Hag-Seed

by Margaret Atwood

  "I know that part," says Felix. His heart twists within him.

  "So some of the guys have kids," he says. "They've got photos of them, you're allowed to have those kinds of photos. Of your family, suppose you've got one. So we video the boat--we can use, like, a toy boat, bang it around, fix it so it looks falling apart; and it's dark, wind's blowing, it's night, and then in the sky we show the pictures of their kids. That's how the guys feel about it, with their kids: it's a cherubin type of thing that helps them get through the rough parts."

  How can Felix say no? "Let's give it a try," he says.

  "8Handz says he can cut photos like that in easy," says SnakeEye. "Into a video. He says he can make them flash, each one, just for a second. Like stars."

  "That sounds nice," says Felix. His throat is closing up on him. Why is a cornball idea like this wrecking him so completely? Sentimental sludge! Is he going to cry?

  Careful, he tells himself. Hold it together. Prospero's always in control. More or less.

  SnakeEye has more to say: he's shifting from foot to foot. Spit it out, Felix wants to snap. Let's have the second barrel. Finish me off.

  "We thought maybe you might like to add something of your own, Mr. Duke." His voice is shy. "If you've got a special photo like that. You could add it in to the sky thing too. Sort of like a guest cameo. The guys say you'd be welcome."

  His lost Miranda, three years old, on her swing, up in the sky, in her silver frame. Laughing with joy. That did preserve me.

  "No," Felix almost shouts. "No, I don't have anything suitable! But thank you all the same. Excuse me." They're not doing this to get at him. They can't possibly know anything about him, him and his remorse, his self-castigation, his endless grief.

  Half blinded, choking, he blunders down to the fifties-period demonstration cell and collapses onto a bottom bunk. Scratchy gray blankets. Arms crossed on knees, head bowed. Lost at sea, drifting here, drifting there. In a rotten carcass the very rats have quit.

  Moods pass. Things look up. Bustling around is always a help.

  On the weekend, Felix makes a trip into Toronto in search of costumes and props. He goes on the train, leaving his car in the Makeshiweg station lot because he can't face the traffic and the ordeal of trying to park. He's no longer used to urban crowds.

  The guys have made their lists of what they think is needed. He hasn't promised them certainty, but he's vowed to do his best for them. Anne-Marie has added the three Disney Princess dolls. She would have ordered them online, she said, but her credit cards are maxed out.

  He gets off the train at Union Station and begins his quest. Anne-Marie, after a search on her smartphone, has made him a map, with likely locations marked on it.

  His first stop is a toy store a few subway stops away. He can contemplate these kinds of stores now: Miranda is no longer at the age for toys. He walks past the front window, walks past again: it's only plastic in there, it's only cardboard. Surely he can risk going in.

  He takes a deep breath, plunges across the threshold into that world of damaged wishes, forlorn hopes. So bright, so shining, so out of reach for him. There's a fluttering in his chest, but he holds firm.

  Once safely inside, he heads for the beach-toy section: anything that might float is likely to be there. As he ponders the many primary-colored items on offer, a salesgirl comes up to him. "May I help you?" she says.

  "Thank you," says Felix. "I'd like two boats. One more like a rowboat, the other maybe bigger, more like a sailboat." No, he doesn't want a model kit. Something that can actually handle water, like a bath toy, or--

  "Ah," says the girl. "Grandchildren?"

  "Not exactly," says Felix. "I'm more like an uncle." Together they select the boats. The small one can be covered with patches, the big one will look good in the tempest.

  "Anything else?" the girl asks. "Can I interest you in some flotation devices for the little ones? Water wings--they're decorated like butterflies, cute for girls--and the noodles are very popular. Swim noodles," she adds, seeing his blank look.

  "Actually," says Felix, "do you have any, ah, Disney Princesses?"

  "Oh yes," says the girl, laughing. "We've got a surfeit of them!" She's a history major or something like that, because who else would say surfeit? "Over there." She's finding him droll. That's fine, he tells himself: droll can work for me.

  "Would you help me pick them out?" he asks, putting on his helpless face. "I need three."

  "What lucky nieces!" she says with an ironic quirk of her eyebrow. "Did you have any particular princesses in mind?"

