The Golden Notebook

  This story, with variations more or less melodramatic, is the story of the communist or near-communist intellectual in this particular time.

  3rd Jan., 1952

  I write very little in this notebook. Why? I see that everything I write is critical of the Party. Yet I am still in it. Molly too.

  Three of Michael’s friends hanged yesterday in Prague. He spent the evening talking to me—or rather to himself. He was explaining, first, why it was impossible that these men could be traitors to communism. Then he explained, with much political subtlety, why it was impossible that the Party should frame and hang innocent people; and that these three had perhaps got themselves, without meaning to, into “objectively” anti-revolutionary positions. He talked on and on and on until finally I said we should go to bed. All night he cried in his sleep. I kept jerking awake to find him whimpering, the tears wetting the pillow. In the morning I told him that he had been crying. He was angry—with himself. He went off to work looking an old man, his face lined and grey, giving me an absent nod—he was so far away, locked in his miserable self-questioning. Meanwhile I help with a petition for the Rosenbergs. Impossible to get people to sign it, except party and near-party intellectuals. (Not like France. The atmosphere of this country has changed dramatically in the last two or three years, tight, suspicious, frightened. It would take very little to send it off balance into our version of McCarthyism.) I am asked, even by people in the Party, let alone the “respectable” intellectuals, why do I petition on behalf of the Rosenbergs but not on behalf of the people framed in Prague? I find it impossible to reply rationally, except that someone has to organise an appeal for the Rosenbergs. I am disgusted—with myself, with the people who won’t sign for the Rosenbergs; I seem to live in an atmosphere of suspicious disgust. Molly began crying this evening, quite out of the blue—she was sitting on my bed, chatting about her day, then she began crying. In a still, helpless way. It reminded me of something, could not think of what, but of course it was Maryrose, suddenly letting the tears slide down her face sitting in the big room at Mashopi, saying: “We believed everything was going to be beautiful and now we know it won’t.” Molly cried like that. Newspapers all over my floor, about the Rosenbergs, about the things in Eastern Europe.

  The Rosenbergs electrocuted. Felt sick all night. This morning I woke asking myself: why should I feel like this about the Rosenbergs, and only feel helpless and depressed about the frameups in communist countries? The answer an ironical one. I feel responsible for what happens in the West, but not at all for what happens over there. And yet I am in the Party. I said something like this to Molly, and she replied, very brisk and efficient (she’s in the middle of a hard organising job), “All right, I know, but I’m busy.”

  Koestler. Something he said sticks in my mind—that any communist in the West who stayed in the Party after a certain date did so on the basis of a private myth. Something like that. So I demand of myself, what is my private myth? That while most of the criticisms of the Soviet Union are true, there must be a body of people biding their time there, waiting to reverse the present process back to real socialism. I had not formulated it so clearly before. Of course there is no Party member I could say this to, though it’s the sort of discussion I have with ex-party people. Suppose that all the Party people I know have similarly incommunicable private myths, all different? I asked Molly. She snapped: “What are you reading that swine Koestler for?” This remark is so far from her usual level of talk, political or otherwise, I was surprised, tried to discuss it with her. But she’s very busy. When she’s on an organising job (she is doing a big exhibition of art from Eastern Europe) she’s too immersed in it to be interested. She’s in another role altogether. It occurred to me today, that when I talk to Molly about politics, I never know what person is going to reply—the dry, wise, ironical political woman, or the Party fanatic who sounds, literally, quite maniacal. And I have these two personalities myself. For instance, met Editor Rex in the street. That was last week. After the greetings were exchanged, I saw a spiteful, critical look coming on to his face, and I knew it was going to be a crack about the Party. And I knew if he made one, I’d defend it. I couldn’t bear to hear him, being spiteful, or myself, being stupid. So I made an excuse and left him. The trouble is, what you don’t realise when you join the Party, soon you meet no one but communists or people who have been communists who can talk without that awful dilettantish spite. One becomes isolated. That’s why I shall leave the Party, of course.

  I see that I wrote yesterday, I would leave the Party. I wonder when, and on what issue?

