The Handmaid's Tale(34)

He finds it painful to move his hands, painful to move. He doesn’t know what he’s accused of. A problem. There must be something, some accusation. Otherwise why are they keeping him, why isn’t he already dead? He must know something they want to know. I can’t imagine. I can’t imagine he hasn’t already said whatever it is. I would.

He is surrounded by a smell, his own, the smell of a cooped-up animal in a dirty cage. I imagine him resting, because I can’t bear to imagine him at any other time, just as I can’t imagine anything below his collar, above his cuffs. I don’t want to think what they’ve done to his body. Does he have shoes? No, and the floor is cold and wet. Does he know I’m here, alive, that I’m thinking about him? I have to believe so. In reduced circumstances you have to believe all kinds of things. I believe in thought transference now, vibrations in the ether, that sort of junk. I never used to.

I also believe that they didn’t catch him or catch up with him after all, that he made it, reached the bank, swam the river, crossed the border, dragged himself up on the far shore, an island, teeth chattering; found his way to a nearby farmhouse, was allowed in, with suspicion at first, but then when they understood who he was, they were friendly, not the sort who would turn him in, perhaps they were Quakers, they will smuggle him inland, from house to house, the woman made him some hot coffee and gave him a set of her husband’s clothes. I picture the clothes. It comforts me to dress him warmly.

He made contact with the others, there must be a resistance, a government in exile. Someone must be out there, taking care of things. I believe in the resistance as I believe there can be no light without shadow; or rather, no shadow unless there is also light. There must be a resistance, or where do all the criminals come from, on the television?

Any day now there may be a message from him. It will come in the most unexpected way, from the least likely person, someone I never would have suspected. Under my plate, on the dinner tray? Slipped into my hand as I reach the tokens across the counter in All Flesh?

The message will say that I must have patience: sooner or later he will get me out, we will find her, wherever they’ve put her. She’ll remember us and we will be all three of us together. Meanwhile I must endure, keep myself safe for later. What has happened to me, what’s happening to me now won’t make any difference to him, he loves me anyway, he knows it isn’t my fault. The message will say that also. It’s this message, which may never arrive, that keeps me alive. I believe in the message.

The things I believe can’t all be true, though one of them must be. But I believe in all of them, all three versions of Luke, at one and the same time. This contradictory way of believing seems to me, right now, the only way I can believe anything. Whatever the truth is, I will be ready for it.

This also is a belief of mine. This also may be untrue.

One of the gravestones in the cemetery near the earliest church has an anchor on it and an hourglass, and the words: In Hope.

In Hope. Why did they put that above a dead person? Was it the corpse hoping, or those still alive?

Does Luke hope?





VIII

BIRTH DAY





CHAPTER NINETEEN


I’m dreaming that I am awake.

I dream that I get out of bed and walk across the room, not this room, and go out the door, not this door. I’m at home, one of my homes, and she’s running to meet me, in her small green nightgown with the sunflower on the front, her feet bare, and I pick her up and feel her arms and legs go around me and I begin to cry, because I know then that I’m not awake. I’m back in this bed, trying to wake up, and I wake up and sit on the edge of the bed, and my mother comes in with a tray and asks me if I’m feeling better. When I was sick, as a child, she had to stay home from work. But I’m not awake this time either.

After these dreams I do awake, and I know I’m really awake because there is the wreath, on the ceiling, and my curtains hanging like drowned white hair. I feel drugged. I consider this: maybe they’re drugging me. Maybe the life I think I’m living is a paranoid delusion.

Not a hope. I know where I am, and who, and what day it is. These are the tests, and I am sane. Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so I will have enough, when the time comes.


Greyness comes through the curtains, hazy bright, not much sun today. I get out of bed, go to the window, kneel on the window seat, the hard little cushion, FAITH, and look out. There is nothing to be seen.

I wonder what has become of the other two cushions. There must have been three, once. HOPE and CHARITY, where have they been stowed? Serena Joy has tidy habits. She wouldn’t throw away anything not quite worn out. One for Rita, one for Cora?