A Ripple From the Storm
Now, after all those years, Mrs Van remembered the image that had filled the girl’s mind through those long hours while she lay awake by a man who also lay awake, waiting for her to turn to him. The image was of something deep, soft, dark and vulnerable, and of a very sharp sword stabbing into it, again and again. She had not moved, and not let her arm relax into contact with her husband’s, and so the sword had not stabbed into her, never again, the soft dark painful place which she felt to be somewhere under her heart had remained untouched. She had remained herself.
For the flash of an instant Mrs Van felt the pain of that night, so that the small bright harmless picture was radiant with a real feeling. Mrs Van abruptly turned away from Martha. She said gruffly: ‘My dear, I know all these things are very difficult, they are all very difficult …’ Her voice shook, and she said hastily: ‘My dear, I hope you will be very happy.’ This conventional remark released Martha, who turned to her and thanked her, smiling, laying the roses down on the table.
Mrs Van said suddenly: ‘Your mother came to see me tonight.’
‘I didn’t know you knew her.’
‘I think you should have told her you were getting married.’
Martha’s eyebrows went up, as if to say: And what’s it got to do with you?
Mrs Van, regretting she had mentioned Mrs Quest, said with severity: ‘All the same, you should have told her.’
Martha exclaimed: ‘Do you imagine I wanted to make all this bloody farce even worse?’
Mrs Van positively started. Then she walked out of the kitchen with a gesture that repudiated Martha completely.
The main room was silent and held a new element. This was Mrs Quest, who had just entered, and had stopped inside the door, whatever she had been going to say swallowed by the surprise of seeing so many people. She could not see Martha, and as her daughter came into view behind Mrs Van, she said in a friendly and even sprightly voice: ‘Oh, so there you are.’
Mrs Quest, who had vowed never to speak to her daughter again, had in the interval since she had seen Mrs Van whipped herself up into a mood of violent anger. All kinds of scenes of reproach, recrimination and reconciliation had been passing through her mind. In the midst of her anger, Mr Roberts, in pursuit of Mrs Van, had approached her to find out where Martha could be found, and dropped the information that Martha had that afternoon been ‘inciting the blacks to revolution’. Martha said helplessly: ‘Well, mother?’ – and began the business of introduction. But she gave it up.
Mrs Quest demanded: ‘Where’s my son-in-law?’ Five minutes before she had been pursuing a fantasy where she announced to him that with the co-operation of the authorities she would have him deported from the Colony, but now she sounded no more than humorously grieved.
Anton extricated himself from the mess of people on the bed, held out his hand, and found that he was being kissed by an elderly British matron on whom he had never set eyes before, gave her a stiff and awkward nod, said he was very pleased to make her acquaintance, and then, feeling that more was being asked of him, bent to give her a courtly kiss on the hand. ‘Gnädige Frau!’ he murmured.
Mrs Quest blushed and cried out to Martha that if she were having a party to celebrate the wedding the least she could do was to invite her father, who would be very hurt indeed when he heard.
Martha was still helpless in the middle of the room. She was looking with apprehension at a wad of paper in Mrs Quest’s hand. Everyone was watching the scene, most with half-suppressed grins on their faces. Mrs Van was stem with disapproval.
‘But it isn’t a party, it’s a meeting,’ Martha said, her voice harsh with humour. She was feeling as if farce, the spirit of total incongruity that seemed to lie in wait for her behind everything she did, had finally overwhelmed her.
‘A meeting,’ cried Mrs Quest. This revived her anger. Looking around for means to express it, her eyes discovered the papers in her hands. These she thrust energetically into the hands of the people closest to her. In a moment, the heads of everyone in the room were bent over cuttings from the Zambesia News.
Mrs Quest was in the habit of cutting from the News all the letters signed White Settler, Old Hand, or Fair Play, most of which began: ‘After forty years of handling the native, etc’
Jack Dobie read out aloud, very seriously, his face expressing the queerest mixture of amusement and anger: ‘It is my opinion that the cheek and the insolence of the Kaffirs is largely due to the propaganda of certain liberals in this town, and Britain’s greatest mistake is her belief in equality: let charity begin at home, and let her take her hands off our natives.’
