The Golden Notebook

by Doris Lessing

  A woman who has fallen in love, against her will. She is happy. And yet, in the middle of the night, she wakes. He starts up, as if in danger. He says: No, no, no. Then, consciousness and control. He slowly lays himself down again, in silence. She wants to say: What is it you are saying No to? For she is filled with fear. She does not say it. She sinks back to sleep, and weeps in her sleep. She wakes; he is still awake. She says, anxiously, Is that your heart beating? He, sullen: No, it’s yours.

  *6 A SHORT STORY

  A man and a woman, in a love affair. She, for hunger of love, he for refuge. One afternoon he says, very carefully: “I have to go and see—” But she knows it is an excuse, while she listens to a long, detailed explanation, for she is full of dismay. She says, “Of course. Of course.” He says, with a sudden loud young laugh, very aggressive: “You are very permissive,” and she says: “What do you mean, permissive? I’m not your keeper, don’t make me into an American woman.” He comes into her bed, very late, and she turns to him, just awake. She feels his arms about her, cautious, measured. She understands he doesn’t want to make love to her. His penis is limp, though (and this annoys her, the naivety of it) moving himself against her thighs. She says, sharp: “I’m sleepy.” He stops moving. She feels bad, because he might feel hurt. Suddenly she realises he is very big. She is dismayed because he wants her just because she has refused. Yet she is in love, and she turns to him. When the sex is over, she knows that for him it has meant accomplishing something. She says sharply, out of instinctive knowledge, not knowing she was going to say it: “You’ve just been making love to someone else.” He says quickly: “How did you know?” And then, just as if he has not said, how did you know, he says: “I haven’t. You’re imagining it.” Then, because of her tense miserable silence, he says, sullen: “I didn’t think it would matter. You have to understand, I don’t take it seriously.” This last remark makes her feel diminished and destroyed, as if she does not exist as a woman.

  *7 A SHORT STORY

  A wandering man happens to land in the house of a woman whom he likes and whom he needs. He is a man with a long experience of women needing love. Usually he limits himself. But this time, the words he uses, the emotions he allows himself, are ambiguous, because he needs her kindness for a time. He makes love to her, but for him the sex is no worse or better than what he has experienced a hundred times before. He realises that his need for temporary refuge has trapped him into what he most dreads: a woman saying, I love you. He cuts it. Says good-bye, formally, on the level of a friendship ending. Goes. Writes in his diary: Left London. Anna reproachful. She hated me. Well, so be it. And another entry, months later, which could read either: Anna married, good. Or: Anna committed suicide. Pity, a nice woman.

  *8 A SHORT STORY

  A woman artist—painter, writer, doesn’t matter which, lives alone. But her whole life is oriented around an absent man for whom she is waiting. Her flat too big, for instance. Her mind is filled with shapes of the man who will enter her life, meanwhile she ceases to paint or to write. Yet in her mind she is still “an artist.” Finally a man enters her life, some kind of artist, but one who has not yet crystallised as one. Her personality as “an artist” goes into his, he feeds off it, works from it, as if she were a dynamo that fed energy into him. Finally he emerges, a real artist, fulfilled; the artist in her dead. The moment when she is no longer an artist, he leaves her, he needs the woman who has this quality, so that he can create.

  *9 A SHORT NOVEL

  An American “ex-red” comes to London. No money, no friends. Black-listed in the film and television worlds. The American colony in London, or rather, the American “ex-red” colony, know him as the man who started criticising Stalinist attitudes in the Communist Party three or four years before they had the courage to do it. He goes to them for help, feeling that as he has been justified by events, they will forget their hostility. But their attitudes to him are still what they were when they were still dutiful party members or fellow-travellers. He is still a renegade, this in spite of the fact that their attitudes have changed, and they are now beating their breasts because they didn’t break with the party earlier. A rumour starts among them, a man who was formerly a dogmatic non-critical communist, but now hysterically breast-beating, that this new American is an agent of the F.B.I. The colony accepts this rumour as fact, refuse him friendship and help. While they are ostracising this man, they are talking self-righteously about the secret police in Russia, and the behaviour of the anti-American activity committees and the informers, ex-reds. The new American commits suicide. Then they all sit around remembering incidents from the political past, finding reasons to dislike him, to drown their guilt.

