Heather's Library

The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Atwood

p.4 It was in the air; and it was still in the air, an afterthought, as we tried to sleep, in the army cots that had been set up in rows with spaces between so we could not talk. We had flanellette sheets, like children's, and army-issue blankets, old ones that stool at the ends of the beds. The lights were turned down but not out. Aunt Sara and Aunt Elizabeth patrolled; they had electric cattle prods slung on thongs from their leather belts.

No guns though, even they could be trusted with guns. Guns were for the guards, specially picked from the Angels. The guards weren't allowed into the building except when called, and we weren't allowed out, except on walks, twice daily, two by two around the football field, which was enclosed now by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. The Angels stood outside it with their backs to us. They were objects of fear to us, but something else as well. If only they would look. If only we could talk to them. Something could be exchanged, we thought, some deal made, some tradeoff, we still had our bodies. That was our fantasy.
We learned to whisper almost without a sound. In the semidarkness we could stretch out our arms, when the Aunts weren't looking, and touch each other's hands across space. We leraned to lip-read, our heads flat on the beds, turned sideways, watching each other's mouths. In this way we exchanged names, from bed to bed: Alma. Janine. Lolores. Moira. June.

p.7 A chair, a table, a lamp. Above, on the white ceiling, a relief ornament in the shape of a wreath, and in the center of it a blank space, plastered over, like the place in a face where the eye has been taken out. There must have been a chandelier, once. They've removed anything you can tie a rope to.

p.8 A bed, matress medium-hard, covered with a flocked white spread. Nothing takes place in the bed but sleep; or now sleep. I try not to think too much. Like other things now, thought must be rationed. There's a lot that doesn't bear thinking about. Thinking the window opens opens only partly and why the window opens only partly and why the glass in it is shatterproof. It isn't running away that they're afraid of. We wouldn't get far. It's tose other escaps, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.

p.11 Or I would help Rita make the bread, sinking my hands into that soft resistant warmth which is so much like flesh. I hunger to touch something, other than cloth or wood. I hunger to commit the act of touch.

p.22 The one with the moustache opens the small pedestrian gate and stands back, well out of the way, and we pass through. As we walk away I know they're watching, these two men who aren't you permitted to touch women. They touch with their eyes instead and I move my hips a little, feeling the full red skirt sway around me. It's like thumbing your nose from behind a fence or teasing a dog with a bone held out of reach, and I'm ashamed of myself for doing it, because none of this is the fault of those men, they're too young.
Then I find I am not ashamed at all. I enjoy the power; power of a dog bone, passive but there. I hope they get hard at the sight of usand have to rub themselves against the painted barriers, surreptitiously. They will suffer, later, at night, in their regimented beds. They have no outlets now except themselves, and that's a sacrilige. There are no more magazines, no more films, no more substitutes; only me and my shadow, walking away from the two men, who stand at attention, stiffly, by a roadblock, watching our retreating shapes.

( more under the cut )