The Golden Notebook (44 page)

And he made the sound of vomiting. Anna, furious, was on the point of going forward to quarrel with them. She found herself, instead, shaken, trembling, and frightened. She crept downstairs, hoping they had not known she was there. But now they shut their door with a bang, and she heard shouts of laughter-from Ivor; and shrill graceful peals from Ronnie. She got into bed, appalled. At herself. For she saw that the obscene little play that had been prepared for her was nothing more than the night-face of Ronnie's girlishness, Ivor's big-dog friendliness, and that she might have deduced it all for herself without waiting to have it demonstrated. She was frightened because she was affected. She sat up in bed in the big dark room, smoking, and felt herself as vulnerable and helpless. She said again: If I cracked up then... The man on the train had shaken her; the two young men upstairs had reduced her to trembling. A week ago, coming home late from the theatre, a man had exposed himself on a dark street corner. Instead of ignoring it, she had found herself shrinking inwardly, as if it had been a personal attack on Anna-she had felt as if she, Anna, had been menaced by it. Yet, looking back only a short time, she saw Anna who walked through the hazards and ugliness of the big city unafraid and immune. Now it seemed as if the ugliness had come close and stood so near to her she might collapse, screaming. And when had this new frightened vulnerable Anna been born? She knew: it was when Michael had abandoned her. Anna, frightened and sick, nevertheless grinned at herself, smiled at the knowledge that she, the independent woman, was independent and immune to the ugliness of perverse sex, violent sex, just so long as she was loved by a man. She sat in the dark grinning, or rather, forcing herself to grin, and thinking that there was no one in the world she could share this amusement with but Molly. Only Molly was in such trouble this was no moment to talk to her. Yes-she must ring up Molly tomorrow and talk to her about Tommy. And now Tommy came back into the front of Anna's mind, with her worry over Ivor and Ronnie; and it was all too much. She crept in and under the clothes, clinging on to them. The fact is, said Anna, trying to be calm about it, to herself: that I'm not fit to cope with anything. I stay above all this-chaos, because of this increasingly cold, critical, balancing little brain of mine. (Anna again saw her brain, like a cold little machine, ticking away in her head.) She lay, frightened, and again the words came into her head: the spring has gone dry. And with the words, came the image: she saw the dry well, a cracked opening into the earth that was all dust. Laying about her for something to hold on to, she clutched to the memory of Mother Sugar. Yes. I have to dream of water, she told herself. For what was the use of that long 'experience' with Mother Sugar if now, in time of drought, she could not reach out for help. I must dream of water, I must dream of how to get back to the spring. Anna slept and dreamed. She was standing on the edge of a wide yellow desert at midday. The sun was darkened by the dust hanging in the air. The sun was a baleful orange colour over the yellow dusty expanse. Anna knew she had to cross the desert. Over it, on the far side, were mountains-purple and orange and grey. The colours of the dream were extraordinarily beautiful and vivid. But she was enclosed by them, enclosed by these vivid dry colours. There was no water anywhere. Anna started off to walk across the desert, so that she might reach the mountains. That was the dream she woke with in the morning; and she knew what it meant. The dream marked a change in Anna, in her knowledge of herself. In the desert she was alone, and there was no water, and she was a long way from the springs. She woke knowing that if she was to cross the desert she must shed burdens. She had gone to sleep confused about what to do about Ronnie and Ivor, but woke knowing what she would do. She stopped Ivor on his way out to work (Ronnie was still in bed, sleeping the just sleep of a petted mistress) and said: 'Ivor, I want you to go.' This morning he was pale, apprehensive, and appealing. He could not have said more clearly, without using the words to say it: I'm sorry, I'm in love with him and I can't help myself. Anna said: 'Ivor, you must see that it can't go on.' He said: 'I've been meaning to say this for some time- you've been so good, I really would like to pay you for Ronnie's being here.' 