The Golden Notebook

by Doris Lessing

  I have never, in all my life, been so desperately and wildly and painfully happy as I was then. It was so strong I couldn’t believe it. I remember saying to myself, This is it, this is being happy, and at the same time I was appalled because it had come out of so much ugliness and unhappiness. And all the time, down our cold faces, pressed together, the hot tears were running.

  A long time later, a red glow came up into the dark in front of us, and the landscape fell away from it, silent, grey, exquisite. The hotel, unfamiliar from this height, appeared half a mile away, and not where we expected it. It was all dark, not a light anywhere. And now we could see that the rock we sat on was at the mouth of a small cave, and the flat rock wall at its back was covered with Bushman paintings. They were fresh and glowing even in this faint light, but badly chipped. All this part of the country was covered with these paintings, but most were ruined because white oafs threw stones at them, not knowing their value. Paul looked at the little coloured figures of men and animals all cracked and scarred and said: “A fitting commentary to it all, dear Anna, though I’d be hard put to it to find the right words to explain why, in my present state.” He kissed me, for the last time, and we slowly climbed down through the tangles of sodden grass and leaves. My crepe dress had shrunk in the wet and was above my knees, and this made us laugh, because I could only take tiny steps in it. We walked very slowly along a track to the hotel, and then up to the bedroom block, and there on the verandah sat Mrs Lattimer, crying. The door into the bedroom behind her was half-open, and Mr Lattimer sat on the floor by the door. He was still drunk, and he was saying in a methodical, careful, drunken voice: “You whore. You ugly whore. You barren bitch.” This had happened before, obviously. She lifted her ruin of a face to us, pulling at her lovely red hair with both hands, the tears dropping off her chin. Her dog crouched beside her, whining softly, its head in her lap, and the red feathery tail swept apologetically back and forth across the floor. Mr Lattimer took no notice of us at all. His red ugly eyes were fixed on his wife: “You lazy barren whore. You street girl. You dirty bitch.”

  Paul left me, and I went into the bedroom. It was dark and stuffy.

  Willi said: “Where have you been?”

  I said: “You know where.”

  “Come here.”

  I went over to him, and he gripped my wrist and brought me down beside him. I remember lying there and hating him and wondering why the only time I could remember him making love to me with any conviction was when he knew I had just made love to someone else.

  That incident finished Willi and me. We never forgave each other for it. We never mentioned it again, but it was always there. And so a “sexless” relationship was ended finally, by sex.

  Next day was Sunday and we assembled just before lunch under the trees by the railway lines. George had been sitting there by himself. He looked old and sad and finished. Jackson had taken his wife and his children and vanished in the night; they were now walking north to Nyasaland. The cottage or shack which had seemed so full of life had been emptied and made derelict overnight. It looked a broken-down little place, standing there empty beyond the paw-paw trees. But Jackson had been in too much of a hurry to take his chickens. There were some guinea-fowl, and some great red laying hens, and a handful of the wiry little birds called kaffir fowls, and a beautiful young cockerel in glistening brown and black feathers, black tail feathers iridescent in the sunlight, scratching at the dirt with his white young claws and crowing loudly. “That’s me,” said George to me, looking at the cockerel, and joking to save his life.

  Back in the hotel for lunch, Mrs Boothby came to apologise to Jimmy. She was hurried and nervous, and her eyes were red, but although she could not even look at him without showing distaste, she was genuine enough. Jimmy accepted the apology with eager gratitude. He did not remember what had happened the night before and we never told him. He thought she was apologising for the incident on the dance floor with George.

  Paul said: “And what about Jackson?”

  She said: “Gone and good riddance.” She said it in a heavy uneven voice, that had an incredulous wondering sound to it. Obviously she was wondering what on earth could have happened to make her dismiss so lightly the faithful family servant of fifteen years. “There are plenty of others glad to get his job,” she said.

