The Four-Gated City

by Doris Lessing

  Among the guests there was also, but not for long (politics bored him he said) Jimmy Wood, Mark’s partner. He was a short, fair man. Wispy. He had soft baby’s hair on his large head. He had a carefully kept, almost scared, smile. He moved about, with a glass of whisky in his hand, listening, and looking, always on the edge of a group, always with his half-smile. He did not look at the television set, only at the other guests, and as if he were a stranger doomed to be one. He talked briefly to Martha, smiling, or rather, grinning and clutching his glass. He wore strong spectacles. Behind them were small, strained-looking eyes. Mark said he was a variety of scientific genius.

  Half through the evening Mark called from Cambridge to say that Martha should get James’s room ready for Sally: she was coming back with him. Paul too.

  Martha therefore was away from the party for some time. When she came back, they were saying that even if Labour did get back, it must be with a reduced majority. Margaret and some Tory friends who had come in from a near-by hotel drank to the defeat of the Reds (Labour). Those ‘Reds’ near them drank an opposition toast-everything was very jolly. Mark had sounded harried, even rather frightened, jimmy Wood went, on hearing that Mark would not be there for at least two hours. Mark said that Jimmy and he talked-days at a time. Mark said Jimmy was a lonely man; and so little given to talking about personal affairs, he did not know to this day if he were married.

  In the room were two new people. Young men. One was Graham Patten, John’s son by a former marriage. He had a friend with him. Both were in their last year at Oxford. They stood on the side of the noisy scene and despised it. They were also at pains to despise television. Politics were unfashionable among the undergraduates of Britain at that time: Graham and Andrew thought politics were derisory. Dandyism was fashionable: they wore embroidered waistcoats and would not surrender their cloaks, one black lined with scarlet, one scarlet lined with leopard skin. They both maintained supercilious smiles, until someone, unable to stand their frustration, went up to them, when they delivered themselves of a great many observations on a large variety of subjects. They were a bit better when they got drunk, if not very endearing.

  Margaret was heard to apologize for them: they would grow out of it, she said.

  Mark had told Martha that he would take Sally and the child straight up to the room. She listened for him to come in, and went quietly out into the hall when he did. But Margaret was there seeing some guests out. Afterwards Martha kept the clearest picture of that brief scene.

  At the door were a group of noisily tipsy people on their way back to the hotel where they proposed to celebrate Labour’s so greatly reduced majority. Margaret was saying ‘Good-bye! Goodbye!’ to them; but she was watching Mark, who stood on the stairs with Sally-Sarah, who had Paul in her arms. By Margaret was Hilary Marsh, observing them all-a quietly smiling, unnoticed man. Sally-Sarah looked ill. The little boy had his thumb in his mouth and stared over his mother’s shoulder with large, blank, shocked eyes. The two were wrapped in a travelling rug Mark had taken from the car. In this cheerful din (the noise from the big room was shattering, when one listened to it from outside) they had the look of refugees, of people in flight.

  Mark summoned Martha with his eyes. She went to Sally-Sarah, while Margaret came forward saying: ‘Sally! Is Colin here? What’s the matter? ’

  Martha led the two up and away from Margaret and her party, while Mark stayed. Sally-Sarah was quite passive. She was trembling. In the big bedroom on the second floor, she stood until Martha suggested she might sit; and sat, staring until Martha said she might like to get into bed. Martha took the child and undressed him. Sally-Sarah was undressing herself like an automaton. Offered tea, coffee, milk, she did not hear. Martha put them both in the same bed.

  When she left them, Sally-Sarah had not said one word.

  Downstairs the big room was emptying fast, because of Mark’s presence. He stood with his back to a wall, grave, anxious, looking past the two undergraduates who stood in front of him. It was now clear why they had come to this party: to meet the writer. It appeared that some tutor or teacher had said that Mark’s novel was influenced by Kierkegaard. Andrew had his clever young face, now rather flushed by drink, close to Mark’s, and he was unloading a series of observations: he did not agree with the tutor, it seemed. He was explaining to Mark why the novel was to be compared with Stendhal’s The Red and The Black. Mark was not listening. Close to this group Hilary Marsh stood, observing. Martha went forward to rescue Mark. She listened while the two young men, unwillingly accepting her as substitute, continued their ingenious literary game, their eyes not on her, but past her, on Mark. Hilary Marsh was expressing concern, to Mark about his brother Colin. After a few moments Mark said: ‘Yes. Yes. Excuse me …’ and went out of the room.

