The Testaments

52

I had a disagreeable jolt last evening, my reader. I was scratching furtively away in the deserted library with my pen and my blue drawing ink, with my door open for air flow, when Aunt Vidala’s head suddenly thrust itself around the corner of my private carrel. I did not startle—I have nerves of curable polymers, like those of plastinated corpses—but I coughed, a nervous reflex, and slid the closed Apologia Pro Vita Sua over the page I’d been writing on.

“Ah, Aunt Lydia,” said Aunt Vidala. “I hope you’re not catching a cold. Shouldn’t you be in bed?” The big sleep, I thought: that’s what you’re wishing for me.

“Just an allergy,” I said. “Many people have them at this time of year.” She could not deny this, being a major sufferer herself.

“I’m sorry for intruding,” she said untruthfully. Her glance moved over Cardinal Newman’s title. “Always researching, I see,” she said. “Such a notorious heretic.”

“Know your enemy,” I said. “How may I help you?”

“I have something crucial to discuss. May I offer you a cup of warm milk at the Schlafly Café?” she said.

“How kind,” I replied. I replaced Cardinal Newman on my shelf, turning my back to her in order to slip my blue-inked page within.

Soon the two of us were sitting at a café table, me with my warm milk, Aunt Vidala with her mint tea. “There was something odd about the Pearl Girls Thanks Giving,” she began.

“And what was that? I thought it all went much as usual.”

“That new girl, Jade. I am not convinced by her,” said Aunt Vidala. “She seems unlikely.”

“They all seem unlikely at first,” I said. “But they want a safe haven, protected from poverty, exploitation, and the depredations of the so-called modern life. They want stability, they want order, they want clear guidelines. It will take her a little time to settle in.”

“Aunt Beatrice told me about that ridiculous tattoo on her arm. I suppose she told you as well. Really! God and Love! As if we could be taken in by such a crude attempt to curry favour! And such heretical theology! It reeks of an attempt to deceive. How do you know she’s not a Mayday infiltrator?”

“We’ve been successful in detecting those in the past,” I said. “As for the bodily mutilation, the youth of Canada are pagans; they have all kinds of barbaric symbols branded on themselves. I believe it shows a good intention; at least it is not a dragonfly or a skull or some such item. But we will keep a close eye on her.”

“We should have that tattoo removed. It’s blasphemous. The word God is holy, it does not belong on an arm.”

“Removal would be too painful for her at the moment. It can wait until later. We don’t want to discourage our young Supplicant.”

“If she is a true one, which I very much doubt. It would be typical of Mayday to attempt a ruse of this kind. I think she should be interrogated.” By herself, was what she meant. She does enjoy those interrogations a little too much.

“The more haste, the less speed,” I said. “I prefer more subtle methods.”

“You didn’t prefer them in the early days,” said Vidala. “You were all for the primary colours. You didn’t used to mind a little blood.” She sneezed. Perhaps we should do something about the mildew in this café, I thought. Then again, perhaps not.

It being late, I called Commander Judd in his office at home and requested a crash meeting, which was granted. I told my driver to wait for me outside.

The door was opened by Judd’s Wife, Shunammite. She was not looking at all well: thin, white-faced, hollow-eyed. She’d lasted a comparatively long time for a Judd Wife; but at least she’d produced a baby, Unbaby though it had been. Now, however, her time appeared to be running out. I wondered what Judd had been putting in her soup. “Oh, Aunt Lydia,” she said. “Please come in. The Commander is expecting you.”

Why had she opened the door herself? Door-opening is a Martha’s job. She must have wanted something from me. I dropped my voice. “Shunammite, my dear.” I smiled. “Are you ill?” She had once been such a lively young girl, if brash and aggravating, but she was now a sickly wraith.

“I’m not supposed to say so,” she whispered. “The Commander tells me it’s nothing. He says I invent complaints. But I know there’s something wrong with me.”

“I can have our clinic at Ardua Hall do an evaluation,” I said. “A few tests.”

“I would have to get his permission,” she said. “He won’t let me go.”

“I will obtain his permission for you,” I said. “Never fear.” There were tears then, and thank yous. In another age, she would have kneeled and kissed my hand.

Judd was waiting in his study. I have been there before, sometimes when he was in it, sometimes when he was not. It is a richly informative space. He should not bring work home with him from his office at the Eyes and leave it lying around so carelessly.

