The Summer Before the Dark

by Doris Lessing

  Kate knew of course that she was about to be flipped from one suave impersonal Organisation into another, in a matter of hours, by means of a suave impersonal Airline. She was, like us all, acquainted by radio, television, films, with the international civil service and their manner of life. But it did not happen like that. On the eve of her departure the strike was definitely called off, and she was sure of her flight; by next morning there was another, of the administrative staff. Kate took the train to Paris where she expected to take a plane to Rome. In Paris she was told the roads to the airport were blocked that day by a demonstration of alien workers, mostly Spanish and Italian—she would be unlikely to get off the ground that day. She took the train to Rome. There it was a question of leaving one circuit of machinery—railways, to link with the other, air travel. There were traffic jams, muddles, all kinds of delay, but she was able at last to make the switch; rather late, however. In Turkey her surroundings were as she had expected: a sleek car took her, by herself, through people who could never expect to sit in such a car, unless their job was to drive or maintain it, and, shielded from her surroundings in every way but through her eyes, she talked French with the chauffeur. The hotel was like, in spirit and style, the building for Global Food. Her room was like the undemanding box she had left. But because she was late, having been so much delayed, she arrived at the same time as the incoming delegates—a thousand small necessary things had not been done, and they were a translator short. She did no more than see her luggage to her room, then presented herself: irritation focussed on her; she was now personifying the spirit of inefficiency about which all over this vast hotel the delegates were complaining—just as she had been complaining yesterday and the day before, in London, Paris, and Rome.

  A whole floor had been given to the conference. The large room in which the deliberations would be held was like the one which she had just left, and which she was almost thinking of as “home.” It was fleshed in shining wood from ceiling to the floor, which, however, was not thick carpet, but tiles, whose pattern was copied from a mosque. In the middle of this room was a vast table, this time rectangular, set with headphones, switches, and buttons. It was now her task to see that each place was equipped with paper, for doodling and scribbling during fits of boredom when delegates spoke too long, and with pencils, and biros, and water. Or rather, she did not do this herself: she was making sure that the hotel employee whose responsibility it was had not forgotten. His name was Ahmed, a young man, fattish and pale, invincibly agreeable and smiling, her counterpart, her ally, her brother. He spoke French and German and English; was happy she had what he lacked—Italian and Portuguese; he knew everything about the hotel trade, but had not before assisted at a Conference—or rather, while he knew business conferences, expected this one would be different. They conferred in this language or that. When a boy in braid and buttons came up to Ahmed, Kate heard Turkish in an order being given and taken. She had not heard that language spoken since she had arrived in the country. Sitting and talking with Ahmed, standing and talking, walking and talking, making plans for other people’s comfort, she heard Turkish, as it were, out of the corners of her ears—noises offstage, no more. All around her, outside this hotel, was a world where her ears, when they were actually and at last exposed to it, would be suddenly dulled and uncomprehending: the language she did not know was around her like panes of badly cleaned glass, opaque, painful; her ears, as if rebuked, would strain after the exchange of two maids in a corridor—they felt they ought to understand, and if they did not, it was their fault … without Ahmed, she would be like a bit of useless machinery.

  He had the necessary experience of night life, restaurants, dancing girls, mosques, churches, and suitable short trips out of Istanbul—useful in that order. The city, viewed from hundreds of feet in its air, but in brief glimpses, was all an enticing glitter of roofs and silvery water, and streets which were, like the Turkish language itself, far away, and energetic with a life she felt she ought to be reaching after, understanding … a bird flew past at eye level as she stood at a window. It was one she had not seen before. She felt that subtle approaches were being made to her from an unknown world and she watched the bird cross the water fed from the Black Sea to spires and domes on another shore, while Ahmed waited beside her for an answer to a question about eating preferences. By the time the last of the delegates had descended from the skies, entertainments, excursions, cultural delights of all kinds, not to mention the great dishes of a dozen nations, were waiting. And already being enjoyed, for these men and women seemed minimally fatigued, so experienced were they all in this business of crossing continents, arriving delightfully dressed and nonchalant, chattering together in a score of languages. It was clear that this was going to be a good-humored, well-tempered conference. They were liking each other. After all, they always did, these administrators, these so bland antagonists, these tactful interpreters of national interest. For no matter how much they expressed disagreement when sitting around vast tables, and how forcefully they pressed their own country’s claims, or even accused each other of double-dealing—It was Nation X who put the beetle in that season’s crop to ruin our trade!—No, it is obvious to the whole world that your crop got the beetle because you weren’t growing it properly—You won’t allow anybody but your own country to benefit—you always hog everything!—On the contrary, we want to help our unfortunate brothers in the poor countries—yes, exactly like so many quarrelling children; but no matter how much and how often all this went on, afterwards in the lounges and the bars and the coffee rooms and the restaurants, not to mention the beds, all was understanding and fraternity. Of course; for these people did the same job, spent their lives in exactly the same way—they had everything in common.

