The Handmaid's Tale (19 page)

Sometimes, however, Serena Joy is out, visiting another Commander's Wife, a sick one; that's the only place she could conceivably go, by herself, in the evenings. She takes food, a cake or pie or loaf of bread baked by Rita, or a jar of jelly, made from the mint leaves that grow in her garden. They get sick a lot, these Wives of the Commanders. It adds interest to their lives. As for us, the Handmaids and even the Marthas, we avoid illness. The Marthas don't want to be forced to retire, because who knows where they go? You don't see that many old women around any more. And as for us, any real illness, anything lingering, weakening, a loss of flesh or appetite, a fall of hair, a failure of the glands, would be terminal. I remember Cora, earlier in the spring, staggering around even though she had the flu, holding onto the doorframes when she thought no one was looking, being careful not to cough. A slight cold, she said when Serena asked her.

Serena herself sometimes takes a few days off, tucked up in bed. Then she's the one to get the company, the Wives rustling up the
stairs, clucking and cheerful; she gets the cakes and pies, the jelly, the bouquets of flowers from their gardens.

They take turns. There is some sort of list, invisible, unspoken. Each is careful not to hog more than her share of the attention.

On the nights when Serena is due to be out, I'm sure to be summoned.

The first time, I was confused. His needs were obscure to me, and what I could perceive of them seemed to me ridiculous, laughable, like a fetish for lace-up shoes.

Also, there had been a letdown of sorts. What had I been expecting, behind that closed door, the first time? Something unspeakable, down on all fours perhaps, perversions, whips, mutilations? At the very least some minor sexual manipulation, some bygone peccadillo now denied him, prohibited by law and punishable by amputation. To be asked to play Scrabble, instead, as if we were an old married couple, or two children, seemed kinky in the extreme, a violation too in its own way. As a request it was opaque.

So when I left the room, it still wasn't clear to me what he wanted, or why, or whether I could fulfil any of it for him. If there's to be a bargain, the terms of exchange must be set forth. This was something he certainly had not done. I thought he might be toying, some cat-and-a-mouse routine, but now I think that his motives and desires weren't obvious even to him. They had not yet reached the level of words.

The second evening began in the same way as the first. I went to the door, which was closed, knocked on it, was told to come in. Then followed the same two games, with the smooth beige counters.
Prolix, quartz, quandary, sylph, rhythm
, all the old tricks with consonants I could dream up or remember. My tongue felt thick with the effort of spelling. It was like using a language I'd once known but
had nearly forgotten, a language having to do with customs that had long before passed out of the world:
café au lait
at an outdoor table, with a brioche, absinthe in a tall glass, or shrimp in a cornucopia of newspaper; things I'd once read about but had never seen. It was like trying to walk without crutches, like those phony scenes in old TV movies.
You can do it. I know you can
. That was the way my mind lurched and stumbled, among the sharp
r's
and
t's
, sliding over the ovoid vowels as if on pebbles.

The Commander was patient when I hesitated, or asked him for a correct spelling. We can always look it up in the dictionary, he said. He said
we
. The first time, I realized, he'd let me win.

That night I was expecting everything to be the same, including the good-night kiss. But when we'd finished the second game, he sat back in his chair. He placed his elbows on the arms of the chair, the tips of his fingers together, and looked at me.

I have a little present for you, he said.

He smiled a little. Then he pulled open the top drawer of his desk and took something out. He held it a moment, casually enough, between thumb and finger, as if deciding whether or not to give it to me. Although it was upside-down from where I was sitting, I recognized it. They were once common enough. It was a magazine, a women's magazine it looked like from the picture, a model on glossy paper, hair blown, neck scarfed, mouth lipsticked; the fall fashions. I thought such magazines had all been destroyed, but here was one, left over, in a Commander's private study, where you'd least expect to find such a thing. He looked down at the model, who was right-side-up to him; he was still smiling, that wistful smile of his. It was a look you'd give to an almost extinct animal, at the zoo.

