The Memoirs of a Survivor

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This time seems now to have gone on and on, yet in fact it was quite short, a matter of months. So much was happening, and every hour seemed crammed with new experience. Yet in appearance all I did was to live quietly there, in that room, with Hugo, with Emily. Inside it was all chaos… the feeling one is taken over by, at the times in one's life when everything is in change, movement, destruction — or reconstruction, but that is not always evident at the time — a feeling of helplessness, as if one were being whirled about in a dust-devil or a centrifuge.

Yet I had no alternative but to go on doing exactly what I was. Watching and waiting. Watching, for the most part, Emily… who had been a stranger, so it seemed, for years. But of course this was not so, it was anxiety for her that stretched the hours. The yellow beast, melancholy, his sorrow swallowed — I swear this was so, though he was no more than animal — in the determination to be stoic, not to show his wounds, sat quietly either at the window in a place behind the curtains where he could easily dodge back and down, or stretched along the wall, in a mourner's position, his head on his forepaws, his green eyes steady and open. He lay there hour after hour, contemplating his — thoughts. Why not? He thought, he judged, as animals can be seen to do, if observed without prejudice. I must say here, since it has to be said somewhere about Hugo, that I think the series of comments automatically evoked by this kind of statement, the ticker-tape remarks to do with 'anthropomorphism' are beside the point. Our emotional life is shared with the animals; we flatter ourselves that human emotions are so much more complicated than theirs. Perhaps the only emotion not known to a cat or a dog is — romantic love. And even then, we have to wonder. What is the emotional devotion of a dog for his master or mistress but something like that sort of love, all pining and yearning and 'give me, give me'. What was Hugo's love for Emily but that? As for our thoughts, our intellectual apparatus, our rationalisms and our logics and our deductions and so on, it can be said with absolute certainty that dogs and cats and monkeys cannot make a rocket to fly to the moon or weave artificial dress materials out of the byproducts of petroleum, but as we sit in the ruins of this variety of intelligence, it is hard to give it much value: I suppose we are under-valuing it now as we over-valued it then. It will have to find its place: I believe a pretty low place, at that.

I think that all this time, human beings have been watched by creatures whose perceptions and understanding have been so far in advance of anything we have been able to accept, because of our vanity, that we would be appalled if we were able to know, would be humiliated. We have been living with them as blundering, blind, callous, cruel murderers and torturers, and they have watched and known us. And this is the reason we refused to acknowledge the intelligence of the creatures that surround us: the shock to our amour propre would be too much, the judgement we would have to make on ourselves too horrible: it is exactly the same process that can make someone go on and on committing a crime, or a cruelty, knowing it: the stopping and having to see what has been done would be too painful, one cannot face it.

But people need slaves and victims and appendages, and of course many of our 'pets' are that because they have been made into what we think they should be, just as human beings can become what they are expected to be. But not all, not by any means; all the time, through our lives, we are accompanied, everywhere we go, by creatures who judge us, and who behave at times with a nobility which is… we call it human.

Hugo, this botch of a creature, was in his relations with Emily as delicate as a faithful lover who is content with very little provided he is not banished from the beloved presence. This is what he had imposed on himself: he would not make demands, not ask, not be a nuisance. He was waiting. As I was. He watched, as I did.

I was spending long hours with him. Or I sat at the times when the sunlight was on the wall, waiting for it to open, to unfold. Or I went about the streets, taking in news and rumours and information with the rest, wondering what to do for the best, and deciding to do nothing for the time being; wondering how long this city would stand, eroded as it was in every way, its services going and gone, its people fleeing, its food supplies worsening, its law and order consisting more and more of what the citizens imposed on themselves, an instinctive self — restraint, even a caring for others who were in the same straits.

There seemed to be a new sharpness in the tension of waiting. For one thing, the weather — the summer had come hot and dry, the sun had a dusty look. The pavement opposite my window had filled up again. But there was less interest now in what went on out there: the windows held fewer heads, people had become used to it all. Everyone knew that again and again the street's edge would half-empty as another tribe took off, and we acknowledged with mixed feelings the chance that had chosen our street as a gathering place for the migrations from our part of the city: parents at least knew what their children were doing, even if they did not like it. We became accustomed to watching a mixed lot of people collect along the pavement with their pathetic bits of baggage, and then depart, singing their old wartime songs, or revolutionary songs that seemed as inappropriate as sex songs are to old age. And Emily did not leave. She would run after them a little way with some of the other girls, and then come home, subdued, to put her arms around her Hugo, her dark head down on his yellow coat. It was as if they both wept. They huddled together, creatures in sorrow, comforting each other.

