The Golden Notebook

by Doris Lessing

  I thought it out, and said: “About the C.P.—I swing from fear and hatred of it to a desperate clinging to it. Out of a need to protect it and look after it—do you understand that?” She nodded, so I went on: “And Janet—I can resent her existence violently because she prevents me doing so many things I want to do, and love her at the same time. And Molly. I can hate her one hour for her bossiness and protectiveness and love her the next. And Michael—it’s the same thing. So we can obviously confine ourselves to one of my relationships and be dealing with my whole personality?” Here she smiled, drily. “Very well,” she said, “let’s confine ourselves to Michael.”

  15th March, 1950

  I went to Mrs Marks and said that while I was happier with Michael than I have ever been in my life, something was happening that I did not understand. I would go to sleep in his arms, dissolved and happy, and wake in the morning hating and resenting him. At which she said: “Well, my dear, so perhaps it is time you started dreaming again?” I laughed, and she waited for me to stop laughing, so I said, “You always win.” Last night I began to dream again as if I had been ordered to dream.

  27th March, 1950

  I am crying in my sleep. All I can remember when I wake is that I have been crying. When I told Mrs Marks, she said: “The tears we shed in our sleep are the only genuine tears we shed in our lives. The waking tears are self-pity.” I said: “That’s very poetic, but I can’t believe you mean it.” “And why not?” “Because when I go to sleep knowing I am going to cry, there’s pleasure in it.” She smiles; I wait for it—but by now she is not going to help me. “You aren’t going to suggest,” I say, ironical, “that I am a masochist?” She nods: of course. “There’s pleasure in pain,” I say, sounding the trumpet for her. She nods. I say: “Mrs Marks, that sad nostalgic pain that makes me cry is the same emotion I wrote that damned book out of” She sits up, straight, shocked. Because I could describe a book, art, that noble activity, as damned. I say: “All you’ve done is to bring me, step by step, to the subjective knowledge of what I knew before anyway, that the root of that book was poisoned.” She says: “All self-knowledge is knowing, on deeper and deeper levels, what one knew before.” I say: “But that isn’t good enough.” She nods and sits thinking. I know something is coming but I don’t know what. Then she says: “Do you keep a diary?” “Off and on.” “Do you write in it what happens here?” “Sometimes.” She nods. And I know what is in her mind. It is that the process, writing a diary, is the beginning of what she thinks of as unfreezing, the releasing of the “block” that stops me writing. I felt so angry, so resentful, that I couldn’t say anything. I felt as if, in mentioning the diary, in making it part of her process, so to speak, she was robbing me of it.

  [At this point the diary stopped, as a personal document. It continued in the form of newspaper cuttings, carefully pasted in and dated.]

  March, 50

  The modeller calls this the “H-Bomb Style,” explaining that the “H” is for peroxide of hydrogen, used for colouring. The hair is dressed to rise in waves as from a bomb-burst, at the nape of the neck. Daily Telegraph

  July 13th, 50

  There were cheers in Congress today when Mr Lloyd Bentsen, Democrat, urged that President Truman should tell the North Koreans to withdraw within a week or their towns would be atom-bombed. Express

  July 29th, 50

  Britain’s decision to spend £100 millions more on Defence means, as Mr Attlee has made clear, that hoped-for improvements in living standards and social services must be postponed. New Statesman

  Aug. 3, 50

  America is to go right ahead with the H Bomb, expected to be hundreds of times more powerful than the atom bombs. Express

  Aug. 5th, 50

  Basing its conclusions on the lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as to the range of blast, heat-flash, radiation, etc., it assumes that one atom bomb might kill 50,000 people in a British built-up area. But, leaving out the Hydrogen Bomb, it is surely unsafe to assume that…New Statesman

  24th Nov., 50

  MACARTHUR PUTS IN 100,000 TROOPS IN AN OFFENSIVE TO END THE WAR IN KOREA. Express

  9th Dec., 50

  KOREA PEACE TALKS OFFERED BUT ALLIES WOULD NOT APPEASE. Express

  16th Dec., 50

  U.S. “IN GRAVE DANGER.” Emergency call today. President Truman tonight told Americans that the U.S. is in “grave danger” created by the rulers of the Soviet Union.