  Felix consults his list. "Snow White," he reads. "Jasmine. Pocahontas."

  "My," says the girl. "How knowledgeable you are! About the tastes of girls. I bet you have daughters as well as the nieces!"

  Felix winces. Why, this is hell, he thinks, nor am I out of it. Damn Anne-Marie, I should have made her come with me and buy these things herself. He negotiates the purchase process, then asks that the future goddesses be deboxed, wrapped in tissue, and crammed into a single bag. Humiliating for them, but their apotheosis awaits.

  Carrying his two shopping bags, he locates the costume and joke emporium on Yonge Street that Anne-Marie has marked down for him. In the window is an almost-naked mannequin in stiletto heels, a sequined mask, and leather bondage gear, wielding a whip. Inside, he scopes through the vampire teeth, Batman capes, and zombie masks, trying not to look like a fetishist. Behind the counter is a heavily muscled young man with an array of chrome ornaments in his ears and a skull tattooed on his forearm.

  "Anything special?" he says with a demi-leer. "We've got some new leather, very nice. We do custom-fitted. Muzzles, shackles." He's spotted Felix for a masochist; not so far from the mark, thinks Felix.

  "Got any black wings?" he says. "Or any color really, except white."

  "Fallen angel, are we?" says the guy. "Sure. We've got some blue ones. Those do?"

  "Even better," says Felix. He buys the wings, a jar of blue face paint, a jar of muddy-green face paint, a clown makeup kit, a scaly green Godzilla hat with lizard eyes on top and upper teeth that frame the forehead, a pair of snakeskin-patterned leotards--these last three items for Caliban--and some werewolf masks, which is the closest he can get to spirit dogs.

  The shop doesn't have any ruffs, but there are four short velvet capes, so he adds them to the pile for the aristocrats. A handful of fake gold medallions on chains, with lions and dragons on them. Two cheap gold-sequinned wraparounds and a silver one: glisterwear, to allure the fools. A couple of packages of blue glitter confetti, several sheets of temporary tattoos: spiders, scorpions, snakes, the usual.

  The wings are hard to carry. He stops at a luggage place, buys a large wheeled suitcase, and stows the wings, the boats, the Disney Princesses, the werewolf masks, and the glistering trash. It all fits in with room to spare, which is good, because there's more to come.

  Next, a sports shop. He wants some ski goggles, he tells the healthy-looking young sales clerk: the iridescent kind of goggles. "These are our top sellers," says the youth. "Plutonite." There's a purple-blue sheen to the lenses, which are enormous and wraparound: a bug-eye effect. "For yourself?" says the clerk, raising his eyebrows; evidently the image of Felix on skis is a stretch for him.

  "No," says Felix. "A juvenile relative."

  "Good skier?"

  "Let's hope so," says Felix. "And I want fifteen black ski masks."

  "Fifteen?"

  "If you've got them. It's for a party."

  They only have eight in stock, but there's a Mark's Work Wearhouse in the Wilmot mall where he can doubtless pick up the rest of them, plus fifteen pairs of stretchy black gloves. He's unsure of how many Goblins he will finally need, but it's best to be well prepared.

  In a corner knick-knack shop that sells umbrellas and handbags he picks up a semi-opaque women's raincoat in aqua, with a cheerful pattern of ladybugs, bees, and butterflies. "The biggest one you've got," he tells the clerk. It's a Large, woman's
size, but despite that it may still be a tight squeeze for 8Handz. They can always cut it up the back and pin the two sides to his shirt: only the front needs to show.

  In a Canadian Tire outlet he buys a blue shower curtain, a stapler, a clothesline, some plastic clothes pegs--these last two for Stephano and Trinculo's clothes-stealing scene--and a green plastic bowl for the feast that's offered, then snatched away.

  Next he goes to a nearby Staples and scores a large pack of construction paper in various colors, a roll of brown wrapping paper, and some felt markers: cactuses, palm trees, those kinds of things, for the island sets. All you need is a few items: the brain completes the illusion.

  His last stop is at a women's swimwear boutique. "I'd like a bathing cap," he says to the elegant middle-aged woman who's presiding. "Blue, if you have one."

