The Four-Gated City

by Doris Lessing

  A third letter. The arrival was a few weeks off. This letter had to be read carefully. It began: My darling girl, and ended, Your loving Mother. In between, were pages of reproof, reproach, hatred. Martha had always got letters like these from her mother. For years and years-when had they started? But she could not remember. She did not read them. Or rather, she had learned a technique for reading them, skimming over them fast, to extract necessary facts, but insulated against pain. In her room was a suitcase full of letters from Mrs. Quest, beginning My Darling Girl, and ending your loving Mother. Martha wrote letters to her mother once a week, like a schoolgirl, saying nothing that was not polite, even affectionate.

  Now she forced herself to read four years of letters. It took days. She was ill-but very calm. Martha now had to tell Mark something; and so said that she had ’flu. He was kind: he was always kind, but particularly so when he had a sick woman on his hands. Martha searched his face for signs that he might feel she was going the way of Lynda, of Patty, but if he felt it he did not say it. He brought hot-water bottles and oranges and aspirin and sat with her in her dark room. He told stories, anecdotes. Martha vaguely listened. They concerned a brother and sister, called Rachel and Aaron. It seemed as if she had known them. Then she understood that Mark was in the process of talking his way into a new book, conceived by his affair with Patty. But Patty had become fused with Sally-Sarah. Mark was tormented by guilt over Sally-Sarah. If he, Mark, had not been so obtuse, she would not have had to kill herself. Mark was taking on to himself a burden of guilt about the fate of the Jews in the last war. There was Patty, there was Sally-Sarah, there was also, though Martha did not see immediately that this was why his tales were half-familiar, Thomas. Mark had found the ant-laced heap of manuscript and was using it in the creation of his brother and sister, Jews from Poland, … how odd to lie here and hear Mark’s voice tell of Aaron, a Jewish boy from Poland, who was also Thomas.

  Rachel and Aaron were dark, lithe vital handsome creatures, children of a corn-dealer in a village near the German border. Aaron was once beaten by his father so hard he couldn’t sit down for a week because he refused to go to school: the teacher was no good, he said, the teacher didn’t even know any Latin … what was Thomas’s voice like? Martha could not remember. She could hear Mark’s, she could see Aaron, that flashing rebellious lad. What had Thomas really looked like? He didn’t look at all like Aaron, no: he had been large and blond and blue-eyed. For a time, at least. There had been two Thomases, one of them alien to her, a sombre bitter man-as Aaron might have become if he hadn’t died in the concentration camp?

  Whole areas of Martha’s life had slipped away. She lay, half-listening to Mark, trying to remember the simplest things. Her childhood had gone, except for small bright isolated events. For instance, she had once sat under a tree and looked across the veld and imagined a city shining there in the scrub. Perhaps the same city: but both, after all, were imagined. What had that stretch of country looked like? She could not remember, the blue mountains on the horizon stood up high into a cool blue sky, and they were streaked with snow. What had the house been like? It had gone. A shabby old grass-thatched house on a hill: but she could not see it. And inside? All gone. Even her bedroom which had once been her place, her refuge, and where she had known every brushmark on the wall, and how the separate strands of grass had glistened when the lamps were brought in. And after that, she had been married. She had lived in different places with Douglas Knowell. She had had a large house. She had had a daughter. Caroline had been a pretty small girl. She was now, what? Twelve? But that wasn’t possible. And that long period (or it seemed so at the time) when she had been such an active busy communist and then an active and busy social person-what was left of it all? Anton. She could not remember the rooms where she had lived with Anton. Thomas. She could not remember his voice, could not hear it. What came back from Thomas was-the strong smell of fresh wet greenery, growth, a sound of strong rain hitting dust, the sun on a drenched tree.

