Oursonette

By Margaret Atwood published Saturday, July 1. 2017

Canada country is not just its people and places, but its stories. On the
occasion of Canada’s sensquicenter The Globe and Mail has invited a
group of writers – from home and abroad – to celebrate the country’s his-
tory fiction. The results will be published throughout the course of 2017.

Paper was fluttering down from the sky. Typed pages, blanks, ticker-
tape, hole puncher confetti, streamers – it was like a blizzard! Where
did it come from? Who had been saving it all up over the past five years?
And to think of the trouble we had getting enough paper for Our-
sonette, Al thought bitterly. We had to grovel, we had to deal, we had
to steal, we practically sold our souls. And for what?
Sourpuss, he told himself. It’s the end of the war. You should be
happy. Everyone else is.
At least he’s got the day off: around eleven, Canadian Pacific hade
called it quits. As soon as he stepped out the door he’d found himself
shouldering his way through a surging mass of grinning, singing hu-
manity. Women and men were still pouring onto Yonge Street from
office buildings and side streets: dozens, hundreds, multiplying by the
second. The noise was deafening: drums, bugles, bagpipes, tin horns,
rattling New Year’s Eve noisemakers, anything that could be whacked
or blown. Hit tunes blared from Victory Loan loudspeakers. Some-
where in the distance – was that a hymn? Abide With Me: doleful
enough for him. He wasn’t in the mood for Glenn Miller.
The sky was blue, the sun was shining. That did nothing to cheer
him up. Overhead, a couple of RCAF mosquitoes were showing off,
wing-dipping and buzzing the Lancaster bomber that was dumping
more paper into the air. Flags everywhere: the Canadian Red Ensign,
the Union Jack, the Stars and Stripes, the Hammer and Sickle, the Chi-
nese flag; the French one, the Polish one, others he was vague about.
Faces on posters: the King and Queen, serene; Churchill scowling;
FDR grinning widely, even though he was dead; Uncle Joe with his
tiger smile. Some Chinese guy. A group of dancers, hand in hand;
couples locked in embrace. A barbershop quartet in uniform, man-
gling The White Cliffs of Dover. He might have been among them if
his feet weren’t so flat and his lungs had been better, though recently
they’d been accepting men scrawnier than him.
Well, he’d done his bit anyway: Oursonette was good for morale,
especially in the beginning when things had been going so badly. Our-
sonette brought a smile amid the gloom. She stiffened the resolve. Sev-
eral letter-writers had told him that.
“Look out where you’re going,” said a voice. He was jostled roughly
aside, but then he was grabbed and kissed. His face came away wet:
tears, not his. Some girl weeping with joy. He rubbed his mouth: who
else she’d been kissing?
Now there was an uproarious old geezer with a bottle, no tie or hat,
his fly undone, offering him a drink. He turned down, because it could
be home brew, and “blind drunk” meant something.
A streetcar moved past him at the speed of a slug, a bunch of teen-
agers clinging to the front, waving at him, stretching out their hands.
“Hop on!” they yelled. He’d never done such a thing at their age, and it
was too late now. He was twenty-one, old enough to know better.
“Hey Four-eyes, how about a smooch?” A CWAC, in uniform, hair
mussed, lipstick like raspberries mashed around her mouth. She ought
to know better, too, though the women who joined the CWAC were
definitely loose, or so it was said.
Not all of them though: Oursonette was SWAC, and she was a hero-
ine. No man could get near her because she had to save her powers for
fighting Nazi spies. She’d been so pure, so brave. What would become
of her now? Would she be scrapped for parts, like a ruined tank? It was
so unfair.
He picked his way along King Street West, going against the flow.
His feet hurt as they frequently did. Finally he reached the Pickering
Hotel. It was the hangout for the inky boys; you could usually find
some of them in there, stoking themselves up before hitting the draw-
ing board again. Il you were fulltime the pace could be blistering.
The place was half-empty – everyone was out celebrating, he sup-
posed – but Gloria and Mike were at their regular table. They used the
