Doris Lessing - The Memoirs of a Survivor

She did sit with her yellow animal in the mornings, she fed him his meat substitutes and his vegetables, she fondled him and talked to him, she took him at night into her little room where he lay by her bed as she slept. She loved him, there was no doubt of that, as much as ever she had done. But she was not able to include him into her real life on the pavement.

One early evening, she came in at the time when the life outside was at its most lively, its noisiest — that is, just as the lights were beginning to appear at their different heights in the darkening air. She came in, and with a look of trepidation which she was trying to hide from me, she said to Hugo: 'Come on, come with me and be introduced.'

She had forgotten her earlier experiment? No, of course not; but it seemed to her that things could have changed. She was now well-known out there — more, she must feel herself to be a founder-member of this particular tribe: she had helped to form it.

He did not want to go. Oh, no, he very much did not want to go with her. He was laying the responsibility for what might happen on her in the way he stood up, signifying his willingness, or at least his agreement, to go with her.

She led the way out, and he followed. She had not put him on his heavy chain. She was, in leaving her animal unprotected, making her pack responsible for their behaviour.

I watched the young girl, slender and vulnerable even in her thick trousers, her boots, her jacket, her scarves, cross the road, with her beast following soberly after her. She was afraid, that was obvious, as she stood on the edge of one of the bright chattering noisy groups which always seemed lit with an inner violence of excitement or of readiness for excitement. She kept her hand down on the beast's head, for reassurance. People turned and saw her, saw Hugo. Both the girl and the animal had their backs to me; I was able to see the throng of faces as Emily and Hugo saw them. I did not like what I saw… if I had been out there I would have wanted to run, to get away… But she stuck it out for a time. Her hand always kept down, close to Hugo's head, fondling his ears, patting him, soothing, she moved quietly among the clans, determined to make her test, to sound out her position with them. She stayed out with him as dusk came down and the lively crowds were absorbed into a mingle of light and dark, where sound — a laugh, a raised voice, the clink of a bottle — was heightened, and went travelling out in every direction to the now invisible watchers at their windows, carrying messages of excitement or alarm.

When she brought him in she seemed tired. She was saddened. She was much closer to the commonplace level where I, as one of the elderly, lived. Her eyes saw me, as she sat eating her bean salad, her little hunk of bread, seemed really to see the room we sat in. As for me, I was full of apprehension: I believed her sadness was because she had decided her Hugo could not safely travel with the tribe — I thought her mad even to have considered it — and that she had decided to leave with them, to jettison him.

After the meal she sat for a long time at the window. She gazed at the scene she was usually a part of. The animal sat, not beside her, but quietly in a corner. You could believe he was weeping, or would, if he knew how. He sorrowed inwardly. His lids lowered themselves as crises of pain gripped him, and he would give a great shiver.

When Emily went to bed she had to call him several times, and he went at last, slowly, with a quiet dignified padding. But he was in inner isolation from her: he was protecting himself.

Next morning she offered to go out and forage for supplies. She had not done this for some time, and again I felt this was sort of token apology because she meant to leave.

We two sat on quietly in the long room, where the sunlight had left because it was already midday. I was at one side of it, and Hugo lay stretched, head on paws, along the outer wall of the room where he could not be seen from the windows above him.

We heard footsteps outside which stopped, then became stealthy. We heard voices that had been loud, suddenly soft.

A young girl's voice? — no, a boy's; but it was hard to tell. Two heads appeared at the window, trying to see in the comparative dusk of the room: the light was brilliant outside.

'It's here,' said one of the Mehta boys from upstairs.

'I've seen him at the window,' said a black youth. I had observed him often with the others on the pavement, a slim, lithe, likeable boy. A third head appeared between the other two: a white girl, from one of the blocks of flats.

'Stewed dog,' she said daintily, 'well I'm not going to eat it.'

'Oh go on,' said the black boy, 'I've seen what you eat.'

I heard a rattling sound; it was Hugo. He was trembling, and his claws were rattling on the floorboards.

Then the girl saw me sitting there, recognised me, and put on the bright uncaring grin the pack allowed outsiders.

'Oh,' she said, 'We thought…'

'No,' I said. 'I am living here. I haven't left.'

The three faces briefly turned towards each other, brown, white, black, as they put on for each other's benefit we've made a mess of it grimaces. They faded outwards, leaving the window empty.

There was a soft moaning from Hugo.

'It's all right,' I said. 'They've gone.'

The rattling sound increased. Then the animal heaved himself up and crept away, with an attempt at dignity, towards the door into the open kitchen, which was the farthest he could go from the dangerous window. He did not want me to observe his loss of self-possession. He was ashamed of having lost it. The moaning I had heard was as much shame as because he was afraid.

When Emily came in, a good girl, daughter-of-the-house, it was evening. She was tired, had had to visit many places to find supplies. But she was pleased with herself. The rations at that time were minimal, because of the winter, just finished: swedes, potatoes, cabbage, onions. That was about it. But she had managed to find a few eggs, a little fish, and even — a prize — a strongly scented, unshrivelled lemon. I told her, when she had finished showing off her booty, what had happened. At once her good spirits went. She sat quiet, head lowered, eyes concealed from me by the thick, white, heavily-lashed lids. Then, without looking at me, turning herself from me, she went to find her Hugo, to comfort him.

And then a little later, out she went to the pavement and stayed there until very late.

I remember how I sat on and on in the dark. I was putting off the moment of lighting the candles, thinking that the soft square of light which was how my window looked from across the street, would remind the cannibals out there of Hugo. Who was back in the place along the wall, where he could not easily be seen. He was as still as if asleep, but his eyes were open. When I did light the candles he did not move or even blink.

Looking back I see myself sitting in the long room with its comfortable old furniture, with Emily's things in the little space she allotted for them, and the yellow beast lying quietly, suffering. And there for backdrop was the ambiguous wall, which could so easily dissolve, dissolving, too, all this extraneous life, and the anxieties and pressures of the time — creating, of course, its own. Shadowily present, there it stood, its pattern of fruits and leaves and flowers obliterated by the dim light. That is how I see it, see us, that time: the long room, dimly fit, with me and Hugo there, thinking of Emily away across the street among crowds that shifted and ebbed and thinned and left — and behind us that other indefinite region, shifting and melting and changing, where walls and doors and rooms and gardens and people continually recreated themselves, like clouds.