Landlocked. Doris Lessing
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stood, looking at the fierce little man who was gazing into their faces one after another, insisting that they should agree, become welded together, forget all their old differences. But of course it was not possible.
Piet said: ‘Oh no thanks, I couldn’t face all that all over again.’ He went off, and his wife followed him, having sent back a friendly, no-hard-feelings smile. Tommy Brown went after the de Preez couple. Marjorie, who was grasping Athen’s hands, in passionate approval of what he said, found her husband Colin at her side. ‘Yes, dear,’ said Colin, ‘I’m sure you’re right, but don’t forget we’ve got a babysitter waiting.’ ‘Isn’t it just typical!’ exclaimed Marjorie – but she went off with her husband. Johnny Lindsay was taken home by Flora and by Mrs Van and by the Professor, an old friend.
The lights went out in the hall, and by the time they reached the pavement, there remained Anton, Martha, Thomas Stern, and Athen.
Athen stood smiling bitterly as the others went into the Old Vienna Tea Rooms. Then he turned and said to the three friends: ‘Well, shall I make a speech just for us here?’
‘Why not?’ said Anton.
‘Ah,’ said Athen, in a low passionate tone, his face twisted with self-dislike, or so it seemed – pale with what he felt: ‘It is time I was at home. Every morning I wake up and I find myself here, and I ask myself, how long must I be away from my people?’
‘And how do you think I feel?’ said Anton. He sounded gruff, brusque, with how he felt. Yet such was the Greek’s power to impose an idea of pure, burning emotion that Anton seemed feeble beside him. Meanwhile, Thomas from Poland stood quietly by, watching. There they stood on the dark pavement. It was a hot night. A blue gum moved its long leaves dryly together over their heads. The air was scented with dust and with eucalyptus.
‘Look, Athen,’ said Martha, ‘why don’t you just come back and – I’ll make everyone bacon and eggs.’ She felt she had earned Athen’s reply: ‘Thank you, Martha, but no, I will not. Suddenly tonight I feel far from you all. And what will you all do now? You will sit and watch how the poor people of this country suffer, and you will do nothing? No, it is not possible.’
Thomas observed: ‘Athen, we’ll just have to cut our losses. That’s all there is to it.’
And now it was Thomas’s turn to appear inadequate – even ridiculous. Athen looked quietly at them all, one after another. Then he shrugged and walked off.
They stood, silent. Then Thomas said: ‘I’ll fix him, don’t worry.’ He ran after Athen. The two men stood in low-voiced gesticulating argument a few paces off, then Thomas led Athen back.
‘Athen has something to say,’ Thomas announced. He then stood back beside Martha and Anton, leaving Athen to face them. An audience of three waited for the speaker to begin. Presumably this is what Thomas intended to convey? Was he trying to make fun of Athen? Martha could not make out from Thomas’s serious listening face what he meant, then he nodded at her, feeling her inspection of him, that she must listen to Athen, who stood, his eyes burning, his fists raised, his dark face darker for the pale gleam of his elegant suit.
He was reminding them of the evening the Labour Party won the elections. The little office in Founders’ Street had been stocked with beer, and for hours people, mainly RAF, had streamed in, to sit on the floor, and outside in the corridor, and down the stairs. They were drinking beer, singing the Red Flag, finally dancing in the street. Athen had been there. Towards morning he had got up from where he had been sitting, very quiet, observing them all – the communists were celebrating with the others – from the bench under the window. He had said: ‘Good night, comrades. I hope that by the time the sun rises you will have remembered that you are Marxists.’
‘Is it possible that we are so far from each other – yet we all call ourselves communists? I do not understand you. Is it that you have forgotten what it means to be a socialist now? Yet when your Labour Party got into power, you were all as pleased as little children that night. I sometimes think of you all – just like little children. Such thoughts, they are understandable from the men in the RAF and in the army. They are poor men without real politics. When they are happy their Labour Party gets into power, then I am happy for them. But we know, as Marxists, that …’
It was grotesque, of course. This was a speech, they understood, that Athen had thought over, worked out, made part of himself. He had planned to deliver it – when and where? Certainly not on a dusty pavement after a public meeting that was almost a riot. Certainly not to Anton and Martha and Thomas. It was one of the statements, or manifestos, that we all work out, or rather are written for us on the urgent pressure of our heart’s blood, or so it feels, and always at three o’clock in the morning. When we finally deliver these burning, correct, true, just words, how differently will people feel our situation – and of course! theirs. But, alas, it is just these statements that never get made. Or if they do …
The three of them looked at Athen, embarrassed rather than not, and all of them wished to stop him.
‘… is it true that you really believe that Britain will now be socialist and all men free? And tonight, do we have to be told by a Professor from Johannesburg that now the war is over, America and Britain will again try to harm the Soviet Union? Is not America now, as we stand here, pouring out her millions to destroy the communist armies in China? Yes, it has been easy for you to say, in the last years, that you are socialists. But we have been allowed to say it only because the Soviet Union has been crippling herself to kill fascism. And now it will be death and imprisonment again, just as it was before …’
At last he stopped, though they had not moved, or coughed, or made any sign of restlessness. He said: ‘Forgive me, comrades, I see that you are listening out of kindness. You would rather be in the Old Vienna Tea Rooms with the others.’ Again he walked off. This time no one stopped him. A few paces away he turned to say in a different voice –
low, trembling, ashamed: ‘Perhaps I feel these things because of something I must be ashamed of. I hate you comrades, because for you it is already peace. Your countries are at peace. But mine is at war – full, full of war, still. Good night. Forgive me.’ He went.
Anton, Martha, Thomas.
Martha wished that Anton would now say: ‘Let us go and have a cup of coffee together.’ She would have preferred to be alone with Thomas, but this was not possible at the moment, it seemed.
She had hardly seen Thomas since the scene, months ago now, in the office. A few days after it, Thomas had been transferred abruptly to another city. The transfer was not only unexpected – there was more to it, because Thomas was morose, bitter. It was rumoured Thomas had had a fight in the camp, had beaten someone up. He had not said anything about the fight to her, though. Then off he had gone, a couple of hundred miles away. From the new camp he had written a humorous regretful letter – the fortunes of war, etc. As for Martha, she felt that she might have foreseen it. Since the war had started – friends, lovers, comrades, they appeared and vanished unpredictably. Of course Thomas was bound to be transferred that moment they agreed to love each other.
Once or twice he had come up for short visits. On one, she had taken the afternoon off, and he had come to the flat. But they had been unable to make love: the bedroom was hers and Anton’s. They felt constrained, and sat and talked instead. Besides, a quick hour snatched where they could was not what either of them had engaged for.
Thomas had set himself to amuse her by making a short speech in parody of the solemn group style: an ‘analysis’ of sex in war-time.
‘It is popularly supposed that the moment the guns start firing sex drives everyone into bed. But what war fosters, comrades, is not sex, but the frustrations of romance. What will we all remember of the war? I will tell you: the fact that one was never in one place long enough to make love with the same person twice. Partings and broken hearts, comrades – the war has given us back the pure essence of Romance. What are the ideal economic and social circumstances for sexual activity, comrades? I will tell you. It is a stable bourgeois society where the woman has servants to take the children off