Authors: Margaret Atwood
But despite all the machinery of destruction which is aimed at them, our distant relatives are more than holding their own. They feed on the crops and herd-animals and even on the flesh of the blood-creatures; they live in their homes, devour their clothes, hide and flourish in the very cracks of their floors. When the blood-creatures have succeeded at last in overbreeding themselves, as it seems their intention to do, or in exterminating one another, rest assured that our kind, already superior in both numbers and adaptability, will be poised to achieve the ascendancy which is ours by natural right.
This will not happen tomorrow, but it will happen. As you know, my sisters, we have long been a patient race.
Y
OU CAN COME
to the end of talking, about women, talking. In restaurants, cafés, kitchens, less frequently in bars or pubs, about relatives, relations, relationships, illnesses, jobs, children, men; about nuance, hunch, intimation, intuition, shadow; about themselves and each other; about what he said to her and she said to her and she said back; about what they feel.
Something more definite, more outward then, some action, to drain the inner swamp, sweep the inner fluff out from under the inner bed, harden the edges. Men at sea, for instance. Not on a submarine, too claustrophobic and smelly, but something more bracing, a tang of salt, cold water, all over your calloused body, cuts and bruises, hurricanes, bravery and above all no women. Women are replaced by water, by wind, by the ocean, shifting and treacherous; a man has to know what to do, to navigate, to sail, to bail, so reach for the How-To book, and out here it’s what he said to him, or didn’t say, a narrowing of the eyes, sizing the bastard up before the pounce, the knife to the gut, and here comes a wave, hang on to the shrouds, all teeth grit, all muscles bulge together. Or sneaking along the gangway, the passageway, the right of way, the Milky Way, in the dark, your eyes shining like digital wristwatches, and the bushes, barrels, scuppers, ditches, filthy
with enemies, and you on the prowl for adrenalin and loot. Corpses of your own making deliquesce behind you as you reach the cave, abandoned city, safe, sliding panel, hole in the ground, and rich beyond your wildest dreams!
What now? Spend it on some woman, in a restaurant. And there I am, back again at the eternal table, which exists so she can put her elbows on it, over a glass of wine, while he says. What does he say? He says the story of how he got here, to her. She says: But what did you feel?
And his eyes roll wildly, quick as a wink he tries to think of something else, a cactus, a porpoise, never give yourself away, while the seductive waves swell the carpet beneath the feet and the wind freshens among the tablecloths. They’re all around her, she can see it now, one per woman per table. Men, at sea.
H
E CONCEIVES
himself in alien territory. Not his turf – alien! Listen! The rushing of the red rivers, the rustling of the fresh leaves in the dusk, always in the dusk, under the dark stars, and the wish-wash, wish-wash of the heavy soothing sea, which becomes – yes! – the drums of the natives, beating, beating, louder, faster, lower, slower. Are they hostile? Who knows, because they’re invisible.
He sleeps and wakes, wakes and sleeps, and suddenly all is movement and suffering and terror and he is shot out gasping for breath into blinding light and a place that’s even more dangerous, where food is scarce and two enormous giants stand guard over his wooden prison. Shout as he might, rattle the bars, nobody comes to let him out. One of the giants is boisterous and hair-covered, with a big stick; the other walks more softly but has two enormous bulgy comforts which she selfishly refuses to detach and give away, to him. Neither of them looks anything like him, and their language is incomprehensible.
Aliens! What can he do? And to make it worse, they surround him with animals – bears, rabbits, cats, giraffes – each one of
them stuffed and, evidently, castrated, because although he looks and looks, all they have at best is a tail. Is this the fate the aliens have in store for him, as well?
Where did I come from?
he asks, for what will not be the first time.
Out of me
, the bulgy one says fondly, as if he should be pleased. Out of
where?
Out of
what?
He covers his ears, shutting out the untruth, the shame, the pulpy horror. It is not to be thought, it is not to be borne!
