The semi-autobiographical tale is inspired by the author’s time in Provence.
Her latest piece of fiction isTwo Scorched Men, a semi-autobiographical tale inspired by her time in Provence.
The full story is available onScribd.comstarting today, but EW is giving you an exclusive first taste below.
Margaret Atwood’s latest piece of fiction is ‘Two Scorched Men’.Credit: Courtesy Margaret Atwood; Scribd
He laughed his pink-cheeked, silent laugh.
“But you mustn’t tell him that I told you.”
“What do you mean, in the radiator?”
Francois was not always self-evident.
He paused, giving me time to say “Really?”
with the required lift of the eyebrows.
I think so," he continued.
“There is water all over the floor.
He has called a plumber.
He is in quite a rage.”
“Oh dear,” I said.
I was thus familiar with the rages, which could be unleashed at any time.
I also knew where that radiator was located: in a back hallway off the kitchen.
That was where John cleaned his gun, or guns.
I was uncertain as to the number.
What did he shoot with it, or them?
Wild boars, possibly, once.
“In the radiator!
It is so funny,” said Francois, making more laughing expressions.
“But you mustn’t tell that you know.
His feelings would be hurt.”
Here is the clue: They’d both been in the war.
They’re dead now.
A thing that happens increasingly: People die.
This radiator incident took place in the early nineties, when the two of them must have beenwhat?
I’m counting backwards.
Francois was three or four years younger.
Both of them presented me with their stories that year.
Why did they want this?
Breath in the mouths of others.
Gentlemen, the time has come.
I will do my best for you.
There were straying pigs (rages about the pigs).
There was a lot of mud on the roads (rages about the mud).
There were neighbors in thick knitted cardigans and filthy overalls (rages about the neighbors).
John’s house, however, was not part of a working farm.
The house was two-story, stone, eighteenth-century, with the vertical shutter-trimmed windows of that time and place.
It had one of the most beautiful interiors either Tig or I had ever seen.
The furniture was neither comfortable nor convenient, but it was authentic.
John made sure we knew that, though the exquisite taste was his wife’s, not his.
(He never threw rages about this unseen wife, or not when we were around.)
During the war the house had belonged to an Englishman of ambiguous loyalties.
Bullet in the head.
No gun in sight, so not suicide.
A shrug, followed by a mini-rage about the criminality and secretiveness of the region.
Or rather, someone must have known but nobody would say.
And serve you right, said John, for being so sodding stupid.
The woods were full of signs threatening traps or poison, to deter potential miscreants and their truffle-sniffing dogs.
Was it a hex sign of some kind?
A warning, but about what, or to whom?
We were off the main trail; nobody came there.
“Don’t touch it,” said Tig, but I wouldn’t have anyway.
There were already flies, and a stench of rotting meat.
We told John about the bone arrangement, which generated another rant about the dark doings in these parts.
Evil peasants, dead ignorant, witless mud-wallowers,emmerdeurs, smugglers, thieves.
No respect for civilization, or the law either, such as it was.
But maybe this was because of historical memory, I said.
The distrust of authorities.
John let out a bellow.
What tripe had I been dabbling in?
But they’d been horribly persecuted, I said.
At this point Tig slid off to the kitchen to pour himself a Scotch.
He was not much interested in thirteenth-century dualism, or heresies in general, or massacres; unlike me.
John, however, was well versed in heresies.
Anyway, stuff their persecution!
They were heretics, it was their choice, what did they expect?
Not that he himself was a Catholic.
Stuff the Catholics, and most especially the Irish ones!
[small cut here]
I wasn’t willing to let go of the heretics.
But the nonconformists, I said, attempting to herd him back to the topic.
Especially in the south of France.
Their refusal to toe the line.
Surely that had something to do with the strength of the French Resistance down here during the war?
What kind of brain-dead North American twat was I?
Underneath the bluster he was a sentimentalist, like many of the enraged.
An excerpt from Margaret Atwood’sTwo Scorched Men, published by Scribd Originals.
Copyright 2021 Margaret Atwood.
Reprinted with permission from Scribd LLC.
