Landlocked

This was ‘a big meeting’ and therefore everyone had turned out, responsible to the end towards something they had begun and which now was ending. They sat along the back of the Brazen Hall, 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?

‘Yes,’ said Athen, ‘but that is not good, it is not enough that we just go home. We have a responsibility.’

They 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 her hands. The husband goes to work or to visit his mistress, and the wife entertains her lover. No society has yet developed anything like this for satisfaction because not only do we get the comforts of – comfort, but just enough frustration to keep love alive. No, comrades, I tell you, when I was still a poor boy in my village, I understood perfectly well, from novels, just how things ought to be, and war – nonsense, it’s no use to us – but trust me, Matty. I’ll be discharged soon, and I’ve got a place in town that I’ll open up again for us.’

Meanwhile, he wrote sometimes. His erratic love life continued – so she heard. Knowing that she must hear he wrote: ‘I’m in an impossible position with you, Matty. Do you imagine that I don’t know what a woman feels when she is told that she is too special for casual affairs? Do you imagine I’d be such a fool as to say this to you? But if I’m careful not to say it, circumstances are saying it for me. But they tell me that this camp is being closed next month, and that means I’ll be with you soon.’

This afternoon Thomas had said that the camp was not being closed – not for another two or three months.

There was nothing for it but to go on writing love letters.

‘I’d like to have a cup of coffee with you both,’ said Thomas. ‘But I’ve got to be off. I’m driving out to the farm tonight – I’ve got two days’ leave.’

‘Oh, do come and have a cup of coffee,’ Anton said. Both Martha and Thomas looked at him to see if the drawling emphasis he put into it meant anything special, but it seemed not.

‘Or perhaps you’d like to make a speech too?’ said Anton.

‘Why not?’ said Thomas, sounding abrupt. Martha could see that he longed, as she did, for Anton to be somewhere else. This not being possible, he was talking on, saying anything, so as not to go away at once.

‘Perhaps we could have a competition about whose country has suffered most?’ said Anton.

‘It’s as useful as most of things we do now, certainly,’ said Thomas.

‘I don’t agree,’ said Anton, suddenly angry – it was evident that he had been restraining himself, with Athen, but was quite ready now to have a real argument. Even perhaps, an ‘analysis of the situation’.

Thomas smiled, recognizing this. He said again: ‘I haven’t time – I must go.’ But he still didn’t go, stood in front of them, hands in his pockets, in his characteristic pose, frowning.

‘Then you haven’t time,’ said Anton.

‘It’s been quite a year, hasn’t it?’ remarked Thomas.

‘That is certainly true,’ said Anton, on a questioning note: if you have anything to say, do say it?

Thomas remarked: ‘Today I read that the war damage in Germany is 400 milliard marks.’ He smiled. ‘Well then. Thirty-two milliard pounds. Does that make it any easier? I kept looking at the figures like a madman.’

Anton stood looking at Thomas. On his face was a small, cold smile.

‘Oh, all right, I won’t press that point then. How about the mass bombing of Germany then? We didn’t know what that involved did we?’

He came a step nearer and stood looking close into their faces – first Anton, then Martha. Now they understood that he was saying what he had been feeling, or thinking, while Athen made his speech.

‘There’s very little work to do in the camp now. That’s a bad thing – I have nothing to do but read. It’s like living in a bad nightmare – a thousand empty huts, because all the men are demobbed, but someone’s made a slip-up somewhere, and the camp’s being kept open. All the machinery is running – the mess is open, all the health people like me operating away at full efficiency, all the blacks standing at attention waiting to take orders. No one to give orders, no one to eat in the mess, no one in the hospital, no one using my fine, efficient latrines – it’s a ghost camp. And I sit in my fine, well-ventilated hut reading … for instance, I’ve got the latest about the concentration camps. We haven’t heard the truth about them, that’s obvious, it’s too terrible to tell, so we’ll get the truth in bits.’

Again he looked at them, waiting.

‘No comment? Well, I have the advantage over you, because you don’t sit all day on a bed in a ghost camp full of food that’s rotting in its cases because there’s no one to eat it. Well then, how about dropping the atom bombs on Japan, how about that?’

‘We discussed that at the time,’ Anton said. To begin with, the socialists had supported the bombs being dropped. Or rather, the thing had been accepted. It seemed that nothing much worse had happened than had been happening for years. Certainly Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not the words they later became – symbols for the beginning of a new, frightful age. Nor had there been a special meeting or even a private discussion since about the atom bombs. Yet people’s minds had changed, were changing. Without anything formal being said, or decisions being taken, the incident of the atom bombs was isolating itself, growing in meaning and intensity. But some people still agreed that it was right the atom bomb should have been used – Anton for one.

‘What’s your point?’ said Anton. ‘That war isn’t the prettiest of human activities?’

Thomas looked steadily at Anton, then smiled at Martha. ‘Oh, I haven’t any point. That is the point. Anyway, I’ve got thirty miles to drive. And it has been storming over the mountains, my wife said, so the rivers will be up if I don’t get a move on.’

‘Well then,’ said Anton.

‘Yes. And there’s India. How about the famine in India? It’s all right, isn’t it – I say, how about the famine in India? But the famine in Germany – that’s not the same thing at all, is it?’

‘What are you getting at?’ said Anton, his pale blue eyes like ice. ‘Are you telling me that I’m a German?’

‘No. Of course not. Well, I seem to be talking to myself.’ Off he went, walking fast. At the corner of the street he turned and half-shouted: ‘Did you read, they’re going to transfer one million people from East to West Germany?’

‘Come on,’ said Anton to Martha, impatiently. ‘Let’s get home.’

Thomas was saying, or shouting: They walk. ‘They put their belongings in handcarts and walk hundreds of miles guarded by soldiers. Like cattle.’ Now he did go off finally, and they saw him lift his hand and wave it, in a sort of mock salute.

‘Yes,’ said Anton. ‘So now we all discover that the war has made a lot of mess everywhere. What is the use of such discoveries?’

He took Martha’s elbow to steer her safely through the people who were coming out of the Old Vienna Tea Rooms. ‘Good night, good night,’ they all said to each other.

Martha and Anton walked in silence to find the car. Amicably they drove back to their flat.

Their relations were admirable since Anton had a mistress. He believed that Martha had a lover.

Or apparently he did. Yet there was something odd about this, because while he would say to her: ‘I’m meeting Millicent after work,’ and she replied: ‘Oh, good, I’ll see you later then,’ she never said who she would be meeting or what she would be doing. It was assumed that she would be meeting somebody. Who? Once or twice Anton had joked it must be Solly, and he had never mentioned Thomas.