The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood Read Free Book Online

air.
    She was wearing a dress I’d never seen, white and down to the ground.
    I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance.
    If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.
    It isn’t a story I’m telling.
    It’s also a story I’m telling, in my head, as I go along.
    Tell, rather than write, because I have nothing to write with and writing is in any case forbidden. But if it’s a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don’t tell a story only to yourself. There’s always someone else.
    Even when there is no one.
    A story is like a letter.
Dear You
, I’ll say. Just
you
, without a name. Attaching a name attaches you to the world of fact, which is riskier, more hazardous: who knows what the chances are out there, of survival, yours? I will say
you, you
, like an old love song.
You
can mean more than one.
    You
can mean thousands.
    I’m not in any immediate danger, I’ll say to you.
    I’ll pretend you can hear me.
    But it’s no good, because I know you can’t.

IV
WAITING ROOM

CHAPTER EIGHT
    T he good weather holds. It’s almost like June, when we would get out our sundresses and our sandals and go for an ice-cream cone. There are three new bodies on the Wall. One is a priest, still wearing the black cassock. That’s been put on him, for the trial, even though they gave up wearing those years ago, when the sect wars first began; cassocks made them too conspicuous. The two others have purple placards hung around their necks: Gender Treachery. Their bodies still wear the Guardian uniforms. Caught together, they must have been, but where? A barracks, a shower? It’s hard to say. The snowman with the red smile is gone.
    â€œWe should go back,” I say to Ofglen. I’m always the one to say this. Sometimes I feel that if I didn’t say it, she would stay here forever. But is she mourning or gloating? I still can’t tell.
    Without a word she swivels, as if she’s voice-activated, as if she’s on little oiled wheels, as if she’s on top of a music box. I resent this grace of hers. I resent her meek head, bowed as if into a heavy wind. But there is no wind.
    We leave the Wall, walk back the way we came, in the warm sun.
    â€œIt’s a beautiful May day,” Ofglen says. I feel rather than see her head turn towards me, waiting for a reply.
    â€œYes,” I say. “Praise be,” I add as an afterthought.
Mayday
used to be a distress signal, a long time ago, in one of those wars we studied in high school. I kept getting them mixed up, but you could tell them apart by the airplanes if you paid attention. It was Luke who told me about Mayday though.
Mayday, Mayday
, for pilots whose planes had been hit, and ships – was it ships too? – at sea. Maybe it was SOS for ships. I wish I could look it up. And it was something from Beethoven, for the beginning of the victory, in one of those wars.
    Do you know what it came from? said Luke. Mayday?
    No, I said. It’s a strange word to use for that, isn’t it?
    Newspapers and coffee, on Sunday mornings, before she was born. There were still newspapers, then. We used to read them in bed.
    It’s French, he said. From
M’aidez
.
    Help me.
    Coming towards us there’s a small procession, a funeral: three women, each with a black transparent veil thrown over her headdress. An Econowife and two others, the mourners also Econowives, her friends perhaps. Their striped dresses are worn-looking, as are their faces. Some day, when times improve, says Aunt Lydia, no one will have to be an Econowife.
    The first one is the bereaved, the mother; she carries a small black jar. From the size of