Stone Mattress: Nine Tales

by Margaret Atwood

  There is rage out there, and yes, it’s sad that some of the most vulnerable in society are being scapegoated, but this turn of affairs is not without precedent in history, and in many societies – says the anthropologist – the elderly used to bow out gracefully to make room for young mouths by walking into the snow or being carried up mountainsides and left there. But that was when there were fewer material resources, says the economist: older demographics are actually big job creators. Yes, but they are eating up the health-care dollars, most of which are spent on those in the last stages of … yes, that is all very well, but innocent lives are being lost, if I may interrupt, that depends on what you call innocent, some of these people … surely you are not defending, of course not, but you have to admit …

  The host announces that they will now take calls from their listeners.

  “Don’t trust anyone under sixty,” says the first caller. They all laugh.

  The second caller says he does not understand how they can be making light of this. The people of a certain age have worked hard all their lives, they’ve been taxpayers for decades and most likely still are, and where is the government in all of this, and don’t they realize the young never vote? Revenge will be taken at the polls on the elected representatives if they don’t snap to it and get this thing cleaned up right now. More jails, that’s what is needed.

  The third caller begins by saying that he does vote, but it’s never done him any good. Then he says, “Torch the dusties.”

  “I didn’t catch that,” says the host. The third caller begins screaming, “You heard me! Torch the dusties! You heard me!” and is cut off. Upbeat radio music.

  Wilma switches off: that’s enough intelligence for today.

  As she’s rummaging around for a teabag – risky, making tea, she might scald herself, but she’ll be very careful – her big-numbers phone rings. It’s the old kind of phone, with a receiver; she can’t manage a cellphone any more. She locates the phone in her peripheral vision, ignores the ten or twelve little people who are skating on the kitchen counter in long fur-bordered blue velvet cloaks and silver muffs, and picks it up.

  “Oh, thank god,” says Alyson. “I’ve seen what’s going on, they showed your building on TV with all those people outside and the overturned laundry van, I’ve been so worried! I’m getting on a plane right now, and …”

  “No,” says Wilma. “It’s fine. I’m fine. It’s under control. Stay where you …” Then the line goes dead.

  So now they’re cutting the wires. Any minute now the electricity will go off. But Ambrosia Manor has a generator, so that will hold things in place for a while.

  As she’s drinking her tea the door opens, but it’s not Tobias: no scent of Brut. There’s a rush of footsteps, a smell of salt and damp cloth, a gust of weeping. Wilma is enfolded in a strong, dishevelling embrace. “They say I must leave you! They say I must! We are told to leave the building, all workers, all healthcares, all of us, or they will …”

  “Katia, Katia,” says Wilma. “Calm down.” She disengages the arms, one at a time.

  “But you are like a mother to me!” Wilma knows a little too much about Katia’s tyrannical mother back in Serbia to find this complimentary, but it’s kindly meant.

  “I’ll be fine,” she says.

  “But who will make your bed, and bring your fresh towels, and clean up the things you have broken, and place upon your pillow the chocolate, in the night …” More sobbing.

  “I can manage,” Wilma says. “Now, be a good girl and don’t cause trouble. They’re sending the army. The army will help.” It’s a lie, but Katia needs to leave. Why should she be trapped inside what‘s looking more and more like a besieged fortress? She asks Katia to bring her purse, then gives her all the petty cash left inside it. Someone might as well get the use out of it; she herself won’t be going on a shopping spree any time soon. She tells Katia to add the stash of wrapped floral-scented soaps from the bathroom, leaving two of them for Wilma just in case.

  “Why is there water in the bath?” Katia asks. At least she’s stopped weeping. “It is cold water! I will make it hot!”

  “It’s all right,” says Wilma. “Leave it there. Now, hurry along. What if they barricade the doors? You don’t want to be late.”

