The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
“Look,” said Jimmy. A small beetle about twice the size of the largest ant-eater was approaching through the towering grass-stems.
“No good,” said Paul, “that is not a natural victim.”
“Maybe not,” said Jimmy. He twitched the beetle into the largest pit. There was a convulsion. The glossy brown jaws snapped on the beetle, the beetle jumped up, dragging the ant-eater half-way up the sides of the pit. The pit collapsed in a wave of white sand, and for a couple of inches all around the suffocating silent battle the sand heaved and eddied.
“If we had ears that could hear,” said Paul, “the air would be full of screams, groans, grunts and gasps. But as it is, there reigns over the sunbathed veld the silence of peace.”
A cleaving of wings. A bird alighted.
“No don’t,” said Maryrose in pain, opening her eyes and raising herself on her elbow. But it was too late. Paul had shot, the bird fell. Before it had even hit the ground another bird had touched down, swinging lightly on a twig at the very end of a branch. Paul shot, the bird fell; this time with a cry and a fluttering of helpless wings. Paul got up, raced across the grass, picked up the dead bird and the wounded one. We saw him give the wounded struggling bird a quick determined tight-mouthed look, and wring its neck.
He came back, flung down the two corpses and said: “Nine. And that’s all.” He looked white and sick, and yet in spite of it, managed to give Jimmy a triumphant amused smile.
“Let’s go,” said Willi, shutting his book.
“Wait,” said Jimmy. The sand was now unmoving. He dug into it with a fine stem and dragged out, first the body of the tiny beetle, and then the body of the ant-eater. Now we saw the jaws of the anteater were embedded in the body of the beetle. The corpse of the ant-eater was headless.
“The moral is,” said Paul, “that none but natural enemies should engage.”
“But who should decide which are natural enemies and which are not?” said Jimmy.
“Not you,” said Paul. “Look how you’ve upset the balance of nature. There is one ant-eater the less. And probably hundreds of ants that should have filled its maw will now live. And there is a dead beetle, slaughtered to no purpose.”
Jimmy stepped carefully over the shining round-pitted river of sand, so as not to disturb the remaining insects lying in wait at the bottom of their sand-traps. He dragged on his shirt over his sweaty reddened flesh. Maryrose got up in the way she had—obedient, patient, long-suffering, as if she had no will of her own. We all stood on the edge of the patch of shade, reluctant to plunge into the now white-hot midday, made dizzy and giddy by the few remaining butterflies who reeled drunk in the heat. And as we stood there, the clump of trees we had lain under sang into life. The cicadae which inhabited this grove, patiently silent these two hours waiting for us to go, burst one after another into shrill sound. And in the sister clump of trees, unnoticed by us, had arrived two pigeons who sat there cooing. Paul contemplated them, his rifle swinging. “No,” said Maryrose. “Please don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Please Paul.”
The heap of nine dead pigeons, tied together by their pink feet, dangled from Paul’s free hand, dripping blood.
“It is a terrible sacrifice,” said Paul gravely, “but for you, Maryrose, I will refrain.”
She smiled at him, not in gratitude, but in the cool reproachful way she always used for him. And he smiled back, his delightful, brown, blue-eyed face all open for her inspection. They walked off together in front, the dead birds trailing their wings over jade-coloured clumps of grass.
The three of us followed.
“What a pity,” remarked Jimmy, “that Maryrose disapproves so much of Paul. Because there is no doubt they are what is known as a perfectly-matched couple.” He had tried the light ironic tone, and almost succeeded. Almost, not quite; his jealousy of Paul grated in his voice.
We looked: they were, those two, a perfect couple, both so light and graceful, the sun burnishing their bright hair, shining on their brown skins. And yet Maryrose strolled on without looking at Paul who gave her his whimsically appealing blue glances all in vain.
It was too hot to talk on the way back. Passing the small kopje on whose granite chunks the sun was beating, waves of dizzying heat struck at us so that we hurried past it. Everything was empty and silent, only the cicadae and a distant pigeon sang. And past the kopje we slowed and looked for the grasshoppers, and saw that the bright clamped couples had almost disappeared. A few remained, one above another, like painted clothes-pegs with painted round black eyes. A few. And the butterflies were almost gone. One or two floated by, tired, over the sun-beaten grass.