place as their impromptu office. Gloria was drinking a cup of the burnt
toast crumbs and charred grain that the Pickering liked to term coffee.
Mike was finishing of a beer and a hamburger, mustard smearing his
chin. Al never touched those hamburger, not since Mike told him that
the meat was ground-up pig snouts. Then he said it was a joke, but Al
wasn’t so sure about that. Mike didn’t care much what he put into his
mouth.
“Hi, boy genius, how’s tricks?” Mike said. Al wished he would crew
and swallow before talking.
“Hi, boy genius, how’s tricks?” Mike said. Al wished he would chew
and swallow before talking.
“Join us, Al,” said Gloria.
“Why are you eating that?” Al slid into the booth. He’d have to order
something – the Pickering frowned on free setting. He’d opt for the
orange Jell-O, even though Mike said it was made out of horse’s hooves.
“Because he’s hungry,” said Gloria in her husky voice. She blew out
smoke from under her wavy blonde Veronica Lake side flop, extruding
her lips into a red O. “He’s always hungry, He’s a growing boy.” She
smiled at Mike as if he was a two year old and had done a cute thing
just by eating, which was how she always smiled at him.
That annoyed Al – what was so special about Mike except that he
knew how to draw? Other than that he was quiet stupid: Gloria was the
brains behind Canoodle Features. She picked the artists, she okayed
the ideas, she supervised the printing, the distribution, the ads. She
kept the books. She’d inherited the business , which had printed signs,
posters, and streetcar ads before the war, so she’d already known the
basics.
“I’m getting back in shape,” said mike. “As a carnivore. Now that the
war’s over we’re going to see a lot of meat. At explosion of meat! It’ll be
like someone dropped this enormous meat bomb!”
“I can hardly wait,” said Gloria. “No more meat tokens! Roast lamb,
that’s my favourite.”
“We’re sunk,” Al Said.
“What?” Mike said. “What d’you mean, sunk? We just won the dad-
ratted war!” He’d been told by Gloria not to swear around her, not real
swearing, so most of the time he didn’t.
“Who do you mean by ‘we’?” said Gloria to Al. She was no dumb
bunny, except in the matter of Mike.
“Mike means the allies. I mean us,” said Al. “All of us. You and
Mike. Canoodle Features. The rest of them, too: Bell and Wow, Johnny
Canuck, Nelvana, the works. And Oursonette.”
“But Oursonette’s doing great!” said Mike. “The fan club – it doubled
since the last issue! And the numbers are great too! Right, Gloria?”
“Twenty thousand copies,” said Gloria. “Maybe twenty-five, I’ll
know in a week. Not as good as Bell’s numbers, but we’re climbing.”
She paused, gave Al a level look. “Or we were climbing, until now.”
The last episode of Oursonette had indeed been a triumph: she’d
parachuted behind enemy lines in her nifty fur-trimmed outfit with
the short skirt that enemy lines in her nifty fur-trimmed outfit with
the short skirt that showed a lot of leg – “Show more leg,” Gloria had
said – and her fur-topped boots. Then, after an interlude when she’d
been captured, tied up, and almost brutally tortured, she’d called on
her two bear allies, broken free of her bonds with their aid, changed
into her white bear form, and subdued a whole nest full of enemy
agents.
She wasn’t allowed to actually kill them – that would have been
too unfeminine, said Gloria – but she’d tied them up in bundles,
using telegraph wire, and she and her two bear allies had carted them
through the lines, dodging machine-gun bullets and artillery fire –
dubba dubba dubba, ack-ack-ack! After another narrow escape, she’d
met up with the Brits and Canucks under the command of Field Mar-
shall Montgomery, drown by Al from a newspaper photo. She’d then
switched back into her human form.
“got a little present for you, boys,” she’d said. She was charmingly
offhand about her own heroic exploits.
“Oursonette! How can we thank you?” they’d said, as they usually did.
“No need,” Oursonette had said. “We’re winning! That’s thanks
enough. Au revoir!” Oursonette often said “Au revoir!” Her name was
more or less French, which was good because Al was partial to the Van
Doos, especially since Ortona. “Au revoir” was the only French thing
Oursonette ever said, but you got the idea.