  When Katia has gone, Wilma shuffles into the living area, knocking something off a bookshelf in the process – the pencil jar, there’s a sound of wooden sticks – and collapses into the armchair. She intends to take stock of her situation, review her life or something of the sort, but first she’ll try to wend her way through another sentence or two of Gone with the Wind on the big-print e-reader. She gets the thing turned on and finds her place, a wonder in itself. Is it time for her to learn Braille? Yes, but that’s unlikely now.

  Oh, Ashley, Ashley, she thought, and her heart beat faster … Idiot, thinks Wilma. Destruction is at hand and you’re mooning over that wimp? Atlanta will burn. Tara will be gutted. Everything will be swept away.

  Before she knows it, she’s nodded off.

  She’s wakened by Tobias, gently shaking her arm. Was she snoring, was her mouth open, is her bridge in place? “What time is it?” she says.

  “It is time for lunch,” says Tobias.

  “Did you find any food?” Wilma asks, sitting up straight.

  “I have acquired some dried noodles,” says Tobias. “And a can of baked beans. But the kitchen was occupied.”

  “Oh,” says Wilma. “Some of them stayed? The cooking staff?” That would be consoling news: she notes that she’s hungry.

  “No, they are all gone,” says Tobias. “It is Noreen and Jo-Anne, and some of the others. They have made a soup. Shall we descend?”

  The dining room is in full swing, judging from the noise: everyone’s getting into the spirit of things, whatever that spirit may be. Hysteria, would be Wilma’s best guess. They must be carrying the soup in from the kitchen, acting as waiters. There’s a crash; much laughter.

  Noreen’s voice looms up, right behind her ear. “Isn’t this something?” she says. “Everyone’s just rolling up their sleeves and pitching in! It’s like summer camp! I suppose they thought we couldn’t cope!”

  “What do you think of our soup?” Jo-Anne, this time. The question is not addressed to Wilma but to Tobias. “We made it in a cauldron!”

  “Delicious, dear lady,” Tobias says politely.

  “We raided the freezer! We put in everything!” says Jo-Anne. “Everything but the kitchen sink! Eye of newt! Toe of frog! Finger of birth-strangled babe!” She giggles.

  Wilma is attempting to identify the ingredients. A piece of sausage, a fava bean, a mushroom?

  “The state of that kitchen is disgraceful,” says Noreen. “I don’t know what we were paying them for, the so-called staff! Certainly not for cleaning! I saw a rat.”

  “Shhh,” says Jo-Anne. “What they don’t know won’t hurt them!” They both laugh gleefully.

  “I am not alarmed by a simple rat,” says Tobias. “I have seen worse.”

  “But it’s awful, about the Advanced Living wing,” says Noreen. “We went to see if we could bring them some soup, but the connecting doors are locked.”

  “We couldn’t open them,” says Jo-Anne. “And the staff are all gone. That means …”

  “It’s terrible, it’s terrible,” says Noreen.

  “There is nothing to be done,” says Tobias. “The people in this room could not care for those other people, in any case. It is beyond our powers.”

  “But they must be so confused in there,” says Noreen in a small voice.

  “Well,” says Jo-Anne. “Once we’ve had lunch, I think all of us should just stiffen our will power and form up into a double line, and march right out of here! Then we can tell the authorities, and they’ll come in and get the doors open, and move those poor people into a proper location. This whole thing is beyond disgraceful! As for those stupid baby face masks they’ve got on …”

  “They will not let you thr
ough,” says Tobias.

  “But we’ll all go together! The press will be there. They wouldn’t dare stop us, not with the whole world watching!”

  “I would not count on that,” says Tobias. “The whole world has an appetite for ringside seats at such events. Witch-burnings and public hangings were always well attended.”

  “Now you’re frightening me,” says Jo-Anne. She doesn’t sound very frightened.

  “I’m going to have a nap first,” says Noreen. “Gather my strength. Before we march out. At least we don’t have to do the dishes in that filthy kitchen, since we won’t be here much longer.”

  Tobias has done a circuit of the grounds: the back gate is besieged as well, he says, as of course it would be. He spends the rest of the afternoon in Wilma’s apartment, availing himself of her binoculars. More people are gathering outside the lion gate; they’re brandishing their usual signs, he says, plus some new ones: TIMES UP. TORCH THE DUSTIES. HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME.