On the right wall—the one not visible from the door, as one must not shock the female inmates—there is a painting from the nineteenth century, showing a barely nubile girl without any clothes on. Dragonfly wings have been added to make her into a fairy, fairies having been known in those times to be averse to clothing. She has an amoral, elvish smile and is hovering over a mushroom. That’s what Judd likes—young girls who can be viewed as not fully human, with a naughty core to them. That excuses his treatment of them.

The study is book-lined, like all these Commanders’ studies. They like to accumulate, and to gloat over their acquisitions, and to boast to the others about what they have pilfered. Judd has a respectable collection of biographies and histories—Napoleon, Stalin, Ceauşescu, and various other leaders and controllers of men. He has several highly valuable editions that I envy: Doré’s Inferno, Dalí’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Picasso’s Lysistrata. He has another kind of book, less respectable: vintage pornography, as I knew from having examined it. It is a genre that is tedious in bulk. The mistreatment of the human body has a limited repertoire.

“Ah, Aunt Lydia,” he said, half-rising from his chair in an echo of what was once considered gentlemanly behaviour. “Do sit down and tell me what brings you out so late.” A beaming smile, not reflected in the expression of his eyes, which was both alarmed and flinty.

“We have a situation,” I said, taking the chair opposite.

His smile vanished. “Not a critical one, I hope.”

“Nothing that cannot be dealt with. Aunt Vidala suspects the so-called Jade of being an infiltrator, sent to ferret out information and put us in a bad light. She wishes to interrogate the girl. That would be fatal to any productive future use of Baby Nicole.”

“I agree,” he said. “We would not be able to televise her afterwards. What can I do to help you?”

“To help us,” I said. It is always good to remind him that our little privateer holds two. “An order from the Eyes protecting the girl from interference until we know she may be credibly presented as Baby Nicole. Aunt Vidala is not aware of Jade’s identity,” I added. “And she should not be told. She is no longer fully reliable.”

“Can you explain that?” he said.

“For the moment, you’ll have to trust me,” I said. “And another thing. Your Wife, Shunammite, ought to be sent to the Calm and Balm Clinic at Ardua Hall for medical treatment.”

There was a long pause while we gazed into each other’s eyes across his desk. “Aunt Lydia, you read my mind,” he said. “It would indeed be preferable for her to be in your care rather than in mine. In case anything might happen…in case she might develop a fatal illness.”

I will remind you here that there is no divorce in Gilead.

“A sage decision,” I said. “You must remain above suspicion.”

“I depend on your discretion. I am in your hands, dear Aunt Lydia,” he said, rising from his desk. How true, I thought. And how easily a hand becomes a fist.

My reader, I am now poised on the razor’s edge. I have two choices: I can proceed with my risky and even reckless plan, attempt to transfer my packet of explosives by means of young Nicole, and, if successful, give both Judd and Gilead the first shove over the cliff. If I am unsuccessful, I will naturally be branded a traitor and will live in infamy; or rather die in it.

Or I could choose the safer course. I could hand Baby Nicole over to Commander Judd, where she would shine brilliantly for a moment before being snuffed out like a candle due to insubordination, as the chances of her meekly accepting her position here would be zero. I would then reap my reward in Gilead, which would potentially be great. Aunt Vidala would be nullified; I might even have her assigned to a mental institution. My control over Ardua Hall would be complete and my honoured old age secure.

I would have to give up the idea of retributive vengeance against Judd, as we would then be joined at the hip forever. Judd’s Wife, Shunammite, would be a collateral casualty. I have placed Jade in the same dormitory space as Aunt Immortelle and Aunt Victoria, so once she was eliminated, their own fates would hang in the balance: guilt by association applies in Gilead, as it does elsewhere.

Am I capable of such duplicity? Could I betray so completely? Having tunnelled this far under the foundations of Gilead with my stash of cordite, might I falter? As I am human, it is entirely possible.

In that case, I would destroy these pages I have written so laboriously; and I would destroy you along with them, my future reader. One flare of a match and you’ll be gone—wiped away as if you had never been, as if you will never be. I would deny you existence. What a godlike feeling! Though it is a god of annihilation.

I waver, I waver.

But tomorrow is another day.