  *10

  A man or a woman who has, because of some mental condition, lost a sense of time. A film, obviously, marvellous what one could do with it. Well I’d never have a chance to write it, so there’s no point thinking about it. But I can’t help thinking about it. A man whose “sense of reality” has gone; and because of it, has a deeper sense of reality than “normal” people. Today Dave said, quite casually: “That man of yours, Michael, the fact that he’s turning you down, you shouldn’t let it affect you. Who are you if you can be broken up by someone being fool enough not to take you on?” He spoke as if Michael were still in the process of “turning me down” instead of its being years old. And of course he was talking about himself. He was, for a moment, Michael. My sense of reality shivered and broke. But something very clear was there, all the same, a sort of illumination, though it would be hard to say what. (This art of comment belongs to the blue notebook, not this one.)

  *11 A SHORT NOVEL

  Two people together, in any kind of relationship—mother, son; father, daughter; lovers; it doesn’t matter. One of them acutely neurotic. The neurotic hands on his or her state to the other, who takes it over, leaving the sick one well, the well one sick. I remember Mother Sugar telling me a story about a patient. A young man had come to see her convinced he was in desperate psychological trouble. She could find nothing wrong with him. She asked him to send along his father to her. One by one all the family, five of them, arrived in her consulting room. She found them all normal. Then the mother came. She, apparently “normal,” was in fact extremely neurotic, but maintaining her balance by passing it on to her family, particularly to the youngest son. Eventually Mother Sugar treated the mother, though there was terrible trouble getting her to come for treatment. And the young man who had come in the first place found the pressure lifting off him. I remember her saying: Yes, often it’s the most “normal” member of a family or a group who is really sick, but simply because they have strong personalities, they survive, because other, weaker personalities, express their illness for them. (This sort of comment belongs to the blue notebook. I must keep them separate.)

  *12 A SHORT STORY

  A husband, unfaithful to his wife, not because he is in love with another woman, but in order to assert his independence of the married state, comes back from sleeping with the other woman, with every intention of being discreet, but “accidentally” does something to give the show away. This “accident,” scent or lipstick or forgetting to wash off the smell of sex, is in fact why he did it in the first place, though he doesn’t know it. He needed to say to his wife: “I’m not going to belong to you.”

  *13 A SHORT NOVEL, TO BE CALLED “THE MAN WHO IS FREE OF WOMEN.”

  A man of about fifty, a bachelor, or perhaps was married for a short time, his wife died, or he got divorced. If an American, he is divorced, but if English, he has this wife tucked away somewhere, he might even live with her or share a house, but without real emotional contact. At fifty, he has had a couple of dozen affairs, three or four serious. These serious affairs were with women who hoped to marry him, they lingered on, in what were really marriages without formal ties, he broke the affairs off at the point where he had to marry them. At fifty he is dry, anxious about his sexuality, has five or six women friends, all ex-
mistresses, now married. He is a cuckoo in half a dozen families, the old family friend. He is like a child, dependent on women, gets vaguer and more inefficient, is always ringing up some woman to do something for him. Outwardly a dapper, ironic intelligent man, making an impression on younger women for a week or so. He has these affairs with girls or much younger women, then returns to the older women who fulfil the function of kindly nannies or nursemaids.

  *14 A SHORT NOVEL

  A man and a woman, married or in a long relationship, secretly read each other’s diaries in which (and it is a point of honour with them both) their thoughts about each other are recorded with the utmost frankness. Both know that the other is reading what he/she writes, but for a while objectivity is maintained. Then, slowly, they begin writing falsely, first unconsciously; then consciously, so as to influence the other. The position is reached where each keeps two diaries, one for private use, and locked up; and the second for the other to read. Then one of them makes a slip of the tongue, or a mistake, and the other accuses him/her of having found the secret diary. A terrible quarrel which drives them apart forever, not because of the original diaries—“but we both knew we were reading those diaries, that doesn’t count, how can you be so dishonest as to read my private diary!”

  *15 A SHORT STORY

  An American man, English woman. She, in all her attitudes, emotions, expects to be possessed and taken. He, in all his attitudes and emotions, expects to be taken. Regards himself as an instrument to be used, by her, for her pleasure. Emotional deadlock. Then they discuss it: the discussion, on sexual emotional attitudes turns into a comparison of the two different societies.

