Doris Lessing - The Sweetest Dream

And now they were all asleep except for Colin, who lay with his arms around Sophie, who was asleep, the little dog on her hip, dozing, though its wisp of a tail sometimes fluttered.

He was not thinking of beautiful Sophie, in his arms. Like his mother earlier he was insanely promising: ‘I’ll kill him, I swear I will. ‘Now here's a knot! If Johnny had recognised himself in the poisonous word-spinner, then he was being asked for the heights of dispassionate judgement: only the standards of literary excellence should fuel his thoughts, 'Is this a good novel or isn't it?' — the memories perhaps of those novels he had read when he had been a well-read person, before he had succumbed to the simple charms of socialist realism. As when the victim of a savage cartoon is expected to say, ‘Oh, well done! What a talent you have! In short, from Comrade Johnny was being demanded conduct that his family had long ago agreed he was incapable of. On the other hand, if he had not recognised himself, then he was to blame for suspecting nothing of how at least one of his sons saw him.

Julia grieving, grieving, though she could not have said for what if it wasn't Sylvia, or her whole life, studied newspapers, flung them down, tried again, and when Wilhelm walked her to the Cosmo, she tried to take in what was being said around her. The Vietnam War, that was what they talked about. Sometimes Johnny came in, with his entourage, dramatic, forceful, and he might nod at her, or even give her the clenched fist salute. Often, Geoffrey was with him, whom she knew so well, a handsome young man, like Lochinvar from the West, as she said scornfully to Wilhelm. Or Daniel, with his red hair, like a beacon. Or James, who came to her saying, ‘I am James, do you remember me? But she remembered no one with a cockney accent.

'It's the correct thing, now,’ Wilhelm explained. 'They speak cockney.'

'But what for, when it's so ugly?'

'To get jobs. They are opportunists. If you want to get a job in television or in films, you have to lose your educated voice.'

Around them, cigarette smoke, and often angry voices. ‘Why is it when it's politics, then there's always quarrelling?'

‘Ah, my dear, if we understood that...’

' It reminds me of the old days, when I visited home, the Nazis...'

‘And the communists. '

She remembered the fighting, the shouting, the flung stones, the running feet – yes, waking at night to hear feet running, running. After some atrocious thing, they ran through the streets shouting.

Julia sat in her chair, surrounded by newspapers, until her thoughts pushed her up to prowl around her rooms, clicking her tongue with annoyance as she found an ornament out of place, or a dress anyhow on the back of a chair. (What was Mrs Philby thinking of?) All her sorrows were becoming focused on the Vietnam War. She could not bear it. Wasn't it enough, that old war, the first one, so terrible and then the second, what more did they want, killing, killing, and now this war. And the Americans, were they mad, sending their young men, no one cared about the young men, when there was a war the young men were herded up and driven off to be killed. As if they were good for nothing but that. Again and again. No one learned anything, it was a lie to say we learned from history, if any lessons had been learned, the bombs would not be falling into Vietnam, and the young men... Julia was dreaming about her brothers, for the first time in years. She had nightmares about this war. On the television she watched Americans fighting the police, Americans not wanting the war, and she didn't want it, she was on the side of the Americans who rioted in Chicago or at the universities, and yet when she had left Germany to marry Philip she had chosen America, she was on that side. Philip had wanted Andrew to go to school in the States, and if he had, then by now he would probably be part of that America that turned hoses and teargas on the Americans who protested. (Julia knew Andrew was conservative by nature, or perhaps better say, on the side of authority.) Johnny's new woman, who apparently had abandoned him, was fighting in the streets against the war. Julia hated and feared street fighting, even now she had nightmares about what she had seen in the Thirties, when she went home to visit, in Germany, which was being destroyed by the gangs that rioted and smashed and shouted and ran at nights through the streets. Julia's head and mind and heart were whirling with violently opposing pictures, thoughts, emotions.

And her son Johnny was constantly in the papers, speaking against this war, and she felt he was right. Yet Johnny had never been right, she was sure of that, but suppose he was right now?

Julia, without telling Wilhelm, put on her hat, the one that concealed her face best, with its close-meshed veil, and chose gloves that would not show every mark – she associated politics with dirt – and took herself off to hear Johnny speak at a meeting to oppose the Vietnam War.

It was in a hall she thought of as communist. The streets around it seethed with young people. The taxi put her down outside the main entrance, and as she went in young people dressed like gypsies or hoodlums stared at her. The ones who had seen her arrive by taxi told each other she must be a CIA spy, while others, seeing this old lady – there was not one person here over fifty – said she must be here by mistake. Some said that with that hat she must be the cleaning lady.

The hall was full. It seemed to heave and swell and sway. The smell was horrible. Immediately in front of Julia were two heads of greasy unwashed blonde hair – what girls could have so little self-respect? Then she saw that they were men. And they stank.

The noise was so loud that she did not at once see that the speeches had begun. Up there were Johnny, and Geoffrey, whose clean well-ordered face she knew so well, but he had Viking's hair, and stood with his feet apart, and his right hand pounding the air, as if stabbing something, and he was sneering agreement with what Johnny was saying, which was variations on what she had heard so often, American imperialism... roars of agreement; the industrial-military complex – groans and boos; lackeys, jackals, capitalist exploiters, sell-outs, fascists. It was hard to hear, the roars ofagree-ment were so loud. And there was James, so much the public man, large and affable, who had become a cockney, and there was a black man beside Johnny she was sure she knew. A lot of people up there on the platform. Every face was alive and elated with conceit and self-righteousness and triumph. How well she did know all that, how it frightened her. They swaggered about up there, under strong lights, spilling out their phrases which she could anticipate, each one, before it arrived. And the audience was a unit, it was whole, it was a mob, it could kill or run riot, and it was aflame with – hatred, yes that is what it was. Yet strip off the stupid cliches, and she was agreeing with them, she was on their side; how could she be, when they were foul, they were frightful; yet the violence of war was everything she hated most. She was finding it hard to keep upright – she was standing against a wall, and surrounded by Yahoos who might as well be carrying clubs. She took a long last look up at the platform, saw her son had recognised her, and that his stare was both triumphant and hostile. If she did not leave he might be making her a target for his sarcasms. She pushed her way through the crowd back to the door. Luckily she was not far away from it. Her hat was knocked awry, Julia believed deliberately. She was right. The muttering that she was a CIA spy was following her. She tried to hold her hat on, and at the door saw a large young woman with a big face reddened by excitement and by alcohol. She had a steward's badge. Recognising Julia she said loudly for the benefit of her colleagues, 'Well, what do you know? It's Johnny Lennox's ma.' 'Let me get past,' said Julia, who by now was beginning to panic. 'Let me out.'