The Testaments(110)

This is an N, for “Nicole” perhaps—you can trace the upstroke, here—and an A, and a G: could these refer to “Ada” and “Garth”? Or does the A point to “Agnes”? There is a V—for “Victoria”?—slightly below it, here. Over here, the letters AL, referring possibly to the “Aunt Lydia” of their testimonies.

Who was the mother of these two half-sisters? We know there was a fugitive Handmaid who was an active field agent with Mayday for some years. After surviving at least two assassination attempts, she worked for some years under triple protection at their intelligence unit near Barrie, Ontario, which posed as an organic hemp products farm. We have not definitively excluded this individual as the author of the “Handmaid’s Tale” tapes found in the footlocker; and, according to that narrative, this individual had at least two children. But jumping to conclusions can lead us astray, so I depend on future scholars to examine the matter more closely, if possible.

For the use of interested parties—at the moment, an opportunity available only to symposium attendees, though, depending on funding, we hope to extend it for the benefit of a broader readership—my colleague Professor Knotly Wade and I have prepared a facsimile edition of these three batches of materials, which we have interleaved in an order that made approximate narrative sense to us. You can take the historian out of the storyteller, but you can’t take the storyteller out of the historian! (Laughter, applause.) We have numbered the sections to aid in searches and references: needless to say, no such numbers appear on the originals. Copies of the facsimile may be requested at the registration desk; no more than one each, please, as supplies are limited.

Travel well on your journey into the past; and while you are there, ponder the meaning of the cryptic windowsill markings. I will confine myself to suggesting that the correspondence of the initial letters to several key names in our transcripts is highly evocative, to say the least.



* * *



—

I will conclude with one more fascinating piece of the puzzle.

The group of slides I am about to show you portrays a statue located at present on the Boston Common. Its provenance suggests it is not from the Gilead period: the name of the sculptor corresponds to that of an artist who was active in Montreal some decades after the collapse of Gilead, and the statue must have been transferred to its present position some years after the post-Gilead chaos and subsequent Restoration of the United States of America.

The inscription would appear to name the principal actors cited in our materials. If this is so, our two young messengers must indeed have lived not only to tell their tale but also to be reunited with their mother and their respective fathers, and to have children and grandchildren of their own.

I myself take this inscription to be a convincing testament to the authenticity of our two witness transcripts. The collective memory is notoriously faulty, and much of the past sinks into the ocean of time to be drowned forever; but once in a while the waters part, allowing us to glimpse a flash of hidden treasure, if only for a moment. Although history is rife with nuance, and we historians can never hope for unanimous agreement, I trust you will be able to concur with me, at least in this instance.

As you can see, the statue depicts a young woman wearing the costume of the Pearl Girls: note the definitive cap, the strand of pearls, and the backpack. She is carrying a bouquet of small flowers identified by our ethno-botanist consultant as forget-me-nots; on her right shoulder there are two birds, belonging, it would seem, to the pigeon or dove family.

Here is the inscription. The lettering is weathered and difficult to read on the slide, so I took the liberty of transcribing it on the following slide, here. And on this last note I will close.

    IN LOVING MEMORY OF

BECKA, AUNT IMMORTELLE

THIS MEMORIAL WAS ERECTED BY HER SISTERS

AGNES AND NICOLE

AND THEIR MOTHER, THEIR TWO FATHERS,

THEIR CHILDREN AND THEIR GRANDCHILDREN.

AND IN RECOGNITION OF THE INVALUABLE SERVICES PROVIDED BY A.L.

A BIRD OF THE AIR SHALL CARRY THE VOICE, AND THAT WHICH HATH WINGS SHALL TELL THE MATTER.

LOVE IS AS STRONG AS DEATH.





Acknowledgements


The Testaments was written in many places: in the dome car of a train stuck on a siding due to a mudslide, on a couple of ships, in a number of hotel rooms, in the middle of a forest, in the centre of a city, on park benches, and in cafés, with words inscribed on the proverbial paper napkin, in notebooks, and on a laptop. The mudslide was beyond my control, as were some of the other events affecting the writing venues. Others were entirely my own fault.

But before the actual placing of words on pages, The Testaments was written partly in the minds of the readers of its predecessor, The Handmaid’s Tale, who kept asking what happened after the end of that novel. Thirty-five years is a long time to think about possible answers, and the answers have changed as society itself has changed, and as possibilities have become actualities. The citizens of many countries, including the United States, are under more stresses now than they were three decades ago.

One question about The Handmaid’s Tale that came up repeatedly is: How did Gilead fall? The Testaments was written in response to this question. Totalitarianisms may crumble from within, as they fail to keep the promises that brought them to power; or they may be attacked from without; or both. There are no sure-fire formulas, since very little in history is inevitable.