Alias Grace (38 page)

He must retain his position of all-knowing authority in her eyes.

Mrs. Humphrey is talking again; the subject is her gratitude to him, as it often is while he is eating his toast. She waits until his mouth is full, then launches in. His gaze wanders over her — the pale oval of her face, her stringent and bloodless hair, her crackling black silk waist, her abrupt white edgings of lace.

Underneath her stiff dress there must be breasts, not starched and corset-shaped, but made of soft flesh, with nipples; he finds himself idly guessing what colour these nipples would be, in sunlight or else in lamplight, and how large. Nipples pink and small like the snouts of animals, of rabbits or mice perhaps; or the almost-red of ripening currants; or the scaly brown of acorn caps. His imagination runs, he notes, to wildwood details, and to things hard or alert. In reality this woman does not attract him: such images arrive unsummoned. His eyes feel squeezed — not a headache yet, but a dull pressure. He wonders if he’s running a low fever; this morning he examined his tongue in the mirror for telltale blanching and spots. A bad tongue looks like cooked veal: greyish white, with a scum on it.

The life he’s leading is not healthy. His mother is right, he should marry. Marry or burn, as St. Paul says; or search out the usual remedies. There are houses of ill repute in Kingston, as everywhere, but he cannot avail himself of them as he might in London or Paris. The town is too small and he is too conspicuous, his position too precarious, the Governor’s wife too pious, the enemies of Reform too ubiquitous. It’s not worth the risk, and in any case the houses here are bound to be depressing. Sadly pretentious, with a provincial idea of the alluring in their wistfully upholstered furnishings. Too much brocade and fringe. But also briskly utilitarian — run on the North American mill-town factory principle of quick processing, and dedicated to the greatest happiness of the greatest number, no matter how grim and minimal the quality of that happiness may be. Soiled petticoats, whores’ sunless flesh pallid as uncooked pastry and smudged by the thick tarry fingers of sailors; and by those, more manicured, of the occasional Government legislator, travelling through, sheepishly incognito.

It’s just as well he must avoid these places. Such experiences drain the mental energies.

“Are you ill, Dr. Jordan?” asks Mrs. Humphrey, as she hands him a second cup of tea, which she has poured for him without being asked. Her eyes are motionless, green, marine, the pupils small and black.

He wakes with a start. Has he been asleep?

“You were pressing your hand to your forehead,” she says. “Do you have a pain there?”

She has a habit of materializing outside his door while he’s trying to work, asking if there is anything he needs. She is solicitous of him, tender almost, yet there is something cringing about her, as if she’s waiting for a slap, a kick, a flat-handed blow, which she knows with dreary fatalism will surely come sooner or later. But not from him, not from him, he protests silently. He is a mild-tempered man, he has never been given to outbursts, to rampages and violence. There is no news of the Major. He thinks of her naked feet, shell-thin, exposed and vulnerable, tied together with — where has this come from? — an ordinary piece of twine. Like a parcel. If his subthreshold consciousness must indulge in such exotic poses, it ought to be able to supply at least a silver chain….

He drinks the tea. It tastes of marshes, the roots of bulrushes. Tangled and obscure. He’s had some intestinal problems lately, and has been dosing himself with laudanum; fortunately he has a good supply.

He suspects the water in this house; perhaps his intermittent digging in the yard has disturbed the well. His plan of a kitchen garden has come to nothing, though he’s turned over a satisfying amount of mud. After his days spent wrestling with shadows, he finds it a curious relief to get his hands into something real, such as earth. But it’s getting too hot for that.

“I must go,” he says, and stands up, pushing back his chair, wiping his mouth brusquely, making a show of bustle, although in fact he has no appointment until the afternoon. Useless to stay in his room, to try to work; at his desk he will only doze, but with his ears alert, like a drowsing cat’s, attuned to the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

He goes out, wanders at random. His body feels insubstantial as a bladder, emptied of will. He is carried along beside the lakeshore; he squints into the immense morning light, passing here and there the solitary fishermen as they cast their lures into the tepid and indolent waves.

