In short, they were all, already, in their late twenties or early thirties, middle-aged women neurotic with dissatisfaction, just as if they had never made resolutions not to succumb to the colonial small-town atmosphere.
And the terrible thing was, they could never forget it: they watched their own deterioration like merciless onlookers. These days, all over the world, there are people like these, mostly women: the states of mind that once only afflicted people on death-beds or at moments of acute crisis are their permanent condition. Lives that appear to them meaningless, wasted, hang around their necks like decaying carcasses. They are hypnotized into futility by self-observation. It is as if self-consciousness itself has speeded up the process, a curve of destruction. At thirty-five they drink too much, or are in nervous breakdown, or are many times divorced. And it is these people who are at twenty the liveliest, the most intelligent, the most promising.
All these women envied Martha: you’re all right, you’re going to England! You’re going to get out of here.
Even Mrs Van had said to Martha: ‘I envy you, going to England.’
But people Martha’s age don’t like to be told that the old envy them, it is too frightening.
Martha saw a good deal of Mrs Van, whose career had also been brought to a stop by the cold war. She was out of Parliament and had not easily retained her seat on the Council. She was getting old, and she was tired. The young women ran errands for her.
This often meant that she wanted someone to talk to. Her house was full all the time, but mostly of children. Her husband was busy with one big court case after another. Her old crony Johnny Lindsay was out of bed, though the doctor said he should not be, but his energies were spent on keeping upright and, as he said himself, on not being a nuisance. He sat in a grass easy chair by the doorway on to the street, and the children of the street came in and out. When his breath allowed it, he talked to the children about the high old days of industrial battle on the Rand, while Flora sat knitting.
Mrs Van talked a great deal about Johnny.
A few weeks ago, Flora had come in late from the pictures, having left him in the care of one of his African friends.
Flora had taken the old man a cup of hot milk.
He sat up in bed, holding the hot milk, looking at her—a thin old man with the battling blue eyes of his youth. Flora had faced this look steadily.
‘Johnny, is there something you want to say to me?’ she had asked at last.
Johnny, smiling, patted Flora’s hand, then, without a word, had shut his eyes and sat quietly in the dark, ready for sleep.
Flora had gone next day to tell Mrs Van this incident. Mrs Van had told Martha. Or rather, Mrs Van had asked Martha to come up and keep her company while she watched an assortment of her grandchildren at play.
‘I felt terrible, Mrs Van,’ Flora had said to Mrs Van. ‘I felt as if he should kill me right away and be done with it, Mrs Van.’
‘But Flora, my dear, surely you can’t talk of someone like Johnny killing?’
‘Oh, Mrs Van, that’s how I felt when he looked at me—I’d rather he killed me.’
Martha and Mrs Van sat on the veranda. On the lawn outside a small black boy pushed a lawn-mower up and down, shouting some song of his own over the clatter of the machine. The cut grass fell aside behind him in fringes of bright green.
Under trees at the far end of the garden a group of small children sat on the grass having a tea party, while three black nannies watched them.
‘Yes, Matty, Flora’s an honest woman, but I can’t help feeling: surely she could have waited for his death to start love-making? There’s that man from the store at McGrath’s, you know.’
‘Perhaps she feels he’ll never die,’ said Martha, insisting on her right to say it, looking Mrs Van straight in the face.
‘I daresay she sometimes feels that, Matty, but we all feel discreditable things sometimes, and it doesn’t mean we have a right to feel them, does it?’
‘Mrs Van, Mrs Van, oh, then he said: “Come over to the bed, Flora.” So I went over. I was trembling so I could hardly stand, I promise you. Then he opened his eyes and took my hand and he looked at me and he said: “Flora, my dear, you are a young woman still.” “Oh, no,” I said, “don’t say that, Johnny, I’m getting on you know, I’m over forty!” But he smiled and he said: “You’re a pretty woman, my dearest—” oh, Mrs Van, then I started to cry, I can’t stand him, he’s so good, do you know what I mean? And he said: “When you did me the honour to share my life with me”, oh, yes, that’s what he said, did me the honour, Mrs Van…’
‘Because of course, Matty, he couldn’t marry her, he had a wife living and children—the children won’t speak to him, or at least, they didn’t for a long time. But he adores Flora. Isn’t it strange, Matty, that grand old man, he adores her, and when you come down to it, she’s a girl he picked up in some dance hall. I see you’re smiling, Matty?’
