The Golden Notebook (17 page)

form, asking for their history as members, and there was a section asking them to detail their 'doubts and confusions.' Molly said she had begun to write this, expecting to write a few sentences, had found herself writing 'a whole thesis-dozens of bloody pages.' She seemed upset with herself. 'What is it I want-a confessional? Anyway, since I've written it, I'm going to send it in.' I told her she was mad. I said: 'Supposing the British Communist Party ever gets into power, that document will be in the files, and if they want evidence to hang you, they've got it-thousands of times over.' She gave me her small, almost sour smile-the smile she uses when I say things like this. Molly is not an innocent communist. She said: 'You're very cynical.' I said: 'You know it's the truth. Or could be.' She said: 'If you think in that way, why are you talking of joining the Party?' I said: 'Why do you stay in it, when you think in that way too?' She smiled again, the sourness gone, ironically, and nodded. Sat a while, thinking and smoking. 'It's all very odd, Anna, isn't it?' And in the morning she said: 'I took your advice, I tore it up.' On the same day I had a telephone call from Comrade John saying that he had heard I was joining the Party, and that 'Comrade Bill'-responsible for culture-would like to interview me. 'You don't have to see him of course, if you don't feel like it,' said John hastily, 'but he said he would be interested to meet the first intellectual prepared to join the Party since the cold war started.' The sardonic quality of this appealed to me and I said I'd see Comrade Bill. This although I had not, in fact, finally decided to join. One reason not to, that I hate joining anything, which seems to me contemptible. The second reason, that my attitudes towards communism are such that I won't be able to say anything I believe to be true to any comrade I know, is surely decisive? It seems not however, for in spite of the fact that I've been telling myself for months I couldn't possibly join an organisation that seems to me dishonest, I've caught myself over and over again on the verge of the decision to join. And always at the same moments-there are two of them. The first, whenever I meet, for some reason, writers, publishers, etc.- the literary world. It is a world so prissy, maiden-auntish; so class-bound; or if it's the commercial side, so blatant, that any contact with it sets me thinking of joining the Party. The other moment is when I see Molly, just rushing off to organise something, full of life and enthusiasm, or when I come up the stairs, and I hear voices from the kitchen-I go in. The atmosphere of friendliness, of people working for a common end. But that's not enough. I'll see their Comrade Bill tomorrow and tell him that I'm by temperament 'A fellow traveller,' and I'll stay outside. The next day. Interview at King Street, a warren of little offices behind a facade of iron-protected glass. Had not really noticed the place before though I've been past it often enough. The protected glass gave me two feelings-one of fear; the world of violence. The other, a feeling of protectiveness-the need to protect an organisation that people throw stones at. I went up the narrow stairs thinking of the first feeling: how many people have joined the British C. P. because, in England, it is difficult to remember the realities of power, of violence; the C. P. represents to them the realities of naked power that are cloaked in England itself? Comrade Bill turned out to be a very young man, Jewish, spectacled, intelligent, working-class. His attitude towards me brisk and wary, his voice cool, brisk, tinged with contempt. I was interested that, at the contempt, which he was not aware he was showing, I felt in myself the beginnings of a need to apologise, almost a need to stammer. Interview very efficient; he had been told I was ready to join, and although I went to tell him I would not, I found myself accepting the situation. I felt (probably because of his attitude of contempt), well, he's right, they're getting on with the job, and I sit around dithering with my conscience. (Though, of course, I don't think he's right.) Before I left, he remarked, out of the blue, 'In five years' time, I suppose you'll be writing articles in the capitalist press exposing us as monsters, just like all the rest.' He meant, of course, by 'all the rest'-intellectuals. Because of the myth in the Party that it's the intellectuals who drift in and out, when the truth is the turnover is the same in all the classes and groups. I was angry. I was also, and that disarmed me, hurt. I said to him: 'It's lucky that I'm an old hand. If I were a raw recruit I might be disillusioned by your attitude.' He gave me a long, cool, shrewd look which said: Well, of course I wouldn't have made that remark if you hadn't been an old hand. This both pleased me-being back in the fold, so to speak, already entitled to the elaborate ironies and complicities of the initiated; and made me suddenly exhausted. I'd forgotten of course, having been out of the atmosphere so long, the tight, defensive, sarcastic atmosphere of the inner circles. But at the moments when I've wanted to join it's been with a full understanding of the nature of the inner circles. All the communists I know-that is, the ones of any intelligence, have the same attitude towards 'the centre'-that the Party has been saddled with a group of dead bureaucrats who run it, and that the real work gets done in spite of the centre. Comrade John's remark for instance, when I first told him I might join: 'You're mad. They hate and despise writers who join the Party. They only respect those who don't.' They' being the centre. It was a joke of course, but fairly typical. On the underground, read the evening newspaper. Attack on Soviet Union. What they said about it seemed to me true enough, but the tone-malicious, gloating, triumphant, sickened me, and I felt glad I had joined the Party. Came home to find Molly. She was out, and I spent some hours despondent, wondering why I had joined. She came in and I told her, and said: 'The funny thing is I was going to say I wouldn't join but I did.' She gave her small sourish smile (and this smile is only for politics, never for anything else, there is nothing sour in her nature), 'I joined in spite of myself too.' She had never given any hint of this before, was always such a loyalist, that I must have looked surprised. She. said: 'Well now you're in, I'll tell you.' Meaning that to an outsider the truth could not be told. 'I've been around Party circles so long that...' But even now she couldn't say straight out 'that I knew too much to want to join.' She smiled, or grimaced instead. 'I began working in the Peace thing, because I believed in it. All the rest were members. One day that bitch Ellen asked me why I wasn't a member. I was flippant about it-a mistake, she was angry. A couple of days later she told me there was a rumour I was an agent, because I wasn't a member. I suppose she started the rumour. The funny thing is, obviously if I was an agent I'd have joined-but I was so upset, I went off and signed on the dotted line...' She sat smoking and looking unhappy. Then said again: 'All very odd, isn't it?' And went off to bed.