  "For your wife?" says the woman, smiling. "Going on a cruise?" Felix is tempted to tell her it's for a convicted criminal inside a prison who's playing the part of a magic flying blue alien, but he thinks better of it.

  "Yes," he says. "In March. To the Caribbean," he elaborates.

  "That sounds lovely," says the woman a little wistfully. It's her fate to provide for cruises but never to go on one.

  He views and rejects several bathing caps: one with daisies, one with a pattern of pink roses on aqua, one with waterproof bows. "She likes them really plain," he says. The best he can do is an impish cap with overlapping rubber scale-shaped scallops on it. "Do you have a larger size?" he asks. "The largest. She has a big head and a lot of hair," he feels compelled to explain.

  "She must be quite tall," says the clerk.

  "Statuesque," says Felix.

  Maybe there will be some way of stretching the cap, he hopes. He doesn't want 8Handz to look ridiculous, with a tiny blue cap perched on his head like a mushroom.

  Felix returns to Makeshiweg on the train, then wheels his big suitcase through the station parking lot to his car. More snow is falling; once he's back at the laneway leading to his hovel, it's a struggle to lug the suitcase through the fresh drifts to his door.

  Despite the local flurries the sun is setting, far to the southwest, in clouds the color of apricot. On the edge of the drifted field the shadows cast by the trees are bluish. Once, not so long ago, Miranda would have been outside at this time, taking advantage of the last rays of light to play in the snow, throwing handfuls of it into the air or making snow angels. He looks for footprints: no, she hasn't gone out recently. But he reminds himself that she doesn't leave footprints, so lightly does she tread.

  There's an earthy, ashen smell inside the house, as often when the fire's gone out. He turns on the heater. It whirs; there's the ping of warming metal. "Miranda?" he says.

  At first he thinks she isn't there, and his heart plummets. Then he detects her: she's over by their table, in the gathering shadows. She's waiting by the chess set, ready to resume their lesson. He's been teaching her some mid-game developments. When he opens the new suitcase, however, she leaves the table and comes over to look wonderingly at what he's brought.

  Such riches--the gold fabric, the blue rubber bathing cap, the little boats! The three Disney Princesses in their tawdry finery: she finds them enchanting.

  What is each thing? she wants to know. Where did it come from, what is it for? A bathing cap? Ski goggles? What is bathing, what is skiing? Of course these items are unknown to her: she knows so little about the outside world.

  "They're for the play," Felix tells her. Then he has to explain what a play is, what acting is, why people pretend to be someone they're not. He's never talked to her about the theatre; in fact, up until this time she has shown scant interest in where he goes when he's not in their two shoddy rooms, but now she listens attentively.

  --

  When he gets back from Fletcher Correctional on the Monday, exhausted after six hours of thrashing through Act II scene by scene, he finds she's read The Tempest. He shouldn't have left his spare playbook lying around so carelessly. Now that she's seen it, she's been seized by it. He should have known.

  He's never wanted her to go into the theatre. It's too hard a life, it's too rough on the ego. There are so many rejections, so many disappointments, so many failures. You need a heart of iron, a skin of steel, the willpower of a tiger, and more of these as a woman. It would be an especially difficult vocation for a girl like her: she's so tender-hearted, so sensitive. She's been protected from the worst in human nature: how would she cope, once brought face to face with that worst? She ought to choose a safer career path, such as medicine, or perhaps dentistry. And marry a stable and loving husband eventually, of course. She shouldn't fritter herself away on a world of illusions--of vanishing rainbows, of bursting bubbles, of cloud-capped towers--the way he himself has done.

  But the theatre must be in her blood, because now she's determined. She insists on being in the production. Worse, she wants to play Miranda. She feels the part is right for her, she tells him. It makes her so happy to think about it! She can hardly wait to meet the person who'll be playing Ferdinand. She knows they'll be spectacular together.

  "You can't play Miranda," he says as firmly as he can. "It's not possible." This is the first time he's opposed her directly in anything. How to tell her that no one but he himself would be able to see her? She'd never believe it. And if she did believe it, if she were forced to believe it, what would become of her then?

  Why not? she persists. Why can't she be Miranda? He's being so mean! He doesn't understand! He's treating her as if--

  "What, moody?" he says to her.

  Is that a pout? Her arms crossed in defiance? But why? she wants to know. Why can't I?