‘That’s so like you, Mrs Van.’
‘Is it? You mean, I’m a snob?’
‘No, you’re not a snob. It would have been all right if she’d sold books in a book store!’
Mrs Van sat pleating her blue silk skirt with one fat, ringed hand—the other now rose in an irritable gesture to her ear. She shouted across the noise of the lawn-mower: ‘Please, Silas, can you mow at the back of the house, I can’t hear myself think.’
The child Silas grinned, and pushed the machine away around the house, across lawns, paths, gravel, in a fearful din. Silence. The small children, in their pink, white, yellow dresses, sat scattered on bright green.
Martha was secretly playing a game. She shut her eyes: the noises of the afternoon, children’s voices, insects in the grass, wind in leaves, made waves, made sea: against her dark lids rose and crashed thundering salt waves. She opened them: a calm, hot afternoon in Mrs Van’s garden.
Mrs Van said: ‘Well, that’s how I do feel I suppose. I can’t help it. Recently I’ve been feeling there is something limited about my judgements, I have been feeling that, but I can’t help it, it’s too late to teach an old dog new tricks.’
From the back of the house came the now distant sound of the lawn-mower. Martha shut her eyes and heard seas running on distant beaches.
‘About Flora, Mrs Van? What else did she say?’
‘And we’re gossiping, I suppose. I don’t like gossip!’
Outside Mrs Van’s gate rose a large tree whose leaves fell in regular bright fronds. As the wind shook them, the whole tree surged in an untidy mass of shiny gold spangles. A deep, dark, glossy green, glistening light, a ripple of white…
‘Jack said he knew she had a lover, he could tell from how she walked, and her eyes, and he was happy for her. He hoped that when he was dead, she would be happy with this man. He said she needed a man her age and not an old man like him.’
In the wrinkles under Mrs Van’s little blue eyes lay webs of wet.
‘It’s no good, Matty. I think about it and I think—Johnny’s a great man. Yes, he is.’ She nodded emphatically, in her old way. ‘How many people like him have I met? Well, Matty, I tell you this, once or twice in a lifetime you meet someone like Johnny—he’s naturally good.’
‘Yes, he is.’
‘He literally does not understand—evil, if I can use such a word.’
‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t.’
‘It’s not one of my words. I’m surprised that—but I’m surprised about less and less these days. But Johnny, we were talking about him.’
A small boy, as fat and brown as toffee, in bright yellow, came staggering towards the veranda. ‘Gran, Gran, Gran…’ he called. A large black girl rose off the grass, took two long steps, picked him up, tossed him in the air in a great curve and caught him as he descended where he had started from. He laughed. She laughed. Laughter and cries of ‘See me, Gran, see me?’ Over them the tree’s branches shook and pranced.
‘Are you stupid, my old friend, I was thinking—recently I’ve been
sitting there thinking, are you stupid, Johnny?—no, I mean it, there’s something stupid about someone who never expects people to behave badly. Well, do you know what I mean?’
‘The thing is, people don’t behave badly with Johnny.’
‘Don’t they?’
Martha shifted her chair a couple of feet. Now she could see Mrs Van’s flower garden which seemed to be growing, this hot afternoon, swarms of greenish-white butterflies. The air was full of variegated scents.
That morning, Martha had sat by Johnny Lindsay while he cut out small paper figures for a little black child who stood by the old man’s knee, one hand on the knee, watching the flashing scissors shape birds and cats, which fell into his other hand in long, unfolding white patterns.
Flora had been in the back room cooking something. She was now as much Johnny’s nurse as Mrs Quest was her husband’s. She cooked, and sometimes sent Martha a troubled, anxious smile, and said: ‘Are you warm enough, Johnny? Are you sure you’re warm?’