  It now occurred to the two young men that Mark might be upset about his brother Colin whose name had been all over the newspapers that day. When Martha left the party finally they were being witty about spies to Hilary Marsh, who, it seemed, was quite prepared to listen to them.

  Upstairs Martha found Mark in Sally-Sarah’s room. She was not asleep. She was curled up in bed, like a child, her child asleep beside her. Her eyes were shocked.

  She said, ‘Thank you. Thank you. You are very kind. Thank you. Thank you.’

  Mark and Martha left her.

  ‘I’ll tell you in the morning, ’ said Mark, ‘I must get rid of…’ He went downstairs.

  Colin’s principal, the man with whom he had worked for years, had been sentenced to fourteen years in prison for giving scientific information to the Russians. Next day Mark stayed in his room. Sally stayed in her room. Martha kept buying newspapers. Late that afternoon it was announced that Colin Coldridge son of-etc. etc., brother of the writer Mark Coldridge, and of Arthur Coldridge the well-known left-wing member of Parliament, had fled the country, presumably to Russia, leaving behind his wife and his son.

  Martha took the newspaper to Mark. ‘Did you know? ’ she asked.

  ‘I knew he was going to.’

  ‘Are we to look after Sally? ’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose so.’

  ‘Didn’t he say anything about her? ’

  ‘I didn’t see him yesterday. I couldn’t get hold of him. I had a telephone call from him in the hotel. He was in a call box. All he said was, that he would be away for a time. He rang off.’

  Sally-Sarah came down to supper with her little boy. She wore her purple and gold striped dressing-gown. On the whole she seemed composed. The telephone rang continuously from Mark’s study, but they were not answering it. Outside the house, newspapermen stood in groups. They did not tell Sally-Sarah this, but after supper she went to a window and looked out at the group of men in their raincoats, with their cameras and their notebooks.

  She then asked Mark and Martha if they would look after Paul for a day. She wanted to go back to Cambridge to fetch some things. They dissuaded her: she must not go by herself they said. She appeared to agree. Late that night, going up to see if she needed anything, they found she had slipped out of the house, though it was hard to see how she had done it without alerting the newspapermen.

  In the morning Martha got Paul and told him stories. His mother had gone back to fetch something; his father had gone for some work somewhere. Paul was not concerned about his father; he had seen so little of him. He asked once or twice about his mother, but on the whole played quite happily.

  When Sally did not come back by lunchtime, Mark telephoned the flat in Cambridge. There was no reply. Shortly afterwards, as Mark was preparing to go to Cambridge to find her, the police telephoned. Sally-Sarah had gone to the flat, and gassed herself. She had left no message-nothing.

  And now, though there was no need at all to say it, Mark said: ‘You can’t go, Martha. I don’t see how you can.’

  ‘No, ’ she said.

  ‘I don’t think Colin intends to come back. He never said anything-not directly. But I understand some things I didn
’t at the time.’

  Martha rang up the estate agent to say she would not be taking the flat, now nearly ready. The churlish gracelessness that was the spirit of the time spoke through him as he said: ‘Well, if you don’t want the flat, there are plenty that do. You do realize your deposit isn’t returnable? ’

  Life frayed into a series of little copings-with; dealings-with; details, details, journalists; newspapers; telephone calls; threatening letters.

  Paul had to be looked after, Francis had to be told-something. What?

  One thing became clear at once. Mark was going to be isolated. By refusing to condemn his brother, or inform, or to ‘co-operate’ with the police-very insistent they were that he should-he was tarred with Colin-a traitor.