  That evening Kate joined a sightseeing group of these well-travelled people who, however, had been unfortunate enough not to have seen Istanbul before, and the moment she left the hotel found herself in a city of legend, mystery, and romance, exactly as the guidebooks described it in all the languages she spoke and many she did not. The group was Madame Phiri, a handsome and very French black lady from Sierra Leone, a Mr. Daniel from Brazil, and a Mr. Ferrugia from Italy. They had dinner in a Turkish restaurant, for this was the least that was expected of them, visited two night clubs where they saw belly dancers and sword swallowers, and agreed that very soon these same four would visit a village fifty miles off where there were some interesting antiquities newly discovered. It had been, they all agreed, as they parted in the foyer for the night, a particularly pleasant evening: they spoke like the connoisseurs they were. They then went to bed early—that is, before one in the morning—since the conference would start tomorrow.

  Kate did have time before she slept to think of her Michael in—she believed—Chicago, where he was spending a few days with an old colleague who had emigrated to the States. She thought, too, of her four children. She noted that the pang that came with them was at once assuaged: she knew that she was already blooming, expanding, enlarging—she was wanted, needed; she was going to be in demand all day and most of the night.

  And now, for the few minutes she had free every day she noted the slow rise of her euphoria—she watched it drily enough. And, since she was too busy to think for long, she could allow thoughts to enter which would have been too painful if there was time for them to invade: how delighted her family had been when she had said that she was busy with her conference in London and would not have time to pack and organise and arrange—and there had been the relief in Tim’s voice when she had said, Oh darling, are you all right for Norway? I’m sorry, I am simply too busy to …

  The fact was, the picture or image of herself as the warm centre of the family, the source of invisible emanations like a queen termite, was two or three years out of date. (Was there something wrong with her memory perhaps? It was seeming more and more as if she had several sets of memory, each contradicting the others.) The truth was that she had been starved for two years,
three, more—at any rate, since the children had grown up. The fact that this had taken some time, that it had been a process, that there had never been a moment when she could have said: now, they’re grown, it’s done—was it because of this her memories were turning out to be liars? Of course it had not been the “real” Kate who had been starved. That personage had remained, as always—or at least in her better moments—quietly offstage, in observation that was more often than not humorous. But it had been painful enough, that deprivation; she had sat often alone in her room, raging under a knowledge of intolerable unfairness. Injustice, the pain of it, had been waiting for her all these last years. But she had not allowed herself to feel it, or not for long. She had instead carefully tended the image of the marriage (could it be called, perhaps, The Tenth Phase? The Fifteenth Phase?) that was the result of intelligent discussions with her husband. She had not allowed herself to get much closer to what she had been feeling than the humorous grimace. She could not bear to let it all assault her now. Some time she was going to have to! But now, luckily, she was too busy; how very flatteringly busy. Here she was, being smiled upon by chambermaids and waiters, by the hotel manager and the floor managers, by taxi men, and interpreters—and particularly by Ahmed, who adored her. Just as she adored him. Their relationship was that of two eunuchs in a harem. He supported her, understood everything, provided everything: she was unfailingly the one person able to cope with all the problems and needs of these difficult, talented, spoiled, used-to-being-waited-on children, the international administrators, the new elite: she, with her twin Ahmed. While the conference went on, she was in a room nearby, waiting to be of use; and when necessary she was in her little booth, ready at a gesture to switch from French, Italian, English, converting them into Portuguese—all the Portuguese speakers had come to her, congratulating her on her absolute fidelity to the spirit of their language. At coffee and drink breaks, at mealtimes, everywhere, at all hours of the day and night, there she was, the ever-available, ever-good-natured, popular Kate Brown.

  During the summer before, on her visit to the States, she had observed her own present condition …

  All over that continent are repeated variations of a building like a small town, but under a single roof, and these are sometimes miles-long and subdivided into sectors, each self-contained, each of which serves an airline. Some of the large airlines employ girls like the drum majorettes that are used at conventions and carnivals. These girls, dressed fancifully, and in arresting colours, patrol the area alongside the check-in desks of their airline. They are supposed to give information and guidance, and do, in fact, offer these services, but this is not their function. Which is, quite simply, to attach the idea of easily available and guiltless sex to that airline. Not a challenging or difficult or complex or mysterious sexuality—God forbid. The girls are attractive, but not very sexual. They have been chosen for their friendly perky daylight sexiness, and there they are, in ones and twos and threes, walking up and down, smiling, smiling, smiling, and, as you watch them (while the hours pass: if, for instance, your plane is late in leaving) they slowly become inflated, with a warm expanding air. They are intoxicated—but really, literally—with their own attractiveness, and by their public situation, dressed and placed where they will draw so many eyes towards them, and by their own helpfulness. They smile and smile and smile, and soon it looks as if these girls will one by one float off and up, carried by their own expanding gases of goodwill, which are being constantly replenished by so much attention. Yes, off they will float through the airport windows, and bob smiling around the sky like weather balloons among the ascending and descending airplanes. And inside the aircraft are girls in exactly the same condition: the air hostesses, every one of them intoxicated by her position as public benefactor, a love supplier. This isn’t true of the big airlines, the international lines, where the girls are working hard supplying attention and love in the form of food to their customers, but all over America the small, brisk aircraft flit, day and night, supplied plentifully by girls with nothing much to do. They offer drinks. They lay before you, with tenderness and intimate smiles, trays of packaged meals. They send loving messages through the intercom: “We love you, we need you, please come again, please love us.” And they walk up and down, up and down, smiling, smiling, being admired by men and by women. Their business is to be admired. As they move about displaying themselves, the fever rises. At the beginning of the flight a girl is fresh and radiant with general friendliness, but soon she seems ready to explode with the forces of attention she has absorbed. She is blown up with it; she probably has a temperature—she certainly looks as if she has, with flushed cheeks and glazed excited eyes.

