Dancing Girls

by Margaret Atwood

  She would like to take a picture of the scene, with the orange against the blue, two of her favourite colours. But someone at the bottom is calling to her to hurry up, so she sits on the chute, placing her knees together so her skirt won’t blow up, holds her purse, her camera and her folded coat firmly on her lap, and pushes off. It’s like going down a slide, the kind they used to have in parks. Annette finds it odd that she should be the last one off the plane. Surely the captain and the stewardesses ought to have remained on board until all the passengers were safely off, but there is no sign of them. She doesn’t have much time to think about this however, because the round boat is in a state of confusion, there seem to be a lot of people on it and someone is shouting orders. “Row,” the voice says, “we’ve got to get away from here … the suction!”

  Annette wonders what he is talking about. There are only two paddles in any case so she settles herself out of the way and watches while a couple of men, the owner of the voice and a younger man, paddle at either side of the boat as if their lives depended on it. The boat moves up and down with the waves, which are not large, it rotates – one of the men must be stronger than the other, Annette thinks – and it moves gradually away from the plane, in the direction of the afternoon sun. Annette feels as though she’s being taken for a boat-ride; she leans back against the swelling rubber side of the boat and enjoys it. Behind them, the plane settles imperceptibly lower. Annette thinks it would be a good idea to get a picture of it, for use when they are rescued and she can write up the story, and she opens her camera bag, takes out her camera and adjusts the lens; but when she squirms around so she can get a better view, the plane is gone. She thinks it ought to have made a noise of some kind, but they are quite a distance from where it was.

  “No sense in getting too far away from the crash site,” says the man who has been giving the orders. There’s something military about him, Annette decides; maybe it’s the trimmed moustache or the fact that he’s older. He and the other man ship their paddles and he begins to roll a cigarette, taking the papers and tobacco from his breast pocket. “I suggest we introduce ourselves,” he says; he’s used to directing.

  There are not as many people in the boat as Annette at first supposed. There’s the two men, the one who says he’s in insurance (though Annette doubts this), and the younger one, who has a beard and claims to teach at a free school; the older man’s wife, who is plump and kind-looking and keeps saying “I’m all right,” although she isn’t, she’s been crying quietly to herself ever since they’ve been in the boat; an overly tanned woman of forty-five or so who gives no clue as to her occupation, and a boy who says he’s a university student. When it comes to Annette’s turn she says, “I write a food column for one of the newspapers.” In fact she did this for a couple of months, before she got onto the travel page, so she knows enough about it to be able to back it up. Still, she is surprised at herself for lying and can’t imagine why she did. The only reason she can think of is that she hasn’t believed the stories of any of the others, except the plump, crying woman, who could not possibly be anything other than what she so obviously is.

  “We’ve been damn lucky,” says the older man, and they all agree.

  “What are we supposed to do now?” says the tanned woman.

  “Just sit around and wait to be rescued, I guess,” the bearded schoolteacher says, with a nervous laugh. “It’s an enforced vacation.”

  “It’ll just be a matter of hours,” says the older man. “They’re more efficient about these things than they used to be.”

  Annette volunteers the information that she has some food and they all congratulate her for being so resourceful and foresighted. She provides the wrapped sandwiches and they divide them up equally; they pass around one of the bottles of ginger ale to wash them down. Annette doesn’t say anything about the peanuts or the other two bottles of ginger ale. She does say, however, that she has some seasick pills if anyone needs one.

  She’s about to toss the plastic sandwich trays overboard, but the older man stops her. “No, no,” he says, “can’t throw those away. They might come in handy.” She can’t imagine what for, but she does as he says.

  The plump woman has stopped crying and has become quite talkative; she wants to know all about the food column. In fact they are now a festive bunch, chattering away as if they are on a huge sofa in a recreation room, or in the waiting room of an airport where the flights have been temporarily held up. There’s the same atmosphere of time being passed, from necessity but with superficial cheer. Annette is bored. For a moment she thought something real had happened to her but there is no danger here, it is as safe in this lifeboat as everywhere else, and the piece she would write about it would come out sounding the same as her other pieces. For exploring the Caribbean, a round orange lifeboat strikes an unusual note. The vistas are charming, and you have a body-to-body contact with the sea which is simply not possible in any other kind of boat. Take some sandwiches and plan to stay out for lunch!