  "Because I already have an actress for Miranda," he says. "I'm sorry."

  She's sad about that, which makes him sad as well. He hates to hurt her feelings; it wrings his heart.

  She disappears--is she outside, walking in the dark, in the snow? Is she in her room, sulking on her bed, as teenage girls do?

  But she doesn't have a room, he reminds himself. She has no bed. She never sleeps.

  Now that they have costumes to try on the cast has become more energized. The play's becoming real for them. They spend a lot of time in front of the mirrors in Room Two, now renamed the Green Room, looking at themselves from various angles, making faces, trying out their lines. Doing the warmup exercises he's taught them.

  Tip of the tongue, top of the teeth, he can hear them saying. Ar, ar, ar: Repentance! El, el, el: Loss! Liberty! Ess, ess, ess: Sweet sprites! Pee, pee, pee: Perfection! Those who are to sing warm up their voices, chanting as Anne-Marie has taught them: Om Om Om! Bones! Gone! Ding dong bell!

  The keyboard arrives; after some wrangling, it's allowed past Security. Felix designates Room Four as the Music Room. Anne-Marie is working with the dancers. Before every session they warm up: she has them doing pushups and floor exercises. Patrolling the hallway of his little kingdom, eavesdropping, Felix can hear her: "Keep the beat! One-two, hit it on the two! Shake it! Shake it! Shake it or break it! From the core! Count! Move that pelvis! Yes!"

  One day 8Handz is elbows-deep in cables, the next it's mini-cameras. After that he's installing some tiny microphones and speakers, wireless ones: it would be contraindicated to drill holes in the walls.

  Felix has set up a folding screen in the corner of the main room, the one they'll use for the video viewing. Behind the screen are a desk with a computer screen and keyboard, and two chairs, one for 8Handz, one for himself. Felix can now snoop on any point in his domain.

  "Green Room," says 8Handz, calling it up onscreen. "Music Room. Demonstration holding cell, the old one. Now the other one. I've got them all labeled here, see? There's audio and video, and recording for both of those."

  "Exactly what I need," says Felix. "My brave spirit!"

  "You sure you got permission for all this?" says 8Handz a little anxiously. He doesn't want to incur any penalties: that might delay his parole.

  "You're in the clear," says
Felix. "Everything's part of the play. I take full responsibility. I've explained it to the authorities, they know what we're doing." Half true, but half will do. "Any questions, just refer them to me."

  "Cool," says 8Handz.

  --

  Anne-Marie and WonderBoy have been rehearsing their scenes, creditably for both. She's virginal and spontaneous, he's puppy-eyed and doting. He's puppy-eyed and doting offstage too, but Anne-Marie is affecting not to notice. She's settled on a den-mother act, aiming to inspire filial devotion rather than lust among her fellow cast members. To that effect she's taken up baking: she arrives with pans of caramel brownies, with chocolate-chip cookies, with cinnamon buns, and hands them around during coffee breaks. Dylan and Madison are awarded samples and make jokes about there being drugs in the goodies, isn't that what theatre people are into? Wild, crazed orgies? Anne-Marie smiles indulgently at them, as if they are clever nine-year-olds.

  Astonishing, thinks Felix, how someone so slender and girlish can appear so matronly. He wasn't wrong about her those many years ago: she's a fine actress.

  She's also taken charge of the goddesses. Snow White will be Iris, the messenger, she's decreed; Pocahontas will be Ceres, goddess of fertility; and Jasmine will play Juno, patroness of marriage. "But they can't wear this shit," she'd told Felix when he'd handed them over. She'd begun to peel off their finery.

  "I can see that," Felix said, "but where will we get..."

  "My knitting group can do it as a project."

  "I still can't see you in a knitting group." Knitting groups used to be for missionary aunts and World War One matrons turning out socks for the boys in the trenches, not for hip young actresses.

  "It calms the nerves. Knitting. You should try it. Guys are doing it too."

  "I'll pass," said Felix. "You think your group will want to take this on? Doll-dressing?"

  "They're pretty rad," she'd said. "They'll love it. Rainbow colors for Iris; fruit and tomatoes and, you know, wheat sheaves and stuff for Ceres; a peacock-feather design for Juno."