‘He held my hand, Mrs Van, and said: “Flora, my love, you’re the love of my life, you’re the loveliest thing in my life, my love, I fell in love with you when I saw you that night when you were dancing, remember? But now be happy.” Well, I didn’t know what to say, Mrs Van. Did he want me to go away? I was crying so hard I didn’t know what to say—did he want me to go away? I wouldn’t know what to do without Johnny, that’s the truth! Then I got cross. What did he mean by saying, Now be happy! He’s dying, isn’t he? What does he think I am? How can he say, Be happy? I was so angry, Mrs Van, God forgive me, but I wanted to shake him. I said: “But Johnny, have a heart, what do you mean? Do you want me to go away and leave you? Because you’re making up something too much of me and Dennis”—his name is Dennis, Mrs Van. He’s got a job at McGrath’s, he looks after the stores and the labour. But he’s married—well, sort of. I don’t know how Johnny wants to see it, but it’s not as he thinks. I said to him: “But man, Johnny, have a heart”, if I said to Dennis, Johnny’s thrown me out, I don’t know what he’d say. That’s Johnny’s trouble, Mrs Van—he always thinks things are better than they are.’
Martha looked at Mrs Van’s severe face, and waited. Mrs Van glanced up. Slowly she smiled.
‘Yes, all right, Matty, I was thinking, if he didn’t see things better than they are, how could he love a woman like you.’
‘I know you were, Mrs Van!’
‘But haven’t I admitted it? I’m censorious! But now be honest, Martha, what is Flora?’
‘A red-headed floozie from a dance hall?’
‘She’s a blonde this week, she’s dyed her hair. She looks horrible.’
Martha laughed.
‘No, it’s no good, it’s no good, Matty, when I think of him and I think of her…’
‘But Mrs Van, he loves her.’
‘Yes, yes, he does. And imagine, to be loved like that—Matty? Well, I can understand why she was so angry.’ Mrs Van’s eyes were sparkling in a change of mood—she was flushed, and she smiled. ‘Flora was so angry, she was angry for hours afterwards, she said. He kept saying to her: “Be happy, my darling Flora. I shall die happy if I can think of you happy”—almost as if he wanted her to go off, she said, and—“Well, I don’t know what really, because all that happens is that Dennis and I meet in the cocktail bar at McGrath’s twice a week when his wife visits her mother. Then he drives me home in the car—well, it’s not much more than that, Mrs Van. Of course, I’m not pretending I wouldn’t like there to be more…” she’s honest, at least, Martha.’
The flock of brightly coloured children had run to the central lawn and stood throwing up the newly cut fronds of jade-green grass all around them. The nurse-girls joined the babies. They all stood throwing up handfuls of strongly smelling grass, the tall, strong, black girls, the tiny, white children.
‘She said to me: “I swear if I told him that was all there was to it, he’d be disappointed. Because after all, a man like Johnny, it’s not every day you meet a man like Johnny, although I don’t mind telling you, I think some of his ideas are crazy, I can tell you, it’s gone against my grain often enough, all these black Africans all the time, I mean, I’d never dare tell my mother or my friends what I’ve done with Johnny, like sitting down day after day to eat with black people in my own house.”’
‘So what’s going to happen, Mrs Van?’ said Martha.
‘That I don’t know. Because Flora’s really upset, she really is. Because if you think about it, Matty, it is strange of him—everyone knows, particularly Johnny, he might die at any moment, and Flora says she cooks him his supper and is all ready to sit by him for the evening, then he says: “Now run along and enjoy yourself, my darling.”’
In spite of herself, Martha laughed.
Mrs Van raised a severe head, then smiled. For a moment she was a mischievous girl.
‘Yes, yes, Matty, the thing is, it’s quite natural for him to behave like that, but he can’t see it isn’t for others. And he’s been like that all his life. It’s not only since I’ve known him. I know people who knew him when he was a young man.’ Mrs Van sat smiling, pleating her blue skirt.
‘He was handsome, I should imagine?’
‘Oh, yes, Matty, he must have been handsome, mustn’t he? He’s handsome now, isn’t he? He’s as straight as a die even now? But people I’ve met say that even then, when he was young, he was…well, he’s never been like ordinary unregenerate mortals like you and I, Matty, he’s spent all his life like this, and it’s never even occurred to him there was another way to live.’