  The sun sets in its usual abrupt, spectacular fashion, and it’s not until then that they begin to get worried. No helicopters have appeared, and none of the other lifeboats is in sight. Perhaps they paddled away too quickly. They haven’t even heard any sounds of distant rescue operations. But “They’ll be along, all right,” the older man says, and his wife suggests they have a singsong. She begins with “You Are My Sunshine,” warbling in a church soprano, and continues through a repertoire of once-popular favourites: “On Top Of Old Smokey,” “Good Night Irene.” The others join in, and Annette is momentarily amazed by the numbers of words to these songs that she herself can remember. She goes to sleep during one of the choruses, her winter coat pulled over her; she’s glad she brought it.

  She awakens feeling groggy and clogged. She can’t believe they’re all still on the boat, it’s beginning to get annoying, and she is boiling hot under her coat. The rubber of the lifeboat is hot too and there’s no wind, the sea is as flat as the palm of your hand with only a sickening groundswell. The others are sprawled listlessly around the boat’s circumference, their legs in awkward tangles here and there. Annette thinks to herself they’d be better off with fewer people in the boat, but immediately censors this. The two women are still asleep; the plump one, the singer, lies with her mouth open, snoring slightly. Annette rubs her eyes; the lids feel dry and gritty. She seems to remember getting up in the night and squatting perilously over the edge of the boat; someone else must have made this effort and failed, or not made it at all, for there is a faint smell of urine. She is very thirsty.

  The older man is awake, smoking in silence; so is the one with the beard. The student is drowsing still, curled in a heap, like a puppy.

  “What should we do?” Annette asks.

  “Stick it out till they come for us,” says the older man. He doesn’t look so military any more with his day’s growth of stubble.

  “Maybe they won’t come,” says the bearded man. “Maybe we’re in the Bermuda whatchamacallit. You know, where those ships and planes vanish without a trace. What made the plane go down, anyway?”

  Annette looks at the sky, which is more like a flat screen than ever. Maybe this is what has happened, she thinks, they’ve gone through the screen to the other side; that’s why the rescuers can’t see them. On this side of the screen, where she thought there would be darkness, there is merely a sea like the other one, with thousands of castaways floating around in orange lifeboats, lost and waiting to be rescued.

  “The main thing,” says the older man, “is to keep your mind occupied.” He flicks his cigarette butt into the water. Annette expects to see a shark emerge and snap it up, but none does. “First off, we’ll all get sunstroke if we aren’t careful.” He’s right, they are all quite red.

  He wakes the others and puts them to work constructing a shade, which they make from Annette’s winter coat and the men’s suit jackets, the buttons of one inserted into the buttonholes of the next. They prop it up w
ith the paddles, lashing it on with neckties and stockings, and sit under it, with a fleeting sense of accomplishment. It’s hot and stuffy, but it is out of the sun. Again at his suggestion the men turn out their pockets and the women empty their purses, “to see what we’ve got to work with,” the older man says. Annette has forgotten everyone’s name and suggests they introduce themselves again, which they do. Bill and Verna, Julia, Mike and Greg. Julia has a pounding headache and takes several of Annette’s aspirins-with-codeine. Bill is going through the assortment of handkerchiefs, keys, compacts, lipsticks, travel-sized bottles of hand lotion, pills and chewing gum. He has appropriated the two remaining bottles of ginger ale and the peanuts, which he says will have to be rationed. For breakfast he lets them each have a Chiclet and a cough drop, to suck on. After that they take turns brushing their teeth, with Annette’s toothbrush. She’s the only one who has travelled light and thus has all her toiletries with her. The others used suitcases, which of course went down in the hold of the plane.