  Had dinner with John. We meet rarely—always on the verge of political disagreement. At the end of the dinner, he said: “The reason why we don’t leave the Party is that we can’t bear to say good-bye to our ideals for a better world.” Trite enough. And interesting because it implies he believes, and that I must, only the communist party can better the world. Yet we neither of us believe any such thing. But above all, this remark struck me because it contradicted everything he had been saying previously. (I had been arguing that the Prague affair was obviously a frame-up and he was saying that while the Party made “mistakes” it was incapable of being so deliberately cynical.) I came home thinking that somewhere at the back of my mind when I joined the Party was a need for wholeness, for an end to the split, divided, unsatisfactory way we all live. Yet joining the Party intensified the split—not the business of belonging to an organisation whose every tenet, on paper, anyway, contradicts the ideas of the society we live in; but something much deeper than that. Or at any rate, more difficult to understand. I tried to think about it, my brain kept swimming into blankness, I got confused and exhausted. Michael came in, very late. I told him what I was trying to think out. After all, he’s a witch-doctor, a soul-curer. He looked at me, very dry and ironic, and remarked: “My dear Anna, the human soul, sitting in a kitchen, or for that matter, in a double bed, is quite complicated enough, we don’t understand the first thing about it. Yet you’re sitting there worrying because you can’t make sense of the human soul in the middle of a world revolution?” And so I left it, and I was glad to, but I was nevertheless feeling guilty because I was so happy not to think about it.

  I went to visit Berlin with Michael. He in search of old friends, dispersed in the war, might be anywhere. “Dead, I expect,” he said in his new tone of voice, which is flat with a determination not to feel. Dates from the Prague trial, this voice. East Berlin terrifying place, bleak, grey, ruinous, but above all the atmosphere, the lack of freedom like an invisible poison continually spreading everywhere. The most significant incident this one: Michael ran into some people he knew from before the war. They greeted him with hostility—so that Michael, having run forward, to attract their attention, saw their hostile faces and shrank into himself. It was because they knew he had been friendly with the hanged men in Prague, or three of them, they were traitors, so that meant he was a traitor too. He tried, very quiet and courteous, to talk. They were like a group of dogs, or animals, facing outward, pressing against each other for support against fear. I’ve never experienced anything like that, the fear and hate on their faces. One of them, a woman with flaming angry eyes, said: “What are you doing, comrade, wearing that expensive suit?” Michael’s clothes are always off the peg, he spends nothing on clothes. He said: “But Irene, it’s the cheapest suit I could buy in London.” Her face snapped shut into suspicion, she glanced at her companions, then a sort of triumph. She said: “Why do you come here, spreading that capitalist poison? We know you are in rags and there are no consumer goods.” Michael was at first stunned, then he said, still with irony, that even Lenin had understood the possibility that a newly-established communist society might suffer from a shortage of consumer goods. Whereas England which, “as I think you know, Irene,” is a very solid capitalist society, is quite well-equipped with consumer goods. She gave a sort of grimace of fury, or hatred. Then she turned on her heel and went off, and he
r companions went with her. All Michael said was: “That used to be an intelligent woman.” Later he made jokes about it, sounding tired and depressed. He said for instance: “Imagine Anna, that all those heroic communists have died to create a society where Comrade Irene can spit at me for wearing a very slightly better suit than her husband has.”

  Stalin died today. Molly and I sat in the kitchen, upset. I kept saying, “We are being inconsistent, we ought to be pleased. We’ve been saying for months he ought to be dead.” She said: “Oh, I don’t know, Anna, perhaps he never knew about all the terrible things that were happening.” Then she laughed and said: “The real reason we’re upset is that we’re scared stiff. Better the evils we know.” “Well, things can’t be worse.” “Why not? We all of us seem to have this belief that things are going to get better. Why should they? Sometimes I think we’re moving into a new ice age of tyranny and terror, why not? Who’s to stop it—us?” When Michael came in later, I told him what Molly had said—about Stalin’s not knowing; because I thought how odd it was we all have this need for the great man, and create him over and over again in the face of all the evidence. Michael looked tired and grim. To my surprise he said: “Well, it might be true, mightn’t it? That’s the point—anything might be true anywhere, there’s never any way of really knowing the truth about anything. Anything is possible—everything’s so crazy, anything at all’s possible.”

