The Golden Notebook (46 page)

has prepared us above all for the long littleness of life. What else has it prepared us for? Speaking for myself, I can't wait for the long littleness to begin. When I get back-if I ever do get back that is, I shall...' 'Hallo,' exclaimed Paul, 'here comes another bird. No it doesn't.' A pigeon cleaved towards us, saw us, and swerved off and away in mid-air, nearly settled on the other clump of trees, changed its mind and sped into the distance. A group of farm labourers were passing on the track a couple of hundred yards off. We watched them, in silence. They had been talking and laughing until they saw us, but now they, too, were silent, and went past with averted faces, as if in this way they might avert any possible evil that might come from us, the white people. Paul said softly: 'My God, my God, my God.' Then his tone changed, and he said jauntily: 'Looking at it objectively, with as little reference as we can manage to Comrade Willi and his ilk-Comrade Willi, I'm inviting you to consider something objectively.' Willi laid down his book, prepared to show irony. 'This country is larger than Spain. It contains one and a half million blacks, if one may mention them at all, and one hundred thousand whites. That, in itself, is a thought which demands two minutes silence. And what do we see? One might imagine-one would have every excuse for imagining, despite what you say, Comrade Willi, that this insignificant handful of sand on the beaches of time-not bad, that image?-unoriginal, but always apt-this million-and-a-little-over-a-half people exist in this pretty piece of God's earth solely in order to make each other miserable....' Here Willie picked up his book again and applied his attention to it. 'Comrade Willi, let your eyes follow the print but let the ears of your soul listen. For the facts are-the facts-that there's enough food here for everyone!-enough materials for houses for everyone!-enough talent though admittedly so well hidden under bushels at the moment that nothing but the most generous eye could perceive it-enough talent, I say, to create light where now darkness exists.' 'From which you deduce?' said Willi. 'I deduce nothing. I am being struck by a new... it's a blinding light, nothing less...' 'But what you say is the truth about the whole world, not just this country,' said Maryrose. 'Magnificent Maryrose! Yes. My eyes are being opened to-Comrade Willi, would you not say that there is some principle at work not yet admitted to your philosophy? Some principle of destruction?' Willi said, in exactly the tone we had all expected: 'There is no need to look any further than the philosophy of the class struggle,' and as if he'd pressed a button, Jimmy, Paul and I burst out into one of the fits of irrepressible laughter that Willi never joined. 'I'm delighted to see,' he remarked, grim-mouthed, 'that good socialists-at least two of you call yourselves socialists, should find that so very humorous.' 'I don't find it humorous,' said Maryrose. 'You never find anything humorous,' said Paul. 'Do you know that you never laugh, Maryrose? Never? Whereas I, whose view of life can only be described as morbid, and increasingly morbid with every passing minute, laugh continuously? How would you account for that?' 'I have no view of life,' said Maryrose, lying flat, looking like a neat soft little doll in her bright bibbed trousers and shirt. 'Anyway,' she added, 'you weren't laughing. I listen to you a lot-' (she said this as if she were not one of us, but an outsider) '-and I've noticed that you laugh most when you're saying something terrible. Well I don't call that laughing.' 'When you were with your brother, did you laugh, Maryrose? And when you were with your lucky swain in the Cape?' 'Yes.' 'Why?' 'Because we were happy,' said Maryrose simply. 'Good God,' said Paul in awe. 'I couldn't say that Jimmy, have you ever laughed because you were happy?' 'I've never been happy,' said Jimmy. 'You, Anna?' 'Nor me.' 'Willi?' 'Certainly,' said Willi, stubborn, defending socialism, the happy philosophy. 'Maryrose,' said Paul, 'you were telling the truth. I don't believe Willi but I believe you. You are very enviable Maryrose, in spite of everything. Do you know that?' 'Yes,' said Maryrose. 'Yes, I think I'm luckier than any of you. I don't see anything wrong with being happy. What's wrong with it?' Silence. We looked at each other. Then Paul solemnly bowed towards Maryrose: 'As usual,' he said humbly, 'we have nothing to say in reply.' Maryrose closed her eyes again. A pigeon alighted fast on a tree in the opposite clump. Paul shot and missed. 