He handed the cutting back to Mrs Quest, with a polite: ‘Thanks.’
Mrs Quest now handed the cutting to Martha: ‘You see,’ she said, ‘the Kaffirs are getting out of hand.’ But she was smiling. Her anger, contained in the bits of newspaper, was now distributed around the room, and she wanted to be invited to join the party. She was looking at the bottles of wine on the floor. Martha took the cutting, and poured her mother out a glass of wine. But there was nowhere for her to sit down.
Besides, the meeting, which had been due to start at eight, was now two hours delayed. ‘The group’ were handing bits of paper from hand to hand with delighted and satirical smiles.
Mrs Van, whose instinct for saving a situation was always stronger than any other, said: ‘Those cuttings will be very useful for my collection.’ She had a file headed: ‘White settler imbecilities’, filled with articles and letters of a similar tone, which she sent to newspapers and magazines overseas as evidence of the deplorable state of affairs in Zambesia.
Mrs Quest, delighted to find an ally in a woman she had heard of as Kaffir-lover, delighted that this Town Councillor, by repute so dangerous, was in fact sound, now grasped Mrs Van by the hand and said: ‘My dear, I’m so pleased you agree with me. It is really awful, isn’t it, these agitators should all be shot.’ She kept her hand on Mrs Van’s arm while she remarked generally around the room: ‘You see, it is really very dangerous what you are doing. I’ve always said so.’
Mrs Van said: ‘I’m going back home now. Perhaps you’d like a lift?’
Mrs Quest, uncertain what to do with her glass of wine, looked about for a place to set it down, saw nothing but bare boards, hastily drank it, said: ‘Thank you, my dear! And I would like to discuss this native problem with you – I think responsible people like ourselves ought to get together and form some vigilantes committees, because the Government doesn’t do anything, and we must protect ourselves.’
‘That would be a very good idea,’ said Mrs Van. She turned and said in a low voice to Martha, with an emphatic and rather angry nod: ‘If things are done in a regular manner, these situations need not arise!’
Martha said: ‘Regular? What’s regular about anything that happens? Don’t you see that it’s all a farce, everything …’ She turned away from Mrs Van and returned to her place on the bed.
Mrs Van, shrugging crossly, signalled to her allies Jack and Johnny, who followed her to the door, grinning with delight at the situation. There Mrs Quest remembered Martha, and said: ‘Go to bed early, you naughty girl, and get some sleep.’ She remembered her daughter had just got married, frowned, said hastily that she would see her in a few days, smiled at the company and went out.
People showed signs of dissolving into laughter, but Martha looked gloomy and strained, and nothing happened, until Athen inquired seriously: ‘I did not understand that woman, Comrade Matty. Is she your mother?’
Martha shrugged.
‘And what did she want you to do with these reactionary letters in the newspapers?’
‘We should read them and acquire a correct outlook on life.’
‘I do not understand you, Comrade Matty.’ Martha again shrugged. The Greek examined her for a moment, in silent severity, and then, speaking to her direct, as if they were alone, said: ‘I feel I should say something. There is a kind of laughter that is very bad. It is a mocking at the truth
.’
‘Well, yes, I dare say.’
At this Maisie said: ‘I think Matty is upset, and I don’t blame her. I don’t think we ought to have a meeting when Matty and Anton haven’t even arranged their room yet.’
But Tommy, who had been waiting impatiently for some time, unable to understand the undercurrents, unhappy and disapproving of this marriage which he found even more irregular than Maisie’s and Andrew’s, burst out: ‘No, comrades, we must discuss something, I have to get my mind clear about something.’
So the meeting started, on the burst of Tommy’s furious demand for clarity, and for the first time without chairman, secretary, or any sort of formality.