  Nobody ventures inside the perimeter wall, or nobody Tobias has spotted. The day is overcast, which makes for lower visibility. It’s going to be an unusually chilly evening for this time of year, or that’s what the TV was saying before it went silent. His cellphone is now inoperative, he tells Wilma: the young people out there, although lazy and communistic, are adept at manipulating digital technology. They tunnel secretly here and there inside the Internet, like termites. They must have got hold of a list of Ambrosia’s inhabitants and accessed their accounts, and switched them all off.

  “They have oil drums,” he says. “With fires inside. They’re cooking hot dogs. And drinking beer, I suspect.” Wilma would like a hot dog herself. She can picture walking out there and asking politely whether they might be inclined to share. But she can also picture the answer.

  Around five o’clock a scanty clutch of Ambrosia Manor inhabitants musters itself outside the front door. Only about fifteen, says Tobias. They’re arranging themselves in a double line, as if for a procession: twos, and the odd three. The crowd outside stills: they’re watching. Someone among the Ambrosiads has found a megaphone: Jo-Anne, says Tobias. Orders are given, indecipherable through the window glass. The line moves forward, haltingly.

  “Have they reached the gate?” asks Wilma. How she wishes she could see this! It’s like a football game, back when she was an undergraduate! The tension, the opposing teams, the megaphones. She was always in the audience, never in the game, because girls did not play football: their role was to gasp. And to be fuzzy about the rules, as she is now.

  The suspense is making her heart beat faster. If Jo-Anne’s group can make it through, the rest of them can get organized and try the same thing.

  “Yes,” says Tobias. “But something has happened. There has been an incident.”

  “What do you mean?” says Wilma.

  “It’s not good. Now they’re coming back.”

  “Are they running?” says Wilma.

  “As much as possible,” says Tobias. “We will wait until dark. Then we must leave quickly.”

  “But we can’t leave!” Wilma almost wails. “They won’t let us!”

  “We can leave the building,” says Tobias, “and wait in the grounds. Until they go away. Then we will be unimpeded.”

  “But they aren’t going away!” says Wilma.

  “They will go away when it’s over,” says Tobias. “Now we will eat something. I will open this can of baked beans. Humanity’s failure to invent a can opener that actually functions has never ceased to dismay me. The design of the can opener has not been improved since the war.”

  What do you mean by over? Wilma wants to ask; but doesn’t.

  Wilma prepares herself for the proposed excursion. Tobias has told her they may be outside for some hours, or possibly days; it all depends. She puts on a cardigan, and takes a shawl and a packet of biscuits; also her jeweller’s loupe and the e-reader, which is light enough to be portable. She worries about trifles; she knows they’re trifles, but still, where is she going to put her teeth tonight? Her expensive teeth. And what about clean underwear? They can’t carry much with them, says Tobias.

  Now they will venture forth, like mice in moonlight. It is the right time, says Tobias. He leads her by the hand, down the back stairs, then through the corridor to the kitchen, then through the storage area and past the trash bins. He names each stage of their journey so she will know where they are; he pauses at each threshold. “Do not worry,” he says. “There is no one here. They have all departed.”

  “But I heard something,” she whispers, and she did: a scuttling, a rustling. A squeaking, as of tiny, shrill voices: are the little people talking to her at last? Her heartbeat is annoyingly fast. Is that a smell, a foetid animal smell like overheated scalps, like unwashed armpits?

  “It’s rats,” he says. “There are always rats in places like this, in hiding. They know when it is safe for them to come out. They are smarter than us, I think. Take my arm, there is a step down.”

  Now they’ve gone through the back entrance; they’re outside. There are distant voices, there is chanting – it must be coming from the crowd at the front gate. What is it they’re saying? Time to Go. Fast Not Slow. Burn Baby Burn. It’s Our Turn. An ominous rhythm.

