The Commander's Bookshelf

[This is my attempt to address both Brave New World and The Handmaid's Tale via creative writing.]

The Commander’s Bookshelf

There’s a book on the commander’s bookshelf I want to read. I remember it from school, hurriedly skimming its pages before class.

I do not ask if I can read the book. At first it is because I’m distracted by the other magazines and books the commander offers me. Then it is because I’m worried about what he’ll think. I look instead at the volume he’s chosen for me, an impressive, well-used Latin textbook. Show-off. There are notes scribbled in the margins.

He smiles when he sees them. Schoolboy jokes, he says. My gaze catches on one phrase, scrawled in uneven, adolescent handwriting. Nolite te carborundorum bastardes.

What do they mean? I ask.

He enjoys bestowing knowledge, teaching. Part of that is the power, but part of it's the connection. He's lonely. He taps different phrases. Fac ut vivas. Get a life. He laughs. Now, this one, I won’t repeat in front of you. As for this one. He taps the one I was looking at. Nolite te carborundorum bastardes. Don’t let the bastards get you down. He laughs again, looking pleased with himself.

I feel pressure in my jaw. I want to mimic the syllables, which rhyme and run like music. Not pop. Punk. Later, when I’m alone in my room, staring up at the faint outline of the chandelier in the dark, I do.

***

How about you choose what to read this time? he says.

I’m surprised, although perhaps I shouldn’t be. He was so careful at the beginning, unsure of what he could and couldn't do. But as the days go on, he is becoming more and more confident.

I take the chance. My sister Sara always said I was too impulsive, but sometimes you have no choice. That one, I say, pointing.

It’s his turn to be surprised. I always thought this one was a little silly, he says. But I suppose it’s entertaining. He hands the book to me and I open it. I start at the beginning.

A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, Community, Identity, Stability.

***

I read, he watches. He doesn’t have to explain. The hunger is always in his eyes. I wonder if I am as obvious when I read as he is when he looks at the light freckles over my cheekbones.

I don’t care about him.

I start out slow, savoring each familiar word, each recognized name. I look at each letter, tracing the serif lines with my eyes. I observe the meanings, but also the shapes themselves, the long swoop of a j, like a woman’s naked neck, now forbidden. Or the end of a sharp hook speared in a fish’s flesh. I've missed all of it, but perhaps most of all the latter; my mother was from Norway. Loaves and Fishes is closed so often, Rita has stopped giving me tokens for it when I go out shopping.

However, as the days go on, I start to feel a sense of urgency not altogether different from when I was reading for class. The story flies, and so do I.

Do you like it? he asks. He still finds it curious that I asked for this book, in particular. It’s frivolous to him.

Yes, I say.

I am nearing the end.

I know what happens.

***

It has been many, many weeks, and I am still not pregnant. Everyone looks at me with a sort of tightness in their gaze. I’m angry in an exhausted way, in a way that looks complacent from the outside.

When the commander summons me again, I don’t want to go. But I do. When I sit down across from him, he smiles. Idiot, I think.

But I won’t let him ruin it for me.

I have been dashing through the book as though pursued. However, as I near the last pages, as I read about the orgy—which seems so incredibly shocking now—I slow to a crawl. I bend my head forward so he can’t see my face. And I read the last line over and over and over.

When I return to my room I feel flushed, I feel feverish, I feel sick. I kneel down by the closet and start scratching with my fingernail. It’s slow and frustrating but something propels me forward. You were always too impulsive, Sara had said.

When I am finished, it must be nearing dawn. I stand, ignoring my aching body. I’ve done it. I have no lighthouse of my own, only a chandelier, but I’ve made my arrows nonetheless. Let my aim be true.

My feet will be compass needles. Right. North, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west. Then left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east…

---

-Annette