Our heads ached with heat. We were slightly sick with the smell of blood.
At the hotel we separated with hardly a word.
[The right side of the black notebook, under the heading Money, continued.]
Some months ago I got a letter from the Pomegranate Review, New Zealand, asking for a story. Wrote back, saying I did not write stories. They replied asking for “portions of your journals, if you keep them.” Replied saying I did not believe in publishing journals written for oneself. Amused myself composing imaginary journal, of the right tone for a literary review in a colony or the Dominions: circles isolated from the centres of culture will tolerate a far more solemn tone than the editors and their customers in let’s say London or Paris. (Though sometimes I wonder.) This journal is kept by a young American living on an allowance from his father who works in insurance. He has had three short stories published and has completed a third of a novel. He drinks rather too much, but not as much as he likes people to think; takes marihuana, but only when friends from the States visit him. He is full of contempt for that crude phenomenon, the United States of America.
April 16th. On the steps of the Louvre. Remembered Dora. That girl was in real trouble. I wonder if she has solved her problems. Must write to my father. The tone of his last letter hurt me. Must we be always isolated from each other? I am an artist—Mon Dieu!
April 17th. The Gare de Lyon. Thought of Lise. My God, and that was two years ago! What have I done with my life? Paris has stolen it…must re-read Proust.
April 18th. London. The Horseguards’ Parade. A writer is the conscience of the world. Thought of Marie. It is a writer’s duty to betray his wife, his country and his friend if it serves his art. Also his mistress.
April 18th. Outside Buckingham Palace. George Eliot is the rich man’s Gissing. Must write to my father. Only ninety dollars left. Will we ever speak the same language?
May 9th. Rome. The Vatican. Thought of Fanny. My God, those thighs of hers, like the white necks of swans. Did she have problems! A writer is, must be, the Machiavelli of the soul’s kitchen. Must reread Thom (Wolfe).
May 11th. The Campagna. Remembered Jerry—they killed him. Salauds! The best die young. I have not long to live. At thirty I shall kill myself. Thought of Betty. The black shadows of the lime trees on her face. Looked like a skull. I kissed the sockets of her eyes so as to feel the white bone on my lips. If I don’t hear from my father before next week shall offer this journal for publication. On his head be it. Must re-read Tolstoy. He said nothing that wasn’t obvious, but perhaps now that reality is draining the poetry from my days I can admit him to my Pantheon.
June 21st. Les Halles. Spoke to Marie. Very busy but she offered me one of her nights for free. Mon Dieu, the tears stand in my eyes as I remember it! When I kill myself I shall remember that a woman of the streets offered me one of her nights, for love. No greater compliment has been paid me. It is not the journalist but the critic who is the prostitute of the intellect. Re-reading Fanny Hill. Am thinking of writing an article called “Sex Is the Opium of the People.”
June 22nd. Café de Flore. Time is the River on which the leaves of our thoughts are carried into oblivion. My father says I must come home. Will he never understand me? Am writing a porno for Jules called Loins. Five hundred dollars, so my father can go hang. Ar
July 30th. London. Public Convenience, Leicester Square. Ah, the lost cities of our urban nightmare! Thought of Alice. The lust I feel in Paris is of a different quality from the lust I feel in London. In Paris sex is scented with je ne sais quoi. In London it is just sex. Must go back to Paris. Shall I read Bossuet? Am reading my book Loins for the third time. Pretty good. Have put, not my best self, but my second-best self into it. Pornography is the true journalism of the fifties. Jules said he would only pay me three hundred dollars for it. Salaud! Wired my father, told him I had finished a book which had been accepted. He sent me a thousand dollars. Loins is a real spit in the eye for Madison Avenue. Leautard is the poor man’s Stendhal. Must read Stendhal.