Once he’s with Grace, things are a little better, as he can still delude himself by flourishing his own sense of purpose. Grace at least represents to him some goal or accomplishment. But today, listening to her low, candid voice — like the voice of a childhood nurse reciting a well-loved story — he almost goes to sleep; only the sound of his own pencil hitting the floor pulls him awake. For a moment he thinks he’s gone deaf, or suffered a small stroke: he can see her lips moving, but he can’t interpret any of the words.

This however is only a trick of consciousness, for he can remember — once he sets his mind to it —

everything she’s been saying.

On the table between them lies a small and dispirited white turnip, which both of them have so far ignored.

He must concentrate his intellectual forces; he can’t afford to flag now, give in to lethargy, lose hold of the thread he’s been following over the course of these past weeks, for at last they are approaching together the centre of Grace’s narrative. They are nearing the blank mystery, the area of erasure; they are entering the forest of amnesia, where things have lost their names. In other words, they are retracing (day by day, hour by hour) the events which immediately preceded the murders. Anything she says now may be a clue; any gesture; any twitch. She knows; she knows. She may not know that she knows, but buried deep within her, the knowledge is there.

The trouble is that the more she remembers, the more she relates, the more difficulty he himself is having.

He can’t seem to keep track of the pieces. It’s as if she’s drawing his energy out of him — using his own mental forces to materialize the figures in her story, as the mediums are said to do during their trances.

This is nonsense, of course. He must refuse to indulge such brain-sick fancies. But still, there was something about a man, in the night: has he missed it? One of those men: McDermott, Kinnear. In his notebook he has pencilled the word
whisper,
and underlined it three times. Of what had he wished to remind himself?

My dearest Son. I am alarmed that I have not heard from you for so long. Are you perhaps
unwell? Where there are mists and fogs, there are bound to be infections; and I understand that
the situation of Kingston is quite low, with many nearby swamps. One cannot be too careful in a
garrison town, as soldiers and sailors are promiscuous in their habits. I hope you will take the
precaution of keeping indoors as much as possible during this intense heat, and not going out in
the sun.

Mrs. Henry Cartwright has purchased one of the new domestic Sewing Machines, for the use of
her servants; and Miss Faith Cartwright was so intrigued by it, that she has tried it herself, and
was able to hem a petticoat with it, in very little time; which she most thoughtfully brought over
yesterday, so that I might see the stitching, as she knows I am interested in the modern inventions.

The Machine works tolerably well, though there is room for improvement — snarls of thread
occur more often than is desirable, and must be cut or untangled — but such devices are never
perfected at first; and Mrs. Cartwright says that her husband is of the opinion, that the shares in
the company which manufactures these machines, would prove a most sound investment over
time. He is a most affectionate and considerate Father, and has given much study to the future
welfare of his daughter, who is his only surviving Child.

But I will not bore you with talk of money, as I know you find it tedious; although, dear Son, it
does keep the larder supplied, and is the means for coming by those small comforts, which make
the difference between a threadbare existence, and a life of modest ease; and as your dear Father
used to say, it is a substance which does not grow on trees….

Time is not running at its usual unvarying pace: it makes odd lurches. Now, too quickly, it’s evening.

Simon sits at his desk, the notebook open before him, and stares stupidly out through the darkening square of window. The hot sunset has faded, leaving a purple smear; the air outside vibrates with insect whines and amphibious peepings. His entire body feels swollen, like wood in rain. From the lawn comes a scent of withering lilacs — a singed smell, like sunburned skin. Tomorrow is Tuesday, the day when he must address the Governor’s wife’s little salon, as promised. What can he possibly say? He must jot down a few notes, organize some sort of coherent presentation. But it’s no use; he can’t accomplish anything of importance, not tonight. He can’t think.

