Stone Mattress: Nine Tales by Margaret Atwood
ALPHINLAND
The freezing rain sifts down, handfuls of shining rice thrown by some unseen celebrant. Wherever it hits, it crystallizes into a granulated coating of ice. Under the streetlights it looks so beautiful: like fairy silver, thinks Constance. But then, she would think that; she’s far too prone to enchantment. The beauty is an illusion, and also a warning: there’s a dark side to beauty, as with poisonous butterflies. She ought to be considering the dangers, the hazards, the grief this ice storm is going to bring to many; is already bringing, according to the television news.
The TV screen is a flat high-definition one that Ewan bought so he could watch hockey and football games on it. Constance would rather have the old fuzzy one back, with its strangely orange people and its habit of rippling and fading: there are some things that do not fare well in high definition. She resents the pores, the wrinkles, the nose hairs, the impossibly whitened teeth shoved right up in front of your eyes so you can’t ignore them the way you would in real life. It’s like being forced to act as someone else’s bathroom mirror, the magnifying kind: seldom a happy experience, those mirrors.
Luckily, on the weather show the personnel stand well back. They have their maps to attend to, their broad hand gestures, like those of waiters in glamorous films of the ’30s or magicians about to reveal the floating lady. Behold! Gigantic swaths of whiteness plume across the continent! Just look at the extent of it!
Now the show moves outside. Two young commentators – a boy, a girl, both of them wearing stylish black parkas with halos of pale fur around their faces – hunch under dripping umbrellas as cars grind slowly past them, windshield wipers labouring. They’re excited; they say they’ve never seen anything like it. Of course they haven’t, they’re too young. Next there are shots of calamities: a multiple car-crash pileup, a fallen tree that’s bashed off part of a house, a snarl of electrical wires dragged down by the weight of the ice and flickering balefully, a row of sleet-covered planes stranded in an airport, a huge truck that’s jackknifed and tipped over and is lying on its side with smoke coming out. An ambulance is on the scene, a fire truck, a huddle of raingear-clad operatives: someone’s been injured, always a sight to make the heart beat faster. A policeman appears, crystals of ice whitening his moustache; he pleads sternly with people to stay inside. It’s no joke, he tells the viewers. Don’t think you can brave the elements! His frowning, frosted eyebrows are noble, like those on the wartime bond-drive posters from the 1940s. Constance remembers those, or believes she does. But she may just be remembering history books or museum displays or documentary films: so hard, sometimes, to tag those memories accurately.
Finally, a minor touch of pathos: a stray dog is displayed, semi-frozen, wrapped in a child’s pink nap blanket. A gelid baby would have been better, but for lack of one the dog will do. The two young commentators make Aw cute faces; the girl pats the dog, which wags its sodden tail feebly. “Lucky guy,” says the boy. This could be you, it’s implied, if you don’t behave yourself, only you wouldn’t get rescued. The boy turns to the camera and solemnifies his face, even though it’s clear he’s having the time of his life. There’s more to come, he says, because the main part of the storm hasn’t even hit! It’s worse in Chicago, as it so often is. Stay tuned!
Constance turns off the TV. She crosses the room, dims the lamp, then sits beside the front window, staring out into the streetlight-illuminated darkness, watching the world turn to diamonds – branches, rooftops, hydro lines, all glittering and sparkling.
“Alphinland,” she says out loud.
“You’ll need salt,” says Ewan, right in her ear. The first time he spoke to her it startled and even alarmed her – Ewan having been no longer in a tangibly living condition for at least four days – but now she’s more relaxed about him, unpredictable though he is. It’s wonderful to hear his voice, even if she can’t depend on having any sort of a conversation with him. His interventions tend to be one-sided: if she answers him, he doesn’t often answer back. But it was always more or less like that between them.
She hadn’t known what to do with his clothes, afterwards. At first she left them hanging in the closet, but it was too upsetting to open the door and see the jackets and suits ranged on their hangers, waiting mutely for Ewan’s body to be slipped inside them so they could be taken for a walk. The tweeds, the woollen sweaters, the plaid work shirts … She couldn’t give them away to the poor, which would have been the sensible thing. She couldn’t throw them out: that would have been not only wasteful but too abrupt, like ripping off a bandage. So she’d folded them up and stored them away in a trunk on the third floor, with mothballs.
That’s fine in the daytimes. Ewan doesn’t seem to mind, and his voice, when it turns up, is firm and cheerful. A striding voice, showing the way. An extended index-finger voice, pointing. Go here, buy this, do that! A slightly mocking voice, teasing, making light: that was often his manner towards her before he became ill.
At night, however, things get more complex. There have been bad dreams: sobbing from inside the trunk, mournful complaints, pleas to be let out. Strange men appearing at the front door who hold out promises of being Ewan, but who are not. Instead they’re menacing, with black trench coats. They demand some garbled thing that Constance can’t make out, or, worse, they insist on seeing Ewan, shouldering their way past her, their intentions clearly murderous. “Ewan’s not home,” she’ll plead, despite the muted cries for help coming from the trunk on the third floor. As they begin to tromple up the stairs, she wakes up.