  *16 A SHORT STORY

  Man and a woman, both sexually proud and experienced, seldom meeting others as experienced. Suddenly both afflicted by dislike for the other, an emotion which, when examined (and they are nothing if not self-examiners), turns out to be dislike for themselves. They have found their mirrors, take a good look, grimace, leave each other. When they meet it is with a wry sort of acknowledgement, become good friends on this basis, after a time this wry ironical friendship turns into love. But love is barred to them because of the first stark experience, without emotion.

  *17 A SHORT NOVEL

  Two rakes, male and female, together. Their concourse has the following ironical rhythm. He takes her, she wary from experience, but she slowly succumbs emotionally. At the moment when she emotionally gives herself to him, his emotions cut off, he loses desire for her. She, hurt and miserable. Turns to another man. But at this point, the first man finds her desirable again. But whereas he is excited by the knowledge she has been sleeping with someone else, she is frozen up because he is excited, not by her, but the fact she has been with someone else. But slowly, she succumbs to him emotionally. And just at the moment when it is at its best for her, he freezes up again, takes another woman, she another man, and so on.

  *18 A SHORT STORY

  Same theme as Chekhov’s The Darling. But this time the woman doesn’t change to suit different men, one after another; she changes in response to one man who is a psychological chameleon, so that in the course of a day she can be half a dozen different personalities, either in opposition to or in harmony with him.

  *19 THE ROMANTIC TOUGH SCHOOL OF WRITING

  The fellows were out Saturday-nighting true-hearted, the wild-hearted Saturday-night gang of true friends, Buddy, Dave and Mike. Snowing. Snow-cold. The cold of cities in the daddy of cities, New York. But true to us. Buddy, the ape-shouldered, stood apart and stared. He scratched his crotch. Buddy the dreamer, pitch-black-eyed, sombrely staring, he would often masturbate in front of us, unconscious, pure, a curious purity. And now he stood with the snow crumb white on his sad bent shoulders. Dave tackled him low, Dave and Buddy sprawled together in the innocent snow, Buddy winded. Dave drove his fist into Buddy’s belly, oh true love of true friends, mensch playing together under the cold cliffs of Manhattan on a true Saturday night. Buddy passed out cold. “I love this son-of-a-bitch,” Dave said, while Buddy sprawled, lost to us and to the sadness of the city. I, Mike, Mike-the-lone-walker, stood apart, the burden of knowing on me, eighteen-years-old and lonely, watching my true buddies, Dave and Buddy. Buddy came to. Saliva flecked his near-dead lips and flew off into the saliva-white snow-bank. He sat up, gasping, saw Dave there, arms around his kneecaps, staring at him, love in his Bronx-sad eyes. Left side of hairy fist to chin, he hit and Dave now fell flat out, out in the death-cold snow. Laughing Buddy, Buddy sat laughing, waiting in his turn. Man, what a maniac. “Whatta you going to do, Buddy?” I said, Mike-the-lone-walker but loving his true friends. “Ha ha ha, d’you see the expression on his face?” he said and rolled breathless, holding his crotch. “Didja see that?” Dave gasped, life coming to him, rolled, groaned, sat up. Dave and Buddy fought then, true-fought, laughing with joy, till, laughing, fell apart in the snow. I, Mike, winged-with-words Mike, stood sorrowing with joy. “Hey I love this bastard,” gasped Dave, throwing a punch to Buddy’s midriff and Buddy, fore-arm stopping it said: “Jeez, I love him.” But I heard the sweet music of heels on the frostcold pavement, and I said: “Hey, fellas.” We stood waiting. She came, Rosie, from her dark tenement bedroom, on her sweet-tapping heels. “Hey, fellas,” says Rosie, sweet-smiling. We stood watching. Sad now, watching the proud-fleshed Rosie, swivelling on her true sex down the pavement, twitching her round-ball butt, which jerked a message of hope to our hearts. Then Buddy, our buddy Buddy, moved apart, hesitant, sad-eyed, to our sad eyes: “I love her, fellas.” Two friends were left then. Two-fisted Dave and winged-with-words Mike. We stood then, watching our friend Buddy, fated with life, nod and move on after Rosie, his pure heart beating to the tune of her sweet heels. The wings of mystic time beat down on us then, white with snowflakes, time that would whirl us all after our Rosies to death and the frame-house funeral. Tragic and beautiful to see our Buddy, move on out into the immemorial dance of fated snow-flakes, the dry rime rhyming on his collar. And the love that went out from us to him then was fantastic, true-volumed, sad-faced and innocent of the purposes of time, but true and in fact serious. We loved him as we turned, two friends left, our adolescent top coats flapping around our pure legs. On then, Dave and I, I-Mike, sad, because the intimation-bird of tragedy had touched our pearly souls, he-Dave and I-Mike, on then, goofy with life. Dave scratched his crotch, slow, owl-scratching pure Dave. “Jeez, Mike,” he said, “you’ll write it someday, for us all.” He stammered, inarticulate, not-winged-with-words, “You’ll write it, hey feller? And how our souls were ruined here on the snow-white Manhattan pavement, the capitalist-money-mammon hound-of-hell hot on our heels?” “Gee, Dave, I love you,” I said then, my boy’s soul twisted with love. I hit him then, square to the jaw-bone, stammering with love-for-the-world, love-for-my-friends, for the Daves and the Mikes and the Buddies. Down he went and I then, Mike, then cradled him, baby, I-love-you, friendship in the jungle city, friendship of young youth. Pure. And the winds of time were blowing, snow-fated, on our loving pure shoulders.