  “If it rains,” Bill says, “this boat is perfect for catching water,” but it does not look like rain.

  Bill has a lot of good ideas. In the afternoon he spends some time fishing, with a hook made from a safety-pin and a line of dental floss. He catches nothing. He says they could attract seagulls by flashing Annette’s camera lens at them, if there were any seagulls. Annette is lethargic, although she keeps prodding herself, reminding herself that this is important, this may be the real thing, now that they have not been rescued.

  “Were you in the war?” she asks Bill, who looks smug that she has noticed.

  “You learn to be resourceful,” he says. Towards evening they share out one of the bottles of ginger ale, and Bill allows them three peanuts each, telling them to scrape the salt off before eating them.

  Annette goes to sleep thinking of a different story; it will have to be different now. She won’t even have to write it, it will be her story As Told To, with a picture of herself, emaciated and sunburned but smiling bravely. Tomorrow she should take some pictures of the others.

  During the night, which they spend under the sunshade, now a communal blanket, there is a scuffle. It’s Greg the student and Bill, who has hit him and now claims he was making a try for the last bottle of ginger ale. They shout angrily at each other until Verna says it must have been a mistake, the boy was having a bad dream. All is quiet again but Annette is awake, she gazes up at the stars, you can’t see stars like that in the city.

  After a while there is heavy breathing, surely she’s imagining it, but there’s a distinct sound of furtive copulation. Who can it be? Julia and Mike, Julia and Greg? Not Verna, surely, in her corset which Annette is positive she has not taken off. Annette is a little disappointed that no one has made a pass at her, if that sort of thing is going around. But it was probably initiated by Julia, that suntanned solitary voyager, this must be what she goes on vacations for. Annette thinks of Jeff, wonders how he reacted to the fact that she is missing. She wishes he was here, he would be able to do something, though she doesn’t know what. They could make love, anyway.

  In the morning she scans their faces for signs, revealing clues as to who did what, but finds nothing. They brush their teeth once more, then rub hand lotion onto their faces, which is refreshing. Bill passes round a package of Tums and more cough drops; he’s saving the peanuts and the ginger ale for the evening meal. He devises a strainer out of his shirt and trails it over the side of the boat, to catch plankton, he says. He brings in some messy green stuff, squeezes out the salt water, and chews a handful thoughtfully. The others each take a mouthful, except Julia who says she can’t swallow it. Verna tries, but spits hers out. Annette gets it down; it’s salty and tastes of fish. Later, Bill does manage to catch a small fish and they eat chunks of that also; the hot fish smell mingles with the other smells, unwashed bodies and slept-in clothes, which are rubbing against Annette’s nerves. She’s irritable, she’s stopped taking the pills, maybe that’s why.

  Bill has a knife, and with it he slices the plastic sandwich trays in two, then cuts slits in them to make sun goggles, “like the Eskimos,” he says. He has definite leadership ability. He unravels part of Verna’s sweater, then twists the pink wool to make the strings to tie them with. They have abandoned the coat sunshade, it was too hot and the paddles had to be held upright all the time, so they fasten the plastic trays over their faces. They smear their noses and lips and the exposed parts of their foreheads with lipstick from the purse collection; Bill says it will be protection against sunburn. Annette is disturbed by the effect, these masks and bloody markings. What bothers her is that she can’t tell any more who these people are, it could be anyone behind the white plastic faces with slit eyes. But she must look like that too. It is exotic though, and she is still functioning well enough to think of taking a picture, though she doesn’t take it. She ought to, for the same reason she’s kept her watch conscientiously wound up, it would help morale by implying there is a future. But suddenly there’s no point.

