r*

Margaret Atwood
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MY LIFT AS A BAT
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l. Reincarnation
In my previous life I was a bat.
If you find previous lives amusing or unlikely, you are not
a serious person. Consider: A great many people believe in
them, and if sanity is a general consensus about the content
of reality, who are you to disagree?
Consider also': Previous lives have entered the world of
commerce. Money can he made lrom them. You usere Cleo-
patra, you u)ere a Flemish duke, you u)ere a Druid priestess,
and money changes hands. [f the stock market exists, so must
previous lives.
In the previous-life market, there is not such a great
demand for Peruvian ditch-diggers as there is for Cleopatra;
or lbr lndian latrine-cleaners' or lbr 1952 housewives living
in Calilbrnia split-levels. Similarly, rtot many of us choose to
.remember our lives as vultures, spiders or rodents, but sonle
of us do. The lbrtunate ferv. Conventional wisdom has it that
reincarnation as an animal is a pu4ishment for past sins, but

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 SUDDEN FICTION (CONTINUED) Atrvood MY LIFE AS A BAT

perhaps it is a reward instead. At least a resting place.

An glistening hush, with the moistness of nerv mushrooms, and
interlude ofgrace.
the other bats will chirp and rustle and doze until night
Bats have a few things to put up with, but they do not
unfurls again and makes the hot sky tender for us.
inflict. When they kill, they kill witirout mercy, bui without
But when I reach the entrance to the cave, it is sealed
lrate. They are imnrune from the curse of 'pity. They
never over. It's blocked in. Who can have done this?
gloat.
I vibrate my wings, sniffing blind as a dazzled moth over
the hard surface. In a short time the sun rvill rise like a
2. Nightmares balloon on fire and I will be blasted with its glare, shriveled
to a few small bones.
I have recurring nightmares.
Whoever said that light was liI'e and darkness nothing?
In one of them, I am clinging to the ceiling of a summer
For some of us, the mythologies are dilTerent.
cottage while a red-faced man in white shorts ancl a white
V-necked }shirt jumps up and down, hitting at me
with a 3. Vanrpire Films
tennis racquet. There are cedar rafters up hlre, and
sticky
flypapers attached with tacks, dangling like toxic ."r*"ed..
I became aware of the nature of my previous lil'e gradually,
I look down at the man's face, IbrlshJ.tened and sweating
not only through dreams but through scraps of memory,
the eyes bulgrng and blue, the mouth emitting furious ,,oirI,
through hints, through odd moments of recognition.
rising up like a marine float, sinking again, Jsi.rg as if on
a There was my prel'erence for the subtleties of dawn and
swcll of air.
dusk, as opposed to the vulgar blaring hour of high noon.
The air itself is muggy, the sun is sinking; there will be a
There was my d6jd vu experience in the Carlsbad Caverns-
thunderstorm. A woman is shriehing, .,My- hair! My hair!,,
surely I had been there before, long before, before they put
.rrd someonr: elsc is rnlling, .,Anthr:aillring the str:ptdder!,,
in the pastel spotlights and the cute names for stalactites and
All I wr,rl is 1.. gr:r ,rrr rlrrrrrglr rrr* rrrlt: in t.ll. sr.r.,r,rr, lnrr
llrr: rrrrrlrlrgrrrrnrrl rr:slirtrrirrtt wlror(: y(,lr (:alr r:onrlrirrr.: r:laus-
that will take some concentraiion and it's hard in this din or ' trophobia and indigestion and then take the elevator to get
voices, they interfere with my sonar. There is a smell
ol.dirty hack out.
bathmats-it's his breath, the breath that comes out from
there was also my dislike for headlirls of human hair,
every pore, the breath of the monster. I will be lucky to
get so like nets or the tendrils of poisonous jellyfish: I feared
out of this alive.
entanglemcnts. No real bat would ever sucl< the blood of
In another nighturare I am winging my way-llittering I
necks. 'lhe neck is too near the hair. Even the vampire bat
suppose you'd call it-through the clean-washed demihlht
will target a hairless extremity: by choice a toe, resembling
before dawn. This is a desert. The yuccas are in bloom, a"nd
as it does the teat of a cow.
I have been gorging myself on their juices and pollen. I,m
Vampire films have always seemed ludicrous to me, lbr
hcading to my homc, to my home cave, where it will bc cool
this reason btrt also fior the idiocy ol'l hcir bals-hrrge rubhery
dtrring the burnout of day antl there will be thc sound of
bats, with rcd Christrnas-light t:ycs arrd lhngs likc a sabt-'r-
water trickling through limestone, coating the rock with a
toothed tiger's, Ilown in on strings, their puppet wings

