every day, playing catchy tunes and broadcasting slogans. I was outside it though, I was a foreigner, and there was something beyond that, something wrong. I was passing through a corridor of hostile eyes, the old black-draped women with their sausage legs no longer returned my bongiorno, they didn't even nod, they stared through me or averted their eyes. One put her hand over the eyes of the little girl sitting beside her and made the sign of the cross. What had I done, what taboo had I violated?

  I went to the macelleria and pushed in through the many-colored plastic streamers that covered the entranceway like seaweed. The butcher and his wife were a comforting couple, round as dumplings, both of them, wrapped in big white aprons and smeared with blood. The trays in the glass display case weren't filled ostentatiously like those in the butcher shops in Toronto. What they sold was scarce enough: a few small pieces of veal-like beef, a lone organ: liver, a heart, a kidney or two; three or four oval white objects that I suspected of being testicles. Usually the butcher and his wife would lift, offer, suggest incomprehensible things, beaming all the while.

  But today they weren't beaming. When they saw me come in their faces went still and watchful. Was I making this up or did they seem a little afraid of me? They didn't help me out with the terminology the way they usually did, and I was reduced to pointing. Even though I bought five tiny squares of tissue-paper beef, an extravagant number, they weren't mollified. And I couldn't even ask them what I'd done to offend or frighten them like this. I didn't know the words.

  To the bakery, the grocery store, the vegetable stand, money dripping from my wounded purse, and it was the same, something was wrong. Had I committed some crime? I scarcely had the courage to walk over to the post office, as I knew the policemen would be there. But I'd done nothing, I told myself, it must be a misunderstanding of some kind. It would be cleared up later. I would ask Mr. Vitroni about it.

  "Delacourt," I shouted bravely at the post office. There was no change in the woman behind the counter, since she was never friendly anyway. Soundlessly she extended a fat envelope. Brown manilla, Sam's typewriter.

  Outside I tore it open. It was stuffed with newspaper clippings, arranged neatly in order, the oldest one on top, and a typed note from Sam. "Congratulations. You've become a death cult." I thumbed quickly through the clippings, SUICIDE SUSPECTED IN AUTHORESS DEATH, INVESTIGATION CALLED FOR, the top one read, and it went on from there. Some had the photo off the back of Lady Oracle, some the grinning boatside snapshots Marlene had taken on the day of my death. There was a lot of talk about my morbid intensity, my doomed eyes, the fits of depression to which I was apparently subject (though not a word about the Royal Porcupine, nothing about Louisa Delacourt ... Fraser Buchanan was keeping a low profile). Sales of Lady Oracle were booming, every necrophiliac in the country was rushing to buy a copy.

  I'd been shoved into the ranks of those other unhappy ladies, scores of them apparently, who'd been killed by a surfeit of words. There I was, on the bottom of the death barge where I'd once longed to be, my name on the prow, winding my way down the river. Several of the articles drew morals: you could sing and dance or you could be happy, but not both. Maybe they were right, you could stay in the tower for years, weaving away, looking in the mirror, but one glance out the window at real life and that was that. The curse, the doom. I began to feel that even though I hadn't committed suicide, perhaps I should have. They made it sound so plausible.

  My next thought was: I can never go back now. Here were all these people spewing out words like flowers on a coffin, collecting their usual fee for doing so, and being very serious. If I rose from the dead, waltzed back and announced that it was all a deception, what were they supposed to do? They'd be stuck with egg on their faces, they'd hate me forever and make my life a nightmare. Women scorned to the contrary, nothing matched the fury of a deceived death cultist. It would be like the reappearance of James Dean, thirty years older and pot-bellied, or Marilyn walking down Yonge Street in curlers, having put on fifty pounds. All those who were expressing regret and remembering my ethereal beauty would be extremely upset if I were to materialize in the flesh. I'd have to stay safely buried on the Other Side, perhaps forever. In fact, my death was becoming so profitable to so many people that they'd probably have me bumped off and cemented and sunk in the Toronto harbor the moment I stuck my snout above water.

