Old Babes in the Wood by Margaret Atwood

Author:Margaret Atwood [Atwood, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2023-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

Metempsychosis:

Or, the Journey of the Soul

They were right about the soul: there is one. But nothing else we were told was correct, as it turns out.

You’ve probably seen those diagrams: a so-called primitive organism, such as a snail, is shown with a globe of light glowing within it. That globe represents the soul. If the snail behaves well, upon its death the soul is allowed to reincarnate in a supposedly higher organism, such as a fish. Hopping from one organic stepping stone to another—or, rather, because the soul’s progress is not believed to be horizontal but vertical, from one rung of the ladder on the Great Chain of Being to another—the soul of the well-behaved snail finally arrives at the pinnacle of creation, and—oh joy!—is reborn as a human being. So goes the story.

But I’m here to tell you that very little about this fantasy is true.

For instance, I myself jumped directly from snail to human, with no guppies, basking sharks, whales, beetles, turtles, alligators, skunks, naked mole rats, aardvarks, elephants, or orangutans in between. Nor was I even forced to be conceived, gestated, born, and then raised from infancy, with all the mucus, blood, burping, vomit, urine, rashes, teething, tantrums, pain, and weeping this process entails.

I was demolishing a lettuce leaf, my oval raspy-toothed mouth opening and closing like a flesh valve as I oozed along on my own self-generated glistening slime highway. The lovely green blur all around me, the lacework I was creating, the scent of chlorophyll, the juiciness—it was pure bliss. Live in the moment, humans are often told, but snails don’t need to be told. We’re in the moment all the time, and the moment is in us.

What happened next? Some guy intent on exterminating me got busy with the environmentally friendly pesticide, which—and I shouldn’t be telling you this—was cold coffee in a spray bottle, to which had been added half a cup of salt. Wait! I ought to have screamed as the first scalding droplets hit my tender neck. Spare me! I am part of an ecosystem! I contribute to the eggshells of birds!

Did I know that then? No. Snails are not focused on their place in the universe. I’ve researched the bird-shell connection since; it has to do with ingested calcium. (I couldn’t have screamed, anyway: snails are notoriously mute.)

I didn’t even have time to retract my stalked eyes and withdraw into my protective carapace. My miniature snail soul, a translucent spiral of softly phosphorescent light, shot into the air—the spirit air, you must understand, where the rules are somewhat different—and made its way through the iridescent rainbow clouds and the tinkling bells and theremin woo-woo sounds of that region, then straight into the body of a mid-level female customer service representative at one of the major banks.

I won’t tell you which bank. I’m guessing the top brass would be less than pleased to discover that one of their customer service representatives is, au coeur, a snail. Not even an exotic snail. The common garden variety.

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