  His face looked disintegrated and flushed as he said this. His voice toneless, as it is these days. Later he said: “Well, we are pleased he is dead. But when I was young and politically active, he was a great man for me. He was a great man for all of us.” Then he tried to laugh, and he said: “After all, there’s nothing wrong, in itself, in wanting there to be great men in the world.” Then he put his hand over his eyes in a new gesture, shielding his eyes, as if the light hurt him. He said: “I’ve got a headache, let’s go to bed, shall we?” In bed we didn’t make love, we lay quietly side by side, not talking. He was crying in his sleep; I had to wake him out of a bad dream.

  By-election. North London. Candidates—Conservative, Labour, Communist. A Labour seat, but with a reduced majority from the previous election. As usual, long discussions in C.P. circles about whether it is right to split the Labour vote. I’ve been in on several of them. These discussions have the same pattern. No, we don’t want to split the vote; it’s essential to have Labour in, rather than a Tory. But on the other hand, if we believe in C.P. policy, we must try to get our candidate in. Yet we know there’s no hope of getting a C.P. candidate in. This impasse remains until emissary from Centre comes in to say that it’s wrong to see the C.P. as a kind of ginger group, that’s just defeatism, we have to fight the election as if we were convinced we were going to win it. (But we know we aren’t going to win it.) So the fighting speech by the man from Centre, while it inspires everyone to work hard, does not resolve the basic dilemma. On the three occasions I watched this happen, the doubts and confusions were solved by—a joke. Oh yes, very important in politics, that joke. This joke made by the man from Centre himself: It’s all right, comrades, we are going to lose our deposit, we aren’t going to win enough votes to split the Labour vote. Much relieved laughter, and the meeting splits up. This joke, completely contradicting everything in official policy, in fact sums up how everyone feels. I went up to canvass, three afternoons. Campaign H.Q. in the house of a comrade living in the area; campaign organised by the ubiquitous Bill, who lives in the constituency. A dozen or so housewives, free to canvass in the afternoons—the men come in at night. Everyone knew each other, the atmosphere I find so wonderful—of people working together for a common end. Bill, a brilliant organiser, everything worked out to the last detail. Cups of tea and discussion about how things were going before we went out to canvass. This is a working-class area. “Strong support for the Party around here,” said one woman, with pride. Am given two dozen cards, with the names of people who have already been canvassed, marked “doubtful.” My job to see them again, and talk them into voting for the C.P. As I leave the campaign H.Q., discussion about the right way to dress for canvassing—most of these women much better dressed than the women of the area. “I don’t think it’s right to dress differently than usual,” says one woman, “it’s a kind of cheating.” “Yes, but if you turn up at the door too posh, they get on the defensive.” Comrade Bill, laughing and good-natured—the same energetic good nature as Molly, when she’s absorbed in detailed work, says: “What matters is to get results.” The two women chide him for being dishonest. “We’ve got to be honest in everything we do, because otherwise they won’t trust us.” The names I am given are of people scattered over a wide area of working streets. A very ugly area of uniform, small, poor houses. A main station half a mile away, shedding thick smoke all around. Dark clouds, low and thick, and the smoke drifting up to join them. The first house has a cracked fading door. Mrs C., in a sagging wool dress and apron, a worn-down woman. She has two small boys, well-dressed and kept. I say I am from the C.P.; she nods. I say: “I understand you are undecided whether to vote for us?” She says: “I’ve got nothing against you.” She’s not hostile, but polite. She says: “The lady who came last week left a book.” (A pamphlet.) Finally she says: “But we’ve always voted Labour, dear.” I mark the card Labour, crossing out the Doubtful, and go on. The next, a Cypriot. This house even poorer, a young man looking harassed, a pretty dark girl, a new baby. Scarcely any furniture. New in England. It emerges that the point they are “doubtful” about is whether they are entitled to the vote at all. I explain that they are. Both very good-natured, but wanting me to leave, the baby is crying, an atmosphere of pressure and harassment. The man says he doesn’t mind the communists but he doesn’t like the Russians. My feeling is they won’t trouble to vote, but I leave the card “doubtful” and go on to the next. A well-kept house, with a crowd of teddy-boys outside. Wolf-whistles and friendly jibes as I arrive. I disturb the housewife, who is pregnant and has been lying down. Before letting me in, she complains to her son that he said he was going to the shops for her. He says he will go later: a nice-looking, tough, well-dressed boy of sixteen or so—all the children in the area well-dressed, even when their parents are not. “What do you want?” she says to me. “I’m from the C.P.”—and explain. She says: “Yes, we’ve had you before.” Polite, but indifferent. After a discussion during which it’s hard to get her to agree or disagree with anything, she says her husband has always voted Labour, and she does what her husband says. As I leave she shouts at her son, but he drifts off with a group of his friends, grinning. She yells at him. But this scene has a feeling of good nature about it: she doesn’t really expect him to go shopping for her, but shouts at him on principle, while he expects her to shout at him, and doesn’t really mind. At the next house, the woman at once and eagerly offers a cup of tea, says she likes elections, “people keep dropping in for a bit of a talk.” In short, she’s lonely. She talks on and on about her personal problems on a dragging, listless harassed note. (Of the houses I visited this was the one which seemed to me to contain the real trouble, real misery.) She said she had three small children, was bored, wanted to go back to work, her husband wouldn’t let her. She talked and talked and talked, obsessively, I was there nearly three hours, couldn’t leave. When I finally asked her if she was voting for the C.P., she said: “Yes, if you like dear”—which I’m sure she had said to all the canvassers. She added that her husband always voted Labour. I changed the “doubtful” to Labour, and went on. At about ten that night I went back, with all the cards but three changed to Labour, and handed them in to Comrade Bill. I said: “We have some pretty optimistic canvassers.” He flicked the cards over, without comment, replaced them in their boxes, and remarked loudly for the benefit of other canvassers coming in: “There’s real support for our policy, we’ll get our candidate in yet.” I canvassed three afternoons in all, the other two not “doubtfuls” but going into houses for the first time. Found two C.P. voters, both
Party members, the rest all Labour. Five lonely women going mad quietly by themselves, in spite of husband and children or rather because of them. The quality they all had: self-doubt. A guilt because they were not happy. The phrase they all used: “There must be something wrong with me.” Back in the campaign H.Q. I mentioned these women to the woman in charge for the afternoon. She said: “Yes, whenever I go canvassing, I get the heeby-jeebies. This country’s full of women going mad all by themselves.” A pause, then she added, with a slight aggressiveness, the other side of the self-doubt, the guilt shown by the women I’d talked to: “Well, I used to be the same until I joined the Party and got myself a purpose in life.” I’ve been thinking about this—the truth is, these women interest me much more than the election campaign. Election Day: Labour in, reduced majority. Communist candidate loses deposit. Joke.(In campaign H.Q. Maker of joke, Comrade Bill.) “If we’d got another two thousand votes, the Labour majority would have been on a knife-edge. Every cloud has a silver lining.”