  What had become of my neat, quiet, well-planned death by misadventure? Evidence had come to light - whose? how? - that I did not fall, but jumped. This was ridiculous. It was true I had meant to jump, but in fact I fell, prematurely. And some reporter got to Marlene, who overdid it. She said they threw me a life preserver but I made no attempt to reach it and went down with barely a struggle. Of course there wasn't any life preserver, she shouldn't have invented one. But who had interviewed my father, and why did he tell them I was a strong swimmer? He never saw me swim in his life. I wasn't a bad swimmer. I learned in high school gym class, it was one of the sports I didn't mind, because I was mostly out of sight. My specialty was floating on my back, that and the breast stroke. I wasn't much good at the crawl.

  So they thought I jumped on purpose, refused the life preserver, and sank intentionally, and there was nothing I could do to prove them wrong, though an anonymous informant had volunteered the information that it wouldn't have been like me to commit suicide, I loved life. And it wasn't like me, at all.

  Well, I thought, maybe I really did want to die or I wouldn't have pretended to do it. But that was wrong; I pretended to die so I could live, so I could have another life. They were being perverse and it made me angry.

  I walked back down the hill, carrying my bundles. I loved life, it said this right in the newspaper. So why would I want to do a thing like that?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  I decided to ignore my suicide, since there was nothing I could do about it. For the next three days I tried to work. I sat in front of the typewriter with my eyes closed, waiting for the plot to unroll itself effortlessly behind my eyes, like a movie. But something was blocking it, there was static. I'd taken Charlotte through several narrow escapes: twice she'd been on the verge of rape, and she'd almost been murdered once (arsenic in the Spotted Dick pudding, causing severe vomiting). I knew what had to happen. Felicia, of course, would have to die; such was the fate of wives. Charlotte would then be free to become a wife in her turn. But first she would have a final batde with Redmond and hit him with something (a candelabrum, a poker, a stone, any hard sharp object would do), knocking him out and inducing brain fever with hallucinations, during which his features and desires would be purified by suffering and he would murmur her name. She would nurse him with cold compresses and realize how deeply she loved him; then he would awaken in his right mind and propose. That was one course of action. The other would be a final attempt on her life, with a rescue by Redmond, after which he would reveal how deeply he loved her, with optional brain fever on her part. These were the desired goals, but I was having trouble reaching them.

  For one thing, Felicia was still alive, and I couldn't seem to get rid of her. She was losing more and more of her radiant beauty; circles were appearing beneath her eyes, lines between her brows, she had a pimple on her neck, and her complexion was becoming sallow. Charlotte, on the other hand, had roses in her cheeks and a spring in her step, even though she was afraid to walk beneath the parapets because of the falling objects. The life of danger agreed with her; als
o, her sixth sense told her she would be awarded the prize, the prizes in fact, for in addition to Redmond she would get the emeralds, the family silver, deeds of land stowed away in attics, she would rearrange the furniture and give Felicia's clothes to the Crippled Civilians, she would sack the evil servants like Tom the coachman and reward the virtuous ones like Mrs. Ryerson and generally throw her weight around. All she had to do was stick it out until the murderer's hands were actually around her throat.

  Charlotte stood looking out the Library window. Two figures, a man's and a woman's, were entering the maze. She was trying to see who they were; not that she was nosy, just inquisitive. It went along with her pluck. She heard a noise behind her, and turned. Redmond was standing in the doorway; his left eyebrow was lifting. The other one, the right, remained stationary, but the left eyebrow was definitely lifting, appraisingly, lustfully, ruthlessly, causing hot flushes to sweep over her, while the eye beneath it slid like a roving oyster over her blushing countenance. Did Redmond esteem her, or was he filled with a mere animal lust? She could not tell.