Came to know the young American writer James Schafter. Showed him this journal. He was delighted. We concocted another thousand or so words, and he sent it to an American little review as the work of a friend too shy to send it himself. It was printed. He took me out to lunch to celebrate. Told me the following: the critic, Hans P., a very pompous man, had written an article about James’ work, saying it was corrupt. The critic was due in London. James, who had previously snubbed Hans P., because he dislikes him, sent a sycophantic telegram to the airport and a bunch of flowers to the hotel. He was waiting in the foyer when Hans P. arrived from the airport, with a bottle of Scotch and yet another bunch of flowers. Then he offered him self as a guide around London. Hans P., flattered but uneasy. James kept this up for the two weeks of Hans P.’s visit, hanging on Hans’ every word. When Hans P. left he said from a steep moral height: “Of course you must understand that I never allow personal feelings to interfere with my critical conscience.” To which James replied: “writhing with moral turpitude,” as he describes it—“Yeah, but yeah, I see that, but man, it’s communication that counts—yeah.” Two weeks later Hans P. wrote an article about James’ work in which he says that the element of corruption in James’ work is more the honest cynicism of a young man due to the state of society than an enduring element of James’ view of life. James rolled on the floor laughing all afternoon.
James reverses the usual mask of the young writer. All, or nearly all, naïve enough to begin with, half-consciously, half-unconsciously begin to use naivety as a protection. But James plays at being corrupt. Faced, for instance, with a film-director who plays the usual game of pretending to make a movie of a story of James’, “just as it is, though of course we must make some alterations”—James will spend an afternoon, straight-faced, stammering with earnestness, offering to make wilder and wilder alterations for the sake of the box office, while the director gets more and more uneasy. But, as James says, no suggestion of change one can make to them can be more incredible than they would be prepared to make themselves, and so they never know whether he is laughing at them or not. He leaves them, “inarticulate with grateful emotion.” “Unaccountably,” they are offended, and don’t get in touch with him again. Or at a party where there is a critic or a mandarin who has any flavour of pomposity, James will sit at his or her feet, positively begging for favours, and pouring out flattery. Afterwards, he laughs. I told him all this was very dangerous; he replied it was no more dangerous than being “the honest young artist with built-in integrity.” “Integrity,” he says, with an owlish look, scratching at his crotch, “is a red rag to the bull of Mammon, or, to put it another way, integrity is the poor man’s codpiece.” I said this was all very well—he replied: “Well, Anna, and how do you describe all this pastiching about? What’s the difference between you and me?”
I agreed he was right; but then, inspired with our success over the young American’s journal, we decided to invent another as written by a lady author of early middle-age, who had spent some years in an African colony, and was afflicted with sensibility. This is aimed at Rupert, editor of Zenith, who has asked me for “something of yours—at last!”
James had met Rupert and hated him. Rupert is wet, limp, hysterical, homosexual, intelligent.
Easter week. The doors of the Russian Orthodox Church in Kensington stand flush with the mid-twentieth century street. Inside flickering shadows, incense, the kneeling bowed figures of immemorial piety. The bare vast floor. A few priests absorbed in the ritual of their service. The few worshippers kneeling on the hard wood, bending forward to touch their foreheads to the floor. Few, yes. But real. This was reality. I was aware of reality. After all, it is in the majority of mankind who have their beings inside a religion, the minority who are pagan. Pagan? Ah, that is a joyous word for the aridity of Godless modern man! I stood while the others kneeled. I, stubborn little me, I could feel my knees buckle under, I, who was the only one obstinately standing. The priests grave, harmonious, masculine. A handful of delightful pale young boys charmingly grave with piety. The thundering rich virile waves of the Russian singing. My knees, faint…I found myself kneeling. Where was my little individuality which usually asserts itself? I did not care. I was aware of deeper things. I found the grave figures of the priests wavering and blurring through the tears in my eyes. It was too much. I stumbled up and fled that soil, not mine; that solemnity, not mine…should I perhaps no longer describe myself as an atheist but an agnostic? There is something