  Jean Barker. Wife of minor Party official. Aged thirty-four. Small, dark, plump. Rather plain. Husband patronises her. She wears, permanently, a look of strained, enquiring good-nature. Comes around collecting Party dues. A born talker, never stops talking, but the most interesting kind of talker there is, she never knows what she is going to say until it is out of her mouth, so that she is continually blushing, catching herself up short, explaining just what it is she has meant, or laughing nervously. Or she stops with a puzzled frown in the middle of a sentence, as if to say: “Surely I don’t think that?” So while she talks she has the appearance of someone listening. She has started a novel, says she hasn’t got time to finish it. I have not yet met one Party member, anywhere, who has not written, half-written, or is planning to write a novel, short stories, or a play. I find this an extraordinary fact, though I don’t understand it. Because of her verbal incontinence, which shocks people, or makes them laugh, she is developing the personality of a clown, or a licensed humourist. She has no sense of humour at all. But when she hears some remark she makes pretend that surprises her, she knows from experience that people will laugh, or be upset, so she laughs herself, in a puzzled nervous way, then hurries on. She has three children. She and her husband very ambitious for them, goad them through school, to get scholarships. Children carefully educated in the Party “line,” conditions in Russia, etc. They have the defensive closed-in look with strangers of people knowing themselves to be in a minority. With communists, they tend to show off their Party know-how, while their parents look on, proud.