  Meanwhile Felicia was lying in the shrubbery of the maze. She knew the maze was dangerous, but this very fact excited her. Her skirt was hiked to her waist, so was her petticoat, and her fichu was disarranged. She'd been making love with Otterly, who lay exhausted beside her, his left hand on her right breast, his nose against her ear, his ear in her long red hair. Redmond suspected nothing, which was fatiguing. Felicia wished he would suspect something; then he would realize how he'd been neglecting her. Although Otterly was ardent and inventive, he was also a bit of a fool. Felicia sighed and sat up, disengaging Otterly's hand, nose and ear.

  Then she uttered a gasp of surprise. There was a hole in the shrubbery, and watching her through this hole was an eye. Beneath the eye was a ratlike smile, broadening into a soundless laugh.

  "Master'll want to know about this, I'm thinking," said the voice of Tom the coachman, gloatingly.

  This had happened before, and Felicia knew it meant she would have to bribe him. But she no longer felt like it. She half hoped Redmond would find out; then at least she would know where things stood.

  That night she sat in front of her vanity table, brushing her extravagant red waist-length hair and looking at her reflection in the mirror. She had dismissed her maid. She was very sad; she suspected Redmond no longer loved her. If he did, she would give up her present mode of life and go back to being a loving, conscientious wife. Charlotte would be dismissed and Felicia would stop having affairs with the neighboring gentry. "Do you love me?" she asked him every evening when at last he entered the room, swaying slightly from the effects of too much port and brooding over the elusive Charlotte. She rubbed up against him like a jaguar. She was wearing only a chemise. She and Redmond had separate rooms, naturally; but Redmond hadn't yet given up his nightly visit to hers, he was not yet that blatant about his wish to be rid of her. Besides, he took a certain delight in tantalizing her.

  "Do you love me?" she asked; she usually had to ask twice, because Redmond didn't hear her the first time, or would pretend he didn't. "Of course," he answered with a slightly bored drawl. He was familiar with her chemise, it no longer impressed him the way it used to. She smelled, these days, of wilted hyacinths, a smell of spring decay, not mellow like the decay of autumn but a smell like the edges of swamps. He preferred Charlotte's odor of faintly stale lavender.

  "What would I do without you?" Felicia said adoringly.

  "You'd inherit a lot of money," Redmond replied with amusement. He was turned toward the window, raising his left eyebrow at himself in the reflection on the pane. An unkind observer might have said he was practicing. He was thinking of Charlotte. He liked making her blush. He'd become tired of the extravagance of Felicia: of her figure that spread like crabgrass, her hair that spread like fire, her mind that spread like cancer or pubic lice. "Contain yourself," he'd said to her,; more than once, but she couldn't contain herself she raged over him like a plague, leaving him withered. But Charlotte now, with her stays and her particular ways, her white flannelette face, her blanched fingers ... her coolness intrigued him.

  Or so Felicia imagined, torturing herself, gnawing on her nether lip, that full, sensuous lip Redmond once loved to caress. Tonight he was later than usual. Felicia snuffled, wiping the tears with the back of her free hand. She was too distraught to bother with the niceties of a handkerchief Perhaps she could foresee that life would be arranged for the convenience of Charlotte, after all, and that she herself would have to be disposed of A tear rolled down her cheek, tiny electric sparks jumped from the ends of her hair. In the mirror there were flames, there was water, she was gazing up at herself from beneath the surface of a river. She was afraid of death. All she wanted was happiness with the man she loved. It was this one impossible wish that had ruined her life; she ought to have settled for contentment, for the usual lies.

  I opened my eyes, got up from the typewriter, and went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee. It was all wrong.

  Sympathy for Felicia was out of the question, it was against the rules, it would foul up the plot completely. I was experienced enough to know that. If she'd only been a mistress instead of a wife, her life could have been spared; as it was, she had to die. In my books all wives were eventually either mad or dead, or both. But what had she ever done to deserve it? How could I sacrifice her for the sake of Charlotte? I was getting tired of Charlotte, with her intact virtue and her tidy ways. Wearing her was like wearing a hair shirt, she made me itchy, I wanted her to fall into a mud puddle, have menstrual cramps, sweat, burp, fart. Even her terrors were too pure, her faceless murderers, her corridors, her mazes and forbidden doors.

