Stone Mattress: Nine Tales

by Margaret Atwood

  “Now they’re blocking another van,” says Tobias. “The chicken delivery.” The chickens come from a local organic and free-range farm, as do the eggs. Barney and Dave’s Lucky Cluckies. They always come on Thursdays. No chickens and no eggs: that might get serious in the long run, thinks Wilma. There will be querulousness inside the walls. Voices will be raised. This is not what I paid for.

  “Are there any cops?” she says.

  “I don’t see any,” says Tobias.

  “We need to ask at the front desk,” says Wilma. ‘We need to complain! They ought to be cleared away, or something – those people.”

  “I already asked,” says Tobias. “They don’t know any more about it than we do.”

  The evening’s dinner is more vivacious than usual: more chattering, more clattering, more sudden bursts of reedy laughter. The dining room appears to be short-staffed, which on a normal evening might result in increased peevishness, but as things are there’s an atmosphere of subdued carnival. A tray is dropped, a glass shatters, a cheer goes up. The clients are warned to be aware of the spilled ice cubes, which are barely visible and slippery. We wouldn’t want any broken hips, now, would we? says the voice of Shoshanna, who is wielding the microphone.

  Tobias orders a bottle of wine for the table. “Let’s live it up,” he says. “Here’s looking at you!” Glasses clink. He and Wilma are not a twosome tonight, they’re at a table for four. Tobias proposed it, and Wilma surprised herself by agreeing: if there’s no safety in numbers, at least there’s the illusion of safety. If they stick together they can keep the unknown at bay.

  The other two at the table are Jo-Anne and Noreen. Too bad there can’t be another man, thinks Wilma, but in this age group the women outnumber the men four to one. According to Tobias, women stick around longer because they’re less capable of indignation and better at being humiliated, for what is old age but one long string of indignities? What person of integrity would put up with it? Sometimes, when the bland food gets too much for him or when his arthritis is acting up, he threatens to blow his head off, if he could only lay his hands on the necessary weapon, or slit his wrists in the bath with a razor blade, like an honourable Roman. When Wilma protests, he calms her: that’s just the morbid Hungarian in him, all Hungarian men talk like that. If you’re a Hungarian man you can’t let a day pass without a suicide threat, though – he’ll joke – not nearly enough of them follow through.

  Why not the Hungarian women? Wilma has asked him several times. Why is that they too are not razoring their wrists in the tub? She enjoys reposing questions to him because the answers are sometimes the same, sometimes not. Tobias has had at least three birthplaces and has attended four universities, all at once. His passports are numerous.

  “The Hungarian women aren’t up to it,” he said once. “They never know when it’s game over, in love, life, or death. They flirt with the undertaker, they flirt with the guy shovelling the dirt onto their coffin. They never give up.”

  Neither Jo-Anne nor Noreen is Hungarian, but they too are displaying impressive flirting skills. If they had feather fans they’d be hitting Tobias with them, if bouquets they’d be tossing him a rosebud, if they had ankles they’d be flashing them. As it is they’re simpering. Wilma longs to tell them to act their age, but what would it be like if they did?

  She knows Jo-Anne from the swimming pool. She tries to do a few laps twice a week, manageable as long as someone helps her in and out and guides her to the change room. And she must have met Noreen before at some group function like a concert: she recognizes that pigeon-shaped laugh, a tremulous coo. She has no idea what either of them looks like, though she notes via her side vision that they’re both wearing magenta.

  Tobias is far from unhappy to have a whole new female audience. Already he’s told Noreen that she’s radiant tonight, and has hinted to Jo-Anne that she wouldn’t be safe in the dark with him if he were still the man he once was. “If youth only knew, if age only could,” he says. Is that the sound of hand-kissing? Gigglings come from the two of them, or what would formerly have been gigglings. Closer to squawkings, or cluckings, or wheezings: sudden gusts of air through autumn leaves. The vocal cords shorten, Wilma thinks sadly. The lungs shrink. Everything gets drier.