  13th Jan., 51

  Truman yesterday set vast targets for the U.S. Defence effort involving sacrifices for all Americans. Express

  12th March, 51

  A-BOMBS BY EISENHOWER. I would use them at once if I thought it would bring sufficient destruction to the enemy. Express

  April 6th, 51

  WOMAN ATOM SPY TO DIE. Husband too sent to Electric Chair. Judge: You Caused Korea.

  May 2nd

  KOREA: 371 KILLED, WOUNDED OR MISSING.

  9th June, 51

  The U.S. Supreme Court has sustained the conviction of the eleven leaders of the American Communist Party for conspiracy to teach the violent overthrow of the Government. The sentences of five years in prison and individual fines of $10,000 will now be enforced. Statesman

  16th June, 51

  Sir: The Los Angeles Times of June 2, states: “In Korea it is estimated that some 2 million civilians, the greater part of them children, have been killed or have died of exposure since the start of the war. More than ten million are homeless and destitute.” Dong Sung Kim, special envoy of the Republic of Korea, reported June 1st here: “In just one night, there were 156 villages burned. The villages were in the path of an enemy advance. So, of course, the U.N. planes had to destroy them. And all the old people and children who were still there because they were unable to heed the evacuation orders were killed.” New Statesman

  13th July, 51

  Truce Talks Held Up—because the Reds refuse to allow 20 Allied reporters and photographers into Kaesong. Express

  July 16th

  10,000 in oil-land riots. Troops use tear-gas. Express

  July 28th

  Rearmament has up till now brought no sacrifice to the American people. On the contrary, consumption is still rising. New Statesman

  1st Sept., 51

  The technique of quick-freezing germ-cells and keeping them indefinitely can mean a complete change in the significance of time. At present it applies to the male sperm, but it might also be adapted to the female ovum. A man alive in 1951 and a woman alive in 2,051 might be “mated” in 2,251 to produce a child by a pre-natal foster-mother. Statesman

  Oct. 17, 51

  MOSLEM WORLD FLARES. More troops for Suez. Express

  Oct. 20

  ARMY SEALS OFF EGYPT. Express

  16th Nov., 51

  12,790 Allied war prisoners and 250,000 South Korean civilians have been murdered by Reds in Korea. Express

  24th Nov., 51

  Within the lifetime of some of our children the world’s population may be expected to reach 4,000 millions. How shall we work the miracle of feeding the 4,000 millions? Statesman

  24th Nov., 51

  No one knows how many people were executed, imprisoned, sent to labour camps or died during months of interrogation in the great Soviet purge of 1937–39, nor whether a million or twenty million people are engaged in forced labour in Russia today. Statesman

  Dec. 13th, 51

  RUSSIA BUILDS A-BOMBER. Fastest in the World. Express

  1st Dec., 51

  The U.S. is riding the greatest boom in history. Though its spending on armaments and on overseas economic aid alone is now larger than the entire pre-war Federal Budget. Statesman

  29th Dec., 51

  This was the first peace-time year in British history when we had eleven divisions overseas and consumed ten per cent of our national income in armaments. Statesman

  29th Dec., 51

  There are signs that McCarthy and his friends may at last have gone too far in the United
States. Statesman

  12th Jan, 1952

  When President Truman told the world, early in 1950, that the U.S. would accelerate efforts to produce the H-bomb—which would have, according to the scientists, an explosive effect 1,000 times greater than the Hiroshima bomb, or equal to twenty million tons of T.N.T.—Albert Einstein pointed out quietly that there “emerges, more and more distinctly, the spectre of general annihilation.” Statesman

  1st March, 1952

  Just as hundreds of thousands of innocent people were condemned as witches in the Middle Ages, so multitudes of Communists and Russian patriots were purged for mythical counter-revolutionary activities. Indeed, it was precisely because there was nothing to uncover that the arrests reached such fantastic proportions (by a most ingenious method, Mr Weissberg calculates that eight million innocent people probably passed through the prisons between 1936 and 1939). Statesman

  22nd March, 1952

  The charge that the United Nations are using bacteriological warfare in Korea cannot be dismissed merely because it would be insane. Statesman

  April 15th, 52

  Roumanian Communist Government has ordered mass deportation of “unproductive people” from Bucharest. They number 200,000 or one-fifth of the city. Express

  28th June, 52

  It is impossible to establish the number of Americans who have had their passports restricted or denied, but known cases reveal that a wide range of individuals of different backgrounds, beliefs and political persuasions have been affected. The list includes…Statesman

