Bodily Harm by Margaret Atwood Read Free Book Online Page A

another crinkled smile. “Rice,” he says, watching her closely.
    She’s being asked for something, but she’s not sure what it is. Not admiration, not absolution. Maybe she’s not being asked for anything at all, which is just as well, since she doesn’t have a whole lot of handouts left. “That must have been interesting,” she says. She hasn’t done profiles for nothing, she isn’t stupid, she knows how to add, she knows there’s an X factor. Ten years ago she would have felt entitled to moral outrage, but it’s no skin off her nose. People get trapped in things that are beyond their control, she ought to know that by now.
    He relaxes, leans back in his chair. She’s passed the test, whatever it was. “I’ll tell you about it sometime,” he says, assuming the future; which is more than she can do.

    Rennie’s room at the Sunset Inn is papered with a small floral print, pink and blue; there are several pale-orange watermarks near the ceiling, which is fifteen feet high. At the end of the bed, which is single and narrow and covered with a white chenille spread, hangs a picture of a green melon cut open to reveal the seeds. Over the bed itself is a knotted mosquito net, not quite as white as the bedspread. On the night table beside the bed are a Bible, a mosquito coil in a saucer, a box of matches, Three Star, made in Sweden, and a lamp with a pleated paper shade. The lamp is a mermaid with her arms over her head, holding up the bulb. Her breasts aren’t bare, she’s wearing a harem jacket open at the front, its edges grazing the nipples. In the drawer of the night table are two more mosquito coils in a box labelled
Fish Mosquito Destroyer, Blood Protection Co. Ltd
.
    On the pale-green bureau there’s a thermos jug of water, a glass and a hand-printed card warning visitors not to drink the tap water. Rennie opens the drawers. In the centre one is a lime-green blanket, in the bottom one a safety pin. Rennie feels momentarily that she may be spending the rest of her life in rooms like this. Not her own.
    She lights the mosquito coil, turns on the mermaid lamp and puts her travelling alarm clock on top of the Bible. She unpacks her cotton nightgown and the zipper bag in which she keeps her toothbrush and the other pieces of cleaning and sterilizing equipment people use on their bodies. She’s ceased to take such things for granted; “Prevention of Decay” is no longer just a slogan. She closesthe Venetian blind on the narrow window, turns off the overhead light and undresses. The mirror over the bureau is small, so she isn’t reflected anywhere.
    She takes a shower, in water that refuses to become more than lukewarm. When she comes out of the tiny bathroom, there’s a green lizard sticking to the wall beside the window.
    She turns down the chenille spread and the sheet and looks carefully in the bed and under the pillow, checking for wildlife. She untwists the mosquito net and tucks it around the bed. Then she crawls into the white tent, turns off the light, and moves to the centre of the bed so that no part of her body is touching the net. She can see the oblong of the window, grey against the darkness, and the glowing end of the mosquito coil. The air is warm and damp, warmer and damper on her skin now than before she took the shower, and the bed smells faintly of mildew.
    There are sounds from outside the window, a high cricket sound and a repeated note like a bell or a waterglass being struck, some kind of insect or frog perhaps, and beyond that the insistent syncopated music. Several minutes after she turns out the light a car backfires, or maybe it’s firecrackers, and a woman screams with laughter; but that stops and the music keeps going.
    Despite the heat Rennie lies with her arms folded, left hand on her right breast, right hand on the ridge of skin that slants across the side of her breast up towards her armpit. This is how she always sleeps now.
    She runs the fingers of her left hand over the