No wonder that at the first opportunity he climbs out the window and joins a gang of other explorers, each one of them an exile, an immigrant, like himself. Together they set out on their solitary journeys.
What are they searching for? Their homeland. Their true country. The place they came from, which can’t possibly be here.
All men are created equal, as someone said who was either very hopeful or very mischievous. What a lot of anxiety could have been avoided if he’d only kept his mouth shut.
Sigmund was wrong about the primal scene: Mom and Dad, keyhole version. That might be upsetting, true, but there’s another one:
Five guys standing outside, pissing into a snowbank, a river, the underbrush, pretending not to look down. Or maybe
not
looking down: gazing upward, at the stars, which gives us the origin of astronomy. Anything to avoid comparisons, which aren’t so much odious as intimidating.
And not only astronomy: quantum physics, engineering, laser technology, all numeration between zero and infinity. Something safely abstract, detached from you; a transfer of the obsession with size to anything at all. Lord, Lord, they measure everything: the height of the Great Pyramids, the rate of fingernail growth, the multiplication of viruses, the sands of the sea, the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin. And then it’s only a short step to proving that God is a mathematical equation. Not a person. Not a body, Heaven forbid. Not one like yours. Not an earthbound one, not one with size and therefore pain.
When you’re feeling blue, just keep on whistling. Just keep on measuring. Just don’t look down.
The history of war is a history of killed bodies. That’s what war is: bodies killing other bodies, bodies being killed.
Some of the killed bodies are those of women and children, as a side-effect you might say. Fallout, shrapnel, napalm, rape and skewering, anti-personnel devices. But most of the killed bodies are men. So are most of those doing the killing.
Why do men want to kill the bodies of other men? Women don’t want to kill the bodies of other women. By and large. As far as we know.
Here are some traditional reasons: Loot. Territory. Lust for power. Hormones. Adrenalin high. Rage. God. Flag. Honour. Righteous anger. Revenge. Oppression. Slavery. Starvation. Defence of one’s life. Love; or, a desire to protect the women and children. From what? From the bodies of other men.
What men are most afraid of is not lions, not snakes, not the dark, not women. Not any more. What men are most afraid of is the body of another man.
Men’s bodies are the most dangerous things on earth.
On the other hand, it could be argued that men don’t have any bodies at all. Look at the magazines! Magazines for women have women’s bodies on the covers, magazines for men have women’s bodies on the covers. When men appear on the covers of magazines, it’s magazines about money, or about world news. Invasions, rocket launches, political coups, interest rates, elections, medical breakthroughs.
Reality
. Not
entertainment
. Such magazines show only the heads, the unsmiling heads, the talking heads, the decision-making heads, and maybe a little glimpse, a coy flash of suit. How do we know there’s a body, under all that discreet pinstriped tailoring? We don’t, and maybe there isn’t.
What does this lead us to suppose? That women are bodies with heads attached, and men are heads with bodies attached? Or not, depending.
You can have a body, though, if you’re a rock star, an athlete, or a gay model. As I said,
entertainment
. Having a body is not altogether serious.
Or else too serious for words.
The thing is: men’s bodies aren’t dependable. Now it does, now it doesn’t, and so much for the triumph of the will. A man is the puppet of his body, or vice versa. He and it make tomfools of each other: it lets him down. Or up, at the wrong
moment. Just stare hard out the schoolroom window and recite the multiplication tables, and pretend this isn’t happening! Your face at least can be immobile. Easier to have a trained dog, which will do what you want it to, nine times out of ten.
The other thing is: men’s bodies are detachable. Consider the history of statuary: the definitive bits get knocked off so easily, through revolution or prudery or simple transportation, with leaves stuck on for substitutes, fig or grape; or, in more northern climates, maple. A man and his body are soon parted.
In the old old days, you became a man through blood. Through incisions, tattoos, splinters of wood; through an intimate wound, and the refusal to flinch. Through being beaten by older boys, in the dormitory, with a wooden paddle you were forced to carve yourself. The torments varied, but they were all torments.