  How does she feel about the flirtation that’s going on over the clam chowder? Is she jealous, does she want Tobias all to herself? Not all of him, no; she wouldn’t go so far. She has no desire to roll around in the metaphorical hay with him, because she has no desire. Or not much. But she does want his attention. Or rather she wants him to want her attention, though he seems to be doing well enough with the two inferior substitutes on hand. The three of them are bantering away like something in a regency romance, and she has to listen because there’s nothing to distract her: the little people haven’t shown up.

  She tries to summon them. Come out, she commands silently, fixing what would once have been her gaze in the direction of the artificial flower arrangement in the centre of the table – top quality, says Tobias, you can hardly tell the difference. It’s yellow, which is about all she can say for it.

  Nothing happens. No manikins appear. She can control neither their appearances nor their disappearances; which seems unfair, since they’re products of nobody’s brain but hers.

  The clam chowder is succeeded by a ground beef casserole with mushrooms, followed in turn by rice pudding with raisins. Wilma concentrates on eating: she must locate the plate out of the corners of her eyes, she must direct the fork as if it’s a steam shovel: she must approach, swivel, acquire payload, lift. This takes effort. At long last the cookie plate descends, shortbread and bars as usual. There’s a brief glimpse of seven or eight ladies in off-white frilly petticoats, a can-can flash of their silk-stockinged legs, but they morph back into shortbread cookies almost immediately.

  “What’s happening outside?” she says into a gap left in the web of compliments that’s been spinning itself among the others. “At the main gate?”

  “Oh,” says Noreen gaily, “we were trying to forget all that!”

  “Yes,” says Jo-Anne. “It’s too depressing. We’re living for the moment, aren’t we, Tobias?”

  “Wine, women, and song!” Noreen announces. “Bring on the belly dancers!” Both of them cackle.

  Surprisingly, Tobias does not laugh. Instead he takes Wilma’s hand; she feels his dry, warm, boney fingers enclosing hers. “More are gathering. The situation is more grave than we at first apprehended, dear lady,” he says. “It would be unwise to underestimate it.”

  “Oh, we weren’t underestimating it,” says Jo-Anne, striving to keep her conversational soap bubbles in the air. “We were just ignoring it!”

  “Ignorance is bliss!” chirps Noreen; but they’re no longer cutting any ice with Tobias. He’s dumped his Scarlet Pimpernel foppish-aristocrat frippery and has swung into his Man of Action mode.

  “We must expect the worst,” he says. “They will not catch us napping. Now, dear lady, I will escort you home.”

  She breathes out with relief: he’s come back to her. He’ll take her as far as the door of her apartment; he does this every evening, faithful as clockwork. What has she been afraid of? That he’d leave her to fumble her way ignominiously, deserted in full view of all, and scamper off into the shrubbery with Noreen and Jo-Anne to commit kinky threefold sexual acts with them in a gazebo? No chance of that: the security men would scoop them up in no time flat and whisk them into the Advanced Living wing. They patrol the grounds at night, with flashlights and beagles.

  “Are we ready?” Tobias asks her. Wilma’s heart warms to him. We. So much for Jo-Anne and Noreen, who are, once again, merely they. She leans on him as he takes her elbow, and together they make what she’s free to picture as a dignified exit.

  “But what is the worst?” she says to him in the elevator. “And how can we prepare for it? You don’t think they’ll burn us down! Not here! The police would stop them.”

  “We cannot count on
the police,” says Tobias. “Not any more.”

  Wilma is about to protest – But they have to protect us, it’s their job! – but she stops herself. If the police were all that concerned, they would have acted by now. They’re holding back.

  “These people will be cautious, at first,” says Tobias. “They will proceed by small steps. We still have a little time. You must not worry, you must sleep well, to build up your strength. I have my preparations to make. I will not fail.”

  It’s strange how reassuring she finds this snippet of melodrama: Tobias taking charge, having a deep plan, outfoxing Fate. He’s only a feeble old man with arthritis, she tells herself. But she’s reassured and soothed all the same.