  And she smiles. She smiles. She smiles.

  One can imagine that when she gets back to her room after a flight she is restless, can’t sit down, can’t sleep, can’t stop smiling, can’t eat. She is too stimulated, she can’t switch herself off. If she has a man, what can that poor nothing’s love be compared to what she has been receiving from dozens of men all day. And imagine what happens when this victim marries! Which of course is bound to happen very soon: the marriage rate is high in the profession, like the divorce rate. But for one year, two years, three years—at the most half a dozen—that girl has been on show, the focus of hundreds of pairs of eyes, all day; every minute of her working time a receptacle for admiration and desire and envy, the producer of warmth, comfort, attention. Then she marries. It must be like walking off a stage where a thousand people are applauding into a small dark room. Very likely she has no idea at all of what is making her feel like a top that has been whipped and whipped—and left to spin there for ever. She cannot have been introspective or self-aware; for such a girl must necessarily be naive, to be prepared to do such work at all. Never during her entire life has this thought come near her: the monstrousness of putting up a girl to be a target for public love—drum majorette, airline advertisement, hostess—for months, or for years. She marries because to get married young is to prove herself; and then it must be as if she has inside her an organ capable of absorbing and giving off thousands of watts of Love, Attention, Flattery, and this organ has been working at full capacity, but she can’t switch the thing off. What is the matter with her? She has no idea. Why does she feel so irritable, why can’t she relax, rest, sleep? She is like a child the grownups have been admiring but now they have got bored with her, they have turned away and started talking and forgotten her, and no matter how she dances, and smiles and poses and shouts, Look at me! Look at me! they seem not to hear. At last they say, “Be quiet. Run along and play.”

  She has headaches. She is frigid and then makes frenetic love to a man who feels as if he has a rival. Soon there is a divorce. Probably she enquires for her old job, but she is too old. She has lost her easy puppy vitality, and her place has been taken by a girl just out of college.

  It would soon be the middle of July. The conference would end in a couple of days, when the delegates would scatter while others came in: the hotel was to accommodate a conference on cholera.

  Kate was smiling, smiling, in the beam of other people’s appreciation, turning the beam of her own readiness outwards to warm everybody else; the thought that soon now she would be alone caused her reactions to become exaggerated. She knew it. It was panic. The smiling beam was too strong. Or perhaps that was not it: she was offering what she had available, as she had been doing since the start of the conference, but now it was too strong for a situation where they were all thinking about how they must pack up and go. She saw herself, through the reactions of Ahmed, as an efficient, high-powered, smiling woman, but spinning around and around on herself like a machine that someone should have switched off. He offered her cachets for headache, confessed that he suffered himself—at the end of such an event as this, he could not sleep, and his wife complained. Kate showed him pictures of her family; he showed her a quiet well-arranged woman with a stiff little girl on her knee; the taking of that photograph
had been an occasion, Kate could see. This scene took place in an interval of work at the top of some stairs, standing up at a window. For Ahmed could not sit down, like a guest, as she could; just as she accompanied the delegates everywhere for meals and excursions, but of course Ahmed could not. So now she stood, with Ahmed beside her, and listened to how if she went to bed early tonight having taken this medicine, she would be less nervous in the morning.

  Kate thought that this would not be true: what was waiting for her, the moment she gave it a chance, was not going to be patted and pushed out of sight by sedatives. She was going to have to return to London, to be alone somewhere for two months, and to look, in solitude, at her life. Of course, she had been invited to various countries by various men and women whose good friend she had become—friendship in the style of this way of living, casual, non-demanding, tolerant, friendship that was in fact all negation. It did not criticise. It did not make demands. It took no notice of national or racial differences which, inside these enchanted circles, seemed only for the purposes of agreeable titillation. And it was sexually democratic. Hearts did not get broken. Of course not, careers were more important than love, or sex: probably this was the sexuality of the future; romantic love, yearning, desperations of any kind would be banished into a neurotic past. Such friends, such past or future lovers, could part in Buenos Aires after intensive daily contact, not exchange another word for months or years, or even think of each other; and meet again in Reykjavik with discreet and carefully measured pleasure for another bout of adjusted intimacy. Rather like actors and actresses in a play, who suffer or enjoy such intense closeness for a short time and then scatter, to meet again, wearing different costumes, ten years later.