The Golden Notebook. Doris Lessing

footsteps up the stairs.

      ‘Well; said Molly.

      ‘Well,’ said Anna, prepared to be challenged.

      ‘It seems a lot of things have been going on while I was away.’

      ‘For one thing, it seems I said things to Tommy I shouldn’t.’

      ‘Or not enough.’

      Anna said with an effort: ‘Yes I know you want me to talk about artistic problems and so on. But for me it’s not like that…’ Molly merely waited, looking sceptical, and even bitter. ‘If I saw it in terms of an artistic problem, then it’d be easy, wouldn’t it? We could have ever such intelligent chats about the modem novel.’ Anna’s voice was full of irritation, and she tried smiling to soften it.

      ‘What’s in those diaries then?’

      ‘They aren’t diaries.’

      ‘Whatever they are.’

      ‘Chaos, that’s the point.’

      Anna sat watching Molly’s thick white fingers twist together and lock. The hands were saying: Why do you hurt me like this?—but if you insist then I’ll endure it.

      ‘If you wrote one novel, I don’t see why you shouldn’t write another,’ said Molly, and Anna began to laugh, irresistibly, while her friend’s eyes filled with sudden tears.

      ‘I wasn’t laughing at you.’

      ‘You simply don’t understand,’ said Molly, determinedly muffling the tears, ‘It’s always meant so much to me that you should produce something, even if I didn’t.’

      Anna nearly said, stubbornly, ‘But I’m not an extension of you,’ but knew it was something she might have said to her mother, so stopped herself. Anna could remember her mother very little; she had died so early; but at moments like these, she was able to form for herself the image of somebody strong and dominating, whom Anna had had to fight.

      ‘You get so angry over certain subjects I don’t know how to begin,’ said Anna.

      ‘Yes, I’m angry. I’m angry. I’m angry about all the people I know who fritter themselves away. It’s not only you. It’s lots of people.’

      ‘While you were away something happened that interested me. Remember Basil Ryan—the painter, I mean.’

      ‘Of course. I used to know him.’

      ‘Well, there was an announcement in the paper, he said he’d never paint again. He said it was because the world is so chaotic, art is irrelevant.’ There was a silence, until Anna appealed: ‘Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’

      ‘No. And certainly not from you. After all, you aren’t someone who writes little novels about the emotions. You write about what’s real.’

      Anna almost laughed again, and then said soberly: ‘Do you realize how many of the things we say are just echoes? That remark you’ve just made is an echo from Communist Party criticism—at its worst moments, moreover. God knows what that remark means, I don’t. I never did. If Marxism means anything, it means that a little novel about the emotions should reflect “what’s real” since the emotions are a function and a product of a society…’. She stopped, because of Molly’s expression. ‘Don’t look like that, Molly. You said you wanted me to talk about it, so I am. And there’s something else. Fascinating, if it wasn’t so depressing. Here we are, 1957, waters under bridges, etc. And suddenly in England, we have a phenomenon in the arts I’m damned if I’d foreseen—a whole lot of people, who’ve never had anything to do with the Party, suddenly standing up, and exclaiming, just as if they had just thought it out for themselves, that little novels or plays about the emotions don’t reflect reality. The reality, it would surprise you to hear, is economics, or machine-guns mowing people down who object to the new order.’

      ‘Just because I can’t express myself, I think it’s unfair,’ said Molly quickly.

      ‘Anyway, I only wrote one novel.’

      ‘Yes, and what are you going to do when the money from that stops coming in? You were lucky over that one, but it’s going to stop sometime.’

      Anna held herself quiet, with effort. What Molly had said was pure spite: she was saying, I’m glad that you are going to be subjected to the pressures the rest of us have to face. Anna thought, I wish I hadn’t become so conscious of everything, every little nuance. Once I wouldn’t have noticed: now every conversation, every encounter with a person seems like crossing a mined field; and why can’t I accept that one’s closest friends at moments stick a knife in, deep, between the ribs?

      She almost said, drily: ‘You’ll be glad to hear the money’s only trickling in and I’ll have to get a job soon.’ But she said, cheerfully, replying to the surface of Molly’s words: ‘Yes, I think I’ll be short of money very soon, and I’ll have to get a job.’

      ‘And you haven’t done anything while I was away.’

      ‘I’ve certainly done a lot of complicated living.’ Molly looked sceptical again, so Anna gave up. She said, humorous, light, plaintive: ‘It’s been a bad year. For one thing, I nearly had an affair with Richard.’

      ‘So it would seem. It must have been a bad year for you even to think of Richard.’

      ‘You know, there’s a very interesting state of anarchy up there. You’d be surprised—why haven’t you ever talked to Richard about his work, it’s so odd.’

      ‘You mean, you were interested in him because he’s so rich?’

      ‘Oh, Molly. Obviously not. No. I told you, everything’s cracking up. That lot up there, they don’t believe in anything. They remind me of the white people in Central Africa—they used to say: Well of course, the blacks will drive us into the sea in fifty years’ time. They used to say it cheerfully. In other words, “We know that what we are doing is wrong.” But it’s turned out to be a good deal shorter than fifty years.’

      ‘But about Richard.’

      ‘Well he took me out to a posh dinner. It was an occasion. He had just bought a controlling interest in all the aluminium saucepans, or pot-cleaners, or aircraft propellers in Europe—something like that. There were four tycoons and four popsies. I was one of the popsies. I sat there and looked at those faces around the table. Good God, it was terrifying. I reverted to my most primitive communist phase—you remember, when one thinks all one has to do is to shoot the bastards—that is, before one learned their opposite numbers are just as irresponsible. I looked at those faces, I just sat and looked at those faces.’

      ‘But that’s what we’ve always said,’ said Molly. ‘So what’s new?’

      ‘It did rather bring it all home. And then the way they treat their women—all quite unconscious, of course. My God, we might have moments of feeling bad about our lives, but how lucky we are, our lot are at least half-civilized.’

      ‘But about Richard.’

      ‘Oh yes. Well. It wasn’t important. He was just an incident. But he brought me home all in his new Jaguar. I gave him coffee. He was all ready. I sat there and thought, Well he’s no worse than some of the morons I’ve slept with.’

      ‘Anna, what has got into you?’

      ‘You mean you’ve never felt that awful moral exhaustion, what the hell does it matter?’

      ‘It’s the way you talk. It’s new.’

      ‘I daresay. But it occurred to me—if we lead what is known as free lives, that is, lives like men, why shouldn’t we use the same language?’

      ‘Because we aren’t the same. That is the point.’

      Anna laughed. ‘Men. Women. Bound. Free. Good. Bad. Yes. No. Capitalism. Socialism. Sex. Love…’

      ‘Anna,