It’s a boy
, they cry with joy.
Let’s cut some off!
Every morning I get down on my knees and thank God for not creating me a man. A man so chained to unpredictability. A man so much at the mercy of himself. A man so prone to sadness. A man who has to take it like a man. A man, who can’t fake it.
In the gap between desire and enactment, noun and verb, intention and infliction,
want
and
have
, compassion begins.
Bluebeard ran off with the third sister, intelligent though beautiful, and shut her up in his palace.
Everything here is yours, my dear
, he said to her.
Just don’t open the small door. I will give you the key, however. I expect you not to use it
.
Believe it or not, this sister was in love with him, even though she knew he was a serial killer. She roamed over the whole palace, ignoring the jewels and the silk dresses and the piles of gold. Instead she went through the medicine cabinet and the kitchen drawers, looking for clues to his uniqueness. Because she loved him, she wanted to understand him. She also wanted to cure him. She thought she had the healing touch.
But she didn’t find out a lot. In his closet there were suits and ties and matching shoes and casual wear, some golf outfits and a tennis racquet, and some jeans for when he wanted to rake up the leaves. Nothing unusual, nothing kinky, nothing sinister. She had to admit to being a little disappointed.
She found his previous women quite easily. They were in the linen closet, neatly cut up and ironed flat and folded, stored in mothballs and lavender. Bachelors acquire such domestic skills. The women didn’t make much of an impression on her, except the one who looked like his mother. That one she took out with rubber gloves on and slipped into the incinerator in the garden.
Maybe it was his mother
, she thought.
If so, good riddance
.
She read through his large collection of cookbooks, and prepared the dishes on the most-thumbed pages. At dinner he was politeness itself, pulling out her chair and offering more wine and leading the conversation around to topics of the day. She said gently that she wished he would talk more about his feelings. He said that if she had his feelings, she wouldn’t want to talk about them either. This intrigued her. She was now more in love with him and more curious than ever.
Well
, she thought,
I’ve tried everything else; it’s the small door or nothing. Anyway, he gave me the key
. She waited until he had gone to the office or wherever it was he went, and made
straight for the small door. When she opened it, what should be inside but a dead child. A small dead child, with its eyes wide open.
It’s mine
, he said, coming up behind her.
I gave birth to it. I warned you. Weren’t you happy with me?
It looks like you
, she said, not turning around, not knowing what else to say. She realized now that he was not sane in any known sense of the word, but she still hoped to talk her way out of it. She could feel the love seeping out of her. Her heart was dry ice.
It is me
, he said sadly.
Don’t be afraid
.
Where are we going?
she said, because it was getting dark, and there was suddenly no floor.
Deeper
, he said.
Those ones. Why do women like them? They have nothing to offer, none of the usual things. They have short attention spans, falling-apart clothes, old beat-up cars, if any. The cars break down, and they try to fix them, and don’t succeed, and give up. They go on long walks from which they forget to return. They prefer weeds to flowers. They tell trivial fibs. They perform clumsy tricks with oranges and pieces of string, hoping desperately that someone will laugh. They don’t put food on the table. They don’t make money. Don’t, can’t, won’t.
They offer nothing. They offer the great clean sweep of nothing, the unseen sky during a blizzard, the dark pause between moon and moon. They offer their poverty, an empty wooden bowl; the bowl of a beggar, whose gift is to ask. Look
into it, look down deep, where potential coils like smoke, and you might hear anything. Nothing has yet been said.
They have bodies, however. Their bodies are unlike the bodies of other men. Their bodies are verbalized.
Mouth, eye, hand, foot
, they say. Their bodies have weight, and move over the ground, step by step, like yours. Like you they roll in the hot mud of the sunlight, like you they are amazed by morning, like you they can taste the wind, like you they sing.
Love
, they say, and at the time they always mean it, as you do also. They can say
lust
as well, and
disgust;
you wouldn’t trust them otherwise. They say the worst things you have ever dreamed. They open locked doors. All this is given to them for nothing.