Life Before Man

by Margaret Atwood

  Who did he run with, twenty or was it twenty-five years ago? Someone called Bobby, Tom something. They're gone now, faceless; he gives them the nostalgia due to those who have died young. Casualties, though of nothing but his own memory. It's himself, his lace-up breeks with leather knee patches, those goddamn wool socks always falling down, mittens ice-beaded and soggy from bombarding the enemy, nose dripping over his upper lip, himself running he mourns.

  And after that, no longer for pure fun, sprinting at high school and third man on the relay team, around the track with the stick he would pretend was dynamite, he had to pass it on before it exploded. He was too skinny for football then but he could run. They never won anything, though once they came second. Mr. Clean, they called him in the yearbook. His mother thought it was a compliment.

  When he was at law school he used to come here to the same place, Queen's Park, an oval like a track. Queens' park. He remembers the jokes, the couples he really did see, in trenchcoats, wind-breakers, the casual intersections that aroused in him only a mild curiosity, a mild embarrassment. It was around that time his back started acting up and he stopped running; shortly after he met Elizabeth. An evolutionary mistake, the doctor said, meaning his height; men should have stopped at five feet. Now they were unbalanced. He told Nate that his right leg was infinitesimally shorter than his left, not uncommon in tall men, and he should wear a built-up heel. A piece of information about which Nate has done nothing. He refuses to join the ranks of the tin woodmen, those with false teeth, glass eyes, rubber breasts, orthopedic shoes. Not yet, not yet. Not before he has to.

  He runs clockwise, against the traffic, the cars meeting and passing him owl-eyed, dark and sleek. Behind him are the Parliament Buildings, squat pinkish heart of a squat province. In the interior, red plush and plump as a cushion, seedy lucrative deals are no doubt being made, decisions about who will build what where, what will be torn down, who will profit. He recalls with more than discomfort, sheer disbelief, that he once thought he would go into politics. Municipal probably. Pompous nit. Stop the developers, save the people; from what, for what? He was once among those who felt the universe should be just and merciful and were prepared to help it achieve this state. That was his mother's doing. He recalls his convoluted pain, his sense of betrayal when he realized finally how impossible this was. Nineteen-seventy, civil rights abolished, a war with no invaders and no enemy and the newspapers applauding. It wasn't the arbitrary arrests, the intimidation, the wrecking of lives that had appalled him; that was no surprise. He'd always known such things happened elsewhere, and despite the prevailing smugness he'd never doubted they could happen here. It was the newspapers applauding. Editorials, letters to the editor. The voice of the people. If that was all they had to say he'd be damned if he'd be their megaphone.

  His idealism and his disillusionment now bore him about equally. His youth bores him. He used to wear a suit and listen to conversations between older men about those in power, hoping to learn something. Remembering this, he cringes; it's like the string of love beads he wore once, briefly, when that fashion was on the wane.

  Ahead of him, across the street to the left, is the Museum, illuminated now by garish orange floodlights. He used to lurk there by the doorway at closing time, hoping to catch Elizabeth on her way out. At first she'd been remote and a little condescending, as if he was some sort of perverted halfwit she was being kind to. It knocked him out; that, and the impression she gave of knowing exactly what she was doing. Lapping Queen's Park on Saturday mornings he would think of her inside the grey buildings, sitting like a Madonna in a shrine, shedding a quiet light. Though actually she never worked on Saturdays. He would think of himself running towards her as she receded in front of him, holding a lamp in her hand like Florence Nightingale. He's glad he never told her about this ludicrous vision. She would have laughed even then, behind his back, and brought it up later to taunt him. Chocolate box, she would have said. The lady with the lamp. Jesus Christ. The lady with the axe, more like it. Now it's a different figure he runs towards.