  Margaret rang up. Having inquired about Paul she then started talking about the flat downstairs. Mark said his mother must have become unhinged by the crisis. She wanted Mrs. Ashe, the widow from India, to live in the flat. She wanted this, apparently, so much, that she was prepared to bring Mrs. Ashe herself, and settle her in. She went on ringing up about Mrs. Ashe and the basement, until Mark lost his temper.

  She then wrote a letter about Mrs. Ashe. It was an extraordinary letter, entreaty, threat, apology-Martha was ready to agree that Margaret was temporarily off balance. But they did not have time to worry about Margaret.

  Mark said: ‘I think it’s going to be a bad time.’

  It was already a bad time, all muddle and misery and suspicion and doubt.

  Part Two

  However, the Man Without Qualities was now thinking. From this the conclusion may be drawn that it was at least partly not a personal matter. What then was it? The world going in and out, aspects of the world falling into shape inside a head … Nothing in the least important had occurred to him. After he had been dealing with water by way of example, nothing else occurred to him but that water is something three times as great as land, even if one takes into account only what everyone recognizes as water-rivers, seas, lakes, and springs. It was long believed to be akin to air. The great Newton believed this, and most of his ideas are nevertheless still quite up to date. In the Greek view the world and life originated from water. It was a god, Okeanos. Later water-sprites, elves, mermaids and nymphs were invented. Temples and oracles were founded on its banks and shores. But were not the cathedrals of Hildesheim, Paderborn and Bremen built over springs-and here these cathedrals were to this day. And was not water still used for baptism? And were there not water-lovers and apostles of nature-cures whose souls had a touch of peculiarly sepulchral health? So there was somewhere in the world something like a blurred spot, or grass trodden flat. And of course the Man Without Qualities also had modern knowledge somewhere in his consciousness, whether he happened to be thinking about it or not. And there now was wafer, a colourless liquid, blue only in dense layers, odourless and tasteless (as one had repeated in school so often that one could never forget it again] although physiologically it also included bacteria, vegetable matter, air, iron, calcium sulphate and calcium bicarbonate, and this archetype of all liquids was, physically speaking, fundamentally not a liquid at all but, according to circumstances, a solid body, -a liquid or a gas. Ultimately the whole thing dissolved into systems of formulae that were all somehow connected with each other, and in the whole wide world there were only a few dozen people who thought alike about even as simple a thing as water; all the rest talked about it in languages that were at home somewhere between today and several thousands of years ago. So it must be said that if a man just starts thinking a bit he gets into what one might call pretty disorderly company.

  ROBERT MUSIL; The Man Without Qualities

  Chapter One

  A bad time is announced by an event. A woman gasses herself because her will to survive is exhausted. This event is different in quality from previous events. It is surprising. But it should not have been surprising. It could have been foreseen. One’s imagination had been working at half-pressure … Martha had been here before.

  When a bad time starts, it is as if on a smooth green lawn a toad appears; as if a clear river suddenly floats down a corpse. Before the appearance of the toad, the corpse, one could not imagine the lawn as anything but delightful, the river as fresh. But lawns can always admit toads, and rivers corpses … Martha had been here before.

  When Sally said she was going back to her flat for a day or so, leaving her little boy, that was so unlike her, so improbable, that if Martha had been alert, she would have-but what? Called the police? The doctors? There was no set of words which Martha could imagine herself using. ‘Sally, you’re not thinking of…? Oh, please don’t!-You’ll feel better in a few days … Lie down for a little and we’ll get you a sedative. Sally, you’re a coward! How can you think of… And what about your little boy, he won’t be able to live without you-’

  (People are infinitely expendable, feel themselves to be, or feel themselves to be now.)

  ’Sally, we’ll lock you up until you come to your senses!

  Sally had gone back to her flat to become Sarah. What had she really felt when the family which had taken her in, had done so only under the passport of Sally? ‘They’ve always called me Sally.’ she said, once, exchanging with Martha a look which the family itself could not be expected to understand. If she had refused to be Sally, had insisted on remaining Sarah, would she then have had to make the journey alone to her empty home where she could turn on the gas?

