The Handmaid's Tale(55)

I don’t know why I expect him to appear on this wall. There are hundreds of other places they could have killed him. But I can’t shake the idea that he’s in there, at this moment, behind the blank red bricks.

I try to imagine which building he’s in. I can remember where the buildings are, inside the Wall; we used to be able to walk freely there, when it was a university. We still go in there once in a while, for Women’s Salvagings. Most of the buildings are red brick too; some have arched doorways, a Romanesque effect, from the nineteenth century. We aren’t allowed inside the buildings any more; but who would want to go in? Those buildings belong to the Eyes.

Maybe he’s in the Library. Somewhere in the vaults. The stacks.

The Library is like a temple. There’s a long flight of white steps, leading to the rank of doors. Then, inside, another white staircase going up. To either side of it, on the wall, there are angels. Also there are men fighting, or about to fight, looking clean and noble, not dirty and blood-stained and smelly the way they must have looked. Victory is on one side of the inner doorway, leading them on, and Death is on the other. It’s a mural in honour of some war or other. The men on the side of Death are still alive. They’re going to Heaven. Death is a beautiful woman, with wings and one breast almost bare; or is that Victory? I can’t remember.

They won’t have destroyed that.


We turn our backs to the Wall, head left. Here there are several empty storefronts, their glass windows scrawled with soap. I try to remember what was sold in them, once. Cosmetics? Jewellery? Most of the stores carrying things for men are still open; it’s just the ones dealing in what they call vanities that have been shut down.

At the corner is the store known as Soul Scrolls. It’s a franchise: there are Soul Scrolls in every city centre, in every suburb, or so they say. It must make a lot of profit.

The window of Soul Scrolls is shatterproof. Behind it are printout machines, row on row of them; these machines are known as Holy Rollers, but only among us, it’s a disrespectful nickname. What the machines print is prayers, roll upon roll, prayers going out endlessly. They’re ordered by Compuphone, I’ve overheard the Commander’s Wife doing it. Ordering prayers from Soul Scrolls is supposed to be a sign of piety and faithfulness to the regime, so of course the Commanders’ Wives do it a lot. It helps their husbands’ careers.

There are five different prayers: for health, wealth, a death, a birth, a sin. You pick the one you want, punch in the number, then punch in your own number so your account will be debited, and punch in the number of times you want the prayer repeated.

The machines talk as they print out the prayers; if you like, you can go inside and listen to them, the toneless metallic voices repeating the same thing over and over. Once the prayers have been printed out and said, the paper rolls back through another slot and is recycled into fresh paper again. There are no people inside the building: the machines run by themselves. You can’t hear the voices from outside; only a murmur, a hum, like a devout crowd, on its knees. Each machine has an eye painted in gold on the side, flanked by two small golden wings.

I try to remember what this place sold when it was a store, before it was turned into Soul Scrolls. I think it was lingerie. Pink and silver boxes, coloured pantyhose, brassieres with lace, silk scarves? Something lost.

Ofglen and I stand outside Soul Scrolls, looking through the shatterproof windows, watching the prayers well out from the machines and disappear again through the slot, back to the realm of the unsaid. Now I shift my gaze. What I see is not the machines, but Ofglen, reflected in the glass of the window. She’s looking straight at me.

We can see into each other’s eyes. This is the first time I’ve ever seen Ofglen’s eyes, directly, steadily, not aslant. Her face is oval pink, plump but not fat, her eyes roundish.

She holds my stare in the glass, level, unwavering. Now it’s hard to look away. There’s a shock in this seeing; it’s like seeing somebody naked, for the first time. There is risk, suddenly, in the air between us, where there was none before. Even this meeting of eyes holds danger. Though there’s nobody near.

At last Ofglen speaks. “Do you think God listens,” she says, “to these machines?” She is whispering: our habit at the Centre.

In the past this would have been a trivial enough remark, a kind of scholarly speculation. Right now it’s treason.

I could scream. I could run away. I could turn from her silently, to show her I won’t tolerate this kind of talk in my presence. Subversion, sedition, blasphemy, heresy, all rolled into one.