The Testaments(84)

There was no one I could confide in. Not even Becka: I didn’t want to endanger her by making her complicit. The truth can cause a lot of trouble for those who are not supposed to know it.

I finished my work for the day, leaving the blue folder where I’d found it. The next day there was a new speech for me to work on, and the blue folder of the day before was gone.



* * *



—

Over the course of the following two years, I found a number of similar folders waiting for me on my desk. They all held evidence of various crimes. Those containing the crimes of Wives were blue, of Commanders black, of professionals—such as doctors—grey, of Econopeople striped, of Marthas dull green. There were none containing the crimes of Handmaids, and none for those of Aunts.

Most of the files left for me were either blue or black, and described multiple crimes. Handmaids had been forced into illegal acts, then blamed for them; Sons of Jacob had plotted against one another; bribes and favours had been exchanged at the highest levels; Wives had schemed against other Wives; Marthas had eavesdropped and collected information, and then sold it; mysterious food poisonings had occurred, babies had changed hands from Wife to Wife on the basis of scandalous rumours that were, however, unfounded. Wives had been hanged for adulteries that had never occurred because a Commander wanted a different, younger Wife. Public trials—meant to purge traitors and purify the leadership—had turned on false confessions extracted by torture.

Bearing false witness was not the exception, it was common. Beneath its outer show of virtue and purity, Gilead was rotting.



* * *



—

Apart from Paula’s, the file that most immediately concerned me was that of Commander Judd. It was a thick file. Among other misdemeanours, it contained evidence pertaining to the fates of his previous Wives, those he had been married to before my short-lived engagement to him.

He had disposed of them all. The first had been pushed down the stairs; her neck was broken. It was said that she’d tripped and fallen. As I knew from my reading of other files, it was not difficult to make such things look like accidents. Two of his Wives were said to have died in childbirth, or shortly thereafter; the babies were Unbabies, but the deaths of the Wives had involved deliberately induced septicemia or shock. In one case, Commander Judd had refused permission to operate when an Unbaby with two heads had lodged in the birth canal. Nothing could be done, he’d said piously, because there had still been a fetal heartbeat.

The fourth Wife had taken up flower-painting as a hobby at the suggestion of Commander Judd, who had thoughtfully purchased the paints for her. She’d then developed symptoms attributable to cadmium poisoning. Cadmium, the file noted, was a well-known carcinogenic, and the fourth Wife had succumbed to stomach cancer shortly thereafter.

I’d narrowly avoided a death sentence, it seemed. And I’d had help avoiding it. I said a prayer of gratitude that night: despite my doubts, I continued to pray. Thank you, I said. Help thou my unbelief. I added, And help Shunammite, for she will surely need it.



* * *



—

When I’d first begun reading these files, I was appalled and sickened. Was someone trying to cause me distress? Or were the files part of my education? Was my mind being hardened? Was I being prepared for the tasks I would later be performing as an Aunt?

This was what the Aunts did, I was learning. They recorded. They waited. They used their information to achieve goals known only to themselves. Their weapons were powerful but contaminating secrets, as the Marthas had always said. Secrets, lies, cunning, deceit—but the secrets, the lies, the cunning, and the deceit of others as well as their own.

If I remained at Ardua Hall—if I performed my Pearl Girls missionary work and returned as a full Aunt—this is what I would become. All of the secrets I had learned, and doubtless many more, would be mine, to use as I saw fit. All of this power. All of this potential to judge the wicked in silence, and to punish them in ways they would not be able to anticipate. All of this vengeance.

As I have said, there was a vengeful side to me that I had in the past regretted. Regretted but not expunged.

I would not be telling the truth if I said I was not tempted.





XIX





Study





The Ardua Hall Holograph


52


I had a disagreeable jolt last evening, my reader. I was scratching furtively away in the deserted library with my pen and my blue drawing ink, with my door open for air flow, when Aunt Vidala’s head suddenly thrust itself around the corner of my private carrel. I did not startle—I have nerves of curable polymers, like those of plastinated corpses—but I coughed, a nervous reflex, and slid the closed Apologia Pro Vita Sua over the page I’d been writing on.

“Ah, Aunt Lydia,” said Aunt Vidala. “I hope you’re not catching a cold. Shouldn’t you be in bed?” The big sleep, I thought: that’s what you’re wishing for me.

“Just an allergy,” I said. “Many people have them at this time of year.” She could not deny this, being a major sufferer herself.

“I’m sorry for intruding,” she said untruthfully. Her glance moved over Cardinal Newman’s title. “Always researching, I see,” she said. “Such a notorious heretic.”