Doris Lessing Three-Book Edition: The Golden Notebook, The Grass is Singing, The Good Terrorist

‘Arrogant?’

‘Yes, I think so. Both the times I came to see you, you talked, and when I put together all the things you said, it sounds to me like arrogance. Like a kind of contempt.’

The other two, Molly and Richard, were now sitting back, smiling, lighting cigarettes, being excluded, exchanging looks.

But Anna, remembering the sincerity of this boy’s appeal to her, had decided to jettison even her old friend Molly, for the time being at least.

‘If it sounded like contempt, then I don’t think I can have explained it right.’

‘Yes. Because it means you haven’t got confidence in people. I think you’re afraid.’

‘What of?’ asked Anna. She felt very exposed, particularly before Richard, and her throat was dry and painful.

‘Of loneliness. Yes I know that sounds funny, for you, because of course you choose to be alone rather than to get married for the sake of not being lonely. But I mean something different. You’re afraid of writing what you think about life, because you might find yourself in an exposed position, you might expose yourself, you might be alone.’

‘Oh,’ said Anna, bleakly. ‘Do you think so?’

‘Yes. Or if you’re not afraid, then it’s contempt. When we talked about politics, you said the thing you’d learned from being a communist was that the most terrible thing of all was when political leaders didn’t tell the truth. You said that one small lie could spread into a marsh of lies and poison everything—do you remember? You talked about it for a long time…well then. You said that about politics. But you’ve got whole books you’ve written for yourself which no one ever sees. You said you believed that all over the world there were books in drawers, that people were writing for themselves—and even in countries where it isn’t dangerous to write the truth. Do you remember, Anna? Well, that’s a sort of contempt.’ He had been looking, not at her, but directing towards her an earnest, dark, self-probing stare. Now he saw her flushed, stricken face, but he recovered himself, and said hesitantly: ‘Anna, you were saying what you really thought, weren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘But Anna, you surely didn’t expect me not to think about what you said?’

Anna closed her eyes a moment, smiling painfully. ‘I suppose I underestimated—how much you’d take me seriously.’

‘That’s the same thing. It’s the same thing as the writing. Why shouldn’t I take you seriously?’

‘I didn’t know Anna was writing at all, these days,’ said Molly, coming in firmly.

‘I don’t,’ said Anna, quickly.

‘There you are,’ said Tommy. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘I remember telling you that I’d been afflicted with an awful feeling of disgust, of futility. Perhaps I don’t like spreading those emotions.’

‘If Anna’s been filling you full of disgust for the literary career,’ said Richard, laughing, ‘then I won’t quarrel with her for once.’

It was a note so false that Tommy simply ignored him, which he did by politely controlling his embarrassment and going straight on: ‘If you feel disgust, then you feel disgust. Why pretend not? But the point is, you were talking about responsibility. That’s what I feel too—people aren’t taking responsibility for each other. You said the socialists had ceased to be a moral force, for the time, at least, because they wouldn’t take moral responsibility. Except for a few people. You said that, didn’t you—well then. But you write and write in notebooks, saying what you think about life, but you lock them up, and that’s not being responsible.’

‘A very great number of people would say that it was irresponsible to spread disgust. Or anarchy. Or a feeling of confusion.’ Anna said this half-laughing, plaintive, rueful, trying to make him meet her on this note.

And he reacted immediately, by closing up, sitting back, showing she had failed him. She, like everyone else—so his patient, stubborn pose suggested, was bound to disappoint him. He retreated into himself, saying: ‘Anyway, that’s what I came down to say. I’d like to go on doing nothing for a month or two. After all it’s costing much less than going to university as you wanted.’

‘Money’s not the point,’ said Molly.

‘You’ll find that money is the point,’ said Richard. ‘When you change your mind, ring me up.’

‘I’ll ring you up in any case,’ said Tommy, giving his father his due.

‘Thanks,’ said Richard, short and bitter. He stood for a moment, grinning angrily at the two women. ‘I’ll drop in one of these days, Molly.’

‘Any time,’ said Molly, with sweetness.

He nodded coldly at Anna, laid his hand briefly on his son’s shoulder, which was unresponsive, and went out. At once Tommy got up, and said: ‘I’ll go up to my room.’ He walked out, his head poked forward, a hand fumbling at the door-knob, the door opened just far enough to take his width: he seemed to squeeze himself out of the room; and they heard his regular thumping 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.’