'No.' 'Whatever rent you say,' he said, and even now, while he was certainly ashamed of his last-night's personality, and above all frightened because his idyll might be shattered, he could not prevent the jeering mocking note coming back into his voice. 'Since Ronnie's been here weeks now, and I've never mentioned rent, it obviously isn't money,' said Anna, disliking the cold critical person who stood there, using this voice. He hesitated again; his face the most remarkable mixture of guilt, impertinence and fear. 'Look Anna, I'm terribly late for work. I'll drop down this evening and we'll talk it over.' He was already halfway down the stairs, he was bounding down them in desperation to get away from her, and his own impulse to jeer and provoke her. Anna went back into her kitchen. Janet was eating her breakfast. She asked: 'What were you talking to Ivor about?' 'I was suggesting he should go, or at least, that Ronnie should go.' She added quickly, for Janet was on the point of protesting: 'That room is for one person, not for two. And they're friends, they'd probably prefer to live together.' To Anna's surprise Janet decided not to protest. She was quiet and thoughtful through the meal, as she had been at supper the night before. At the end of it she remarked: 'Why can't I go to school?' 'But you are at school.' 'No, I mean a real school. A boarding-school.' 'Boarding-schools aren't at all like that story Ivor was reading to you last night.' Janet seemed as if she might go on, but let the subject slip. She went off to her school as usual. Ronnie descended the stairs a short time later, much earlier than he usually did. He was carefully dressed, and very pale under the faint rouge on his cheeks. For the first time he offered to shop for Anna. 'I'm awfully good at little jobs around the house.' When Anna refused, he sat in the kitchen chatting delightfully, and all the time his eyes pleaded with her. But Anna was determined, and when Ivor came to her room that evening for the interview, she remained determined. So Ivor suggested Ronnie should leave and he should stay. 'After all, Anna, I've been here months and months, and we've never got in each other's hair before. I agree with you, Ronnie was asking a bit much. But he's moving out, I promise you.' Anna hesitated, and he pressed her: 'And there's Janet. I'd miss her. And I don't think I'm saying too much if I think she'd miss me. We saw an awful lot of each other while you were so busy holding your poor friend's hand during that awful business with her son.' Anna gave in. Ronnie left. He made an exhibition of leaving. It was made clear to Anna that she was a bitch for turning him out. (And she felt a bitch.) And it was made clear to Ivor that he had lost his mistress, whose minimum price was a roof over his head. Ivor resented Anna for his loss, and showed it. He sulked. But Ivor's sulking meant that things returned to what they had been before Tommy's accident. They hardly saw him. He had become again the young man who said good evening and good morning when they met on the stairs. He was out most nights. Then Anna heard that Ronnie had failed to hold his new protector, had installed himself in a small room in a nearby street, and that Ivor was keeping him.

THE NOTEBOOKS

[The black notebook now fulfilled its original plan, for both sides had been written on. Under the left side heading, The Source, was written:]

11th November, 1955

