The MaddAddam Trilogy

by Margaret Atwood

  “In here,” they said. They seemed not scared exactly, but alert. They checked that no one was watching, and then we all crammed into the booth where people used to get their image spun out into the mallway. It was designed for just two, so we had to stand close together.

  It was hot in there. I could feel the heat from our bodies, as if we were infected and burning with fever, and I could smell the dried-sweat and old cotton and grime and oily scalp smell from Shackie and Croze – which was what we all smelled like – mixed with their older-boy smell, a mushroom and wine-dregs blend; and the flowery smell of Amanda, with a musky undertone and a hint of blood.

  I couldn’t tell what I smelled like to them. They say you can never really smell your own smell because you’re so used to yourself. I wished I’d known about this surprise in advance, because then I could have used one of my saved-up rose soap ends. I hoped I didn’t smell like dirty underwear or cooped-up feet.

  Why do we want other people to like us, even if we don’t really care about them all that much? I don’t know why, but it’s true. I found myself standing there and smelling all those smells, and hoping a lot that Shackie and Croze thought I was pretty.

  “Here it is,” Shackie said. He brought out a piece of cloth with something wrapped up in it.

  “What is it?” I said. I could hear my own voice: girly and squeaky.

  “It’s the surprise,” said Amanda. “They got some of that superweed for us. The stuff Burt the Knob was growing.”

  “No way!” I said. “You bought it? From the CorpSeCorps?”

  “Lifted it,” said Shackie. “We snuck in the back of the Buenavista – we’ve done that lots. The CorpSe guys were going in and out the front door, they didn’t pay any attention to us.”

  “There’s a loose set of bars on one of the cellar windows – we used to get in there and party in the stairwell,” said Croze.

  “They’ve put bags of it in the cellar,” said Shackie. “They must’ve harvested all the gro-op rooms. You could get blasted just breathing.”

  “Show,” said Amanda. Shackie unrolled the cloth: dried shredded leaves.

  I knew how Amanda felt about doing drugs: you lost control of your mind, and that was risky because it gave other people the edge. Also you could do too much, like Philo the Fog, and then you wouldn’t have any mind left to speak of so no one would care whether you lost control of it or not. And you should only smoke with people you trusted. Did she trust Shackie and Croze?

  “Have you tried this stuff?” I whispered to Amanda.

  “Not yet,” Amanda whispered back. Why were we whispering? The four of us were so close together that Shackie and Croze could hear everything.

  “Then I don’t want to,” I said.

  “But I traded!” said Amanda. She sounded fierce. “I traded a lot!”

  “I’ve done this shit,” said Shackie. He used his toughest voice for shit. “It’s awesome!”

  “Me too, you feel like you’re airborne,” said Croze. “Like a fucking bird!” Shackie was already rolling the shredded leaves, already lighting up, already sucking in.

  There was someone’s hand on my bum, I didn’t know whose. It was creeping up, trying to find a way in under my Gardener one-piece dress. I wanted to say, Stop that, but I didn’t.

  “Just give it a try,” said Shackie. He took hold of my chin and stuck his mouth down on mine and blew me full of smoke. I coughed, and he did it again, and I felt very dizzy. Then I had a clear blinding-bright fluorescent image of the rabbit we’d eaten that week. It was glaring at me with its dead eyes, only the eyes were orange.

  “That was too much,” said Amanda. “She’s not used to it!”

  Then I felt sick to my stomach, and then I threw up. I think I must have hit all of them. Oh no, I thought, what an idiot. I don’t know how long all of that lasted because time was like rubber, it stretched out like a long, long elastic rope or a huge piece of chewing gum. Then it snapped shut into a tiny black square and I passed out.

  When I woke up I was sitting against the broken fountain in the mallway. I was still dizzy, though not so sick: it was more like floating. Everything seemed far away and translucent. Maybe I can stick my hand through the cement, I thought. Maybe everything’s lacework – made of specks, with God in between, just like Adam One says. Maybe I’m smoke.

