visited us at our house and showed us their photographs and recited their biographies and qualifications, reading from her notebook, and Paula and Commander Kyle listened and nodded. I was expected to look at the pictures and listen to the recital, but not to say anything at present. I could have a week to consider. My own inclinations would naturally be taken into account, said Aunt Gabbana. Paula smiled at this.
“Of course,” she said. I said nothing.
The first candidate was a full Commander, and was even older than Commander Kyle. He was red-nosed, with slightly bulbous eyes—the mark, said Aunt Gabbana, of a strong personality, one who would be a reliable defender and sustainer of his Wife. He had a white beard and what looked like jowls underneath it, or possibly wattles: skin folds drooping down. He was one of the first Sons of Jacob and so was exceptionally godly, and had been essential in the early struggle to establish the Republic of Gilead. In fact, it was rumoured that he had been part of the group that had masterminded the attack on the morally bankrupt Congress of the former United States. He’d already had several Wives—dead, unhappily—and had been assigned five Handmaids but had not yet been gifted with children.
His name was Commander Judd, though I’m not sure this information is of much use if you are attempting to establish his true identity, since the leading Sons of Jacob had changed their names frequently when they were in the secret planning stages of Gilead. I knew nothing of these name changes at the time: I learned about them later, thanks to my excursions through the Bloodlines Genealogical Archives at Ardua Hall. But even there, Judd’s original name had been obliterated.
The second candidate was younger and thinner. His head was pointed at the top and he had oddly large ears. He was good with numbers, said Aunt Gabbana, and intellectual, not always a desirable thing—especially not for women—but in a husband it could be tolerated. He had managed to have one child by his former Wife, who had died in an asylum for mental sufferers, but the poor infant had expired before the age of one.
No, said Aunt Gabbana, it had not been an Unbaby. There was nothing wrong with it at birth. The cause was juvenile cancer, alarmingly on the rise.
The third man, the younger son of a lower-ranking Commander, was only twenty-five. He had a lot of hair but a thick neck, and eyes that were close together. Not as excellent a prospect as the other two, said Aunt Gabbana, but the family was highly enthusiastic about the match, which meant I would be properly appreciated by the in-laws. This was not to be discounted, since hostile in-laws could make a girl’s life miserable: they would criticize, and always side with the husband.
“Don’t jump to any conclusions yet, Agnes,” Aunt Gabbana said. “Take your time. Your parents want you to be happy.” This was a kind thought, but a lie: they didn’t want me to be happy, they wanted me to be elsewhere.
I lay in bed that night with the three photographs of the eligible men floating in the darkness before my eyes. I pictured each one of them on top of me—for that is where they would be—trying to shove his loathsome appendage into my stone-cold body.
Why was I thinking of my body as stone cold? I wondered. Then I saw: it would be stone cold because I would be dead. I would be as wan and bloodless as poor Ofkyle had been—cut open to get her baby out, then lying still, wrapped in a sheet, staring at me with her silent eyes. There was a certain power in it, silence and stillness.
36
I considered running away from home, but how would I do that and where could I go? I had no notion of geography: we did not study it in school, since our own neighbourhood should be enough for us, and what Wife needed more? I did not even know how big Gilead was. How far did it go, where did it end? More practically, how would I travel, what would I eat, where would I sleep? And if I did run away, would God hate me? Surely I would be pursued? Would I cause a lot of suffering to others, like the Concubine Cut into Twelve Pieces?
The world was infested with men who were certain to be tempted by girls who’d strayed out