so barren about the word atheist when I think (for instance) of the majestic fervour of those priests. Agnostic has more of a tone? I was late for the cocktail party. No matter, the countess did not notice. How sad, I felt, as I always do, to be the Countess Pirelli…a come down, surely, after having been the mistress of four famous men? But I suppose we each of us need our little mask against the cruel world. The rooms crowded as always with the cream of literary London. Spied my dear Harry at once. I am so fond of these tall, pale-browed equine Englishmen—so noble. We talked, under the meaningless din of the cocktail party. He suggested I should do a play based on Frontiers of War. A play which should take no sides but emphasise the essential tragedy of the colonial situation, the tragedy of the whites. It is true, of course…what is poverty, what are hunger, malnutrition, homelessness, the pedestrian degradations (his word—how sensitive, how full of true sensibility are a certain type of Englishman, far more intuitive than any woman!) compared to the reality, the human reality of the white dilemma? Listening to him talk, I understood my own book better. And I thought of how, only a mile away, the kneeling figures on the cold stone of the Russian church bowed their foreheads in reverence to a deeper truth. My truth? Alas no! Nevertheless I have decided I shall henceforth describe myself as an agnostic and not an atheist, and I shall lunch with my dear Harry tomorrow and discuss my play. As we parted, he—so delicately—squeezed my hand, a chill, essentially poetic pressure. I went home, nearer to reality I think than ever in my life. And, in silence, to my fresh narrow bed. So essential, I feel, to have clean linen on one’s bed every day. Ah, what a sensuous (not sensual) pleasure to creep, fresh-bathed, between the cool clean linen, and to lie awaiting sleep. Ah, lucky little me…
Easter Sunday
I lunched with Harry. How charming his house is! He had already made a sketch of how he thought the play should go. His close friend is Sir Fred, who he thinks would play the lead and then, of course, there would be none of the usual trouble of finding a backer. He suggested a slight change in the story. A young white farmer should notice a young African girl of rare beauty and intelligence. He tries to influence her to educate herself, to raise herself, for her family are nothing but crude Reserve Natives. But she misunderstands his motives and falls in love. Then, when he (oh, so gently) explains his real interest in her, she turns virago and calls him ugly names. Taunts him. He, patient, bears it. But she goes to the police and tells them he has tried to rape her. He suffers the social obloquy in silence. He goes to prison accusing her only with his eyes, while she turns away in shame. It could be real, strong drama! It symbolises, as Harry says, the superior spiritual status of the white man trapped by history, dragged down into the animal mud of Africa. So true, so penetrating, so new. True courage consists
I thought all this was a bit thick, but James said no, he’d swallow it. James turned out to be right; but unfortunately my rare sensibility overcame me at the last moment and I decided to keep my privacy. Rupert sent me a note saying that he so understood, some experiences were too personal for print.
[At this point in the black notebook was pinned to the page a carbon copy of a short story written by James Schaffer after being asked to review a dozen novels for a certain literary magazine. He sent in this piece to the editor, suggesting it should be printed in place of the review. The editor wrote back with enthusiasm for the story, asking to be allowed to publish it in the magazine—“but where is your review, Mr Schaffer? We expected it for this issue.” It was at this point that James and Anna decided they were defeated; that something had happened in the world which made parody impossible. James wrote a serious review about the dozen novels, taking them one by one; using his thousand words. Anna and he wrote no more bits of pastiche.]
BLOOD ON THE BANANA LEAVES
Frrrrrr, frrr, frrr, say the banana trees ghosting the age-tired moon of Africa, sifting the wind. Ghosts. Ghosts of time and of my pain. Black wings of night-jars, white wings of night-moths, cut, sift, the moon. Frrrr, frrr, say the banana trees, and the moon slips pale with pain on the wind-tilting leaves. John, John, sings my girl, brown, cross-legged in the dark of the eaves of the hut, the moon mysterious on her eyeballs. Eyes that I have kissed in the night, victim-eyes of impersonal tragedy, to be impersonal no longer. Oh, Africa! for soon the banana leaves will be senile with dark red, the red dust will be redder yet, redder than the new-lipsticked lips of my dark love, store-betrayed to the commerce-lust of the white trader.