Today on the pavement a fat domestic London pigeon waddling among the boots and shoes of people hurrying for a bus. A man takes a kick at it, the pigeon lurches into the air, falls forward against a lamppost, lies with its neck stretched out, its beak open. The man stands, bewildered: he had expected the pigeon to fly off. He casts a furtive look around, so as to escape. It is too late, a red-faced virago is already approaching him. 'You brute! Kicking a pigeon!' The man's face is by now also red. He grins from embarrassment and a comical amazement. 'They always fly away,' he observes, appealing for justice. The woman shouts: 'You've killed it- kicking a poor little pigeon!' But the pigeon is not dead, it is stretching out its neck by the lamppost, trying to lift its head, and its wings strive and collapse, again and again. By now there is a small crowd including two boys of about fifteen. They have the sharp watchful faces of the freebooters of the streets, and stand watching, unmoved, chewing gum. Someone says: 'Call the R. S. P. C. A.' The woman shouts: 'There'd be no need for that if this bully hadn't kicked the poor thing.' The man hangs about, sheepish, a criminal hated by the crowd. The only people not emotionally involved are the two boys. One remarks to the air: 'Prison's the place for criminals like 'im.' 'Yes, yes,' shouts the woman. She is so busy hating the kicker she doesn't look at the pigeon. 'Prison,' says the second boy, 'flogging, I'd say.' The woman now sharply examines the boys, and realises they are making fun of her. 'Yes, and you too!' she gasps at them, her voice almost squeezed out of her by her anger. 'Laughing while a poor little bird suffers.' By now the two boys are in fact grinning, though not in the same shame-faced incredulous way as the villain of the occasion. 'Laughing,' she says. 'Laughing. You should be flogged. Yes. It's true.' Meanwhile an efficient frowning man bends over the pigeon, and examines it. He straightens himself and pronounces: 'It's going to die.' He is right: the bird's eyes are filming, and blood wells from its open beak. And now the woman, forgetting her three objects of hatred, leans forward to look at the bird. Her mouth is slightly open, she has a look of unpleasant curiosity as the bird gasps, writhes its head, then goes limp. 'It's dead,' says the efficient man. The villain, recovering himself, says apologetically, but clearly determined to have no nonsense: 'I'm sorry, but it was an accident. I've never seen a pigeon before that didn't move out of the way.' We all look with disapproval at this hardened kicker of pigeons. 'An accident!' says the woman. 'An accident!' But now the crowd is dissolving. The efficient man picks up the dead bird, but that's a mistake, for now he doesn't know what to do with it. The kicker moves off, but the woman goes after him, saying: 'What's your name and address? I'm going to have you prosecuted.' The man says, annoyed: 'Oh, don't make such a mountain out of a molehill.' She says: 'I suppose you call murdering a poor little bird a molehill.' 'Well, it isn't a mountain, murder isn't a mountain,' observes one of the fifteen-year-olds, who stands grinning with his hands in his jacket pockets. His friend takes it up, sagaciously: 'You're right. Molehills is murder, but mountains isn't.' 'That's right,' says the first, 'when's a pigeon a mountain? When it's a molehill.' The woman turns on them, and the villain thankfully makes his escape, looking incredibly guilty, despite himself. The woman is trying to find the right words of abuse for the two boys, but now the efficient man stands holding the corpse, and looking helpless, and one of the boys asks derisively: 'You going to make pigeon pie, mister?' 'You cheek me and I'll call the police,' the efficient one says promptly. The woman is delighted, and says: 'That's right, that's right, they should have been called long ago.' One of the boys lets out a long, incredulous, jeering, admiring whistle. 'That's the ticket,' he says, 'call the coppers. They'll put you down for stealing a public pigeon, mister!' The two go off, rolling with laughter, but fast as they can without losing face, because the police have been mentioned. The angry woman, the efficient man, the corpse, and a few bystanders remain. The man looks around, sees a rubbish receptacle on the lamppost, and moves forward to drop the dead bird into it. But the woman intercepts him, grasps the pigeon. 'Give it to me,' she says, her voice suffused with tenderness. 'I'll bury the poor little bird in my window-box.' The efficient man thankfully hurries off. She is left, looking down with disgust at the thick blood dropping from the beak of the pigeon.