  Outside her apartment they exchange their standard peck on the cheek, and Wilma listens while he limps away down the hall. Is this regret she’s feeling? Is this a fluttering of ancient warmth? Does she really want him to enfold her in his stringy arms, make his way in towards her skin through the Velcro and zippers, attempt some ghostly, creaky, arthropod-like reprise of an act he must have committed effortlessly hundreds, indeed thousands of times in the past? No. It would be too painful for her, the silent comparisons that would be going on: the luscious, chocolate-sampling mistresses, the divine breasts, the marble thighs. Then only her.

  You believed you could transcend the body as you aged, she tells herself. You believed you could rise above it, to a serene, non-physical realm. But it’s only through ecstasy you can do that, and ecstasy is achieved through the body itself. Without the bone and sinew of wings, no flight. Without that ecstasy you can only be dragged further down by the body, into its machinery. Its rusting, creaking, vengeful, brute machinery.

  When Tobias is out of earshot she closes the door and embarks on her bedtime routine. Shoes replaced by slippers: best to take that slowly. Then the clothes must come off, one Velcro tab after another, and must be arranged on hangers, more or less, and placed in the closet. Underwear into the laundry hamper, and none too soon: Katia will deal with that tomorrow. Peeing accomplished with not too much effort, toilet flushed. Vitamin supplements and other pills washed down with ample water, because having them dissolve in the esophagus is unpleasant. Death by choking avoided.

  She also avoids falling down in the shower. She takes hold of the grips and doesn’t overuse the slippery shower gel. Drying is best done sitting down: many have come to grief attempting to dry their own feet while standing up. She makes a mental note to call Services for an appointment at the salon to get her toenails trimmed, which is another thing she can no longer do herself.

  Her nightgown, clean and folded, has been placed ready on her bed by silent hands at work behind the scenes during the dinner hour, and the bed itself has been turned down. There’s always a chocolate on the pillow. She gropes for it and finds it, and peels off the foil paper, and eats the chocolate greedily. It’s the details that differentiate Ambrosia Manor from its rivals, said the brochure. Cherish yourself. You deserve it.

  Next morning Tobias is late for breakfast. She senses this lateness, then confirms it with the talking clock in the kitchen, another gift from Alyson: you hit the button – if you can find the button – and it tells you the time in the voice of a condescending grade two arithmetic teacher. “It is eight thirty-two. Eight thirty-two.” Then it’s eight thirty-three, then eight thirty-four, and with every minute Wilma can feel her blood pressure shooting up. Maybe something has happened to him? A stroke, a heart attack? Such things occur in Ambrosia Manor every week: a high net worth is no defence against them.

  Finally, here he is. “There is news,” he tells her, almost before he’s inside the door. “I have been to the Dawn Yoga Class.”

  Wilma laughs. She can’t help herself. It’s the idea of Tobias doing yoga, or even being in the same room with yoga. What had he chosen to wear for this event? Tobias and sweatpants don’t compute. “I understand your mirth, dear lady,” says Tobias. “This yoga business is not what I would choose, given other pathways. But I have made a sacrifice of myself in the interests of obtaining information. In any case there was no class, because there was no instructor. So the ladies and I – we could chat.”

  Wilma sobers up. “Why wasn’t there any instructor?” she asks.

  “They have blockaded the gate,” Tobias announces. “They refuse to let anyone in.”

  “What’s happened to the police? And the Manor security?” Blockaded: this is not frivolous. Blockades require heavy lifting.

  “They are nowhere in sight,” says Tobias.

  “Come in and sit down,” says Wilma. “Let’s have some coffee.”

  “You are right,” says Tobias. “We must think.”

  They sit at the little table and drink their coffee and eat their oat cereal – there’s no more bran, and – Wilma realizes – scant hope of getting any. I must appreciate this cereal, she thinks as it crunches inside her head. I must savour this moment. The little people are agitated today, they’re whirling around in a fast waltz, they sparkle all over with silver and gold sequins, they’re putting on a grand show for her; but she can’t attend to them right now because there are more serious matters to be considered.

  “Are they letting anyone out?” she asks Tobias. “Through the blockade.” What was that book she read about the French Revolution? Versailles blockaded, with the royal family stewing and fretting inside.

  “Only the staff,” says Tobias. “They are more or less ordering them to go. Not the inhabitants. We have to stay. So they appear to have decreed.”

