A Ripple from the Storm. Doris Lessing

was another chorus of agreement. It seemed everyone had seen the pamphlets. But on every face was a look of discomfort: they felt disloyal at having to criticize the Soviet Union: more, they felt subtly betrayed, and even threatened.

      Anton said calmly: ‘I have studied the pamphlets and I agree that the comrades in Moscow are out of touch with our needs and have sent us unsuitable propaganda. I propose we write a serious letter explaining why and suggesting lines on which they might frame more suitable pamphlets.’

      ‘They never answer letters,’ said Jasmine, bringing out this fresh criticism of the beloved country with an effort.

      ‘They probably have more important things to do than worry about the problems of Zambesia,’ said Anton.

      ‘Then why do they bother to send the pamphlets at all?’ said Marjorie.

      Anton said coldly: ‘I suggest this is not such a very serious problem. Next item on the agenda.’

      ‘I consider you are dealing with this meeting in a very high-handed manner,’ said Bill Bluett suddenly.

      ‘So do I,’ said Jimmy, who was sitting clenched up, frowning, his big red hands trembling with excitement on his knees.

      Anton said: ‘There are twenty minutes before the RAF comrades must leave, and eight items still remaining on the agenda. We will have to cut political instruction because punctuality is not considered important by the comrades.’

      ‘I still think you are high-handed,’ said Bill.

      ‘In that case I suggest you elect another chairman?’

      Anton sounded huffy and impatient, and Marjorie said: ‘I consider your attitude towards Bill’s remark incorrect.’

      ‘So do I,’ said Jasmine, in her sedate way: ‘You should not react like that to criticism.’

      Anton lowered his eyes to the table and played with a pencil, jabbing it again and again into some paper. The fine lines were quivering around his mouth.

      ‘Which brings me to something I must say,’ said Bill. He got up, fitting his cap over his thick lank hair. ‘I propose that this group undertakes to keep its agreement to have criticism and self-criticism.’

      ‘Agreed,’ said Jasmine promptly.

      ‘Since it is not a question of taking a vote, but since it is a question of putting into effect a decision already made, there is no need to agree or disagree,’ said Anton. To Bill he said politely: ‘Thank you for reminding me, comrade. You are quite correct.’

      ‘Oh, don’t mention it,’ said Bill airily, moving to the door. The other two RAF men followed him.

      The remaining people said they would continue the meeting without them, but all at once Anton got up, nodded to them, and said he had to leave. He went, leaving the group headless.

      ‘Surely he’s not upset at being criticized?’ said Marie.

      ‘Of course not,’ said Jasmine. ‘He’s an old comrade and knows how to take criticism. Let us continue the meeting.’ But here Martha, who had been shivering spasmodically throughout the meeting, shivered so deeply that her teeth chattered. They all looked at her, and exclaimed that she was sick. The meeting broke up on this. Marie and Piet du Preez took Martha home and put her into her bed. Martha was thinking feebly that to get sick was an act of irresponsibility and disloyalty to the whole group. She was also thinking that it would be pleasant to be ill for a day or two, to have time to think, and even – this last thought gave her a severe spasm of guilt – to be alone for a little, not always to be surrounded by people.

       Part Two

       Lenin, as we know, did not spare his opponents.

      A. A. ZHDANOV

       Chapter One

      In the morning Martha woke ill, but above all uneasy because of a weight of guilt: she was ill because she had been careless, and now her work would fall on other people. But the languor of fever was pleasant to her. She had been dreaming and she wished she might return to sleep, for the dreams had had the peculiarly nostalgic quality which she distrusted so much, and yet was so dangerously attractive to her. She had been dreaming of ‘that country’; a phrase she used to describe a particular region of sleep which she often visited, or which visited her – and always when she was overtired or sick. That country’ was pale, misted, flat; gulls cried like children around violet-coloured shores. She stood on coloured chalky rocks with a bitter sea washing around her feet and the smell of salt was strong in her nostrils.

      Now she thought: Well, I suppose it’s England … but how can I be an exile from England when it has nothing to do with me? And do I really have to feel guilty about wanting to sleep when I never sleep enough? She dropped back into a hot sleep, and dreamed she was back in ‘the district’ standing at the edge of Mr McFarline’s great gold-eating pit. But it was abandoned. It had been abandoned centuries before. The enormous gulf in the soil had been worked by a forgotten race which she saw clearly in her dream: a copper-coloured, long-limbed, sharp-featured people, tied together like slaves under the whip of a black overseer. Centuries ago, these people had vanished, and the pit had fallen into disuse, and its sides were covered with a small scrub of bushes and a low rank grass. But near to where she stood was a projection into the pit, a jut of layered rock that spread at its base, like a firmly set animal’s foot.

      She stood at the extreme edge of the pit, space beneath her, smelling the warm gritty smell of hot African sun on loose dry soil, examining the deep-layered rock. Fold after fold, the growth of the earth showed itself in the side of the pit, a warm red showing the living soil at the top, then the dead layers of rock beneath. She saw that the projection into the pit was not dead, but living. It was not an animal’s paw, but the head and the shoulders of an immense lizard, an extinct saurian that had been imprisoned a thousand ages ago, in the rock. It was petrified. The shape of the narrow head, the swell of the shoulders, was visible. A narrow ledge of rock along the grass-grown bottom of the pit was its dead foot. Martha looked again and saw that its eye was steadily regarding her with a sullen and patient query. It was a scaly ancient eye, filmed over with mine-dust, a sorrowful eye. It’s alive, she thought. It’s alive after so many centuries. And it will take centuries more to die. Perhaps I can dig it out?

      But it seemed quite right that the vast half-fossilized extinct creature should be there, alive still in the massive weight of the earth. She looked down at the half-closed patient eye and thought: You must be too old even to see me.

      She woke, all her limbs irritated by fever. Now she was awake the dream seemed frightening, but because of its distance from the cold salt-sprayed shores of ‘that country’. She thought: Next time I drop off to sleep I might go anywhere, it’s like a nightmare, not knowing what’s waiting for you … For the cold salt-sprayed shores and the deep sullen pit seemed to have nothing in common, not to be connected, and their lack of connection was a danger. She realized she was afraid to drop off to sleep again.

      It was ten in the morning. Although she was weighted with guilt because of her responsibilities to the group which she would now not fulfil, she had only just remembered her duty to the office where she earned her living. She went to the telephone in the passage and rang Mrs Buss, who was at pains to explain to Martha that she was quite capable of running the office by herself indefinitely. As for herself, she had not had a day’s illness during the fifteen years she had been earning her living. Martha found Mrs Carson behind her, listening. ‘I’m sick,’ she said hastily, to avoid being involved in some new servant crisis. She went back to bed, followed by the white intense face and the dark obsessed eyes of Mrs Carson, who sat on the foot of the bed and told a long story of how once she had been alone on a farm in some remote district, and a whole pack