5th Feb., 1950

It's as I foresaw, the only discussions I have about politics where I say what I think is with people who have been in the Party and have now left. Their attitude towards me frankly tolerant-a minor aberration, that I joined.

19th August, 1951

Had lunch with John, the first time since I joined the Party. Began talking as I do with my ex-party friends, frank acknowledgement of what is going on in Soviet Union. John went into automatic defence of the Soviet Union, very irritating. Yet this evening had dinner with Joyce, New Statesman circles, and she started to attack Soviet Union. Instantly I found myself doing the automatic-defence-of-Soviet-Union act, which I can't stand when other people do it. She went on; I went on. For her, she was in the presence of a communist so she started on certain clichés. I returned them. Twice tried to break the thing, start on a different level, failed-the atmosphere prickling with hostility. This evening Michael dropped in. I told him about this incident with Joyce. Remarked that although she was an old friend, we probably wouldn't meet again. Although I had changed my mental attitudes about nothing, the fact I had become a Party member, made me, for her, an embodiment of something she had to have certain attitudes towards. And I responded in kind. At which Michael said: 'Well, what did you expect?' He was speaking in his role of East European exile, ex-revolutionary, toughened by real political experience, to me in my role as 'political innocent.' And I replied in that role, producing all sorts of liberal inanities. Fascinating-the roles we play, the way we play parts.

15th Sept., 1951

The case of Jack Briggs. Journalist on Times. Left it at outbreak of war. At that time, unpolitical. Worked during the war for British intelligence. During this time influenced by communists he met, moved steadily to the left. After the war refused several highly-paid jobs on the conservative newspapers, worked for low salary on left paper. Or-leftish; for when he wanted to write an article on China, that pillar of the left, Rex, put him in a position where he had to resign. No money. At this point, regarded as a communist in the newspaper world, and therefore unemployable, his name comes up in the Hungarian Trial, as British agent conspiring to overthrow communism. Met him by accident, he was desperately depressed-a whispering campaign around the Party and near-party circles, that he was and had been 'A capitalist spy.' Treated with suspicion by his friends. A meeting of the writers' group. We discussed this, decided to approach Bill, to put an end to this revolting campaign. John and I saw Bill, said it was obviously untrue Jack Briggs could ever be an agent, demanded he should do something. Bill affable, pleasant. Said he would 'make enquiries,' let us know. We let the 'enquiries' pass; knowing this meant a discussion higher up the Party. No word from Bill. Weeks passed. Usual technique of Party officials-let things slide, in moments of difficulty. We went to see Bill again. Extremely affable. Said he could do nothing. Why not? 'Well in matters of this case when there might be doubt...' John and I angry, demanded of Bill if he, personally, thought it was conceivable Jack could ever have been an agent. Bill hesitated, began on a long, manifestly insincere rationalisation, about how it was possible that anyone could be an agent 'including me.' With a bright, friendly smile. John and I left, depressed, angry-and with ourselves. We made a point of seeing Jack Briggs personally, and insisting that others did, but the rumours and spiteful gossip continue. Jack Briggs in acute depression, and also completely isolated, from right and left. To add to the irony, three months after his row with Rex about the article on China, which Rex said was 'communist in tone,' the respectable papers began publishing articles in the same tone, whereupon Rex, the brave man, found it the right time to publish an article on China. He invited Jack Briggs to write it. Jack, in an inverted, bitter mood, would not. 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 Mc Carthyism.) 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 frame-ups 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 1 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 newlyestablished 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 her 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