Moths beat against the lamp. He sets aside the question of the Tuesday meeting, and turns instead to his unfinished letter.
My dear Mother. My health continues excellent. Thank you for sending the
embroidered watch-case made for you by Miss Cartwright; I am surprised you were willing to
part with it, even though as you say it is too large for your own watch; and it is certainly
exquisite. I expect to finish my work here quite soon….

Lies and evasions on his side, and on hers, plottings and enticements. What does he care about Miss Faith Cartwright and her endless and infernal needlework? Every letter his mother sends him contains news of yet more knitting, stitching, and tedious crocheting. The Cartwright household must by this time be covered all over — every table, chair, lamp, and piano — with acres of tassel and fringe, a woolwork flower heavily abloom in every nook of it. Does his mother really believe that he can be charmed by such a vision of himself — married to Faith Cartwright and imprisoned in an armchair by the fire, frozen in a kind of paralyzed stupor, with his dear wife winding him up gradually in coloured silk threads like a cocoon, or like a fly snarled in the web of a spider?

He crumples the page, drops it onto the floor. He will write a different letter.
My dear Edward. I trust
you are in good health; I myself am still in Kingston, where I continue to…
But continue to what?

What exactly is he doing here? He can’t sustain his usual jaunty tone. What can he write to Edward, what trophy or prize can he show? What clue, even? His hands are empty; he has discovered nothing. He has been travelling blindly, whether forward he cannot say, without learning anything except that he has not yet learned anything, unless he counts the extent of his own ignorance; like those who have searched fruitlessly for the source of the Nile. Like them, he must take into account the possibility of defeat.

Hopeless dispatches, scrawled on pieces of bark, sent out in cleft sticks from the swallowing jungle.

Suffering from malaria. Bitten by snake. Send more medicine. The maps are wrong.
He has nothing positive to relate.

In the morning he will feel better. He will collect himself. When it is cooler. For the moment, he goes to bed. In his ears there’s a simmering of insects. The damp heat settles down on his face like a hand, and his consciousness flares up for a moment — what is it he is on the verge of remembering? — then gutters out.

Suddenly he starts awake. There’s light in the room, a candle, floating in the doorway. Behind it a glimmering figure: his landlady, in a white gown, a pale shawl wrapped around her. In the candlelight her long loose hair looks grey.

He pulls the sheet up over him; he is not wearing a nightshirt. “What is it?” he says. He must sound angry, but in fact he’s frightened. Not of her, surely; but what the Devil is she doing in his bedroom? In future he must lock the door.

“Dr. Jordan, I am so sorry to disturb you,” she says, “but I heard a noise. As if of someone attempting to break in through a window. I was alarmed.”

There’s no trembling in her voice, no quavering. The woman has a very cool nerve. He tells her he will come downstairs with her in a minute, and check the locks and shutters; he asks her to wait in the front room. He fumbles into his dressing-gown, which sticks immediately to his moist skin, and shuffles through the darkness towards the door.

This must stop,
he tells himself.
This can’t go on.
But nothing has been going on, and therefore nothing can stop.

Chapter 33

It’s the middle of the night, but time keeps going on, and it also goes round and around, like the sun and the moon on the tall clock in the parlour. Soon it will be daybreak. Soon the day will break. I can’t stop it from breaking in the same way it always does, and then from lying there broken; always the same day, which comes around again like clockwork. It begins with the day before the day before, and then the day before, and then it’s the day itself. A Saturday. The breaking day. The day the butcher comes.

What should I tell Dr. Jordan about this day? Because now we are almost there. I can remember what I said when arrested, and what Mr. MacKenzie the lawyer said I should say, and what I did not say even to him; and what I said at the trial, and what I said afterwards, which was different as well. And what McDermott said I said, and what the others said I must have said, for there are always those that will supply you with speeches of their own, and put them right into your mouth for you too; and that sort are like the magicians who can throw their voice, at fairs and shows, and you are just their wooden doll. And that’s what it was like at the trial, I was there in the box of the dock but I might as well have been made of cloth, and stuffed, with a china head; and I was shut up inside that doll of myself, and my true voice could not get out.