Doris Lessing - The Memoirs of a Survivor

One afternoon, about an hour before the light went, Emily was by the window looking out, and she exclaimed: 'Oh no, no, no!' I joined her, and saw Gerald out there on the deep clean snow, high under stark branches. He wore his brave coat, but it was open, as if he did not care about the dreadful cold; he had nothing on his head, and he was moving about as if he were quite alone in the city and no one could see him. He was revisiting the scenes — so very recent, after all — of his triumphs, when he was lord of the pavement, chieftain of the gathering tribes? He looked about him at the exquisite crisp snow, up at the sky where low clouds were bringing dark inwards from the west, at the black trees touched up with white; he stood for minutes at a time, quite passive, staring, in thought or in abstraction. And Emily watched, and I could feel the fever of her anxiety rising. By now the three of us were there, watching Gerald; and of course other people were at their windows watching too. He had no weapons. His ungloved hands were in his pockets, or hung at his sides. He looked quite indifferent, had disarmed himself and did not care.

Then a small object hurtled past him, like a speeding bird. He gave a rapid indifferent glance at the building and stayed where he was. There followed a small shower of stones: from the windows above us catapults were being trained on him, perhaps worse than catapults. A stone hit his shoulder: it might have hit his face, or even an eye. Now he deliberately turned and faced the building, and we saw he was presenting himself as a target. He let his hands fall loose at his sides, and he stood quietly there, not smiling, but unworried, unalarmed, waiting, his eyes steadily on something or somebody in windows probably a story up from us.

'Oh no,' said Emily again; and in a moment she had pulled around her shoulders a shawl, like a peasant woman, and she was out of the flat and I saw her running across the street. Hugo's breath was coming in anxious little whines, and his nose was misting the windowpane. I put my hand on his neck and he quieted a little. Emily had slid her arm under Gerald's, and was talking to him, coaxing him off that pavement and across the road towards us. There was a fusillade of stones, bits of metal, offal, rubbish. Blood appeared on Gerald's temple, and a stone, landing in Emily's middle, caused her to stagger back. Gerald, brought to life by the danger to her, now sheltered her with his arm, and he was bringing her in to the building. Above I could hear the children shouting and calling out, and their chant: 'I am the king of the castle…' The stamping and chanting went on above us, as Gerald and Emily arrived in the room where Hugo and I waited for them. Gerald was white and there was a deep gash on his forehead, which Emily bathed and fussed over. And he made her look to see if the stone had hurt her much: there Was a bruise, no worse.

Emily made him sit by the fire, and sat by him, and rubbed his hands between hers.

He was very low, depressed. 'But they are just little kids,' he said again, looking at Emily, at me, at Hugo. 'That's all they are.' His face was all incredulity and pain: I don't know what it was in Gerald that could not — could not even now — bear what those children had become. I do know that it was deep in him, fundamental; and to give them up was to abandon — so he felt — the best part of himself.

'Do you know something, Em? — the little one, Denis, he's four years old, yes, he is. Do you know him, do you know the one I mean? He was down here with a me a few days back — the little one, with the cheeky face.'

'Yes, I do remember, but Gerald, you do have to accept…'

'Four ,' he persisted, 'four. That's all. I worked it out from something he said. He was born the year the first lot of travellers came through this area. Yet he goes out with the others, he is as tough as the others. Did you know he was on that job — you know, the one that night?'

'A murder?' I asked, since Emily did not say anything, but went on rubbing his cold hands.

'Yes, well — but it was murder, I suppose. He was there. When I came back that night, I lost my temper, I was as sick as I could be. I said to them… and then one of them said that Denis had done it, he was the first to let go with what he'd got — a stone, I think. He was the first, and then after him, the others — four years old. And when I came back into the flat, do you know, the dead man was there, and they were all… and Denis was there, as large as life among them, taking his part — it's not their fault, how can it be their fault? How can you blame a kid of four?'

'No one is blaming them,' said Emily softly. Her eyes were bright, and her face was pale, and she was sitting by Gerald as if standing guard, protecting him, as if she had rescued him and now would not let go.

'No, but if no one saves them either, then that's the same as blaming them, isn't it? Isn't it?' he appealed to me;

We sat on through the long night, waiting. Of course we were expecting an attack, a visit, an embassy — something. Above us, in the great empty building there was no sound. And all that following day it snowed, and was dark and cold. We sat and waited, and nothing happened.

I knew that Emily was expecting Gerald to visit the top part of the building, to find out what went on. She was meaning to dissuade him. But he did not go; and all he said was, after some days: 'Well, perhaps they've moved somewhere else.'

'And the animals?' said Emily, fierce, thinking of those poor beasts up there.

He raised his head and looked at her and gave that short laugh which means someone has made an end to something in thought: a decision, but it is a decision beset with irony, or with conflict. 'If I go up there, well, I might be pulled back in again — and that's no good. And as for the animals, they have to take their chance like everyone else — there are other people up there still.'

And so we went on quietly, the four of us.

It all came to an end, but I can't say when it was after Gerald joined us. We had been there, waiting for winter to end, and we knew it was a long time, but not as long as our weary senses told us: an interminable time, but still not longer than a winter. Then, one morning, a weak yellow stain lay on the wall, and there, brought to life, was the hidden pattern. My feeling that this was what we had been waiting for was so strong that I called to the others, who were still asleep: 'Emily — Emily! Gerald and Emily, come quickly. Hugo, where are you?'

From her room padded that obdurate beast, Hugo, and behind him came Gerald and Emily, bundled in their furs, yawning, disheveled, not surprised, but looking their enquiry. Hugo was not surprised, not he: he stood, all alert and vivified beside the wall, looking into it as if at last what he wanted and needed and knew would happen was here, and he was ready for it.

Emily took Gerald by the hand, and with Hugo walked through the screen of the forest into… and now it is hard to say exactly what happened. We were in that place which might present us with anything — rooms furnished this way or that and spanning the tastes and customs of millenia; walls broken, falling, growing again; a house roof like a forest floor sprouting grasses and birds' nests; rooms smashed, littered, robbed; a bright green lawn under thunderous and glaring clouds and on the lawn a giant black egg of pockmarked iron, but polished and glassy around which, and reflected in the black shine, stood Emily, Hugo, Gerald, her officer father, her large laughing gallant mother, and little Denis, the four-year-old criminal clinging to Gerald's hand, clutching it and looking up into his face, smiling — there they stood, looking at this iron egg until, broken by the force of their being there, it fell apart, and out of it came… a scene, perhaps, of people in a quiet room bending to lay matching pieces of patterned materials on a carpet that had no life in it until that moment when vitality was fed into it by these exactly-answering patches: but no, I did not see that, or if I did, not clearly… that world, presenting itself in a thousand little flashes, a jumble of little scenes, facets of another picture, all impermanent, was folding up as we stepped into it, was parcelling itself up, was vanishing, dwindling and going — all of it, trees and streams, grasses and rooms and people. But the one person I had been looking for all this time was there: there she was.