  About two o’clock Greg, the student, starts thrashing around. He lunges for the side of the boat and tries to get his head over into the sea. Bill throws himself on top of him and after a minute Mike joins him. They hold Greg down on the bottom of the boat. “He was drinking sea water,” Mike says, “I saw him, early this morning.” The boy is gasping like a fish, and he looks like a fish too in his impersonal plastic face. Bill removes the mask, and the human features glare up into his. “He’s delirious,” Bill says. “If we let him up, he’ll jump overboard.” Bill’s plastic mask turns, pointing itself toward the other members of the group. No one says anything, but they are thinking, Annette knows what they are thinking because she is thinking the same thing. They can’t hold him down forever. If they let him up, he will die, and not only that, he will be lost to them, wasted. They themselves are dying slowly of thirst. Surely it would be better to … Verna is rummaging, slowly and painfully, like a crippled bumblebee, in the heap of clothing and debris; what is she looking for? Annette feels she is about to witness something mundane and horrible, doubly so because it will be bathed not in sinister blood-red lightning but in the ordinary sunlight she has walked in all her life; some tacky ritual put on for the tourists, tacky because it is put on for tourists, for those who are not responsible, for those who make the lives of others their transient spectacle and pleasure. She is a professional tourist, she works at being pleased and at not participating; at sitting still and watching. But they are going to slit his throat, like that pig on the beach in Mexico, and for once she does not find it quaint and unusual. “Stay out of it,” the man in the light-green suit had said to his wife, who was sentimental about animals. Could you stay out by wishing to?

  I can always say it wasn’t me, I couldn’t help it, she thinks, visualizing the newspaper interview. But there may not be one, and she is therefore stuck in the present, with four Martians and one madman waiting for her to say something. So this is what goes on behind her back, so this is what it means to be alive, she’s sorry she wondered. But the sky is not flat any more, it’s bluer than ever and recedes away from her, clear but unfocused. You are my sunshine, Annette thinks; when skies are grey. The quality of the light has not changed. Am I one of them or not?

  The Resplendent Quetzal

  Sarah was sitting near the edge of the sacrificial well. She had imagined something smaller, more like a wishing well, but this was huge, and the water at the bottom wasn’t clear at all. It was mud-brown; a few clumps of reeds were growing over to one side, and the trees at the top dangled their roots, or were they vines, down the limestone walls into the water. Sarah thought there might be some point to being a sacrificial victim if the well were nicer, but you would never get her to jump into a muddy hole like that. They were probably pushed, or knocked on the head and thrown in. According to the guidebook the water was deep but it looked more like a swamp to her.

  Beside her a group of tourists was being rounded up by the guid
e, who obviously wanted to get the whole thing over with so he could cram them back onto their pink and purple striped turismo bus and relax. These were Mexican tourists, and Sarah found it reassuring that other people besides Canadians and Americans wore big hats and sunglasses and took pictures of everything. She wished she and Edward could make these excursions at a less crowded time of year, if they had to make them at all, but because of Edward’s teaching job they were limited to school holidays. Christmas was the worst. It would be the same even if he had a different job and they had children, though; but they didn’t have any.

  The guide shooed his charges back along the gravel path as if they were chickens, which was what they sounded like. He himself lingered beside Sarah, finishing his cigarette, one foot on a stone block, like a conquistador. He was a small dark man with several gold teeth, which glinted when he smiled. He was smiling at Sarah now, sideways, and she smiled back serenely. She liked it when these men smiled at her or even when they made those juicy sucking noises with their mouths as they walked behind her on the street; so long as they didn’t touch. Edward pretended not to hear them. Perhaps they did it so much because she was blonde: blondes were rare here. She didn’t think of herself as beautiful, exactly; the word she had chosen for herself some time ago was “comely.” Comely to look upon. You would never use that word for a thin woman.

  The guide tossed his cigarette butt into the sacrificial well and turned to follow his flock. Sarah forgot about him immediately. She’d felt something crawling up her leg, but when she looked nothing was there. She tucked the full skirt of her cotton dress in under her thighs and clamped it between her knees. This was the kind of place you could get flea bites, places with dirt on the ground, where people sat. Parks and bus terminals. But she didn’t care, her feet were tired and the sun was hot. She would rather sit in the shade and get bitten than rush around trying to see everything, which was what Edward wanted to do. Luckily the bites didn’t swell up on her the way they did on Edward.