‘The point is this. As I see it there is a fight blowing up in the Labour Party – I mean the Social Democratic Party – and I want to say something else too, all these names, all these names all the time, meaning different things all the time, Social Democratic used to mean revolutionary as far as I can see, and now they use it to be respectable …’ He banged his fists on the top of his head. ‘But that isn’t the point. It’s the African Branch that bothers me. As I see it, an African Branch is reactionary. It’s democratic to have natives, I mean Africans, as members of the Labour Party just like everyone else, going to meetings as individuals. An African Branch is segregation. Well, isn’t it? But Mrs Van and Johnny and Jack are good types, not colour-minded at all, and they support an African Branch and all the reactionaries support what is democratic. Well, I don’t get it. I simply don’t get any of it.’
Athen the Greek directed his firm, unsmiling sympathetic face towards Tommy and said: ‘That’s a good boy, comrade, you must always speak up for what you feel.’
Piet du Preez said with comic and clowning despair: ‘We should of course get our line straight about this little point. We should always have our line straight.’
Anton recovered himself from his lapse into irresponsibility and personal feelings, and sat up, swung his legs down to the floor, and said: ‘Comrades, it seems clear that we must analyse the situation.’
The meeting broke up at four next morning, and everyone went to sleep where they were, on the floor, or in loose bundles of tired flesh on the two beds. They were woken at six again by Maisie’s house-boy, who regarded his employers as friends and allies. He had brought them that day’s copy of the News, which had big black headlines: Agitators Inciting Africans to Revolt.
‘Baas, bass,’ he called out through the half-open door to Andrew, nervously averting his eyes from the dishevelled bodies all over the room. ‘Baas, baas! It’s the newspaper. It is saying bad things about you, baas. Oh it is wicked. It is saying wicked things.’
Part Four
The origin of states gets lost in a myth in which one may believe but one may not discuss.
KARL MARX
Chapter One
The walls and pillars of the du Preez’ veranda, which had been absorbing the sun all day, still quivered off heat at eight in the evening. The members of the group, who had thought it might be cooler out in the quiet heavy-lying hot night air, changed their minds and returned to the big heatsodden living-room. It was only half the group. Last night Anton had said: ‘Group meeting tomorrow, eight o’clock.’
There were present Anton, Marjorie, Andrew and Marie.
‘Where’s Piet?’ Anton demanded before he had so much as sat down. He was angry, but with a new kind of stiff anger, as if with each new infringement of discipline he were inwardly nodding and saying: Yes, it was only to be expected.
Marie said: ‘He’s at the union meeting. And Tommy’s with him.’ It was now assumed that trade union and labour meetings came before group meetings; or rather, it was not so much an assumption, which would have needed decisions on a fundamental policy, as a fact. Ever since ‘the meeting in the Location’ the group had been shaken, pressured, squeezed this way and that because of the repercussions from that great event. In Piet’s trade union a battle raged. Piet had given a lecture on trade unionism to the Kaffirs, and this raised principles whose discussion brought men to the union meetings who normally never went near them.
In the living-room easy chairs were set in a circle. Stacks of literature on Russia stood everywhere among the children’s toys. The room had a look of easy family good-humour. Marie said: ‘We’ll have a spot of the drop that cheers – we might as well while we’re waiting.’
Anton said: This is a communist group meeting.’
Andrew said: ‘I’ll have a beer.’ Marjorie said: ‘Me too.’ Children defying teacher. Anton said nothing. He held his notes on his knees ready for his lecture, which was to be on the course of the war on the Eastern Front.
Marie brought in beer bottles, frosted with cold. The heat sagged through the room and the thunder rolled slowly overhead.
‘I’ve a notion we’ll have to wait some time,’ said Andrew. ‘Matty and Colin have gone to Jack Dobie’s lecture on India.’
‘They had no right to.’
‘Jack came to our place and asked Colin to come – Colin’s been studying up on India. And Matty was there and she said she would go with Colin.’
At the sound of his wife’s name Anton settled back into pale stoicism.