'A failure,' he exclaimed, mock tragic. The bird stayed where it was, surprised, looking about it, watching a leaf dislodged by Paul's bullet float down to the earth. Paul ejected his empty case, refilled at leisure, aimed, shot. The bird fell. Jimmy obstinately did not move. He did not move. And Paul, before the battle of wills could end in defeat for himself, gained victory by rising and remarking: 'I shall be my own retriever.' And he strolled off to fetch the pigeon; and we all saw that Jimmy had to fight with himself to prevent his limbs from jumping him up and over the grass after Paul, who came back with the dead bird yawning, flinging it with the other dead birds. 'There's such a smell of blood I shall be sick,' said Maryrose. 'Patience,' said Paul. 'Our quota is nearly reached.' 'Six will be enough,' said Jimmy. 'Because none of us will eat this pie. Mr. Boothby can have the lot.' 'I shall certainly eat of it,' said Paul. 'And so will you. Do you really imagine that when that toothsome pie, filled with gravy and brown savoury meat, is set before you, that you will remember the tender songs of these birds so brutally cut short by the crack of doom?' 'Yes,' said Maryrose. 'Yes,' I said. 'Willi?' asked Paul, making an issue of it. 'Probably not,' said Willi, reading. 'Women are tender,' said Paul. 'They will watch us eat, toying the while with Mrs. Boothby's good roast beef, making delicate little mouths of distaste, loving us all the more for our brutality.' 'Like the Mashona women and the Matabele,' said Jimmy. 'I like to think of those days,' said Paul, settling down with his rifle at the ready, watching the trees. 'So simple. Simple people killing each other for good reasons, land, women, food. Not like us. Not like us at all. As for us-do you know what is going to happen? I will tell you. As a result of the work of fine comrades like Willi, ever-ready to devote themselves to others, or people like me, concerned only with profits, I predict that in fifty years all this fine empty country we see stretching before us filled only with butterflies and grasshoppers will be covered by semi-detached houses filled by well-clothed black workers.' 'And what is the matter with that?' enquired Willi. 'It is progress,' said Paul. 'Yes it is,' said Willi. 'Why should they be semi-detached houses?' enquired Jimmy, very seriously. He had moments of being serious about the socialist future. 'Under a socialist government there'll be beautiful houses in their own gardens or big flats.' 'My dear Jimmy!' said Paul. 'What a pity you are so bored by economics. Socialist or capitalist-in either case, all this fine ground, suitable for development, will be developed at a rate possible for seriously undercapitalised countries-are you listening, Comrade Willi?' 'I am listening.' 'And because a government faced with the necessity of housing a lot of un-housed people fast, whether socialist or capitalist, will choose the cheapest available houses, the best being the enemy of the better, this fair scene will be one of factories smoking into the fair blue sky, and masses of cheap identical housing. Am I right, Comrade Willi?' 'You are right.' 'Well then?' 'It's not the point.' 'It's my point. That is why I dwell on the simple savagery of the Matabele and the Mashona. The other is simply too hideous to contemplate. It is the reality for our time, socialist or capitalist-well, Comrade Willi?' Willi hesitated, then said: 'There will be certain outward similarities but...' He was interrupted by Paul and myself, then Jimmy, in a fit of laughter. Maryrose said to Willi: 'They're not laughing at what you say, but because you always say what they expect.' 'I am aware of that,' said Willi. 'No,' said Paul, 'you are wrong Maryrose. I'm also laughing at what he's saying. Because I'm horribly afraid it's not true. God forbid, I should be dogmatic about it, but I'm afraid that-as for myself, from time to time I shall fly out from England to inspect my overseas investments and peradventure I shall fly over this area, and I shall look down on smoking factories and housing estates and I shall remember these pleasant, peaceful pastoral days and...' A pigeon landed on the trees opposite. Another and another. Paul shot. A bird fell. He shot, the second fell. The third burst out of a bunch of leaves skywards as if it had been shot from a catapult. Jimmy got up, walked over, brought back two bloodied birds, flung them down with the others and said: 'Seven. For God's sake, isn't it enough?' 'Yes,' said Paul, laying aside his rifle. 'And now let's make tracks fast for the pub. We shall just have time to wash the blood off before it opens.' '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 ant-eater 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. Write 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