Free Life Before Man by Margaret Atwood

given an egg once by the Ukrainian grandmother, one of the untouchable decorated eggs kept on the mantelpiece along with the family photos in silver-plated frames. The Jewish grandmother, finding it, had smashed the egg with her tiny boots, stamping up and down, a mouse’s rage.
    They’re both old women, her mother said. They’ve had hardlives. You can’t change anyone over fifty. Lesje wept over her handful of bright egg fragments while her little grandmother, repentant, stroked her with her brown paws. She bought Lesje another egg, somewhere; which must have cost her more than the money.
    Both grandmothers spoke as if they personally had been through the war, had been gassed, raped, run through with bayonets, shot, starved, bombed and cremated, and had by a miracle survived; which wasn’t true. The only one who had actually been there was Aunt Rachel, her father’s sister, older by twenty years, already married and settled by the time the family left. Aunt Rachel was a photograph on her grandmother’s mantelpiece, a plump dumpy-looking woman. She’d been comfortably off, and that was all the picture revealed: comfort. No foreknowledge; that was added much later, by Lesje, guiltily looking. Her father and mother did not discuss Aunt Rachel. What was there to discuss? No one knew what had happened to her. Lesje, although she has tried, cannot imagine her.
    Lesje does not say any of this to Nate, who’s explaining to her why the French feel the way they feel. Lesje doesn’t really care why. She just wants to stay out of the way.
    Nate has almost finished his turkey sandwich; he hasn’t eaten any of his fries. He’s gazing at the table to the left of Lesje’s water glass, picking apart one of the Varsity Restaurant’s white rolls. His place is scattered with crumbs. Things have to be viewed in a historical context, he says. He abandons the roll and lights a cigarette. Lesje doesn’t like to ask for one – hers are gone, and it’s the wrong time to get up for more – but after a minute he offers her one and even lights it for her, staring at her nose, she feels, which makes her nervous.
    She wants to ask: Why am I here? You didn’t really invite me to lunch in this third-rate restaurant to settle the future of the nation, did you? But he’s already signaling for the bill. As they wait for it,he tells her he has two daughters. He says their names and ages, then repeats them, as though reminding himself or making sure she’s got it straight. He’d like to bring them to the Museum some Saturday, he says. They’re very interested in dinosaurs. Could she perhaps show them around?
    Lesje doesn’t usually work on Saturdays, but how can she say no? Depriving his children of dinosaurs. She ought to be glad for the chance to spread the word, make converts, but she isn’t: dinosaurs aren’t a religion for her, only a preserve. Also she’s oddly disappointed. There should have been more to it, after all that stuttering on the telephone, this assignation at a restaurant which, she suddenly realizes, Elizabeth can be depended on never to enter. Lesje says politely that she’d be more than delighted to walk Nate’s children through the exhibits and answer any questions they might have. She starts to put on her coat.
    Nate pays for the lunch, even though Lesje offers to pick up her half. She would rather pay for the whole lunch. He looks so broke. More importantly, it’s still not at all clear to her what will be expected of her for this gift of a grilled cheese sandwich and a glass of milk; what she is being asked to do or give in return.

Monday, November 15, 1976
NATE
    N ate sits in the Selby Hotel, drinking draft beer and watching television. TRANSIENT, PERMANENT , the sign in the entranceway reads, in big type, as if the two things are the same. Once it was an old man’s bar, a bar for poor old men. He drinks at the Selby out of habit: Martha’s place is only three blocks away, and he’d fallen into the