  He passes the War Memorial at the apex of the park, a granite plinth featureless and without ornament, except for the Gothic wen at the top. No naked women carrying flowers, no angels, not even any skeletons. Just a signpost, a marker. SOUTH AFRICA, it says on the other side; he used to see that in the mornings, driving to work, before he sold the car. Before he quit. Which war? He's never thought much about it. The only real war took place in Europe, Churchill saying they would fight on the beaches, a hot trade in chewing gum and women's stockings, his father vanishing in a thunderclap somewhere over France. With gentle shame he recalls how he cashed in on that. Cut it out, you guys, his dad was killed in the war. One of the few uses for patriotism he still considers valid; and about the only use for the death of his father, whom he cannot at all remember.

  He's running south, Victoria College and St. Mike's on his left. He's almost around. He slows; he can feel the effort now, in his calves, his chest, the blood thudding in his head. He hasn't breathed deeply like this for a long time. Too bad about the exhaust fumes. He should stop smoking, he should run like this every day. He should get up at six every morning, run for half an hour, cut down to a pack a day. A regular program and watch the eggs and butter. He's not forty yet, not nearly; possibly he isn't even thirty-five. He's thirty-four, or was that last year? He's always had trouble remembering the exact year of his birth. So has his mother. It's as if they both entered into a conspiracy some time ago to pretend he wasn't actually born, not like everyone else. Nathanael: Gift of God. His shameless mother takes care to point out this meaning. She pointed it out to Elizabeth soon after their marriage. Thanks a lot, God, Elizabeth said later, genially then. And later less genially.

  He starts running harder again, sprinting towards the shadows where he's left his bicycle. Once around. He used to be able to do this twice, he worked up to three times almost. He could do that again. On sunny days he would run watching his shadow, on the right till the Memorial, on the left coming back; a habit that started when he was on the relay team. Beat your shadow, said the coach, a Scot who taught Grade Nine English when he wasn't teaching P.T. The Thirty-nine Steps by John Buchan. His shadow pacing him; even when there were clouds he could feel it still there. It's here with him now, odd in the street lights so much dimmer than the sun, stretching ahead of him as he passes each light, shrinking, headless, then multiplying and leaping ahead of him again.

  He never used to run at night; he doesn't like it much. He should stop this and go home. The children will be back soon, perhaps are already back, waiting to show him their paper bags. But he keeps running, as if he must run; as if there's something he's running towards.

  Sunday, October 31, 1976

  ELIZABETH

  Elizabeth sits on her mild sofa, facing the bowls. Two disembodied heads burn behind her. The bowls are on the pine sideboard. Not her own bowls, she wouldn't let them use hers, but three bowls from the kitchen, a pyrex casserole, a white china mixing bowl, and another mixing bowl, stainless steel.

  In two of the bowls are the packages the children wrapped in the afternoon, little bundles in wrinkled orange and black paper napkins, a witch and cat motif. Tied at the top with string. They wanted ribbon but there wasn't any. In each package are some candy kisses, a miniature box of Smarties, a box of raisins. They wanted her to make gingerbread cookies with jack-o'-lantern faces on them, the way she usually did, but she said she didn't have time this year. A lame excuse. They know how much time she spends lying in there on her bed.

  The third bowl, the steel one, is full of pennies, for the UNICEF boxes the children carry around with them these days. Save the children. Adults, as usual, forcing the children to do the saving, knowing how incapable of it they are themselves.

  Soon the doorbell will ring and she'll open the door. It will be a fairy or a Batman or a devil or an animal, her neighbors' children, her children's friends, in the shapes of their own desires or their parent
s' fears. She will smile at them and admire them and give them something from the bowls, and they will go away. She will close the door and sit down again and wait for the next ring. Meanwhile her own children are doing the same thing at the houses of her neighbors, up and down the front paths, across the lawns, grass for the newcomers like herself, withered tomato plants and faded cosmos flowers for the Italians and Portuguese whose district has so recently been perceived as quaint.