  5th July, 52

  Most important of all, the effect of the American witch-hunt is to produce a general level of conformity, a new orthodoxy from which a man dissents at his economic peril. Statesman

  2nd Sept., 52

  The Home Secretary said that although grave damage must be caused by an accurately delivered atom bomb, it is sometimes wildly exaggerated. Express

  I am well aware that you cannot carry out a revolution with rose-water; my query was whether, in order to defeat the danger of war from Formosa, it was necessary to execute a million and a half, or whether to disarm them might not have been adequate. Statesman

  Dec. 13th, 1952

  JAPANESE DEMAND ARMS. Express

  Dec. 13th

  Title II of the McCarran Act specifically provides for the establishment of so-called detention centres. Far from directing the creation of such centres, the law authorises the Attorney-General of the U.S. to apprehend and detain “in such places of detention as may be prescribed by him…all persons as to whom there is reasonable ground to believe that such persons probably will engage in or probably will conspire with others to engage in acts of espionage and sabotage.”

  Oct. 3rd, 52

  OUR BOMB GOES OFF. First British atomic weapon exploded successfully. Express

  11th Oct., 52

  MAU MAU SLASH COLONEL. Express

  23rd Oct., 52

  BIRCH THEM. Lord Goddard, Chief Justice. Express

  25th Oct., 52

  Colonel Robert Scott, Commanding Officer of the American Air Base at Furstenfeldbruck: “The preliminary treaty between America and Germany has been signed. I earnestly hope that your fatherland will soon stand as a full-fledged member of the N.A.T.O. forces…I impatiently wait with you for the day when we will stand shoulder to shoulder as friends and brothers to resist the threat of Communism. I hope and pray that the moment will soon come when either I or some other American commander will turn this fine Air Base over to some German Wing Commander with the beginning of Germany’s new Luftwaffe.” Statesman

  17th Nov., 52

  U.S. TRIES OUT H. BOMB. Express

  1st Nov., 52

  Korea: Total casualties since the truce talks started including civilians, will soon be getting close to the number of prisoners whose status has become the main obstacle to the truce. Statesman

  27th Nov., 52

  Kenya’s Government announced tonight that as collective punishment for the murder of Commander Jack Meiklejohn last Saturday, 750 men and 2,200 women and children have been evacuated from their homes. Express

  8th Nov.

  In recent years it has been fashionable to denounce the critics of McCarthyism as dyspeptic “anti-Americans.” Statesman

  22nd Nov., 52

  It is only two years since President Truman gave the word “Go” on the H-Bomb programme. Forthwith a billion-dollar plant was put under construction at Savannah River, South Carolina, to produce tritium (triple-atom-hydrogen); by the end of 1951, the B-bomb industry had become an industrial undertaking comparable only with U.S. Steel and General Motors. Statesman

  22nd Nov., 52

  But the first shot of the present campaign was fired—most conveniently to coincide with the hectic climax of a Republican election campaign which had made all possible capital out of Alger Hiss’s “contamination” of the State Department—by the Republican Senator, Alexander Wiley, of Wisconsin in his disclosure that he had demanded an investigation of the “extensive infiltration” of the U.N. Secretariat by American Communists…Then the Senate Sub-Committee on Internal Security proceeded to cross-examine its first twelve victims in the new drive, all of them high officials…yet the refusal of the 12 witnesses to testify about any Communist affiliations did not save them from…But the witch-hunting Senators were clearly out for bigger fry than the twelve against whom the only evidence of subversion and espionage adduced was their silence. Statesman

  Nov. 29th, 52

  The Czech Sabotage Trial, though it follows the standard pattern of political justice in the People’s Democracies, is of unusual interest. In the first place, Czechoslovakia was the only country in the Eastern Bloc which possessed a deeply rooted democratic way of life, including full civil liberties and an independent judiciary. Statesman

  Dec. 3rd, 52

  DARTMOOR MAN FLOGGED. Thug gets 12 lashes with the Cat. Express

  Dec. 17th, 1952

  11 COMMUNIST LEADERS HANGED IN PRAGUE. Capitalist Spies Claims Czech Government.

  29th Dec., 1952

  A new £10,000 atom factory designed to double Britain’s out-put of atomic weapons. Express