  Her father’s long illness: her mother-ah yes, here it was. and she knew it. She had been blocking off the pain, and had blocked off half of her life with it. Her memory had gone. Well, almost. But in a few weeks, Mrs. Quest would arrive in this house, to this life Martha was living now, and as usual not one thing about it could be revealed to her, because she would be so upset. It was perfectly clear from the letters which Martha was forcing herself to read that Mrs. Quest planned to live in London, and with Martha. This is what she had been dreaming about. But what had she allowed herself to remember of Martha that she could believe in it? For one thing, she had seized on the address: she knew the area very well. Her father had often taken her to the British Museum when she was a girl. She thought she remembered the house: that big white one on the corner with the balconies painted such a pretty green? Martha was the secretary of an author. Was he well-known? Mrs. Quest did not seem to know the name. Well, perhaps Martha could find her a room near by, though of course old ladies did not take up much room, and she hoped she knew how to make herself useful.

  Mrs. Quest planned to live in this house, as Martha’s mother, and to participate in some kind of imagined life. Bloomsbury. For Mrs. Quest this did not mean literature, she would not have that kind of association. It meant trips to the British Museum. She had written that she could help Martha with her work-she had learned to type. This, of course, drove knives into Martha: particularly because her mother could have no idea of the pathos of it. Mrs. Quest had got a secondhand typewriter on one of the rare trips into town, and on the farm among the mountains had sat learning to type so that Martha would make her welcome. She had not been getting on with her son and her daughter-in-law. That this, after all, was a common enough thing did not seem to strike the old lady: it was the fault of the modern generation (she could not bring herself to say that it was the fault of her son and his wife), and though the children were delightful, they were badly brought up. Of course, having four children wasn’t really sensible, not when the farm wasn’t doing too well, but of course Jonathan and Martha had never listened to advice. They even talked of having a fifth. She only hoped that the tobacco prices … and so on.

  The letters were coming faster, sometimes two and three by a single mail. Details, details, details: of the trip, which was being organized to the last hair-net and reel of cotton; and of a London forty years before, which existed in Mrs. Quest’s mind to be communicated in letters about tram routes and the kinds of elastic sold in Harrods. Would Martha ring up the Army and Navy Stores and ask them if they still had a certain type of flannel, and if so, would Martha buy a yard and a half of it … anxiety. Mrs. Quest was in a fever of anxiety, for while she kept saying that she did expect things to have changed, she was trying to arrange in her mind, before she came, that they had not. Mrs. Quest was about to visit the London of before the First World War, and her daughter who had a nice job as the secretary of an author.

  It was the first time that she saw a look on Mark’s face of a patient apprehension, that got Martha out of bed. She had been in it for a month, reading, re-reading letters. But reading them exactly as one puts one’s hand into hot water to test it. In with the hand-quick, no, it’s too hot, withdraw it; a pause: in again … no no, I can’t bear it. Don’t be a coward, go on, stick it out. So the letters got themselves read, and one evening Martha realized Mark had been sitting there talking, and she had not heard one word. And so he sat, regarding her, his face all pain.

  Martha went down to the basement to ask Lynda for advice.

  The two women had been living there now for nearly four years. Dorothy had a job. Rather, she had had a succession of them, for her nagging perfectionism drove one employer after another mad. She worked for half the day. The other half she cleaned the flat and made dolls and tea-cosies and cushion-covers. As for Lynda, she never got up till about twelve, and sometimes she did not get properly dressed for days, unless there were visitors. She moved vaguely about, smoking, cooking a little, laying o
ut the cards, making tea for Mrs. Mellendip and her cronies, reading astrological magazines.

  Martha sat down opposite Lynda and her spread of cards and said: ‘I think I am having a breakdown.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ said Lynda.

  ‘My mother’s coming.’

  ‘God, yes!’ said Lynda, emphatically. The words, years before, had carried fervour. But the emotion had burned out.

  ‘What shall I do?’

  ‘If you’re having one, you are.’

  ‘But I can’t have one, if she’s here. I could otherwise.’

  ‘That’s the point, isn’t it?’

  ‘I must do something.’

  ‘You had better keep out of their hands, ’ said Lynda. ‘That’s my advice.’

  ‘But don’t they help-psychiatrists?’

  Lynda smiled, watching Martha from large eyes surrounded by bruised flesh. ‘Well, ’ she said.

  Martha, for the first time, burst into floods of hysterical tears. ‘I’ve got to do something, I’ve got to.’