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SUDDEN FICTION (CONTINUED) Atrvood MY LIFE AS A BAT

metal' however
flapped sluggishly lihe those of an overweight and degener- experience loathing for something merely
orriirorr. We save i=h"." '""'tioni for those with
skin and
ate bird. I screamed at these filmic moments, but not with
I'ear; rather wlth outraged laughter, at the insult to bats. flesh: a skin, a flesh, unlihe our own'
O Dracula, unlikely hero! O flying leukemia, in your cloah
like a living umbrella, a membrane of black leather which 5. BeautY t,
you unwind from within yourself and lift like a stripteaser's
fan as you bend with emaciated lust over the neck, flawless Perhaps it isn't my lil'e as a bat that was the interlude' Per-
sent into human form
and bland, of whatever woman is longing for obliteration, ffi;iit this life. i%rhup' l havetobeen save and redeem my own
here and now in her best neglig6e. \[hy was it given to you o, if o., a dangerous mission,
by whoever stole your soul to transform yourself into bat folk. When I har" gained a small success?
or died in the
oddso is
and wolf, and only those? Why not a vampire chipmunl<, a ,ii"-p,-f"t hilure,In such a task and against srrch lorrn'
duck, a gerbil? Why not a vampire turtle? Now that would .r"." ilf.t,f y-l will be born again, back into that othor
be a plot. - othcr wttrltl whcrc I more trulyevent
that bckrng
with longing' 'fhe.
Mor" ancl rnore, I think of this
4. The Bat as Deadly Weapon il;;; tf heu.tf"at the vivid plunge into the nectars of
flowers, hovering in ihe. infrared of night;
the
During the Second World War they did experiments with
"'."prr".tlu.
arrit tury half-sleep of daltime, with bodies rounded
and
me' the mothers lick-
bats. Thousands of bats were to be released over German soft as frrrred plums cluster-ing around
of
cities, at the hour of noon. Each was to have a small incendi- ;;;;";iry orrr"d faces oTihe newhorn; the swift love
the tongue and of
ary device strapped onto it, with a timer. lLre bats would what will come next? the anticipations of
nose' nose like a dead
have headed for darkness, as is their habit. They would have the infurled, corrugated and scrolled
crawled into holes in walls, or secreted themselves under the i"rt, like a raiiator grill, nose of a denizen of Pluto'
eaves of houses, relieved to have found safety. At a preor-
"r."
And in the evening, the supersonic hymn
of praise to. our
dained moment they would have explodedo and the cities Creator, the Creatorif b"t, *ho upp""s to us in the lorm
and the liquid
would have gone up in flames. of a bat and who gave us all things: water
petals and lruit
That was the plan. Death by flaming bat. 'll-re bats too ,torr" of caves, the-woody reluge o[ attics'
slippery rvinfs and sharp
would have died, of course. Acceptable megadeaths. and juicy insects, and the beauty of
The cities went up in flames anyway, but not with the aid white canines and shining eYes'
as all do' and lbr
of bats, The atom bomb had bcen invented, arrd thc liery bat What tlo wc pray for? fue pray lirr food
lbr deliverance
health arrd lbr th"-i""t"n'" of ot" kind;
and
was no longer thought necessary.
us' which is hair-
If the bats had been used after all, would there have been from evil, which cannot be explained by
a sirigle white-unseeing
a war memorial to them? It isn't likely. headecl and walks in the night with
two legs'
If you ask a human being what makes his flesh creep stinks o{ half-digested meat' and has
' "tta of caves and
"y", children'
more, a bat or a bomb, he will say the bat. It is difficult to Godcless [rottoes: bless your
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