  13th January, 53

  SOVIET MURDER-PLOT SHOCK. Moscow radio accused early today a group of Terrorist Jewish doctors of trying to assassinate Russian leaders—including some of the top Soviet military men and an atomic scientist. Express

  6th March, 1953

  STALIN DIES. Express

  23rd March, 1953

  2,500 MAU MAU ARRESTS. Express

  23rd March, 1953

  AMNESTY IN RUSSIA FOR PRISONERS. Express

  1st April, 1953

  WHAT COULD PEACE IN KOREA MEAN TO YOU? Express

  7th May, 1953

  PEACE HOPES RISING IN KOREA. Express

  8th May, 1953

  America is discussing possible United Nations action “to curb Communist aggression in S.E. Asia.” And she is sending large quantities of planes, tanks and ammunition to Indo-China. Express

  13th May, 1953

  ATROCITIES IN EGYPT. Express

  18th July, 1953

  BERLIN NIGHT BATTLE. 15,000 People of East Berlin were fighting a division of Soviet tanks and infantry in the dark streets early this morning. Express

  6th July

  REVOLT IN ROUMANIA. Express

  10th July, 53

  BERIA TRIED AND SHOT. Express

  27th July, 1953

  KOREAN CEASE-FIRE. Express

  7th August, 1953

  MASS P.O.W. RIOT. Mass rioting by 12,000 North Korean p.o.w. was put down by U.N. guards using tear-gas and small arms fire. Express

  20th Aug., 1953

  300 dead in coup. Persia. Express

  19th Feb., 1954

  Britain has A-bomb stock-pile now. Express

  27th March, 1954

  2nd H-BOMB IS DELAYED—Isles still too hot from blast No. 1. Express

  30th March

  2nd H-BO
MB EXPLODED. Express

  [And now the personal entries began again.]

  2nd April, 1954

  I realised today that I was beginning to withdraw from what Mrs Marks calls my “experience” with her; and because of something she said; she must have known it for some time. She said: “You must remember that the end of an analysis does not mean the end of the experience itself.” “You mean, the yeast goes on working?” She smiled and nodded.

  4th April, 1954

  I had the bad dream again—I was menaced by the anarchic principle, this time in the shape of an inhuman sort of dwarf. In the dream was Mrs Marks, very large and powerful; like a kind of amiable witch. She heard the dream out, and said: “When you are on your own, and you are threatened, you must summon the good witch to your aid.” “You,” I said. “No, you, embodied in what you have made of me.” So the thing is over, then. It was as if she had said: Now you are on your own. For she spoke casually, indifferently almost, like someone turning away. I admired the skill of this; it was as if, on leave-taking, she were handing me something—a flowering branch, perhaps, or a talisman against evil.

  7th April, 1954

  She asked me if I had kept notes of the “experience.” Now she has never, not once, in the last three years mentioned the diary; so she must have known by instinct I had not kept notes. I said: “No.” “You have kept no record at all?” “No. I have a very good memory, though.” A silence. “So the diary you started has remained empty?” “No, I stuck in cuttings from newspapers.” “What kind of cuttings?” “Just things that struck me—events that seemed important.” She gave me the quizzical look, which said: Well, I’m waiting for the definition. I said: “I glanced over them the other day: what I’ve got is a record of war, murder, chaos, misery.” “And that seems to you the truth about the last few years?” “Doesn’t it seem to you to be the truth?” She looked at me—ironical. She was saying without words that our “experience” has been creative and fructifying, and that I am dishonest in saying what I did. I said: “Very well then; the newspaper cuttings were to keep things in proportion. I’ve spent three years, more, wrestling with my precious soul, and meanwhile…” “Meanwhile what?” “It’s just a matter of luck that I haven’t been tortured, murdered, starved to death, or died in a prison.” She looked patiently ironical, and I said: “Surely you must see that what happens here, in this room, doesn’t only link one with what you call creativity. It links one with…but I don’t know what to call it.” “I’m glad you aren’t going to use the word destruction.” “All right, everything has two faces, etc., but for all that, whenever anything happens anywhere that is terrible, I dream about it, as if I were involved in it personally.” “You have been cutting all the bad things out of the newspapers and sticking them in your diary of this experience, as an instruction to yourself of how to dream?” “But Mrs Marks, what’s wrong with that?” We have reached this particular deadlock so often, neither of us try to break it. She sat smiling at me, dry and patient. I faced her, challenging her.