‘Oh, go on, have a beer, man,’ said Marie, and thrust a glass into Anton’s hand. He set the glass down without looking at it and asked: ‘And is Athen on duty? If not, why is he not here?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ said Andrew. ‘And Maisie’s not here because she’s not feeling so good.’ Anton never inquired after Maisie. It was his way of saying that he did not count her as a group member. Andrew always insisted on accounting for her. The tension between the two men had become acute.
Marie said: ‘For crying out aloud we’ll start slitting each other’s throats because it’s hot in a minute.’
She sat down yawning and spreading her legs.
‘Perhaps we should take a decision to have cocktails with our group meetings,’ said Anton with bitterness. It was true that the scene might have been set for a sundowner party.
‘Oh come off it,’ said Andrew. ‘Come off it. If things have gone wrong tonight, we can put them right next time.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Anton, ‘here we sit, drinking beer, and meanwhile our comrades are dying for us.’
He picked up a newspaper which had been lying on the floor. Its headlines were: German Front Cracking. General Frost Beats German High Command. German Armies Perishing of Cold.
All that winter the Russian armies, the German armies had been struggling together, millions of men struggling and dying, locked in cold and snow, locked together over hundreds of miles of front that stretched over wind-swept, blizzard-torn, frost-bitten plains, Northern plains tilted away from the sun into darkness and ice. Headlines, reports from the fronts, newsreels, gave messages of heroism and misery, but the voices came out of a terrible cold, like distant shouts from people struggling through a snowstorm.
Marjorie looked down at the big black print on the newspaper, saying Cold, Snow, Blizzard, Death and remarked: ‘We could do with a bit of that cold here.’ Her face was beaded with sweat, and she moved her big body continually into easier positions. She was trying to sound humorous.
Anton said: ‘Comrade Marjorie, is that your idea of a joke?’ Ever since her marriage, he had spoken to her as if he disliked her, and she met it with her own brand of dry tolerance. Now she frankly and loudly sighed, and Marie ostentatiously sighed with her.
Andrew said quickly: ‘Why don’t you give your lecture to us, Comrade Anton. After all, it’s better than wasting it.’
Anton raised his cold eyes towards him, lowered them to examine his watch, gathered his notes and began his lecture. It was analysis of this particular stage of the war, with emphasis on the reasons why there was no second front. Normally he spoke for half an hour. Tonight he finished it in ten minutes,
Marjorie said: ‘All the same, it’s like Napoleon, all those masses of men dying in the cold.’
Anton said
: ‘Comrade Marjorie, historical parallels are sometimes useful, but don’t you feel this one is rather farfetched?’
Marjorie said tiredly: ‘No, why? Of course, this is socialism fighting for its life. But men are still dying of cold.’
‘Poor buggers,’ said Marie, splashing beer into her glass and spreading her legs out wider in front of her. ‘Poor bloody bastards. I wish the spring would come for their sake.’
‘You are, I presume, referring to the Red Army?’ asked Anton.
‘I was referring to the Germans as well.’
‘Comrade Ehrenburg has I think made the line quite clear. The Germans have proved themselves barbarians and fascists and must be considered as such. Put yourself into the place of the Russians. ‘
Marie said: ‘If the Russians hate the guts of all the Germans, then it’s natural. But speaking for myself, there are times when Comrade Ehrenburg makes me sick. I don’t see what all that nationalist drum-beating has got to do with socialism, and that’s a fact.’ She said this with a deliberate challenge, as if she had planned to say it for some time. She added, ‘And I keep thinking of those German boys, poor sods, fascists or no fascists, they’re human beings.’
Anton got to his feet. Marie stayed where she was, frankly played out, frankly indifferent. Her face was scarlet with the heat, and her arms and legs were slowly mottling with some kind of heat rash. The thunder was rolling overhead.
‘Wish to God it’d rain,’ said Andrew, in the bluff, let’shave-no-trouble voice which meant he was back in command of himself. He gave Anton a clout across the shoulders and said: ‘Do let up, there’s a good chap. We can all get our political lines straight when it starts to rain.’