The Golden Notebook

by Doris Lessing

  That evening he asked me to an evening party at his house. I said I’d go. After he left I knew I shouldn’t go because I felt uneasy about it. Yet on the face of it, why not? He’d never be my lover, and so we were friends, so why not go and meet his friends, his wife?

  As soon as I entered their flat I realised how much I had not been using my imagination, how stupid I had chosen to be. Sometimes I dislike women, I dislike us all, because of our capacity for not-thinking when it suits us; we choose not to think when we are reaching out for happiness. Well, entering the flat, I knew I had chosen not to think, and I was ashamed and humiliated.

  A large rented flat, full of tasteless, anonymous furniture. And I knew that when they moved into a house and filled it with their own chosen things, they would still be anonymous—that was the quality, anonymity. The safety of anonymity. Yes, and I understand that too, too well. They mentioned the rent of this flat and I was filled with disbelief. Thirty pounds a week, it’s a fortune, it’s crazy. There were about twelve people, all Americans to do with television or the films—“show business” people; and of course they joked about it. “We’re show biz, and why not? Nothing wrong with that, is there?” They all knew each other, their “knowing each other” was on the basis of being show business, on the arbitrary contacts of their work; yet they were friendly, it was an attractive, accepting, casual friendliness. I liked it, it reminded me of the casual, informal friendliness of the white people of Africa. “Hallo. Hallo! How are you? My house is yours, though I’ve only met you once.” Yet I liked it. By English standards they were all rich. In England people as rich as they are don’t talk about it. An atmosphere of money all the time, anxious money, with these American people. Yet, with all the money, everything so expensive (which they apparently take for granted), a middle-class atmosphere that is hard to define. I sat there, trying to define it. It’s a kind of deliberate ordinariness, a scaling-down of the individual; it’s as if they all have, built in, a need to fit themselves to what is expected. And yet one likes them so much, they are such good people, one watches them full of pain because they choose to scale themselves down, to set limits. The limits are money-limits. (Yet why?—half of them were left-wingers, had been black-listed, were in England because they couldn’t earn in America. Yet money, money, money all the time.) Yes, I could feel the money-anxiety, it was in the air, like a question. Yet the rent of Nelson’s big ugly flat would keep an English middle-class family in comfort.

  I was secretly fascinated by Nelson’s wife—half the ordinary curiosity—what is this new person like? But the other half I was ashamed of—what does she lack that I have? Nothing—that I could see.

  She is attractive. A tall, very thin, almost bony, Jewish woman; very attractive, with striking bold features, everything emphasised, big mobile mouth, big, rather beautiful curved nose, large prominent striking black eyes. And colourful dashing clothes. A loud shrill voice (which I hated, I hate loud voices), and an emphatic laugh. A great style and assurance about her, which of course I envied, I always do. And then, looking at her, I knew it was a superficial self-assurance. For she never took her eyes off Nelson. Never, not for one moment. (Whereas he wouldn’t look at her, he was afraid to.) That quality I begin to recognise in American women—the surface competence, the assurance. And underneath the anxiety. They have a nervous, frightened look to their shoulders. They are frightened. They look as if they were out in a space somewhere by themselves, pretending that they are not alone. They have the look of people alone, people isolated. But pretending not to be alone. They frighten me.