  The mallway store window across from us was like a boxful of fireflies, like living sequins. There was a party going on in there, I could hear the music. Tinkly and strange. A butterfly party: they must be dancing on their spindly butterfly legs. If I could only stand up, I thought, I could dance too.

  Amanda had her arm around me. “It’s okay,” she said. “You’re fine.” Shackie and Croze were still there, and they were sounding pissed off. Or Croze was, more than Shackie, because Shackie was almost as whacked as I was.

  “So, when’ll you pay up?” said Croze.

  “It didn’t work,” said Amanda. “So, never.”

  “That wasn’t the trade,” said Croze. “The trade was, we bring the stuff. We brought it. So, you owe us.”

  “The trade was, Ren gets happy,” said Amanda. “She didn’t. End of story.”

  “No way,” said Croze. “You owe us. Pay up.”

  “Make me,” said Amanda. Her voice had that dangerous edge, the one she’d use on pleebrats when they got too close.

  “Whatever,” said Shackie. “Whenever.” He didn’t seem too bothered.

  “You owe us two fucks,” said Croze. “One each. We ran a big risk, we could’ve got killed!”

  “Don’t bug her,” said Shackie. “I just want to touch your hair,” he said to Amanda. “You smell like toffee.” He was still flying.

  “Piss off,” said Amanda. And I guess they did, because the next time I looked for them they weren’t there.

  I was feeling more normal by then. “Amanda,” I said. “I can’t believe you traded with them.” I wanted to say, For me, but I was afraid I’d cry.

  “Sorry it didn’t work,” she said. “I only wanted you to feel better.”

  “I do feel better,” I said. “Lighter.” That was true, partly because I’d puked up a lot of water weight, but partly because of Amanda. I knew she used to do that kind of trade, for food, when she was so hungry after the Texas hurricane, but she’d told me she’d never liked it and it was strictly business, so she never did it any more because she didn’t have to. And she didn’t have to this time, but she’d done it anyway. I didn’t know she liked me so much.

  “Now they’re mad at you,” I said. “They’ll get even.” It didn’t seem really important, though, because I was still high as a bee.

  “I’m not worried,” said Amanda. “I can take care of them.”

  MOLE DAY

  MOLE DAY

  YEAR TWELVE

  OF THE LIFE UNDERGROUND.

  SPOKEN BY ADAM ONE.

  Dear Friends, dear Fellow Mammals, dear Fellow Creatures:

  I point no fingers, for I know not where to point; but as we have just seen, malicious rumours can spread confusion. A careless remark can be as the cigarette butt casually tossed into the dumpster, smouldering until it bursts into flame and engulfs a neighbourhood. Do guard your words in future.

  It is inevitable that certain friendships may lend themselves to undue comment. But we are not Chimpanzees: our females do not bite rival females, our males do not jump up and down on our females and hit them with branches. Or not as a rule. All pair-bondings are subject to stress and temptation – but let us not add to that stress nor misinterpret that temptation.

  We miss the presence of our erstwhile Adam Thirteen, Burt, and his wife, Veena, and little Bernice. Let us forgive what needs to be forgiven, and put Light around them in our hearts.

  Moving forward, we have identified an abandoned automobile repair establishment that can be turned into cozy homes, once our proposed Rat relocation has been carried out. I am sure the Rats of the FenderBender Body Shop will be very happy in the Buenavista
once they have understood the food opportunities it has to offer.

  You’ll be pleased to know that though our Buenavista mushroom beds are lost to us, Pilar has kept some spawn on hand for each of our treasured species, and we will set up our mushroom beds in a cellar room at the Wellness Clinic until a damper location can be found.

  Today we celebrate Mole Day, our Festival of Underground Life. Mole Day is a Children’s festival, and our Children have been busily at work, decorating our Edencliff Rooftop Garden. The Moles with their little claws fashioned from hair combs, the Nematodes wrought from transparent plastic bags, the Earthworms of stuffed pantyhose and string, the Dung Beetles – what a testimony to our God-given powers of creativity, through which even the useless and discarded may be redeemed from meaninglessness.