Staring at the magazine, as he dangled it before me like fishbait, I wanted it. I wanted it with a force that made the ends of my fingers ache. At the same time I saw this longing of mine as trivial and absurd, because I'd taken such magazines lightly enough once. I'd
read them in dentists' offices, and sometimes on planes; I'd bought them to take to hotel rooms, a device to fill in empty time while I was waiting for Luke. After I'd leafed through them I would throw them away, for they were infinitely discardable, and a day or two later I wouldn't be able to remember what had been in them.

Though I remembered now. What was in them was promise. They dealt in transformations; they suggested an endless series of possibilities, extending like the reflections in two mirrors set facing one another, stretching on, replica after replica, to the vanishing point. They suggested one adventure after another, one wardrobe after another, one improvement after another, one man after another. They suggested rejuvenation, pain overcome and transcended, endless love. The real promise in them was immortality.

This was what he was holding, without knowing it. He riffled the pages. I felt myself leaning forward.

It's an old one, he said, a curio of sorts. From the seventies, I think. A
Vogue
. This like a wine connoisseur dropping a name. I thought you might like to look at it.

I hung back. He might be testing me, to see how deep my indoctrination had really gone. It's not permitted, I said.

In here, it is, he said quietly. I saw the point. Having broken the main taboo, why should I hesitate over another one, something minor? Or another, or another; who could tell where it might stop? Behind this particular door, taboo dissolved.

I took the magazine from him and turned it the right way round. There they were again, the images of my childhood: bold, striding, confident, their arms flung out as if to claim space, their legs apart, feet planted squarely on the earth. There was something Renaissance about the pose, but it was princes I thought of, not coiffed and ringleted maidens. Those candid eyes, shadowed with makeup, yes, but like the eyes of cats, fixed for the pounce. No quailing, no
clinging there, not in those capes and rough tweeds, those boots that came to the knee. Pirates, these women, with their ladylike briefcases for the loot and their horsy, acquisitive teeth.

I felt the Commander watching me as I turned the pages. I knew I was doing something I shouldn't have been doing, and that he found pleasure in seeing me do it. I should have felt evil; by Aunt Lydia's lights, I was evil. But I didn't feel evil. Instead I felt like an old Edwardian seaside postcard:
naughty
. What was he going to give me next? A girdle?

Why do you have this? I asked him.

Some of us, he said, retain an appreciation for the old things.

But these were supposed to have been burned, I said. There were house-to-house searches, bonfires …

What's dangerous in the hands of the multitudes, he said, with what may or may not have been irony, is safe enough for those whose motives are …

Beyond reproach, I said.

He nodded gravely. Impossible to tell whether or not he meant it.

But why show it to me? I said, and then felt stupid. What could he possibly say? That he was amusing himself, at my expense? For he must have known how painful it was to me, to be reminded of the former time.

I wasn't prepared for what he actually did say. Who else could I show it to? he said, and there it was again, that sadness.

Should I go further? I thought. I didn't want to push him, too far, too fast. I knew I was dispensable. Nevertheless I said, too softly, How about your Wife?

He seemed to think about that. No, he said. She wouldn't understand. Anyway, she won't talk to me much any more. We don't seem to have much in common, these days.

So there it was, out in the open: his wife didn't understand him.

That's what I was there for, then. The same old thing. It was too banal to be true.

On the third night I asked him for some hand lotion. I didn't want to sound begging, but I wanted what I could get.

Some what? he said, courteous as ever. He was across the desk from me. He didn't touch me much, except for that one obligatory kiss. No pawing, no heavy breathing, none of that; it would have been out of place, somehow, for him as well as for me.

Hand lotion, I said. Or face lotion. Our skin gets very dry. For some reason I said
our
instead of
my
. I would have liked to ask also for some bath oil, in those little coloured globules you used to be able to get, that were so much like magic to me when they existed in the round glass bowl in my mother's bathroom at home. But I thought he wouldn't know what they were. Anyway, they probably weren't made any more.

Dry? the Commander said, as if he'd never thought about that before. What do you do about it?