  Well, from the moment Nelson came in, she never took her eyes off him. He came in with a wisecrack, the self-punishing, self-defining humour that scares me, because it accepts so much: “The man is two hours late, and for why?—because he was getting loaded, to face the social happy evening ahead of him.” (And all his friends laughed—though they were the social happy evening.) And she replied, in the same style, gay and tense and accusing: “But the woman knew he’d be two hours late, because of the happy social evening, so the dinner’s fixed to be ready at ten, please don’t give yourself one minute’s concern over it!” And so they all laughed, and her eyes, apparently so black and bold, so full of apparent self-assurance, were fixed on him, anxious and afraid. “Scotch? Nelson?” she asked, after serving the others; and her voice was suddenly a shrill plea. “Double,” he said; aggressive and challenging; and they looked at each other a moment, it was a sudden exposed moment; and the others joked and laughed to cover it. That was another thing that I began to understand—they covered up for each other, all the time. It gave me the most uneasy feeling, watching the easy friendliness, knowing that they were on guard for dangerous moments like this one, so that they could cover up. I was the only English person present, and they were nice about it, for they are nice people, with an instinct for generosity: they made a lot of self-mocking jokes about the stock American attitudes towards the English; and they were very funny, and I laughed a great deal, and felt bad, because I didn’t know how to be easily self-mocking in return. We drank a lot; it was a gathering where people set themselves, from the moment of entering, to get just so much drink inside them as soon as possible. Well, I’m not used to it, and so I was drunker than anyone, and very quickly, though they drank very much more than I did. I noticed a tiny blonde woman, in a tight Chinese green-brocade dress. Really beautiful she was, with a tiny neat exquisiteness. She was, or is, the fourth wife of a big ugly dark man, a film tycoon of some kind. She had four doubles in an hour, yet she was cool, controlled, charming; watching her husband’s drinking anxiously, babying him out of getting really drunk. “My baby doesn’t really need that new drink,”—cooing at him, baby talk. And he: “Oh, yes, your baby needs that drink and he’s going to have it.” And she stroked and patted him: “My little baby’s not going to drink, no he isn’t, because his momma says so.” And good Lord, he didn’t. She caressed and babied him, and I thought it was insulting; until I saw this was the basis of this marriage—the beautiful green Chinese dress and the long beautiful earrings, in return for mothering him, babying him. I was embarrassed. No one else was embarrassed. I realised, as I sat there, much too tight, watching them; out of it because I can’t talk the cool wise-cracking talk, that I was above all embarrassed; and afraid that next time there was a dangerous corner they wouldn’t cover up in time, there’d be some awful explosion. Well, about midnight there was; but I understood there was no need to be scared, because they were all far ahead of me in some area of sophistication well beyond anything I was used to; and it was their self-aware, self-parodying humour that insulated them against real hurt. Protected them, that is, until the moment when the violence exploded into another divorce, or drunken breakdown.

  I kept watching Nelson’s wife, so bold and attractive and vital, her eyes fixed on Nelson every moment of the evening. Her eyes had a kind of wide, blank, disorganised look about them. I knew the look, but couldn’t place it, then at last remembered: Mrs Boothby’s eyes were like that when she was cracking up, at the end of the story; they were frantic and disorganised, yet staring wide with the effort not to show the state she was in. And Nelson’s wife was locked, I could see, in some permanent, controlled hysteria. Then I understood that they all were; they were all people on the extreme edge of themselves, controlling it, holding it, while hysteria flickered in the good-humoured barbed talk, in the shrewd, on-guard eyes.

  Yet they were all used to it, they had been living inside it for years; it was not strange to them, only to me. And yet, sitting there in a corner, not drinking any more, because I had got tight too quickly, and was in the over-aware, over-sensitive state of having drunk too much too quickly and waiting for it all to subside—I understood that this was not so new to me as I imagined; this was nothing more than I had seen in a hundred English marriages, English homes; it was the same thing taken a stage further, taken into awareness and self-consciousness. They were, I understood, above all self-consci
ous people, aware of themselves all the time; and it was from the awareness, a self-disgusted awareness, that the humour came. The humour was not at all the verbal play, harmless and intellectualised, that the English use; but a sort of disinfection, a making-harmless, a “naming” to save themselves from pain. It was like peasants touching amulets to avert the evil eye.

  It was quite late, as I’ve said, about midnight, that I heard Nelson’s wife’s voice, loud and shrill, saying: “O.K., O.K., I know what’s coming next. You’re not going to write that script. So why waste your time on Nelson, Bill?” (Bill was the big aggressive husband of the tiny tactful mothering blonde.) She went on, to Bill, who looked determinedly good-humoured: “He’s going to talk and talk again for months, but he’ll turn you down at the end of it, and waste his time on another masterpiece that never gets itself on the stage…” Then she laughed, a laugh full of apology, but wild and hysterical. Then Nelson, grabbing the stage, so to speak, before Bill could shield him, which he was ready to do: “That’s right, that’s my wife, her husband wastes time writing masterpieces—well, did I have a play on Broadway, or didn’t I?” He shrieked this last at her, shrieking like a woman, his face black with hate of her, and a naked, panicking fear. And they all began laughing, the roomful of people began to laugh and joke, to cover the dangerous moment, and Bill said: “How do y’know I won’t turn Nelson down, it might come to that, it might be my turn to write the masterpiece, I can feel it coming on.” (With a look at his pretty blonde wife which said: Don’t worry honey, you know I’m just covering up, don’t you?) But it was no good their covering up, the group self-protection was not strong enough for the moment of violence. Nelson and his wife were alone, forgetting all of us, standing at the other side of the room, locked in hatred for each other, and a desperate yearning plea to each other; they were not conscious of us any longer; yet in spite of everything, they were using the deadly, hysterical, self-punishing humour. The wisecrack:

