Martha Quest. Doris Lessing

if her eyes did get better. She was becoming aware of several disconnected strands of her thinking. And this was brought to a climax by Jonathan himself. He was a simple, good-natured boy, very like his father to look at, who spent his holidays visiting the neighbouring farmers, riding in to the station to visit Socrates the Greek, and the Cohen family at the little kaffir store. He was on the best of terms with everyone. But it struck Martha as unjust that this brother of hers who despised the Afrikaners (or rather, who took up the orthodox British attitude towards them, which was the same thing) should spend the day at the Van Rensbergs’ house like a second son, and drop in for a chat with the Cohen brothers as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

      Martha asked him sarcastically. ‘How do you reconcile the Jews ruining the world with going to see Solly and Joss?’

      Jonathan looked uncomfortable and said, ‘But we’ve known them all our lives.’

      When she looked pointedly quizzical, he said, ‘But you never go and see them at all.’

      ‘That’s not because I feel the way you do.’

      Jonathan was embarrassed, because he would not have said he felt any way rather than another; he merely repeated what his parents said, and what he had heard at school. ‘Well, if you think Hitler all right, how do you reconcile that?’

      ‘But I never said he was all right, all I said was –’ She stopped and blushed; and it was his turn to look quizzical. It was true that all she had said was that Hitler’s being an upstart was no criticism of his capabilities, but in this household it was as good as a defence.

      She began a long rational argument; he refused to argue, merely teasing her, ‘Matty’s lost her temper, Matty’s lost her temper,’ singing it like a child.

      ‘You’re nothing but a baby,’ she concluded scornfully, which was how their arguments always ended, and she turned away. Now, that act of turning away implies something one turns towards – and she picked up a book, at random, from the bookcase. This was also a familiar act. How many times had she not simply reached for the nearest book, as if to remark, ‘I have authority for what I say’?

      It occurred to her that the phrase ‘Martha is a great reader’ was being used by herself exactly as her mother used it, and with as little reason. For what was she reading? She read the same books over and over again, in between intervals of distracted daydreaming, in a trance of recognition, and in always the same place, under the big tree that was her refuge, through which the heat pumped like a narcotic. She read poetry, not for the sense of the words, but for the melodies which confirmed the rhythm of the moving grasses and the swaying of the leaves over her head, or that ideal landscape of white cities and noble people which lay over the actual vistas of harsh grass and stunted trees like a golden mirage.

      She went through the house searching for something different. It was full of books. Her own room had shelves packed with fairy stories from her childhood, and with poetry. In the living room, her parents’ bookcases were filled with the classics, Dickens and Scott and Thackeray and the rest, inherited from prosperous Victorian households. These she had read years before, and she now read them again, and with a feeling of being starved. One might equate the small black child with Oliver Twist – but what then? There were also, lying everywhere, books on ‘politics’ in her parents’ sense of the word, such as the memoirs of Lloyd George, or histories of the Great War. None of these seemed to have any reference to the farm, to the gangs of native labour, to what was described in the newspapers, or even to Mein Kampf, which had started this restless condition of mind.

      But one day, slipped behind the rows of dusty books, she found a volume of H G Wells, and, as she held it in her hand, was very conscious of a dull feeling of resistance, a disinclination. It was so strong that she nearly put it down and reached as usual for Shelley or for Whitman; then she became conscious of what she was doing and stood wondering at herself. For she had felt this before. She looked at the book again. It was the Concise History of the World, and the name on the flyleaf was ‘Joshua Cohen’. Now, she had dropped her childish friendship with the Cohen boys from the moment Marnie had said, ‘Joss Cohen is sweet on you.’ She missed them. And yet she could not face them. At first it was because the relief of escaping the barrage of criticism was so great: there was no longer any necessity to read their books, examine her own ideas. Recently it had been because of some obscure and unadmitted shame about her strained eyes. She took the book to her refuge, the tree, and read it through; and wondered why it was that she could read the most obscure and complicated poetry with ease, while she could not read the simplest sort of book on what she called ‘facts’ without the greatest effort to concentration. She brought herself to decide she would make an effort to renew that friendship with the Cohens, for there was no one else who could help her. She wanted them to tell her what she must read. For there are two ways of reading: one of them deepens and intensifies what one already knows; from the other, one takes new facts, new views to weave into one’s life. She was saturated with the first, and needed the second. All those books she had borrowed, two years before – she had read them, oh yes; but she had not been ready to receive them.

      And now what was she to do? For she had behaved very badly to the Cohen boys. She saw them at the station sometimes. Now, to avoid seeing people one has known for years is something of a feat, and Martha achieved it by the simple device of saying to herself, They wouldn’t think that of me – ‘that’ being anti-Semitism – and smiling at them constrainedly, like an acquaintance. They nodded back, and left her alone, as she apparently desired.

      The village held about fifty souls, and had sprung up untidily around the first store, owned by Socrates the Greek, who was known to the farmers as Sock. There was a garage, run by a Welshman; a farmers’ hall; the station beside the railway, a long tin-roofed shack on wooden piles; a ganger’s cottage; and a hotel, also owned by Socrates, in which there was a bar, which was the real social centre of the district. These buildings were scattered over a few acres of red dust; and along the railway line was a stretch of brownish water, where ducks swam until Mrs Socrates came out to catch one for the hotel dinner, and where the oxen from the farmers’ wagons were unyoked while the wagons were loaded, and stood knee-deep in green scum, raising their eyes tranquilly as the train thundered past over their heads. There were two trains a week, and twenty miles away was the end of the line, for beyond was the long ascent to the great escarpment at the verge of the Zambesi Valley. But there was a great deal of road traffic, and all day the cars stood in the dust outside the bar.

      Years before, the Quests used to make the trip in to the station twice a week, for Mrs Quest was sociable; but Mr Quest disliked being disturbed so much that now they went once a month, and Mrs Quest must begin fighting with her husband at least a week before.

      ‘Alfred,’ she would say, with a sort of offhand defiance, ‘remember, we are going in to the station tomorrow.’

      He did not hear. Or rather, he raised vaguely irritable eyes towards her, and dropped them again, hunching his shoulders against her voice.

      ‘Do listen, dear. I told you, we are out of flour, and the boys need new aprons, and the sugar’s practically finished.’

      He kept his eyes lowered, and his face was stubborn.

      ‘Alfred!’ she shouted.

      ‘What is it?’ he demanded, and glared at her.

      Startled by the glare, which nevertheless she had been provoking and facing with obdurate strength for years, she murmured, abashed but determined, ‘We must go to the station.’

      ‘We can send the wagon,’ he said hastily, getting up to escape.

      ‘No, Alfred, you know you always say you can’t spare the wagon, and it’s silly to send the wagon for two sacks of …’ He was at the door, on his way out; but she raised her voice after him: ‘Besides, I want to see if they’ve any nice materials: I’m really down to my last rag.’

      And now he stopped, and gave her another glare, in which there was guilt and reproach, for she was using the weapon he dreaded most: she was saying, The very least you can do is to let me have a little trip once a month, when