12th November

Last night I dreamed of the pigeon. It reminded me of something, I didn't know what. In my dream I was fighting to remember. Yet when I woke up I knew what it was-an incident from the Mashopi Hotel week-ends. I haven't thought of it for years, yet now it is clear and detailed. I am again exasperated because my brain contains so much that is locked up and unreachable, unless, by a stroke of luck, there is an incident like yesterday's. It must have been one of the intermediate week-ends, not the climacteric last week-end, for we were still on good terms with the Boothbys. I remember Mrs. Boothby coming into the dining-room with a.22 rifle at breakfast and saying to our group: 'Can any of you shoot?' Paul said, taking the rifle: 'My expensive education has not failed to include the niceties of grouse and pheasant murder.' 'Oh, nothing so fancy like that,' said Mrs. Boothby. 'There are grouse and pheasant about, but not too many. Mr. Boothby mentioned he fancied a pigeon pie. He used to take out a gun now and then, but he's lost the figure for it, so I thought if you could oblige...?' Paul was handling the weapon quizzically. He finally said: 'Well, I'd never thought of shooting birds with a rifle, but if Mr. Boothby can do it, so can I.' 'It's not hard,' said Mrs. Boothby, as usual letting herself be taken in by the polite surface of Paul's manner. 'There's a small vlei down there between the kopjes that's full of pigeons. You let them settle and just pick them off.' 'It's not sporting,' said Jimmy, owlish. 'My God, it's not sporting!' cried Paul, playing up, clutching at his brow with one hand and holding the rifle away from him with the other. Mrs. Boothby was not sure whether to take him seriously, but she explained: 'It's fair enough. Don't shoot unless you're sure of killing, and then where's the harm?' 'She's right,' said Jimmy to Paul. 'You're right,' said Paul to Mrs. Boothby. 'Dead right. We'll do it. How many pigeons for Host Boothby's pigeon pie?' 'There's not much use with less than six, but if you can get enough I can make pigeon pie for you as well. It'd make a change.' 'True,' said Paul. 'It would make a change. Rely on us.' She thanked him, gravely, and left us with the rifle. Breakfast was over, it was about ten in the morning, and we were glad to have something to fill our time until lunch. A short way past the hotel a track turned off the main road at right-angles and wandered ruttily over the veld, following the line of an earlier African footpath. This track led to the Roman Catholic Mission about seven miles off in the wilderness. Sometimes the Mission car came in for supplies; sometimes farm labourers went by in groups to or from the Mission, which ran a large farm, but for the most part the track was empty. All that country was high-lying sandveld, undulating, broken sharply here and there by kopjes. When it rained the soil seemed to offer resistance, not welcome. The water danced and drummed in a fury of white drops to a height of two or three feet over the hard soil, but an hour after the storm, it was already dry again and the gullies and vleis were running high and noisy. It had rained the previous night so hard that the iron roof of the sleeping block had shaken and pounded over our heads, but now the sun was high, the sky unclouded, and we walked beside the tarmac over a fine crust of white sand which broke drily under our shoes to show the dark wet underneath. There were five of us that morning, I don't remember where the others were. Perhaps it was a week-end when only five of us had come down to the hotel. Paul carried the rifle, looking every inch a sportsman and smiling at himself in this role. Jimmy was beside him, clumsy, fattish, pale, his intelligent eyes returning always to Paul, humble with desire, ironical with pain at his situation. I, Willi and Maryrose came along behind. Willi carried a book. Maryrose and I wore holiday clothes-coloured dungarees and shirts. Maryrose wore blue dungarees and a rose-coloured shirt. I wore rose dungarees and a white shirt. As soon as we turned off the main road on to the sand track we had to walk slowly and carefully, because this morning after the heavy rain there was a festival of insects. Everything seemed to riot and crawl. Over the low grasses a million white butterflies with greenish-white wings hovered and lurched. They were all white, but of different sizes. That morning a single species had hatched or sprang or crawled from their chrysalises, and were celebrating their freedom. And on the grass itself and all over the road were a certain species of brightly-coloured grasshopper, in couples. There were millions of them too. 'And one grasshopper jumped on the other grasshopper's back,' observed Paul's light but grave voice, just ahead. He stopped. Jimmy, beside him, obediently stopped too. We came to a standstill behind them both. 