  NELSON: Yeah. Hear that baby? Bill’s going to write the Death of a Salesman for our time, he’s going to beat me to it, and whose fault will that be—my ever-loving wife’s fault, who else?

  SHE (shrill and laughing, her eyes frantic with anxiety, moving in her face uncontrolled, like small black molluscs, writhing under a knife): Oh, it’s my fault, of course, who else’s could it be? That’s what I’m for, isn’t it?

  NELSON: Yes, of course that’s what you are for. You cover up for me, I know it. And I love you for it. But did I or did I not have that play on Broadway? And all those fine notices? Or did I just imagine it?

  SHE: Twelve years ago. Oh, you were a fine American citizen then, no black-lists in sight. And what have you been doing since?

  HE: O.K., so they’ve beaten me. Do you imagine I don’t know it? Do you have to rub it in? I tell you, they don’t need firing squads and prison to beat people. It’s much easier than that…well, about me. Yeah, about me…

  SHE: You’re black-listed, you’re a hero, that’s your alibi for the rest of your life…

  HE: No, dove; no baby, you’re my alibi for the rest of my life—who wakes me every morning of my life at four a.m., screaming and wailing that you and your children’ll end up on the Bowery if I don’t write some more crap for our good friend Bill here?

  SHE (laughing, her face distorted with laughter): 0.K, so I wake up at four every morning. 0.K, so I’m scared. Want me to move to the spare room?

  HE: Yeah, I want you to move to the spare room. I could use that three hours every morning for working in. If I could remember how to work. (Suddenly laughing.) Except that I’d be in the spare room with you saying I was scared I might end up on the Bowery. How’s that for a project? You and I on the Bowery together, together until death-do-us-part, love until death.

  SHE: You could make a comedy of it, I’d laugh my head off.

  HE: Yeah, my ever-loving wife’d laugh her head off if I ended on the Bowery. (Laughing.) But the joke is, if you were there, stranded drunk in a doorway, I’d come after you for assurance, yeah, it’s the truth. If you were there I’d come after you. I need security, yes, that’s what I need from you, my analyst says so, and who am I to contradict?

  SHE: Yeah, that’s right, that’s what you need from me. And it’s what you get. You need Mom, God help me. (They are both laughing, leaning towards each other, screaming with laughter, helpless with it.)

  HE: Yeah, you’re my mom. He says so. He’s always right. Well it’s O.K. to hate your mom, it’s in the book. I’m right on the line. I’m not going to feel guilty about that.

  SHE: Oh no, why should you feel guilty, why should you ever feel guilty at all?

  HE: (shouting, his dark handsome face distorted): Because you make me guilty, I’m always in the wrong with you, I have to be, Mom’s always right.

  SHE (suddenly not laughing, but desperate with anxiety): Oh, Nelson, don’t get at me all the time, don’t do it, I can’t stand it.

  HE (soft and menacing): So you can’t stand it? Well, you’ve got to stand it. For why? Because I need you to stand it, that’s why. Hey, perhaps you should go to the analyst. Why should I do all the hard work? Yeah, that’s it; you can go to the analyst, I’m not sick, you’re sick. You’re sick! (But she has given in, turned away from him, limp and desperate. He jumps towards her victorious but appalled): And now what’s wrong with you! Can’t take it, huh? Why not? How d’you know it’s not you that’s sick: why should it always be me that’s in the wrong? Oh, don’t look like that! Trying to make me feel bad, as usual, huh? Well, you’re succeeding. O.K., so I’m in the wrong. But please don’t worry—not for a moment. It’s always me that is in the wrong. I said so, didn’t I? I’ve confessed, haven’t I? You’re a woman, so you’re in the right. O.K., O.K., I’m not complaining. I’m just stating a fact—I’m a man, so I’m in the wrong. O.K.?

