Free The Tent by Margaret Atwood Page A

is they who take the first risks, and are ground under the giant clanking wheels of the invading warlords. The next ring is made of slippery defences, labyrinthine corridors, trenches filled with pointed stakes, ambushes involving falling boulders and red-hot coals, very deadly but after a while not enough. The warriors who work this ring obey one single command:
Hold the gate!
    Hand-picked worldwide warriors form the inner circle. They are mercenaries, because you can’t trust volunteers. They are the bodyguards, They guard the body. They’re supposed to guard it with their deaths, they aren’t supposed to live to tell the tale, but some do. The tale is about how, despite their best efforts or anyway their second best, the warlord’s forces were finally overcome. How his cave, his tree, his tower, his castle, his city, his weapons factories, his prisons, his billiard rooms went up in flames. How the invading army drank up all his champagne and took baths in his bathtubs. How his concubines were gang-raped on the rooftops, his wives dismembered, his children blinded, to the delighted howls of the crowd, who now claim never to have liked the warlord anyway. How he himself was roasted, skewered, blown up, beheaded, hanged upside down, forced into bankruptcy. How his statues were toppled and sold as scrap, or else as kitschy souvenirs.
    What point in continuing, after that? With being a hand-picked worldwide warrior. No future in it. No prestige. Scramble out of the uniform, the trappings, the trap; run for your life, through the dank forest, across the prickly desert, up the icy mountains, leaving blood footprints. When you’ve reached neutral territory, when you’ve stashed the loot hoisted from the warlord’s mansion – well, he didn’t have much use for it any more, did he? – and when you finally have a spare moment to sit down at a café with a cool drink, you rethink your occupation.
    But your occupation’s gone. You can’t get another. Once you’ve fought for a warlord, any warlord, even a warlord committee, you can’t forget. You can’t learn anything else. Nothing can replace the adrenalin, the hellish but enlivening nightmares. Nothing – let’s face it – is nearly as much fun as being a warlord’s warrior.
Fun
taken in the broadest sense of the word, you understand.
    Look over there. See that ropy-muscled old guy raking the lawn? The other one sweeping the sidewalk, the third hauling the trash? Warlord survivors, all of them. They’re branded with invisible tattoos. Behind their eyes the embers smoulder. They’re waiting. They’re ready for the call.

The Tent
    You’re in a tent. It’s vast and cold outside, very vast, very cold. It’s a howling wilderness. There are rocks in it, and ice and sand, and deep boggy pits you could sink into without a trace. There are ruins as well, many ruins; in and around the ruins there are broken musical instruments, old bathtubs, bones of extinct land mammals, shoes minus their feet, auto parts. There are thorny shrubs, gnarled trees, high winds. But you have a small candle in your tent. You can keep warm.
    Many things are howling out there, in the howling wilderness. Many people are howling. Some howl in grief because those they love have died or been killed, others howl in triumph because they have caused the loved ones of their enemies to die or be killed. Some howl to summon help, some howl for revenge, others howl for blood. The noise is deafening.
    It’s also frightening. Some of the howling is coming close to you, in your tent, where you crouch in silence, hoping you won’t be seen. You’re frightened for yourself, but especially for those you love. You want to protect them. You want to gather them inside your tent, for protection.
    The trouble is, your tent is made of paper. Paper won’t keep anything out. You know you must write on the walls, on the paper walls, on the inside of your tent. You must write upside down and backwards, you must cover