  Her children are walking, running, lured by the orange lights in front windows. Later that night she will go through their loot while they sleep, looking for evidence of razor blades in apples, poisoned candy. Although their joy cannot touch her, fear for them still can. She does not trust the world's intentions towards them. Nate used to laugh at her concerns, what he called her obsessions: sharp table corners when they were learning to walk, open wall plugs, lamp cords, ponds, streams and puddles (you can drown in two inches of water), moving vehicles, iron swings, porch railings, stairs; and more recently, strange men, cars that slow down, ravines. They had to learn, he'd say. As long as nothing serious happens she looks foolish. But if anything ever does, it will be no consolation to have been right.

  It should be Nate sitting on this sofa, waiting for the doorbell to ring. It should be him this time, opening the door not knowing who it will be, handing out the candy. Elizabeth has always done it before but Nate should know she isn't up to it this year. If he used his head he would know.

  But he's out; and he hasn't, this time, told her where he is going.

  Chris came to the door once, not telling her, rang the bell. Standing on the porch, the overhead light turning his face to moon craters.

  What are you doing here? She'd been angry: he shouldn't have done that, it was an invasion, the children's room was right overhead. Pulled her outside onto the porch, brought his face down to hers wordlessly, in the spotlight. Go away. I'll call you later but please go away. You know I can't do this. A whisper, a kiss, blackmail payment, hoping they wouldn't hear.

  She wants to turn out the lights, extinguish the pumpkins, bolt the door. She can pretend she isn't home. But how will she explain the full bowls of candy, or, even if she throws the packages away, the questions of their friends? We went to your house but there was no one home. Nothing can be done.

  The doorbell rings, rings again. Elizabeth fills her hands, negotiates the door. Easier to have put the bowls at the bottom of the stairs; she'll do that. It's a Chinaman, a Frankenstein Monster and a child in a rat suit. She pretends not to recognize them. She hands each a bundle and drops coins into their slotted tins. They twitter happily among themselves, thank her, and patter across the porch, not knowing, really, what night this is or what, with their small decorated bodies, they truly represent. All Souls. Not just friendly souls but all souls. They are souls, come back, crying at the door, hungry, mourning their lost lives. You give them food, money, anything to substitute for your love and blood, hoping it will be enough, waiting for them to go away.

  PART TWO

  Friday, November 12, 1976

  ELIZABETH

  Elizabeth walks west, along the north side of the street, in the cold grey air that is an extension of the unbroken fish-grey sky. She doesn't glance into the store windows; she knows what she looks like and she doesn't indulge in fantasies of looking any other way. She doesn't need her own reflection or the reflections of other people's ideas of her or of themselves. Peach-yellow, applesauce-pink, raspberry, plum, hides, hooves, plumes, lips, claws, they are of no use to her. She wears a black coat. She's hard, a dense core, that dark point around which other colors swirl. She keeps her eyes straight, her shoulders level, her steps even. She marches.

  On some of the lapels, breasts, approaching her there are still those reminders, red cloth petals of blood spattered out from the black felt hole in the chest, pinned at the center. Remembrance Day. A little pin in the heart. What is it they peddle for the mentally disabled? Seeds of Hope. In school they used to pause while someone read a verse from the Bible and they sang a hymn. Heads bowed, trying to look solemn, not knowing why they should. In the distance, or was it on the radio, guns.

  If ye break faith with us who die

  We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

  In Flanders fields.

  A Canadian wrote that. We are the Dead. A morbid nation. In school they had to memorize it two years in a row, back when memorizing was still in fashion. She'd been chosen to recite it, once. She was good at memorizing; they called it being good at poetry. She was good at poetry, before she left school.

  Elizabeth has bought a poppy but she hasn't worn it. It's in her pocket now, her thumb against the pin.

  She can remember when this walk, any walk through this part of the city, would have excited her. Those windows with their promises that are, finally, sexual, replacing earlier windows and earlier promises that offered merely safety. Tweeds. When did that happen, the switch to danger? Sometime in the past ten years the solid wool suits and Liberty scarves moved out in favor of exotica: Indian imports with slit skirts, satin underwear, silver talismans to dangle between the breasts like minnows on a hook. Bite here. And then the furniture, the milieu, the accessories. Lamps with colored shades, incense, whole shops devoted to soap or thick bath towels, candles, lotions. Enticements. And she was enticed. It once made her skin burn merely to walk along these streets, the windows offering themselves, not demanding anything, certainly not money. Just a word, Yes.

