Cat's eye полностью

“You have to learn to stand up for yourself,” says my mother. “Don’t let them push you around. Don’t be spineless. You have to have more backbone.” She dollops the batter into the tins. I think of sardines and their backbones. You can eat their backbones. The bones crumble between your teeth; one touch and they fall apart. This must be what my own backbone is like: hardly there at all. What is happening to me is my own fault, for not having more backbone.

My mother sets down the bowl and puts her arms around me. “I wish I knew what to do,” she says. This is a confession. Now I know what I’ve been suspecting: as far as this thing is concerned, she is powerless.

I know that muffins have to be baked right away, right after they’ve been ladled out, or they’ll be flat and ruined. I can’t afford the distraction of comfort. If I give in to it, what little backbone I have left will crumble away to nothing.

I pull away from her. “They need to go into the oven,” I say.

Chapter 30

C ordelia brings a mirror to school. It’s a pocket mirror, the small plain oblong kind without any rim. She takes it out of her pocket and holds the mirror up in front of me and says, “Look at yourself! Just look!”

Her voice is disgusted, fed up, as if my face, all by itself, has been up to something, has gone too far. I look into the mirror but I don’t see anything out of the ordinary. It’s just my face, with the dark blotches on the lips where I’ve bitten off the skin.

My parents have bridge parties. They push the furniture in the living room to the walls and unfold two metal bridge tables and eight bridge chairs. In the middle of each table there are two china dishes, one with salted nuts, the other with mixed candies. These candies are called “bridge mixture.” There are also two ashtrays on each table.

Then the doorbell begins to ring and the people come in. The house fills with the alien scent of cigarettes, which will still be there in the morning along with a few uneaten candies and salted nuts, and with bursts of laughter that get louder as time passes. I lie in my bed listening to the bursts of laughter. I feel isolated, left out. Also I don’t understand why this activity, these noises and smells, is called “bridge.” It is not like a bridge.

Sometimes Mr. Banerji comes to these bridge parties. I lurk in the corner of the hallway in my flannelette pajamas, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. I don’t have a crush on him or anything like that. My wish to see him is anxiety, and fellow feeling. I want to see how he is managing, how he is coping with his life, with having to eat turkeys, and with other things. Not very well, judging from his dark, haunted-looking eyes and slightly hysterical laughter. But if he can deal with whatever it is that’s after him, and something is, then so can I. Or this is what I think.

Princess Elizabeth is coming to Toronto. She’s visiting Canada with her husband, who is a Duke. It’s a Royal Visit. On the radio there are cheering crowds, and solemn voices describing what color she’s wearing, a different color every day. I crouch on the living room floor with the Maritimes fiddle music going on in the background, the Toronto Star spread out underneath my elbows, studying the picture of her on the front page. She’s older than she should be and more ordinary: no longer in a Girl Guide uniform as in the days of the Blitz, but not in an evening gown and a tiara either, like the Queen at the back of the classroom. She’s wearing a plain suit and gloves and carrying a handbag, like anyone, and she has on a ladies’ hat. But still she’s a Princess. On the inside of the paper there’s a full page of her, with women curtsying to her, little girls presenting bouquets of flowers. She smiles down upon them, always the same benevolent smile, and is described as radiant.

Day after day, crouching on the floor, turning the pages of the newspapers, I watch her make her way across the map, by plane, by train, by car, from city to city. I memorize the diagrams of her proposed route through Toronto. I’ll get a good chance to see her, because she’s supposed to drive right by our house, along the raw, potholed road that runs between the cemetery, with its spindly new trees and heaps of bulldozed earth, and the line of five new mud mountains.

The mud mountains are on our side of the road. They have recently appeared, replacing the strip of weedy field that used to be there before. Each mountain stands beside its own hole, roughly cellar-shaped, with a slop of muddy water at the bottom. My brother has claimed one of them for his own; he plans to excavate it, tunneling down from the top, then in from the side to make a side entrance. What he wishes to do in there is unknown.