We use butter, I said. When we can get it. Or margarine. A lot of the time it's margarine.

Butter, he said, musing. That's very clever. Butter. He laughed.

I could have slapped him.

I think I could get some of that, he said, as if indulging a child's wish for bubble gum. But she might smell it on you.

I wondered if this fear of his came from past experience. Long past: lipstick on the collar, perfume on the cuffs, a scene, late at night, in some kitchen or bedroom. A man devoid of such experience wouldn't think of that. Unless he's craftier than he looks.

I'd be careful, I said. Besides, she's never that close to me.

Sometimes she is, he said.

I looked down. I'd forgotten about that. I could feel myself blushing. I won't use it on those nights, I said.

On the fourth evening he gave me the hand lotion, in an unlabelled plastic bottle. It wasn't very good quality; it smelled faintly of vegetable oil. No Lily of the Valley for me. It may have been something they made up for use in hospitals, on bedsores. But I thanked him anyway.

The trouble is, I said, I don't have anywhere to keep it.

In your room, he said, as if it were obvious.

They'd find it, I said. Someone would find it.

Why? he asked, as if he really didn't know. Maybe he didn't. It wasn't the first time he gave evidence of being truly ignorant of the real conditions under which we lived.

They look, I said. They look in all our rooms.

What for? he said.

I think I lost control then, a little. Razor blades, I said. Books, writing, black-market stuff. All the things we aren't supposed to have. Jesus Christ, you ought to know. My voice was angrier than I'd intended, but he didn't even wince.

Then you'll have to keep it here, he said.

So that's what I did.

He watched me smoothing it over my hands and then my face with that same air of looking in through the bars. I wanted to turn my back on him – it was as if he were in the bathroom with me – but I didn't dare.

For him, I must remember, I am only a whim.

W
hen the night for the Ceremony came round again, two or three weeks later, I found that things were changed. There was an awkwardness now that there hadn't been before. Before, I'd treated it as a job, an unpleasant job to be gone through as fast as possible so it could be over with. Steel yourself, my mother used to say, before examinations I didn't want to take or swims in cold water. I never thought much at the time about what the phrase meant, but it had something to do with metal, with armour, and that's what I would do, I would steel myself. I would pretend not to be present, not in the flesh.

This state of absence, of existing apart from the body, had been true of the Commander too, I knew now. Probably he thought about other things the whole time he was with me; with us, for of course Serena Joy was there on those evenings also. He might have been thinking about what he did during the day, or about playing golf, or about what he'd had for dinner. The sexual act, although he performed it in a perfunctory way, must have been largely unconscious, for him, like scratching himself.

But that night, the first since the beginning of whatever this new arrangement was between us – I had no name for it – I felt shy of him. I felt, for one thing, that he was actually looking at me, and I didn't like it. The lights were on, as usual, since Serena Joy always avoided anything that would have created an aura of romance or eroticism, however slight: overhead lights, harsh despite the canopy. It was like being on an operating table, in the full glare; like being on a stage. I was conscious that my legs were hairy, in the straggly way of legs that have once been shaved but have grown back; I was conscious of my armpits too, although of course he couldn't see them. I felt uncouth. This act of copulation, fertilization perhaps, which should have been no more to me than a bee is to a flower, had become for me indecorous, an embarrassing breach of propriety, which it hadn't been before.

He was no longer a thing to me. That was the problem. I realized it that night, and the realization has stayed with me. It complicates.

Serena Joy had changed for me, too. Once I'd merely hated her, for her part in what was being done to me; and because she hated me too and resented my presence, and because she would be the one to raise my child, should I be able to have one after all. But now, although I still hated her, no more so than when she was gripping my hands so hard that her rings bit my flesh, pulling my hands back as well, which she must have done on purpose to make me as uncomfortable as she could, the hatred was no longer pure and simple. Partly I was jealous of her; but how could I be jealous of a woman so obviously dried-up and unhappy? You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself. Nevertheless I was jealous.