The Testaments(30)

I meant well too, I sometimes mumble silently. I meant it for the best, or for the best available, which is not the same thing. Still, think how much worse it could have been if not for me.

Bullshit, I reply on some days. Though on other days I pat myself on the back. Whoever said consistency is a virtue?

What’s next in the waltz of the flowers? Lilacs. So dependable. So frilly. So aromatic. Soon my old enemy, Aunt Vidala, will be sneezing. Maybe her eyes will swell up and she won’t be able to peer at me out of their corners, hoping to detect some slippage, some weakness, some lapse in theological correctness that can be leveraged into my downfall.

Hope on, I whisper to her. I pride myself on the fact that I can keep one jump ahead of you. But why only one? Several. Topple me and I’ll pull down the temple.



* * *



—

Gilead has a long-standing problem, my reader: for God’s kingdom on earth, it’s had an embarrassingly high emigration rate. The seepage of our Handmaids, for instance: too many have been slipping away. As Commander Judd’s analysis of escapes has revealed, no sooner is an exit route discovered by us and blocked than another opens up.

Our buffer zones are too permeable. The wilder patches of Maine and Vermont are a liminal space not fully controlled by us, where the natives are, if not overtly hostile, prone to heresies. They are also, as I know from my own experience, densely interconnected by a network of marriages that resembles a piece of surreal knitting, and they are prone to vendettas if crossed. For this reason it’s difficult to get them to betray one another. It’s been suspected for some time there are guides among them, acting either from a desire to outsmart Gilead or from simple cupidity, for Mayday has been known to pay. One Vermonter who fell into our hands told us they have a saying: “Mayday is Payday.”

The hills and swamps, the winding rivers, the long rock-strewn bays that lead to the sea with its high tides—all aid the clandestine. In the subhistory of the region, there are rum-runners, there are cigarette profiteers, there are drug smugglers, there are illicit peddlers of all kinds. Borders mean nothing to them: they slip in and out, they thumb their noses, money changes hands.

One of my uncles was active in that way. Our family having been what it was—trailer-park dwellers, sneerers at the police, consorters with the flip side of the criminal justice system—my father was proud of that. Though not of me: I was a girl and, worse, a smarty-pants girl. Nothing for it but to wallop those pretensions out of me, with fists or boots or whatever else was to hand. He got his throat cut before the triumph of Gilead, or I would have arranged to have it done for him. But enough of such folk memories.



* * *



—

Quite recently, Aunt Elizabeth, Aunt Helena, and Aunt Vidala came up with a detailed plan for better control. Operation Dead End, it was called. A Plan to Eliminate the Female Emigrant Problem in the North-Eastern Seaboard Territories. It outlined the steps necessary for the trapping of fugitive Handmaids en route to Canada, and called for the declaration of a National Emergency, plus a doubling of tracker dogs and a more efficient system of interrogation. I detected Aunt Vidala’s hand in this last: it is her secret sorrow that fingernail ripping and evisceration are not on our list of chastisements.

“Well done,” I said. “This seems very thorough. I will read it with great care, and I can assure you that your concerns are shared by Commander Judd, who is taking action, although I am not free to share the details with you at this time.”

“Praise be,” said Aunt Elizabeth, though she did not sound overjoyed.

“This escape business must be crushed once and for all,” Aunt Helena declared, glancing at Aunt Vidala for reassurance. She stamped her foot for emphasis, which must have been painful considering her fallen arches: she ruined her feet in youth by wearing five-inch Blahnik stilettos. The shoes alone would get her denounced nowadays.

“Indeed,” I said suavely. “And it does appear to be a business, at least in part.”

“We should clear-cut the entire area!” said Aunt Elizabeth. “They’re hand in glove with Mayday in Canada.”

“That is what Commander Judd believes as well,” I said.

“Those women need to do their duty to the Divine Plan like the rest of us,” said Aunt Vidala. “Life is not a vacation.”

Although they’d concocted their plan without getting authorization from me first—an act of insubordination—I felt duty-bound to pass it along to Commander Judd; especially in view of the fact that if I did not, he would be certain to hear of it and take note of my recalcitrance.



* * *



—

This afternoon, the three of them paid me another visit. They were in high spirits: raids in Upstate New York had just produced a mixed haul of seven Quakers, four back-to-the-landers, two Canadian moose-hunting guides, and a lemon smuggler, each of whom was a suspected link in the Underground Femaleroad chain. Once any additional information they might possess had been wrung from them, they would be disposed of, unless they were found to have trading value: hostage exchanges between Mayday and Gilead were not unknown.

I was of course aware of these developments. “Congratulations,” I said. “You must each take some credit, if only under the table. Commander Judd will take centre stage, naturally.”