When Martha went to visit Johnny, she would look for Flora in the kitchen at the back. Flora would come out, taking off her apron, and look enquiringly, half-ashamed, behind her old husband’s back. Martha nodded. Then Flora, making beseeching, guilty signs not to be betrayed, would creep out the back way to go to the pictures. Martha had to say Flora had gone shopping. Flora could not have endured the smiles, the blessings, the good will that Johnny would have certainly sent after her if she had actually said: ‘I want to go to the pictures, I want to meet a friend in McGrath’s cocktail bar.’
Part Four
The Mulla was thinking aloud.
‘How do I know whether I am dead or alive?’
‘Don’t be such a fool,’ his wife said. ‘If you were dead, your limbs would be cold.’
Shortly afterwards Nasrudin was in the forest cutting wood.
It was midwinter. Suddenly he realized that his hands and feet were cold.
‘I am undoubtedly dead,’ he thought; ‘so I must stop working, because corpses do not work.’
And because corpses do not walk about, he lay down on the grass.
Soon a pack of wolves appeared and attacked Nasrudin’s donkey, which was tethered to a tree.
‘Yes, carry on, take advantage of a dead man,’ said Nasrudin from his abject position; ‘but if I had been alive I would not have allowed you to take liberties with my donkey.’
THE SUFIS; Idries Shah
Chapter One
So many jokes had been made about the ‘little bit of paper’, it was as if the bit of paper, when it arrived, was the product of the jokes. There it lay, a thrice-folded sheet of foolscap in which was stated, in five and a half lines of print, that Anton Hesse and his wife Martha were both British citizens.
The two stood examining the paper, each holding it by a corner, each waiting for the other to speak: so many decisions had been postponed until this bit of paper arrived. At last Anton spoke: ‘So, here it is. And now you have decisions to make.’ With which he went off to the bathroom.
The fact that Anton had chosen not to announce decisions—this was in itself a decision or an announcement.
Martha began to tremble with anger: not only because of Anton’s walking off, literally washing his hands of the thing, but (to her surprise—she thought she was long over that childishness) because she, born of so-British parents had been deemed not-British and then as arbitrarily allowed to be British
. Though the emotion itself was infuriating, since ‘what did it matter what nationality one was’? And what could be more ridiculous than being angry, just as if a button had been pushed, about something one had been living with and making jokes about for four, five years?
And what sort of a monster was she to be angry about Anton’s saying: ‘And now you have decisions to make,’ when this was his way of covering deep hurt? For Anton had not yet discovered any relations alive in Germany. When he got information, it was of death. The Hesse family ranged from a pure Jewishness that merited (Anton’s grim joke—it was for some months a joke he made continuously in various forms) a pure death in the gas chambers to branches apparently not Jewish at all whose members (like all the other good Germans) were killed by bombing, or as soldiers on the Russian front, or by starvation. Anton Hesse was linked with the fate of his country so deeply and by so many fibres that the cataclysm which had engulfed Germany had also engulfed him who had fled from it and had been living so many thousands of miles away. And now the Communist Party in East Germany did not reply to his letters, to his demands to come home. They simply did not answer. Nothing. Silence. The old Germany which would have killed him, was dead; and the new Germany would not answer his letters.
A traveller from Europe who had visited Berlin which stood divided and in ruins said: ‘What do you expect? As far as they are concerned, you are a spy, anyone from the West is.’
At which Anton had, after a pause, nodded, and said, very dry, very cold: ‘Of course. They are entirely in the right. I would take the same attitude myself.’
If he wished to live in East Germany, they told him, he must travel there and take his chances. From all over the world, refugees travelled back to East and West Germany and he must do the same.
‘They are in the right,’ he said.
Now he stood in the bathroom, bent over the washbasin, a man absorbed in the business of washing his hands. Martha stood in the front room watching him. She watched him shake the drops of water off his hands into the basin. A few drops scattered on the wall. He carefully took a cloth to wipe the wall dry, then he bent close to peer at the wall—yes, it was dry. He took a small towel and dried his hands. Then he examined his fingernails, then he looked into the shaving-glass and ran a long, white hand over his right cheek. Finally he returned to the front room, smiling. He sat down, flinging one leg across the other, and began examining his hands, back and front, with a calm smile.
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