  Lynda made no attempt to get up, comfort Martha, stop her crying. For years, so her face and pose said, had she watched people crying, screaming, cracking: one watched.

  She laid the cards, and after some minutes made a cup of tea. Martha’s head lay among the litter of the playing cards: she felt she could never move.

  ‘What about Mark?’ said Martha. ‘I can’t inflict this on Mark.’

  ‘Poor old Mark, ’ said Lynda. ‘He does have a bad time.’

  Martha went back upstairs to bed. Later, Mrs. Mellendip ascended the stairs to visit her. She was wearing a very correct red suit, and carried a large black handbag. Her hair was grey, and cut short and neat. She looked like a businesswoman. Her manner was all brisk, kindly authority.

  She had worked out the prognostications of the stars for the forthcoming visit. Things could not be expected to go well, but it would be a help if she knew Mrs. Quest’s birth date: there might be helpful aspects there. Martha was in for a bad time. But there were elements in her chart which showed that it was up to Martha to make use of it. Sometimes charts showed nothing but unrelieved disaster; and on such occasions Mrs. Mellendip advised people to take a trip or a holiday-get right away. But there were bad times which were also good: that is, held the potential for good, a change, a deepening of experience, if properly used. Therefore, she was not advising Martha to go away, but to stay where she was and live through it… Martha had not asked for Mrs. Mellendip’s advice at all. She lay silent in her half-dark, listening to the sensible voice. Which continued. The advice was just the sort which she, Martha, would be giving if she sat in that chair, and Mrs. Mellendip lay helpless on the bed. Though one could not imagine Mrs. Mellendip as helpless or ill.

  She told Mrs. Mellendip that she had not thought of running away. A small pause. ‘There’s nothing wrong with running, if you know you can’t do any good by staying.’

  This maxim carried an extraordinary authority.

  Martha’s problems would be solved, her present weakness would vanish, all was well. Martha was full of confidence.

  Full of confidence, she sat up, ready to take life on: and lay down again, with the thought that if Mrs. Mellendip had said: All’s well that ends well: or, even A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, with that same smiling authority, Martha would have felt as much strengthened. Mrs. Mellendip was a person with reserves of strength, and this strength she was able to inject into the people around her.

  Martha lay and regarded her old antagonist, the competent middle-aged woman. Here she was again, Martha, a poor confused helpless creature, watching, with envy, Mrs. Mellendip. who was so strong. And calm. Calm. Mark said Martha was calm.

  It occurred to Martha, that she, Martha, was after all-what? Nearly thirty-five. For other people now, she was that creature, all confidence and strength. It was impossible, but almost certainly true. Time, dear time, had brought her here, to lie on this bed, a small girl, inwardly weeping mamma, mamma, why are you so cold, so unkind, regarding the admirable calm of Mrs. Mellendip with envy: but, when she got up out of that bed to resume her role in the household it wouldn’t matter a tuppenny damn whether it was she or Mrs. Mellendip who said: Time heals all. Or You can’t have your cake and eat it.

  Mrs. Mellendip sometimes lay, a small girl, on a bed in a darkened room, all helpless envy of the strong?

  Panic flooded Martha. She understood that it was because she did not want to think of Mrs. Mellendip as anything but infallible. If she didn’t get herself out of this, inside a month she would be one of the group of people who floated in and out of the basement, telling cards and swirling tea-dregs around the bottoms of teacups. A strange movement that, the quick circular jerk of the hand, to separate tea-leaves and liquid; exactly the same as that used by a man panning ground rock for gold: a kind of wriggling jerk, and the liquid carried off the light useless dust, leaving the heavy, possibly gold-carrying sediment on the bottom. Over it, one bent and peered, peered at a smudge of tea-leaves, a smear of wet grit that glittered.

  ‘Mrs. Mellendip …’ she began.

  ‘Why don’t you call me Rosa?’

  Well, why didn’t she? She had been meeting Mrs. Mellendip around the place for months and months? Rosa Mellendip smiled, a little dryly, as she waited for Martha to answer.

  The answer was of course that she didn’t want to be associated with her. It was cowardice. Cod forbid that one’s rational friends should ever … at the idea, she was all embarrassed shame. ‘Rosa, ’ she said, ‘I’ll think it over. It’s very nice of you to come up.’