'Strange,' said Paul, 'but I've never understood the inner or concrete meaning of that song before.' It was grotesque, and we were all not so much embarrassed as awed. We stood laughing, but our laughter was too loud. In every direction, all around us, were the insects, coupling. One insect, its legs firmly planted on the sand, stood still; while another, apparently identical, was clamped firmly on top of it, so that the one underneath could not move. Or an insect would be trying to climb on top of another, while the one underneath remained still, apparently trying to aid the climber whose earnest or frantic heaves threatened to jerk both over sideways. Or a couple, badly-matched, would topple over, and the one that had been underneath would right itself and stand waiting while the other fought to resume its position, or another insect, apparently identical, ousted it. But the happy or well-mated insects stood all around us, one above the other, with their bright round idiotic black eyes staring. Jimmy went off into fits of laughter, and Paul thumped him on the back. 'These extremely vulgar insects do not merit our attention,' observed Paul. He was right. One of these insects, or half a dozen, or a hundred would have seemed attractive, with their bright paint-box colours, half-submerged in thin emerald grasses. But in thousands, crude green and crude red, with the black blank eyes staring-they were absurd, obscene, and above all, the very emblem of stupidity. 'Much better watch the butterflies,' said Maryrose, doing so. They were extraordinarily beautiful. As far as we could see, the blue air was graced with white wings. And looking down into a distant vlei, the butterflies were a white glittering haze over green grass. 'But my dear Maryrose,' said Paul, 'you are doubtless imagining in that pretty way of yours that these butterflies are celebrating the joy of life, or simply amusing themselves, but such is not the case. They are merely pursuing vile sex, just like those ever-so-vulgar grasshoppers.' 'How do you know?' inquired Maryrose, in her small voice, very earnest; and Paul laughed his full-throated laugh which he knew was so attractive, and fell back and came beside her, leaving Jimmy alone in front. Willi, who had been squiring Maryrose, gave way to Paul and came to me, but I had already moved forward to Jimmy, who was forlorn. 'It really is grotesque,' said Paul, sounding genuinely put-out. We looked where he was looking. Among the army of grasshoppers were two obtrusive couples. One was an enormous powerful-looking insect, like a piston with its great spring-like legs, and on its back a tiny ineffectual mate, unable to climb high enough up. And next to it, the position reversed: a tiny bright pathetic grasshopper was straddled by, dwarfed, almost crushed by an enormous powerful driving insect. 'I shall try a small scientific experiment,' announced Paul. He stepped carefully among the insects to the grasses at the side of the road, laid down his rifle, and pulled a stem of grass. He went down on one knee in the sand, brushing insects aside with an efficient and indifferent hand. Neatly he levered the heavy-bodied insect off the small one. But it instantly sprang back to where it was, with a most surprisingly determined single leap. 'We need two for this operation,' announced Paul. Jimmy was at once tugging at a grass-stem, and took his place beside him, although his face was wrenched with loathing at having to bend down so close to the swarm. The two young men were now kneeling on the sandy road, operating their grass-stems. I and Willi and Maryrose stood and watched. Willi was frowning. 'How frivolous,' I remarked, ironical. Although, as usual, we were not on particularly good terms that morning, Willi allowed himself to smile at me and said with real amusement: 'All the same, it is interesting.' And we smiled at each other, with affection and with pain because these moments were so seldom. And across the kneeling boys Maryrose watched us, with envy and pain. She was seeing a happy couple and feeling shut out. I could not bear it, and I went to Maryrose, abandoning Willi. Maryrose and I bent over the backs of Paul and Jimmy and watched. 'Now,' said Paul. Again he lifted his monster off the small insect. But Jimmy was clumsy and failed, and before he could try again Paul's big insect was back in position. 'Oh, you idiot,' said Paul, irritated. It was an irritation he usually suppressed, because he knew Jimmy adored him. Jimmy dropped the grass-stem and laughed painfully, tried to cover up his hurt-but by now Paul had grasped the two stems, had levered the two covering insects, large and small, off the two others, large and small, and now they were two well-matched couples, two big insects together and two small ones. 'There,' said Paul. 