  We are inclined to overlook the very small that dwell among us; yet, without them, we ourselves could not exist; for every one of us is a Garden of sub-visual life forms. Where would we be without the Flora that populate the intestinal tract, or the Bacteria that defend against hostile invaders? We teem with multitudes, my Friends – with the myriad forms of Life that creep about beneath our feet, and – I may add – under our toenails.

  True, we are sometimes infested with nanobioforms we would prefer to be without, such as the Eyebrow Mite, the Hookworm, the Pubic Louse, the Pinworm, and the Tick, not to mention the hostile bacteria and viruses. But think of them as God’s tiniest Angels, doing His unfathomable work in their own way, for these Creatures, too, reside in the Eternal Mind, and shine in the Eternal Light, and form a part of the polyphonic symphony of Creation.

  Consider also His workers in the Earth! The Earthworms and Nematodes and Ants, and their endless tilling of the soil, without which it would harden into a cement-like mass, extinguishing all Life. Think of the antibiotic properties of the Maggots and of the various Moulds, and of the honey that our Bees make, and also of the Spider’s web, so useful in the stopping of bloodflow from a wound. For every ill, God has provided a remedy in His great Medicine Cabinet of Nature!

  Through the work of the Carrion Beetles and the putrefying Bacteria, our fleshly habitations are broken down, and returned to their elements to enrich the lives of other Creatures. How misguided were our ancestors in their preserving of corpses – their embalmings, their adornings, their encasings in mausoleums. What a horror – to turn the Soul’s husk into an unholy fetish! And, in the end, how selfish! Shall we not repay the gift of Life by regifting ourselves to Life when the time comes?

  When next you hold a handful of moist compost, say a silent prayer of thanks to all of Earth’s previous Creatures. Picture your fingers giving each and every one of them a loving squeeze. For they are surely here with us, ever present in that nourishing matrix.

  Now let us join our Buds and Blooms Choir in singing our traditional Mole Day Children’s Hymn.

  WE PRAISE THE TINY PERFECT MOLES

  We praise the tiny perfect Moles

  That garden underground;

  The Ant, the Worm, the Nematode,

  Wherever they are found.

  They live their whole lives in the dark,

  Unseen by Human sight;

  The earth is like the air to them,

  Their day is like our night.

  They turn the soil and till it,

  They make the plants to thrive;

  The Earth would be a desert,

  If they were not alive.

  The little Carrion Beetles

  That seek unlikely places

  Return our Husks to Elements,

  And tidy up our spaces.

  And so for God’s small Creatures

  Beneath the field and wood,

  Let us today give joyful thanks,

  For God has found them good.

  From The God’s Gardeners Oral Hymnbook

  31

  TOBY. MOLE DAY

  YEAR TWENTY-FIVE

  While the Flood rages, you must count the days, said Adam One. You must observe the risings of the Sun and the changings of the Moon, because to everything there is a season. On your Meditations, do not travel so far on your inner journeys that you enter the Timeless before it is time. In your Fallow states, do not descend to a level that is too deep for any resurgence, or the Night will come in which all hours are the same to you, and then there will be no Hope.

  Toby’s been keeping track of the days on some old AnooYoo Spa-in-the-Park notepaper. Each pink page is topped with two long-lashed eyes, one of them winking, and with a lipstick kiss. She likes these eyes and smiling mouths: they’re companions of a sort. At the top of each fresh page she prints the Gardener Feast Day or Saint’s Day. She can still recite the entire list off by heart: Saint E.F. Schumacher, Saint Jane Jacobs, Saint Sigurdsdottir of Gullfoss, Saint Wayne Grady of Vultures; Saint James Lovelock, The Blessed Gautama Buddha, Saint Bridget Stutchbury of Shade Coffee, Saint Linnaeus of Botanical Nomenclature, The Feast of Crocodylidae, Saint Stephen Jay Gould of the Jurassic Shales, Saint Gilberto Silva of Bats. And the rest.

  Under each Saint’s Day name she writes her gardening notes: what was planted, what was harvested, what phase of the moon, what insect guests.

