The Testaments(83)

It came as a painful shock: kind, helpful Aunt Estée had lied to us. The truth was not noble, it was horrible. This was what the Aunts meant, then, when they said women’s minds were too weak for reading. We would crumble, we would fall apart under the contradictions, we would not be able to hold firm.

Up until that time I had not seriously doubted the rightness and especially the truthfulness of Gilead’s theology. If I’d failed at perfection, I’d concluded that the fault was mine. But as I discovered what had been changed by Gilead, what had been added, and what had been omitted, I feared I might lose my faith.

If you’ve never had a faith, you will not understand what that means. You feel as if your best friend is dying; that everything that defined you is being burned away; that you’ll be left all alone. You feel exiled, as if you are lost in a dark wood. It was like the feeling I’d had when Tabitha died: the world was emptying itself of meaning. Everything was hollow. Everything was withering.

I told Becka some of what was taking place within me.

“I know,” she said. “That happened to me. Everyone at the top of Gilead has lied to us.”

“How do you mean?”

“God isn’t what they say,” she said. She said you could believe in Gilead or you could believe in God, but not both. That was how she had managed her own crisis.

I said that I wasn’t sure I would be able to choose. Secretly I feared that I would be unable to believe in either. Still, I wanted to believe; indeed I longed to; and, in the end, how much of belief comes from longing?





51


Three years later, an even more alarming thing happened. As I’ve said, one of my tasks at the Hildegard Library was to make fair copies of Aunt Lydia’s speeches. The pages for the speech I was to work on that day would be left on my desk in a silver folder. One morning I discovered, tucked in behind the silver folder, a blue one. Who had put it there? Had there been some mistake?

I opened it. The name of my stepmother, Paula, was at the top of the first page. What followed was an account of the death of her first husband, the one she’d had before she’d married my so-called father, Commander Kyle. As I’ve told you, her husband, Commander Saunders, had been killed in his study by their Handmaid. Or that was the story that had circulated.

Paula had said that the girl was dangerously unbalanced, and had stolen a skewer from the kitchen and killed Commander Saunders in an unprovoked attack. The Handmaid had escaped, but had been caught and hanged, and her dead body had been displayed on the Wall. But Shunammite had said that her Martha had said there had been an unlawful and sinful liaison—the Handmaid and the husband had been in the habit of fornicating in his study. That was what had given the Handmaid the opportunity to kill him, and that was also why she’d done it: the demands he’d been making of her had driven her over the edge of sanity. The rest of Shunammite’s story was the same: Paula’s discovery of the corpse, the capture of the Handmaid, the hanging. Shunammite had added a detail about Paula getting a lot of blood on herself while putting the dead Commander’s trousers back on him to save appearances.

But the story in the blue folder was quite different. It was augmented by photographs, and transcripts of many secretly recorded conversations. There had been no illicit liaison between Commander Saunders and his Handmaid—only the regular Ceremonies as decreed by law. However, Paula and Commander Kyle—my erstwhile father—had been having an affair even before Tabitha, my mother, had died.

Paula had befriended the Handmaid and offered to help her escape from Gilead since she knew how unhappy the girl was. She’d even provided her with a map and directions, and the names of several Mayday contacts along the way. After the Handmaid had set out, Paula had skewered Commander Saunders herself. That was why she’d had so much blood on her, not from putting his trousers back on. In fact, he had never taken them off, or not on that night.

She’d bribed her Martha to back up the murderous Handmaid story, combining the bribe with threats. Then she’d called the Angels and accused the Handmaid, and the rest had followed. The unfortunate girl was found wandering the streets in despair, since the map was inaccurate and the Mayday contacts turned out not to exist.

The Handmaid had been interrogated. (The transcript of the interrogation was attached, and it was not comfortable reading.) Although admitting to her escape attempt and revealing Paula’s part in it, she’d maintained her innocence of the murder—indeed, her ignorance of the murder—until the pain had become too much, and she’d made a false confession.

She was clearly innocent. But she was hanged anyway.

The Aunts had known the truth. Or at least one of them had known. There was the evidence, right in the folder in front of me. Yet nothing had happened to Paula. And a Handmaid had been hanged for the crime instead.



* * *



—

I was bedazzled, as if struck by lightning. But not only was I astounded by this story, I was mystified as to the reason it had been placed on my desk. Why had an unknown person given me such dangerous information?

Once a story you’ve regarded as true has turned false, you begin suspecting all stories. Was an effort being made to turn me against Gilead? Was the evidence faked? Was it Aunt Lydia’s threat to reveal Paula’s crime that had caused my stepmother to abandon her efforts to marry me to Commander Judd? Had this terrible story bought me my place as an Aunt at Ardua Hall? Was this a way of telling me that my mother, Tabitha, had not died of a disease but had been murdered in some unknown way by Paula, and possibly even by Commander Kyle? I didn’t know what to believe.