  The goods are much the same now, although the prices have gone up and there are more stores, but that caressing scent is gone. These days it's all merchandise. You pay, you get, you get no more than you see. A lamp, a bottle. If she had a choice she would take the former, the other, but there's a small deadening voice in her now that cancels choice, that says merely: False.

  She stops in front of a newspaper box, bending to look in through the square glass window. She should buy a paper, to have something to read in the waiting room. She doesn't want to be left with nothing she can concentrate on, and at the moment she can't bear the kinds of magazines they keep in such places. Full-color magazines, brighter than life, about health and motherhood and washing your hair in mayonnaise. She needs something in black and white. Bodies falling from tenth-floor balconies, explosions. Real life. But she doesn't want to read a paper either. They're full of the Quebec election, which will happen in three days and in which she is not the least interested. She's no more interested in elections than she is in football games. Contests between men, both of them, in which she's expected to be at best a cheerleader. The candidates, collections of grey dots, opposing each other on the front pages, snorting silent though not wordless challenges. She doesn't care who wins, though Nate does; though Chris would have. There was always that unvoiced accusation, directed at her, as if who she was, the way she spoke, was a twist on his own arm, an intrusion. The language question, everyone said.

  There's something wrong with my ears. I think I'm going deaf. From time to time, not all the time, I hear a high sound, like a hum, a ringing. And I know I've been having difficulty hearing what other people say to me. I'm always saying, Pardon?

  No, I haven't had a cold. No.

  She rehearses the speech, then repeats it to the doctor and answers the doctor's questions, hands in her lap, feet side by side in their black shoes, purse beside her feet. A matron. The doctor is a round, sensible-looking woman in a white smock, with a light attached to her forehead. She questions Elizabeth kindly, making notes in the Egyptian hieroglyphs of doctors. Then, after they go through a door and Elizabeth sits down in a black leatherette chair, she looks into Elizabeth's mouth and then her ears, one after the other, using a light on the end of a probe. She asks her to hold her nose and blow, to see if there are any popping sounds.

  "No obstructions," the doctor says cheerfully.

  She fits a set of headphones onto Elizabeth's head. Elizabeth stares at the wall, on which hangs a picture done in painted plaster: a tree, a fa
iry-faced child gazing up at the branches, and a poem in scrolled script:

  I think that I shall never see

  A poem lovely as a Tree.

  A Tree whose hungry mouth is pressed

  Against the Earth's sweet flowing breast....

  Elizabeth reads this far, then stops. Even the idealized tree in the plaster oblong looks like a kind of squid, its roots intertwined like tentacles, sticking itself onto that rounded bulge of earth, sucking, voracious. Nancy started biting her in the sixth month, with the first tooth.

  The doctor twiddles buttons on the machine attached by wires to Elizabeth's headphone, producing first high science-fiction sounds, then low vibrations, rumors.

  "I can hear it," Elizabeth says each time the sound changes. She can tell what kinds of things this woman would have in her living room: chintz slipcovers, lamps with bases made of porcelain nymphs. Ceramic poodles on her mantelpiece, like Nate's mother. An ashtray with ladybird beetles on the rim, in natural colors. This whole room is a time warp.

  The doctor removes Elizabeth's headphones and asks her to go back to the outer office. They both sit down. The doctor smiles benignly, indulgently, as if she's about to tell Elizabeth she has cancer of the ears.

  "There's absolutely nothing wrong with your hearing," she says. "Your ears are clear and your range is normal. Perhaps you may have a very slight residual infection that causes plugging from time to time. When that happens, just hold your nose and blow, as you'd do in an airplane. The pressure will clear your ears."