Landlocked. Doris Lessing
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which was even scruffier and dingier than before, a dozen or so people. There were present Anton Hesse and his wife, Piet du Preez and Marie, Athen from Greece, Thomas Stern from Poland, Solly Cohen, Marjorie and Colin Black, Boris Krueger and his wife, young Tommy Brown, and Johnny Lindsay who looked very ill, but was being supported by Flora.
As for the dozens of others, comrades, friends, lovers, who everyone thought about tonight, because of their sense of an occasion which marked an end, they were all over the world – in England, and Scotland, in America and in Israel. Nearer home, Joss had settled ‘up North’; and Jasmine was living ‘down South’ in Johannesburg.
Coming into the hall, Marjorie had said: ‘Isn’t it awful, when you think …’ And big Piet had said: ‘Man, it gives me the skriks, I can tell you that!’ And Solly had said: ‘O?, so I’m a traitor – but how about closing the ranks just for tonight!’
What could more sharply epitomize the general change than that ‘a big meeting’ should be taking place here, in this dirty little hall, even though the speaker was the famous Professor Dickinson from Johannesburg? Only six months before, it would have been enough to ask the authorities for the big State Hall, to be given it. But permission had been mysteriously delayed until Mrs Van, asking for the reason in person, had been give the verbal explanation that ‘it was not considered desirable that the State Hall should be used for such purposes.’ The letter of refusal had of course been bland: the hall was booked for all the nights they had asked for it. Acting on the sound old principle that ‘they should never be allowed to get away with anything’, Marjorie Black had written in offering the authorities twenty more dates supplied by the obliging Professor. But this letter had earned an exact repetition of the first; the hall was booked for all the mentioned dates. Again Mrs Van, respected Town Councillor, enquired ‘off the record’. And off the record she was told that ‘the Reds’ need not think they would ever get the State Hall again – a decision had been taken and was written into the minutes. And how, Mrs Van had demanded to know, was ‘a Red’ defined these days? Anyone who was a member of the following organizations, she was told.
And what, she asked, had happened to make these organizations unsafe which for at least four years had been respectable? A decision had been taken by whom?
At this tempers had been lost, and voices raised. A chill wind blew – that was all. The atmosphere had changed. ‘Public opinion had changed.’ What people were afraid of – that is what had changed. Fear had shifted its quarters.
Another difference: Mrs Van had said that obviously Thomas Stern could not be chairman. Now during the war, or at least since the end of ‘the phoney war’, the atmosphere had been such that of course a corporal from the Health Corps could chair a public meeting, of course a twenty-year-old aircraftsman could address five hundred solid citizens on revolutionary poetry – one needed no other credentials than one’s enthusiasm.
But Mrs Van had put Mr Playfair into the chair – he who had once been reserved for the most tricky of ‘respectable’ meetings. She had said to Marjorie Black: ‘Really, dear, now that everything’s changed, you must have more sense.’
The hall was less than half full. The faces were all familiar, of course. These were the public who had made so many activities possible, had raised money, given it, bought pamphlets, and applauded every variety of left-wing sentiment. And here they sat, their faces for the most part stiff and hostile. And where were the others?
Well, public opinion had changed, that was all.
Professor Dickinson was a lively, handsome little man, even more vigorous than usual tonight because he thrived on opposition. What he was saying was no more than what had been said up and down these platforms for four years. The Soviet Union had been allowed a truce by the capitalist powers for the duration of the war, since it was taking the brunt of the war against Hitler (who of course had been if not created, at least supported, by the said capitalist powers as an anti-communist insurance) but that now the Soviet Union was exhausted, bled white, had lost its usefulness, the capitalist powers would revert to type and do everything to destroy the socialist country, taking up where they had left off in 1940. The war need never have taken place if Britain had responded to the Soviet Union’s invitation to make a pact against Hitler: the war had suited certain financial interests extremely well, millions of people had died because finance capital was more interested in making profits than in …
This thesis, which until a few months ago would have been greeted by everybody with the over-loud, over-quick laugh of public approval which greets sentiments that have been, or might again be, dangerous, and then with storms of clapping and cries of Yes! Yes! – was now being listened to in sullen silence.
The Professor was saying that within two or three years, Germany the outcast, Germany the fascist beast, Germany the murderer would be the bastion of the capitalist defences in Europe against the Soviet Union, just as Hitler had been during the Thirties. The proof? Already the capitalists, particularly American, poured money into German industry. Why? Out of compassion for the starving Germans? No, because it was necessary that Germany was the strongest country in Europe, divided or not, and he would even go as far as to predict that within five years German troops and American troops and British troops would be marching under the same banners … but he could get no further. The whole audience had risen and were shouting at him ‘Red! Communist! Go back to Moscow!’ Mrs Van der Bylt rose from her place beside Mr Playfair, and since he was not doing more than smile earnestly at the angry audience he was supposed to be controlling, she banged authoritatively on the table with an empty glass.
But no one took any notice.
‘Just like the good old days,’ said Solly, with a loud laugh, and people turned sharply to stare at the group of ‘Reds’ who looked back, with incredulous half-embarrassed smiles. In spite of everything, they could not believe that these people, who had been to all their meetings, who were positively old friends, could now be standing there gazing at them with such uneasy, hostile, frightened faces.
But they had to believe it.
They were beginning to understand what they were in for.
It was during those few minutes while the hall seethed with angry shouting people that ‘the group’ finally realized how little they had achieved during their years of hard work.
For one thing, where were the Africans? There was not a black face in the hall – not even a brown one. The Africans, the Coloured people, the Indians – none were here. Yet when ‘the group’ started work, it was axiomatic that it was on behalf of the Africans above all that they would run their study groups and their meetings.
Tonight the mysterious Mr Zlentli, the nationalist leader about whom the white people fearfully gossiped, was running a study group for his associates. So Clive de Wet had told Athen earlier in the afternoon, when Athen had suggested that since the white audience was likely to be unappreciative of the famous Professor from Johannesburg, it might be a good thing if the other groups came. But Clive de Wet had said he did not see the point of their risking their jobs and homes for the sake of communism and the Russians.
So in fact their work had been done for the white people; hundreds of white citizens had been pleased to play with ‘the left’ while the war lasted, and now it was all over. And what had happened? The Zambesia News had changed the tone and style of its editorials, that was all. Or at least, there were no other influences ostensibly at work.
The meeting was breaking up. People streamed from both exits, not looking at the platform, where the Professor and Mrs Van der Bylt and Mr Playfair sat smiling philosophically.
Solly shouted: ‘That’s right, go quickly, got to be careful now, haven’t you?’
‘That’s right,’ said Marjorie fiercely: ‘The heat’s turned on, so back they scuttle to their little holes, out of harm’s way.’
Athen said seriously: ‘But comrades, this means a new policy must be made – I suggest we go to the office to discuss it.’
For the moment silence; then people laughed, uncomfortably, for who were ‘the comrades’ now?