  We decided to leave the hotel that afternoon, and we never went back. A few days later Paul was killed and Jimmy went off to fly his bombers over Germany. Ted shortly got himself failed as a pilot and Stanley Lett told him he was a fool. Johnnie the pianist continued to play at parties and remained our inarticulate, interested, detached friend.

  George tracked down, through the native commissioners, the whereabouts of Jackson. He had taken his family to Nyasaland, left them there, and was now cook at a private house in the city. Sometimes George sent the family money, hoping it would be believed it came from the Boothbys who, he claimed, might be feeling remorse. But why should they? Nothing had happened, as far as they were concerned, that they should be ashamed of.

  And that was the end of it all.

  That was the material that made Frontiers of War. Of course, the two “stories” have nothing at all in common. I remember very clearly the moment I knew I would write it. I was standing on the steps of the bedroom block of the Mashopi hotel with a cold hard glittering moonlight all around me. Down beyond the eucalyptus trees on the railway lines a goods train had come in and was standing and hissing and clattering off clouds of white steam. Near the train was George’s parked lorry, and behind it the caravan, a brown painted box of a thing that looked like a flimsy packing case. George was in the caravan at that moment with Marie—I had just seen her creep down and climb in. The wet cooling flowerbeds smelt strongly of growth. From the dance room came the drumming of Johnnie’s piano. Behind me I could hear the voices of Paul and Jimmy talking to Willi, and Paul’s sudden young laugh. I was filled with such a dangerous delicious intoxication that I could have walked straight off the steps into the air, climbing on the strength of my own drunkenness into the stars. And the intoxication, as I knew even then, was the recklessness of infinite possibility, of danger, the secret ugly frightening pulse of war itself, of the death that we all wanted, for each other and for ourselves.

  [A date, some months later.]

  I read this over today, for the first time since I wrote it. It’s full of nostalgia, every word loaded with it, although at the time I wrote it I thought I was being “objective.” Nostalgia for what? I don’t know. Because I’d rather die than have to live through any of that again. And the “Anna” of that time is like an enemy, or like an old friend one has known too well and doesn’t want to see.

  [The second notebook, the red one, had been begun without any hesitations at all. The British Communist Party was written across the first page, underlined twice, and the date, Jan. 3rd, 1950, set underneath:]

  Last week, Molly came up at midnight to say that the Party members had been circulated with a form, asking for their history as members, and there was a section asking them to detail their “doubts and confusions.” Molly said she had begun to write this, expecting to write a few sentences, had found herself writing “a whole thesis—dozens of bloody pages.” She seemed upset with herself. “What is it I want—a confessional? Anyway, since I’ve written it, I’m going to send it in.” I told her she was mad. I said: “Supposing the British Communist Party ever gets into power, that document will be in the files, and if they want evidence to hang you, they’ve got it—thousands of times over.” She gave me her small, almost sour smile—the smile she uses when I say things like this. Molly is not an innocent communist. She said: “You’re very cynical.” I said: “You know it’s the truth. Or could be.” She said: “If you think in that way, why are you talking of joining the Party?” I said: “Why do you stay in it, when you think in that way too?” She smiled again, the sourness gone, ironically, and nodded. Sat a while, thinking and smoking. “It’s all very odd, Anna, is
n’t it?” And in the morning she said: “I took your advice, I tore it up.”