  But now, suddenly, the tiny blonde woman (who has drunk at least three-quarters of a bottle of Scotch and is as cool and controlled as a soft little kitten with sweet, just-open misty blue eyes) gets up and says: “Bill, Bill, I want to dance. I want to dance, baby.” And Bill jumps up towards the record player, and the room is full of late Armstrong, the cynical trumpet and the cynical good-humoured voice of the older Armstrong. And Bill has gathered his beautiful little wife in his arms, and they are dancing. But it is a parody, a parody of good-humoured sexy dancing. Now everyone is dancing, and Nelson and his wife are away on the edge of the group, ignored. No one is listening to them, people can’t stand it any more. And then Nelson says, loud, jerking his thumb at me: “I’m going to dance with Anna. I can’t dance, I can’t do anything, you don’t have to tell me that, but I’m going to dance with Anna.” I stand up, because everyone is looking at me, saying with their eyes: Go on, you’ve got to dance, you’ve got to.

  Nelson comes over, and says loudly in parody: “I’m going to dance with Anna. Dance with m—e—e—! Da—a—a—ance with me, Anna.”

  His eyes are desperate with self-dislike, misery, pain. And then, in parody: “Com’n, let’s fuck, baby, I like your style.”

  I laugh. (I hear my laugh, shrill and pleading.) They all laugh, in relief, because I’m playing my role; and the dangerous moment is passed. And Nelson’s wife laughs loudest. She gives me, however, an acute, fearful inspection; and I know that I’ve already become part of the marital battle; and that the whole point of me, Anna, was probably to add fuel to the battle. They’ve probably fought over me, interminably, in the terrible hours between four and seven in the morning, when they wake in anxiety (but anxiety about what?) and fight to the death. I can even hear the dialogue: I dance with Nelson, while his wife watches, smiling in painful anxiety, and listen to the dialogue:

  SHE: Yes, I suppose you think I don’t know about you and Anna Wulf.

  HE: That’s right, you don’t know and you’ll never know, will you?

  SHE: So you think I don’t know, well I do know, I’ve just got to look at you!

  HE: Look at me, baby! Look at me, doll! Lo
ok at me, honey, look, look, look! What do you see? Lothario? Don Juan? Yes, that’s me. That’s right. I’ve been screwing Anna Wulf, she’s just my style, my analyst says she is, and who am I to argue with my analyst?

  After the wild, painful, laughing dance, everyone dancing in parody, and urging all the other members of the group to keep up the parody, for their dear lives’ sake, we all say good night and go home.

  Nelson’s wife kisses me at parting. We all kiss each other, one big happy family, though I know, and they know, that any member of this group could fall out of it tomorrow, from failure, or drunkenness or unconformity, and never be seen again. Nelson’s wife’s kiss on my cheeks—first left, then right, is half warm and genuine, as if to say: I’m sorry, we can’t help it, it’s nothing to do with you; and half exploratory, as if to say: I want to know what you’ve got for Nelson that I haven’t.

  And we even exchange glances, ironic and bitter, saying: Well, it’s got nothing to do with either of us, not really!

  The kiss makes me uncomfortable, nevertheless, and I feel an impostor. Because I was realising something I should have known by using my intelligence, without ever having gone to their flat at all: that the ties between Nelson and his wife are bitterly close, and never to be broken in their lives. They are tied by the closest of all bonds, neurotic pain-giving; the experience of pain dealt and received; pain as an aspect of love; apprehended as a knowledge of what the world is, what growth is.

  Nelson is about to leave his wife; he will never leave her. She will wail at being rejected and abandoned; she does not know she will never be rejected.

  The evening after the party I was at home sitting in a chair, exhausted. An image kept coming into my mind: it was like a shot from a film, then it was as if I was seeing a sequence from a film. A man and a woman, on a roof-top above a busy city, but the noise and the movement of the city are far beneath them. They wander aimlessly on the roof-top, sometimes embracing, but almost experimentally, as if they are thinking: How does this taste?—then they separate again and aimlessly move about the roof. Then the man goes to the woman and says: I love you. And she says, in terror: What do you mean? He says: I love you. So she embraces him, and he moves away, with nervous haste, and she says: Why did you say you loved me? And he says: I wanted to hear how it would sound. And she says: But I love you, I love you, I love you—and he goes off to the very edge of the roof and stands there, ready to jump—he will jump if she says even once again: I love you.