  She said it badly, without confidence, apology imminent for in fact asking her to leave. She said it almost as if begging for forgiveness. However, she hadn’t given a nervous laugh or made a squirming puppy-like gesture. She hadn’t been‘Matty’. It did rather look as if for the rest of her life she could expect, when in any weakened or lowered state, that’Matty’ would appear absolutely unchanged, the same as she had been at nine years’ old, a miserably apologetic clown … here she was now, standing by the bed, called back by the powerfully self-confident Rosa.

  Rosa got up, smiling. Smiling she stood looking out of the window at the tree. Then she nodded, smiled, and went.

  Martha felt disproportionate relief, as if a threat had gone. Which was a danger in itself. The basement flat, its occupants, were isolating themselves in her mind, as if it was a territory full of alien people from whom she had to protect herself, with whom she could have no connection. What was happening in fact was exactly the same process as when some months ago she watched ‘communism’, meaning Patty, Mark and their friends, becoming separated from herself, becoming alien so that for two pins she could have become a hater. For two pins now she could switch into an enemy of the shadow world of the basement. She could watch the mechanisms at work in her mind, see how Rosa Mellendip became surrounded by a light first ridiculous, then menacing. She became something to be destroyed, like a witch in the Middle Ages. Sweep it under the carpet! Sweep it out of sight! Save poor Lynda, save poor Dorothy, save all the weak-minded fools from the power-loving fateful woman …

  What an extraordinary household this was, after all, this entity, containing such a variety of attitudes, positions! A whole. People in any sort of communion, link, connection, make up a whole. (She was feeling that again, as she had before, in a heightened, meaningful way, as if a different set of senses operated in her to enable her to feel, even if briefly, the connection between them all.) Mrs. Mellendip, who was capable of saying: Dorothy, you should be careful all day on Thursday, you are going to be accident-prone. And the comrades, who … yes, but that pole, or opposition point had shifted, was dissolving.

  Mark regarded Rosa Mellendip as ridiculous. For her, and her influence over Lynda, he had a sort of snort of offended amusement, that was also disgust. What pressure, what small switch could change that uneasy amusement into the person who could light the faggots, set up the gallows? Looking into the moveme
nt of her own mind, Martha could say: A very small pressure, a very easy switch. There was Jimmy Wood. But here Martha failed. Even to think of Jimmy made her uneasy and she did not know why: and to imagine him and Rosa Mellendip together was to give up: one had to shrug one’s shoulders. Jimmy Wood would have to wait, she must get herself on her feet, get herself working again. And not through Rosa Mellendip-simply because it would be so easy for her, Martha, to become a person who wouldn’t step outside the door on Wednesday, if the stars threw the wrong sort of shadow.

  Martha got up, dressed; before she had finished she knew what she was going to do. She put on a coat, took up a couple of very large shopping baskets, and departed to those streets of London whose façades are showcases for the millions of books they contain.

  Somewhere in Martha’s life it had been instilled into her, or she knew by instinct, that one should never read anything until one wanted to, learn anything until one needed it. She was in for another of the short intensive periods of reading, during which she extracted an essence, a pith, got necessary information, and no more. She was looking for books which would tell her about that area of knowledge referred to in the house in Radlett Street as’Dr Lamb’. She knew nothing, had read nothing. Yet, so much was it ‘in the air’ that she knew roughly the right books, the right authors to ask for. The two great exemplars, forming as they did the two faces or poles of the science, or art, were easy. ‘Freud’ and ‘Jung’ were easy. She sniffed and nosed and smelled her way in the country in between and returned at nightfall with her baskets full, and dozens more books on order. These books were now spread out over her room, and she settled down with them. Mark came in at night, saw her there, sat for a while to watch, or comment, and was relieved. Because she was up and doing something•, what she was doing was another matter. A man who had spent so many hundreds of pounds on hospitals and on Dr Lamb to cure poor Lynda, was not likely to be anything but dubious. But Martha was normal: his friend was back to ordinary life, and so he was relieved.