The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence

Author:Margaret Laurence [Laurence, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 978-1-55199-377-5
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 1988-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

Six

RAIN. I waken groggily in the darkness, and for a moment I wonder if Doris has been in yet to close my window. Then, fumbling my way out of sleep, I realize where I am. My window has a broken pane, and the rain is slanting in. A mild rain, fortunately, not like the thunderstorms we used to get on the prairies, when the lightning would rend the sky like an angry claw at the cloak of God.

But this rain’s ease is deceptive. There’s an unpleasant persistence about it. It could get on a person’s nerves, to listen for long. I realize that I’m shivering. No wonder. I’ve only my thin cardigan. I’m cold. I’m terribly cold now, lying upon this lumpy mattress that reeks of mold and damp. My feet, still shod, are clenched with cramp. I should rise and stand, work the muscles straight. I daren’t, though. What if I fall? Who’d tote me up? I’m reluctant, in any case, to leave the bed, as though it were some sort of stronghold where nothing could touch me.

This rain is so loud and clattering that I couldn’t possibly hear if anyone were walking up the stairs. I’ll lie here silently. I’ll try to breathe more softly so my breath won’t mask any outside noise. But all I can hear is the rain, and the wind prodding the loose cedar shakes on the roof, and making them jabber. Under my ribs the soreness spreads. Is it the old pain or only my apprehension?

If Bram were here, and intruders came, he’d make short work of them. He’d bawl at them in his bull’s voice and they’d go away. He’d curse and swear, and they’d go away all right. But he’s not here.

It’s a muffling darkness, smothering and thick as wool. I have no light. A person needs a light—that’s a certainty. I wonder now if I am here at all, or if I only imagine myself to be.

Is that a different sound? There—it’s stopped now. Will it sound again? What was it? The rain won’t stop—that I do know. I shouldn’t have come to this outlandish place. Now I can’t remember why I came.

If I cry out, who would hear me? Unless there’s another in this house, no one. Some gill-netter passing the point might catch an echo, perhaps, and wonder if he’d imagined it or if it could be the plaintive voices of the drowned, calling through the brown kelp that’s stopped their mouths, in the deep and barnacled places where their green hair ripples out and snags on the green deep rocks. Now I could fancy myself there among them, tiaraed with starfish thorny and purple, braceleted with shells linked on limp chains of weed, waiting until my encumbrance of flesh floated clean away and I was free and skeletal and could journey with tides and fishes.

It beckons a second only. Then I’m scared out of my wits, nearly. Stupid old woman, Hagar, baggage, hulk, chambered nautilus are you? Shut up.

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