  On the same day I had a telephone call from Comrade John saying that he had heard I was joining the Party, and that “Comrade Bill”—responsible for culture—would like to interview me. “You don’t have to see him of course, if you don’t feel like it,” said John hastily, “but he said he would be interested to meet the first intellectual prepared to join the Party since the cold war started.” The sardonic quality of this appealed to me and I said I’d see Comrade Bill. This although I had not, in fact, finally decided to join. One reason not to, that I hate joining anything, which seems to me contemptible. The second reason, that my attitudes towards communism are such that I won’t be able to say anything I believe to be true to any comrade I know, is surely decisive? It seems not however, for in spite of the fact that I’ve been telling myself for months I couldn’t possibly join an organisation that seems to me dishonest, I’ve caught myself over and over again on the verge of the decision to join. And always at the same moments—there are two of them. The first, whenever I meet, for some reason, writers, publishers, etc.—the literary world. It is a world so prissy, maiden-auntish; so class-bound; or if it’s the commercial side, so blatant, that any contact with it sets me thinking of joining the Party. The other moment is when I see Molly, just rushing off to organise something, full of life and enthusiasm, or when I come up the stairs, and I hear voices from the kitchen—I go in. The atmosphere of friendliness, of people working for a common end. But that’s not enough. I’ll see their Comrade Bill tomorrow and tell him that I’m by temperament “A fellow traveller,” and I’ll stay outside.

  The next day.

  Interview at King Street, a warren of little offices behind a facade of iron-protected glass. Had not really noticed the place before though I’ve been past it often enough. The protected glass gave me two feelings—one of fear; the world of violence. The other, a feeling of protectiveness—the need to protect an organisation that people throw stones at. I went up the narrow stairs thinking of the first feeling: how many people have joined the British C.P. because, in England, it is difficult to remember the realities of power, of violence; the C.P. represents to them the realities of naked power that are cloaked in England itself? Comrade Bill turned out to be a very young man, Jewish, spectacled, intelligent, working-class. His attitude towards me brisk and wary, his voice cool, brisk, tinged with contempt. I was interested that, at the contempt, which he was not aware he was showing, I felt in myself the beginnings of a need to apologise, almost a need to stammer. Interview very efficient; he had been told I was ready to join, and although I went to tell him I would not, I found myself accepting the situation. I felt (probably because of his attitude of contempt), well, he’s right, they’re getting on with the job, and I sit around dithering with my conscience. (Though, of course, I don’t think he’s right.) Before I left, he remarked, out of the blue, “In five years’ time, I suppose you’ll be writing articles in the capitalist press exposing us as monsters, just like all the rest.” He meant, of course, by “all the rest” intellectuals. Because of the myth in the Party that it’s the intellectuals who drift in and out, when the truth is the turnover is the same in all the classes and groups. I was angry. I was also, and that disarmed me, hurt. I said to him: “It’s lucky that I’m an old hand. If I were a raw recruit I might be disillusioned by your attitude.” He gave me a long, cool, shrewd look which said: Well, of course I wouldn’t have made that remark if you hadn’t been an old hand. This both pleased me—being back in the fold, so to speak, already entitled to the elaborate ironies and complicities of the initiated; and made me suddenly exhausted. I’d forgotten of course, having been out of the atmosphere so long, the tight, defensive, sarcastic atmosphere of the inner circles. But at the moments when I’ve wanted to join it’s been with a full understanding of the nature of the inner circles. All the communists I know—that is, the ones of any intelligence, have the same attitude towards “the centre”—that the Party has been saddled with a group of dead bureaucrats who run it, and that the real work gets done in spite of the centre. Comrade John’s remark for instance, when I first told him I might join: “You’re mad. They hate and despise writers who join the Party. They only respect those who don’t.” “They” being the centre. It was a joke of course, but fairly typical. On the underground, read the evening newspaper. Attack on Soviet Union. What they said about it seemed to me true enough, but the tone—malicious, gloating, triumphant, sickened me, and I felt glad I had joined the Party. Came home to find Molly. She was out, and I spent some hours despondent, wondering why I had joined. She came in and I told her, and said: “The funny thing is I was going to say I wouldn’t join but I did.” She gave her small sourish smile (and this smile is only for politics, never for anything else, there is nothing sour in her nature), “I joined in spite of myself too.” She had never given any hint of this before, was always such a loyalist, that I must have looked surprised. She said: “Well now you’re in, I’ll tell you.” Meaning that to an outsider the truth could not be told. “I’ve been around Party circles so long that…” But even now she couldn’t say straight out “that I knew too much to want to join.” She smiled, or grimaced instead. “I began working in the Peace thing, because I believed in it. All the rest were members. One day that bitch Ellen asked me why I wasn’t a member. I was flippant about it—a mistake, she was angry. A couple of days later she told me there was a rumour I was an agent, because I wasn’t a member. I suppose she started the rumour. The funny thing is, obviously if I was an agent I’d have joined—but I was so upset, I went off and signed on the dotted line…” She sat smoking and looking unhappy. Then said again: “All very odd, isn’t it?” And went off to bed.