'That's the scientific approach. How neat. How easy. How satisfactory.' There we all stood, the five of us, surveying the triumph of common-sense. And we all began to laugh again, helplessly, even Willi; because of the utter absurdity of it. Meanwhile all around us thousands and thousands of painted grasshoppers were getting on with the work of propagating their kind without any assistance from us. And even our small triumph was soon over, because the large insect that had been on top of the other large insect, fell off, and immediately the one which had been underneath mounted him or her. 'Obscene,' said Paul gravely. There is no evidence,' said Jimmy, trying to match his friend's light grave tone, but failing, since his voice was always breathless, or shrill, or too facetious: 'There is no evidence that in what we refer to as nature things are any better-ordered than they are with us. What evidence have we that all these-miniature troglodites are nicely sorted out male above female? Or even-' he added daringly, on his fatally wrong note '-male with female at all? For all we know, this is a riot of debauchery, males with males, females with females...' He petered out in a gasp of laughter. And looking at his heated, embarrassed, intelligent face, we all knew that he was wondering why it was that nothing he ever said, or could say, sounded easy, as when Paul said it. For if Paul had made that speech, as he might very well have done, we would all have been laughing. Instead of which we were uncomfortable, and were conscious that we were hemmed in by these ugly scrambling insects. Suddenly Paul sprang over and trod deliberately, first on the monster couple, whose mating he had organised, and then on the small couple. 'Paul,' said Maryrose, shaken, looking at the crushed mess of coloured wings, eyes, white smear. 'A typical response of a sentimentalist,' said Paul, deliberately parodying Willi-who smiled, acknowledging that he knew he was being mocked. But now Paul said seriously: 'Dear Maryrose, by tonight, or to stretch a point, by tomorrow night, nearly all these things will be dead-just like your butterflies.' 'Oh no,' said Maryrose, looking at the dancing clouds of butterflies with anguish, but ignoring the grasshoppers. 'But why?' 'Because there are too many of them. What would happen if they all lived? It would be an invasion. The Mashopi Hotel would vanish under a crawling mass of grasshoppers, it would be crushed to the earth, while inconceivably ominous swarms of butterflies danced a victory dance over the deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Boothby and their marriageable daughter.' Maryrose, offended and pale, looked away from Paul. We all knew she was thinking about her dead brother. At such moments she wore a look of total isolation, so that we all longed to put our arms around her. Yet Paul continued, and now he began by parodying Stalin: 'It is self-evident, it goes without saying--and in fact there is no need at all to say it, so why should I go to the trouble?-However, whether there is any need to say a thing or not is clearly besides the point. As is well-known, I say, nature is prodigal. Before many hours are out, these insects will have killed each other by fighting, biting, deliberate homicide, suicide, or by clumsy copulation. Or they will have been eaten by birds which even at this moment are waiting for us to remove ourselves so that they can begin their feast. When we return to this delightful pleasure resort next weekend, or, if our political duties forbid, the week-end after, we shall take our well-regulated walks along this road and see perhaps one or two of these delightful red and green insects at their sport in the grass, and think, how pretty they are! And little will we reck of the million corpses that even then will be sinking into their last resting place all about us. I do not even mention the butterflies who, being incomparably more beautiful, though probably not more useful, we will actively, even assiduously miss-if we are not more occupied with our more usual decadent diversions.' We were wondering why he was deliberately twisting the knife in the wound of Maryrose's brother's death. She was smiling painfully. And Jimmy, tormented continuously by fear that he would crash and be killed, had the same small wry smile as Maryrose. 'The point I am trying to make comrades...' 'We know what point you are trying to make,' said Willi, roughly and angrily. Perhaps it was for moments like these that he was the 'father-figure' of the group, as Paul said he was. 'Enough,' said Willi. 'Let's go and get the pigeons.' 'It goes without saying, it is self-evident,' said Paul, returning to Stalin's favourite opening phrases just so as to hold his own against Willi, 'that mine host Boothby's pigeon pie will never get made, if we go on in this irresponsible fashion.' We proceeded along the track, among the grasshoppers. About half a mile further on there was a small kopje, or tumbling heap of granite boulders; and beyond it, as if a line had been drawn, the grasshoppers ceased. They were simply not there, they did not exist, they were an extinct species. The butterflies, however, continued everywhere, like white petals dancing. I think it must have been October