  Wilma thinks about this. So the staff are allowed to leave, but once out, they won’t be readmitted. “And no delivery vans,” she says, a statement rather than a question. “Such as chickens.”

  “Naturally not,” says Tobias.

  “They want to starve us to death,” she says. “In that case.”

  “It would appear so,” says Tobias.

  “We could disguise ourselves,” says Wilma. “To get out. As, well, as cleaners. Muslim cleaners, with our heads covered up. Or something.”

  “I doubt very much that we would pass unchallenged, dear lady,” Tobias says. “It is a question of the generations. Time leaves its markings.”

  “There can be some quite old cleaners,” Wilma says hopefully.

  “It is a matter of degree,” says Tobias. He sighs, or is it a wheeze? “But do not despair. I am not without resources.”

  Wilma wants to say that she is not despairing, but she refrains because it could get too complicated. She can’t pinpoint exactly what it is that she’s feeling. Not despair, not at all. And not hope. She only wants to see what will happen next. It certainly won’t be the daily routine.

  Before doing anything else, Tobias insists that they fill up Wilma’s bathtub, as a provision for the future. His own bathtub is already filled. Sooner or later the electricity will be cut, he says, and then the water will cease to flow; it is only a matter of time.

  Then he makes an inventory of the supplies in Wilma’s kitchen and mini-fridge. There isn’t much because she keeps no lunch or dinner staples on hand. Why would she, why would any of them? They never cook those meals.

  “I’ve got some yogourt raisins,” says Wilma. “I think. And a jar of olives.”

  Tobias makes a scoffing sound. “We cannot live on these things,” he says, shaking a cardboard box of something or other as if scolding it. Yesterday, he tells her, he took the precaution of visiting the snack shop on the ground floor and making a discreet purchase of energy bars, caramel popcorn, and salted nuts.

  “How clever of you!” Wilma exclaims.

  Yes, Tobias admits. It was clever. But these emergency rations will not hold them for long.

  “I must go down and explore the kitchen,” he says. “Before any of the others might have that idea. They are likely to raid the stores, and trample one another. I have seen such a thing.” Wilma wants to come with him – she might act as a buffer against trampling, for who would see her as a threat? And if they h
ave indeed beat out the raiding hordes, she could carry some of the supplies back up to her apartment in her purse. But she does not suggest this, because she would of course get in the way: he’ll have enough to do without shepherding her hither and thither.

  Tobias seems to know of her wish to be of use. He has considerately thought of a role for her: she is to remain in her apartment and listen to the news. Intelligence gathering, he calls it.

  Once he’s gone, Wilma turns on her kitchenette radio and prepares to gather intelligence. A news report adds little to what they already know: Our Turn is a movement, it’s international, it appears aimed at clearing away what one of the demonstrators refers to as “the parasitic dead wood at the top” and another one terms “the dustballs under the bed.”

  The authorities are acting sporadically, if at all. They do have more important things to attend to: more floods, more runaway forest fires, more tornadoes, all of which are keeping them on the hop. Sound bites from various head honchos are played. Those in the targeted retirement institutions should not succumb to panic, and they should not attempt to wander out onto the streets where their safety cannot be guaranteed. Several who rashly decided to brave the mobs did not survive the attempt, one of these having been manually torn apart. The blockaded ones should stay where they are, as everything would soon be under control. Helicopters may be deployed. The relatives of those under siege should not attempt any interventions on their own, as the situation is unstable. Everyone should obey the police, or the troops, or the special forces. The ones with megaphones. Above all, they must remember that help is on the way.

  Wilma doubts this, but she stays tuned for the panel discussion that follows. The host first suggests that each one of the panellists state his or her age and position, which is done: academic, thirty-five, social anthropologist; energy-sector engineer, forty-two; financial expert, fifty-six. Then they quibble to and fro about whether this thing that’s going on is an outbreak of thuggery, an assault on the whole notion of elders and civility and families, or is on the other hand understandable, considering the challenges and provocations and, to speak quite frankly, the shambles, both economic and environmental, that those under, say, twenty-five have been saddled with.