  5th Feb., 1950

  It’s as I foresaw, the only discussions I have about politics where I say what I think is with people who have been in the Party and have now left. Their attitude towards me frankly tolerant—a minor aberration, that I joined.

  19th August, 1951

  Had lunch with John, the first time since I joined the Party. Began talking as I do with my ex-party friends, frank acknowledgement of what is going on in Soviet Union. John went into automatic defence of the Soviet Union, very irritating. Yet this evening had dinner with Joyce, New Statesman circles, and she started to attack Soviet Union. Instantly I found myself doing the automatic-defence-of-Soviet-Union act, which I can’t stand when other people do it. She went on; I went on. For her, she was in the presence of a communist so she started on certain clichés. I returned them. Twice tried to break the thing, start on a different level, failed—the atmosphere prickling with hostility. This evening Michael dropped in. I told him about this incident with Joyce. Remarked that although she was an old friend, we probably wouldn’t meet again. Although I had changed my mental attitudes about nothing, the fact I had become a Party member, made me, for her, an embodiment of something she had to have certain attitudes towards.

  And I responded in kind. At which Michael said: “Well, what did you expect?” He was speaking in his role of East European exile, ex-revolutionary, toughened by real political experience, to me in my role as “political innocent.” And I replied in that role, producing all sorts of liberal inanities. Fascinating—the roles we play, the way we play parts.

  15th Sept., 1951

  The case of Jack Briggs. Journalist on Times. Left it at outbreak of war. At that time, unpolitical. Worked during the war for British intelligence. During this time influenced by communists he met, moved steadily to the left. After the war refused several highly-paid jobs on the conservative newspapers, worked for low salary on left paper. Or—leftish; for when he wanted to write an article on China, that pillar of the left, Rex, put him in a position where he had to resign. No money. At this point, regarded as a communist in the newspaper world, and therefore unemployable, his name comes up in the Hungarian Trial, as British agent conspiring to overthrow communism. Met him by accident, he wa
s desperately depressed—a whispering campaign around the Party and near-party circles, that he was and had been “A capitalist spy.” Treated with suspicion by his friends. A meeting of the writers’ group. We discussed this, decided to approach Bill, to put an end to this revolting campaign. John and I saw Bill, said it was obviously untrue Jack Briggs could ever be an agent, demanded he should do something. Bill affable, pleasant. Said he would “make enquiries,” let us know. We let the “enquiries” pass; knowing this meant a discussion higher up the Party. No word from Bill. Weeks passed. Usual technique of Party officials—let things slide, in moments of difficulty. We went to see Bill again. Extremely affable. Said he could do nothing. Why not? “Well in matters of this case when there might be doubt…” John and I angry, demanded of Bill if he, personally, thought it was conceivable Jack could ever have been an agent. Bill hesitated, began on a long, manifestly insincere rationalisation, about how it was possible that anyone could be an agent “including me.” With a bright, friendly smile. John and I left, depressed, angry—and with ourselves. We made a point of seeing Jack Briggs personally, and insisting that others did, but the rumours and spiteful gossip continue. Jack Briggs in acute depression, and also completely isolated, from right and left. To add to the irony, three months after his row with Rex about the article on China, which Rex said was “communist in tone,” the respectable papers began publishing articles in the same tone, whereupon Rex, the brave man, found it the right time to publish an article on China. He invited Jack Briggs to write it. Jack, in an inverted, bitter mood, would not.