  Mole Day, she writes now. Year Twenty-five. Do the laundry. Gibbous Moon. Mole Day was part of Saint Euell’s Week. It wasn’t such a good anniversary.

  On the bright side, there should be some polyberries by now, ripe ones. The strength of the polyberry gene splice is that it produces at all seasons. Perhaps in the late afternoon she’ll go down and pick them.

  Two days back – on Saint Orlando Garrido of Lizards – she made an entry that wasn’t about gardening. Hallucination? she’d written. She ponders this entry now. It did seem like a hallucination at the time.

  It was after the daily thunderstorm. She was up on the roof, checking the rain barrel connections: the flow from the single tap she’s kept open downstairs was blocked. She found the problem – drowned mouse clogging the intake – and was turning to go back down the stairs when she heard an odd sound. It was like singing, but not any singing she’d ever heard before.

  She scanned with the binoculars. At first there was nothing, but then at the far end of the field a strange procession appeared. It seemed to consist entirely of naked people, though one man walking at the front had clothes on, and some sort of red hat, and – could it be? – sunglasses. Behind him there were men and women and children, every known skin colour; as she focused, she could see that several of the naked people had blue abdomens.

  That was why she’s decided it must have been a hallucination: the blueness. And the crystalline, otherworldly singing. She’d seen the figures for only a moment. They were there, then they’d vanished, like smoke. They must have gone in among the trees, to follow the walkway there.

  Her heart had leapt with joy – she couldn’t help it. She’d felt like running down the stairs, running outside, running after them. But it was far too much to hope for, other people – so many other people. Other people who looked so healthy. They couldn’t possibly be real. If she allowed herself to be lured outside by such a siren mirage – lured into the pig-ridden forest – she wouldn’t be the first person in history to have been destroyed by the overly optimistic projections of her own mind.

  Confronted by too much emptiness, said Adam One, the brain invents. Loneliness creates company as thirst creates water. How many sailors have been wrecked in pursuit of islands that were merely a shimmering?

  She takes her pencil and scratches out the question mark. Hallucination, it says now. Pure. Simple. No doubt about it.

  She sets down her pencil, gathers her mop handle and her binoculars and the rifle, and trudges up the stairs to the rooftop to survey her domain. All is quiet this morning. No movement out there in the field – no large animals, no naked blue-tinged singers.

  32

  How long ago was that Mole Day, the last one Pilar was alive? Year Twelve, it must have been.

  Right before it had come the disaster of Burt’
s arrest. After he’d been taken away by the CorpSeMen and Veena and Bernice had left the vacant lot, Adam One had called all the Gardeners together for an emergency meeting up on the Edencliff Rooftop. He’d told them the news, and when they’d grasped it, the Gardeners had gone into shock. The revelation was so painful, and so shameful! How had Burt managed to run a gro-op in the Buenavista without anyone suspecting?

  Through trust, of course, thinks Toby. The Gardeners mistrusted everyone in the Exfernal World, but they trusted their own. Now they’d joined the long list of the religious faithful who’d woken one morning to find that the vicar had made off with the church building fund, leaving a trail of molested choirboys behind him. At least Burt hadn’t done any choirboy molesting, or not as far as was known. There’d been gossip among the children – crude remarks of the kind children made – but they hadn’t been about boys. Just girls, and just groping.

  The only one of the Gardeners who hadn’t been surprised and horrified by the gro-op was Philo the Fog, but he was never surprised or horrified by anything. “I’d like to try that shit, see if it’s any good,” was all he had to say.

  Adam One had asked for volunteers to take in the families that had been so suddenly displaced – they couldn’t go back to the Buenavista, he’d said, because it would be overrun with CorpSeMen, so they should consider their material possessions as lost to them. “If the building was on fire, you wouldn’t run back into it to save a few baubles and trinkets,” he said. “It is God’s way of testing your attachment to the realm of useless illusion.” The Gardeners weren’t supposed to be bothered by that part: they’d gleaned their material possessions in junkyards and dumpsters so they could always glean others, went the theory. Nevertheless there was some weeping over a lost crystal glass, and a puzzling fuss about a broken waffle iron with sentimental value.