  Before that double event; Colin’s departure, Sally’s death, the quality of life was different; seemed almost, looking back on it as-no, not happiness. Happiness, unhappiness, these were not words that could be used anywhere near this family, every member of which held the potentiality for-disaster? But that had been true before the double event. How then had it been possible for Martha to feel that ‘the holding operation’ could in fact hold off what had been so loudly heralded? Something had been bound to give. Yet to look back from the day after Sally’s death, to even the day before it, it was as if a bomb had gone off.

  So a war begins. Into a peace-time life, comes an announcement, a threat. A bomb drops somewhere, potential traitors are whisked off quietly to prison. And for some time, days, months, a year perhaps, life has a peace-time quality into which warlike events intrude. But when a war has been going on for a long time, life is all war, every event has the quality of war, nothing of peace remains. Events and the life in which they are embedded have the same quality. But since it is not possible that events are not part of the life they occur in-it is not possible that a bomb should explode into a texture of life foreign to it-all that means is that one has not understood, one has not been watching.

  And, the bomb having exploded, the heralding (or so it seems) event having occurred, even then the mind tries to isolate, to make harmless. It was Martha’s concern, and Mark’s, to try and minimize the double event as if they felt it to be an isolated thing, without results, as it had had no causes. Or at least, that was what it seemed they felt; for with the little boy Paul playing upstairs, his mother dead, his father gone, they were discussing how to soften and make harmless. ‘How to break it’ - as Mark put it.

  Paul was going to be six next week. He had plans for his birthday. His mother had talked of a party. Some sort of a party there must be.

  ‘Is my mother going to be here? ’ asked Paul.

  ‘I expect so, ’ said Mark-and turned away from the child’s acutely-fearful black eyes. Paul had never been separated from his mother, not even for one day. And now his uncle said: ‘I expect so.’ Paul became very gay, manic. He rushed all over the big house, bouncing on the beds, teasing the cat, standing to look out of all the windows, one after another. Through one of them, he would see his mother come. He turned, saw Mark and Martha watching him; and pulled the heavy curtains so that he was hidden from them. He took the black cat to bed with him, where he hugged and kissed the beast, which suffered it. But he did not like Martha touching him. nor Mark. Particularly not Mark. He was not us
ed to contact with a man; his father having been kindly, but concerned (he had even said so) to make up for the emotionalism of the unfortunate Sally-Sarah by being cordial, but restrained.

  Mark and Martha were prisoners in the house, because the reporters patrolled outside. Paul asked to go for a walk. He did not say that he hoped to catch a glimpse of his mother in the streets. He was told that no one was going for walks. Through the windows he saw men trying to peer in; and asked who they were. He tried to slip out of the back door, but found a smiling man on the doorstep, listening to Martha answering the telephone. No, Mr. Coldridge was not in; no, he could not come to the telephone; no there was no comment about Mr Coldridge’s brother.

  ‘Is Mr. Coldridge’s brother my daddy? ’ he inquired.

  The exchange was asked to alter the number. This was done; and for a couple of days there was peace. But then a reporter got the new number from Jimmy Wood at the factory. Jimmy Wood had been asked not to give it. In explanation he said that the man sounded ‘as if he really wanted it’. The number was changed again. Jimmy was again asked not to give it. But he did: he thought, he explained, the man asking for it was an electronics expert. After all, he had said he was. Jimmy’s part through the long siege was simply-not ever to understand it. Mark asked Jimmy to come to the house, so it could all be explained to him. He must be careful of the journalists, he was told. He arrived at the front door, and was enclosed by a group of news-hungry men. To them, smiling, he told everything he knew. Not much, not more than Mark knew; but affable and willing, he chatted, and entered the house, still smiling. But then, he always smiled. Some time in his life he had decided that life must be faced with his smile, and he never switched it off. A defence? An explanation? Who knew? But this small, wispy man with his great head covered in baby hair-smiled, as if he could not help it. They said to him: Please be careful, please don’t expose us, please don’t talk to the Press, and he smiled. Almost at once he began talking about affairs at the factory. It seemed he could not see the necessity for all this fuss.