  Perhaps in the new life, I thought, the life to come, I would be less impressed with capes and more with holes in stockings, hangnails, body odors and stomach problems. Maybe I should try to write a real novel, about someone who worked in an office and had tawdry, unsatisfying affairs. But that was impossible, it was against my nature. I longed for happy endings, I needed the feeling of release when everything turned out right and I could scatter joy like rice all over my characters and dismiss them into bliss. Redmond would kiss Charlotte so that her eyeballs rolled right back into her head, and then they could both vanish. When would they be joyful enough, when would my life be my own?

  There was no coffee, so I made myself some tea. Then I gathered up my underwear from the places where it was growing, under the table, off the chairbacks, and put it all into the washbasin. I scrubbed it with a bar of stringy green soap in the reddish water, which had a faint odor of iron, an odor too of subterranean gas; the toilet was becoming more sluggish every day. Bad drains, bad dreams, maybe that was why I hadn't been sleeping well.

  I wrung the underwear out; it felt gritty. There were no clothespins, so I draped it over the balcony railing. Then I took a bath, though the water was pink and unpleasantly like warm blood. I dried myself off, put on my last set of underwear, and wrapped myself in towels. I made another cup of tea and went out to the balcony. I sat in the plastic chair, head back, eyes closed behind my dark glasses, and tried to empty my mind. Brainwash. From the valley came a monotonous tinny sound, a boy banging on a metal plate to frighten birds. I grew sodden with light; my skin on the inside glowed a dull red.

  Below me, in the foundations of the house, I could hear the clothes I'd buried there growing themselves a body. It was almost completed; it was digging itself out, like a huge blind mole, slowly and painfully shambling up the hill to the balcony ... a creature composed of all the flesh that used to be mine and which must have gone somewhere. It would have no features, it would be smooth as a potato, pale as starch, it would look like a big thigh, it would have a face like a breast minus the nipple. It was the Fat Lady. She rose into the air and descended on me as I lay stretched out in the chair. For a moment she hovered around me like ectoplasm, like a gelatin shell, my ghost, my angel; then she settled and I was absorbed into her. Within my former body,
I gasped for air. Disguised, concealed, white fur choking my nose and mouth. Obliterated.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Redmond was pacing on the terrace. It was night; the wind was sighing through the shrubberies; Redmond was in mourning. He was relaxed, at peace with himself: now that Felicia was dead, drowned in an unfortunate accident when he surprised her fornicating in a punt with his half brother on the River Papple, his life would be quite different. He and Charlotte had secret plans to marry, though because of the possibility of gossip they would not make these public for some time. He gazed fondly up at her lighted window. Once they were married he would renounce his former wild and melancholy ways and settle down. She would play the piano and read the newspaper to him as he reclined beside a cheerful fire, wearing a pair of slippers embroidered by her own hand. They would have children, for now that his brother was dead, struck on the head by the overturning punt, he needed a son and heir to succeed him as the rightful Earl of Otterly. It had all worked out rather well, really. Strange that they never recovered Felicia's body, though he had had the riverbed dragged.

  The shrubberies stirred and a figure stepped out from them, blocking his path. It was an enormously fat woman dressed in a sopping-wet blue velvet gown, cut low on the bosom; her breasts rose from the bodice like two full moons. Damp strands of red hair straggled down her bloated face like trickles of blood.

  "Redmond, don't you know me?" the woman said in a throaty voice which, he recognized with horror, was Felicia's.

  "Well," he said with marked insincerity, "I certainly am glad you didn't drown after all. But where have you been for these last two months?"

  She evaded this question. "Kiss me," she said, passionately. "You don't know how much I've missed you."