  If I’ve gone back to pastiche, then it’s time to stop.

  [The yellow notebook ended here with a double black line.]

  People have heard the room upstairs is empty, they ring me up about it. I’ve been saying I don’t want to let it, but I am short of money. Two business girls came round, they heard from Ivor I had a room. But then I realised I didn’t want girls. Janet and myself, and then two girls, a flat full of women, I didn’t want it. Then some men. Two of them instantly set up the atmosphere: you and me in this flat alone, so I sent them off. Three were in need of mothering, wrecks and waifs, I knew I’d be put in the position of looking after them before a week was out. So then I decided not to let rooms any more. I’ll take a job, move to a smaller flat, anything. Meanwhile Janet’s been asking questions: It’s a pity Ivor had to leave, I hope we’ll get someone as nice as him again, and so on. Then out of the blue she said she wanted to go to boarding-school. Her friend from the day school i
s going. I asked why and she said she wanted other girls to play with. Instantly I felt sad and rejected, then angry with myself that I did. Told her I’d think it over—money, the practical side. But what I really wanted to think over was Janet’s character, what would suit her. I’ve often thought that if she hadn’t been my daughter (I don’t mean genetically, but my daughter because she’s been brought up by me) she would have been the most conventional child imaginable. And that is what she is, despite a surface of originality. Despite the influence of Molly’s house, despite my long affair with Michael, and his disappearance, despite the fact that she’s the product of what is known as a “broken marriage,” when I look at her I see no more than a charming, conventionally intelligent little girl, destined by nature for an unproblematical life. I nearly wrote: “I hope so.” Why? I have no time for people who haven’t experimented with themselves, deliberately tried the frontiers, yet when it’s a question of one’s own child, one can’t bear the thought of all that for them. When she said: “I want to go to boarding-school” with the petulant charm she is using now, trying her wings as a woman, what she was really saying to me was: “I want to be ordinary and normal.” She was saying: “I want to get out of the complicated atmosphere.” I think it is because she must be aware of my increasing depression. It is true that with her I banish the Anna who is listless and frightened. But she must feel that Anna is there. And of course, the reason why I don’t want her to go is that she is my normality. I have to be, with her, simple, responsible, affectionate, and so she anchors me in what is normal in myself. When she goes to school…

  Today she asked again: “When am I going to boarding-school, I want to go with Mary.” (Her friend.)

  I told her we would have to leave this big flat, get a smaller one, and that I must get a job. Not immediately however. For the third time a film company has bought the rights of Frontiers of War, but it won’t come to anything. Well I hope not, anyway. I wouldn’t have sold the rights if I’d believed the film would be made. The money will keep us, living simply, even with Janet at boarding-school.