  But it’s coming from afar; here at the back of the building it’s quiet. The air is fresh, the night is cool. Wilma worries that they’ll be seen, mistaken for intruders or for escapees from Advanced Living, though surely there’s no one around. No men with beagles. Tobias uses his flashlight to guide his own steps and by extension hers, switching it on and then off again.

  “Are there fireflies?” Wilma whispers. She hopes so, for if not, what are those sparkles of light at the edges of her vision, pulsing like signals? Is it some new neural anomaly, her brain short-circuiting like a toaster dropped into the bath?

  “Many fireflies,” Tobias whispers back.

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see,” he says, “when we get there.”

  Wilma has an unworthy and then a frightening thought. What if Tobias has made the whole thing up? What if there are no crowds of baby-faced protesters at the gates? What if it’s a mass hallucination, like statues that weep blood or Virgin Maries in the clouds? Or worse: what if it’s all been an elaborate ruse designed to lure her out here where Tobias can strangle her to death? What if he’s a thrill killer?

  But the radio broadcasts? Easily faked. But Noreen and Jo-Anne, their soup kitchen? Paid actors. And the chanting she can hear right now? A recording. Or a group of student recruits – they’d be happy to chant for minimum wage. Nothing like that would be impossible for a well-organized lunatic with money.

  Too many murder mysteries, Wilma, she tells herself. If he wanted to kill you he could have done it earlier. And even if she’s right, she can’t go back: she wouldn’t have the least idea of where back is.

  “Here we are,” says Tobias. “Grandstand seats. We’ll be quite comfortable here.”

  They’re in one of the gazebos, the one to the extreme left. It’s on the far side of the ornamental pond, and commands, according to Tobias, a partial view of Ambrosia Manor’s main entrance. He’s brought the binoculars.

  “Have some peanuts,” he says. There’s a crackle – the package – and he transfers a clutch of ovoids into the cusp of her hand. How comforting they are! Her panic ebbs. He stashed a blanket in the gazebo earlier in the day, and two thermoses of coffee. He produces them now, and they settle down to their unusual picnic. And, just as in earlier, dimly remembered picnics she’d been on with young men – campfire events, with hot dogs and beer – an arm solidifies out of the darkness and slides itself confidently but shyly around her shoulders. Is it really there, that arm, or is she imagining it?

  “You are safe with me, dear lady,” says Tobias. Everything’s relative, thinks Wilma.

  “What are they doing now?” she asks with a little shiver.

  “Milling around,” says Tobias. “Milling around i
s first. Then people get carried away.” He draws the blanket around her solicitously. There’s a line of little people, men and women both, in dull red velvet costumes, richly textured and embroidered in gold; they must be on the railing of the gazebo, which she can’t see. They’re involved in a stately promenade, arm in arm, couple by couple; they walk forward, stop, turn, bow and curtsey, then walk forward again, golden toes pointed. The women have flowery butterfly-wing crowns; the men have mitres, like bishops. There must be music playing for them, at a range beyond the human.

  “There,” says Tobias. “The first flames. They have torches. No doubt they have explosives as well.”

  “But the others …” says Wilma.

  “There is nothing I can do for the others,” says Tobias.

  “But Noreen. But Jo-Anne. They’re still inside. They’ll be …” She’s clutching – she notices – her own hands. They feel like somebody else’s.

  “It was always that way,” he says mournfully. Or is it coldly? She can’t tell.

  The rumbling from the crowd is louder. “They’ve come inside the walls now,” says Tobias. “They’re piling objects against the door of the building. The side door too, I suppose. To prevent exit, or entrance as well. And the back door; they will be thorough. They are rolling the oil drums inside the gate, and they have driven a car up onto the front steps, to block any attempt.”

  “I don’t like this,” says Wilma.

  There’s a loud bang. If only it were fireworks.

  “It’s burning,” says Tobias. “The Manor.” There’s a thin, shrill screaming. Wilma puts her hands over her ears, but she can still hear. It goes on and on, loud and first, then dwindling.