The next thing was that Emily fell in love… I am conscious that this seems a term inappropriate to the times I am describing. It was with a young man who seemed likely to lead the next contingent out and away from the city. He was, despite his swash-buckling clothes, a thoughtful young man, or at least one slow to judgement; an observer by temperament, perhaps, but pushed into action by the time? He was, at any rate, the natural guardian of the younger ones, the distressed, the forlorn. He was known for this, teased for it, sometimes criticised: softness of this sort was superfluous to the demands of survival. Perhaps this was why he appealed to Emily.

I believe her trust in him was such that she even thought of taking Hugo out to the mob for another trial, but this must have gone from her to Hugo, for he felt it: he shivered and shrank, and she had to put her arms around him, and say: 'No, I won't Hugo, I promise I won't. Did you hear? — I promised, didn't I?'

Well, then, so there it was, she was infatuated. It was 'the first love' of tradition. Which is to say that half a dozen puppy loves, each one as agonising and every bit as intense and serious as later 'adult' loves had passed; this love was 'first' and 'serious' because it was returned, or at least acknowledged.

I remember I used to wonder if these young people, living as they had to from hand to mouth, who would never shut themselves off in couples behind walls unless it was for a few days or hours in a deserted house somewhere, or a shed in a field, would ever say to each other: I love you. Do you love me? Will our love last? — and so on. All of which phrases seemed more and more like the keys or documents of possession to states and conditions now obsolete.

But Emily was suffering, she was in pain, as one is at that age, as fresh as a new loaf and loving a hero of twenty-two. Who had inexplicably, even eerily, chosen her. She was his girl, chosen from many, and known as such. She was beside him on the pavement, went with him on expeditions, and people felt pleasure and even importance when they called to her: 'Gerald says…' 'Gerald wants you to…'

From pain she would soar at once to exaltation, and stood there beside him, flushed and beautiful, her eyes soft. Or fling herself down in the sofa-corner, to be by herself for a bit, or at least away from him, for it was all too much, too powerful, she needed a respite. She was radiant with amazement, not seeing me or her surroundings, and I knew she was saying to herself: But he's chosenme, me… and this did not mean And I'm only thirteen! That was a thought for people my age. A girl was ready for mating when her body was.

But these young people's lives were communal, and mating was far from being the focus or pivot of a relationship when they chose each other. No, any individual consummations were nothing beside this act of mingling constantly with others, as if some giant rite of eating were taking place, everyone tasting and licking and regurgitating everyone else, making themselves known to others and others known to them in this tasting and sampling — eyeing each other, rubbing shoulders and bodies, talking, exchanging emanations.

But while Emily was part of this communal act, the communal feast, she was at the same time feeling as girls tradi — tionally did. She wanted, I knew, to be alone with Gerald: she would have liked that experience, the old one.

But she never was alone with him.

What she wanted was inappropriate. She felt in the wrong, even criminal, at least very much to be blamed. She was an anachronism.

I did not say anything, for our relations were not such that I could ask, or she likely to volunteer.

All I knew was what I could see for myself: that she was being filled over and over again with a violence of need that exploded in her, dazzling her eyes and shaking her body so that she was astonished — needs which could never be slaked by an embrace on the floorboards of an empty room or in the corner of a field. All around her the business of living went on, but Gerald was always at the heart of it: wherever she turned herself in some task or duty, there he was, so efficient and practical and busy with important things, but she, Emily, was possessed by a savage enemy, was raging with joy and grief. And if she betrayed what she felt by a wrong look or a word, what then? She would lose her home here, among these people, her tribe… And this was why she had so often to slip away indoors, to creep near her familiar Hugo, and put her arms around him. At which he might give a muffled groan, since he knew very well the use she was making of him.

There was this juxtaposition: Emily lay with her cheek on rough yellow fur, one still-childish hand enclosing a ragged ear, her tense body expressing emptiness and longing. The wall beside me opened, reminding me again how easily and unexpectedly it could, and I was walking towards a door from which voices came. And frenetic laughter, squeals, protests. I opened the door on that world whose air was irritation, confinement, littleness. A brightly-coloured world: the colours were flat and loud as in old calendars. A hot close place, everything very large, over-lifesize, difficult: this was again the child's view that I was imprisoned in. Largeness and smallness; violence of emotion and its insignificance — contradictions, impossibilities, were built into and formed part of the substance of whatever one saw when that particular climate was entered. It was a bedroom. Again, a fire burned in the wall behind a tall metal guard. Again it was a thick, heavy, absorbing room, with time as its air, the tick of a clock felt as a condition of one's every moment and thought. The room was full of a hot light: a reddish light barred and crossed with shadow lay over the walls, across the ceiling, and on the immensely long soft white curtains that filled a wall opposite the two beds: father's and mother's beds, husband's bed and wife's bed.

The curtains for some reason filled me with anguish, the soft weight of them. They were of white lawn or muslin that had a raised spot woven in, and were lined and lined again. A white that was made for lightness and transparency to let in sun and night-air had been taken hold of and thickened and made heavy and hung up in shrouds to shut out air and light, to reflect hot flame-light from the metal-barred fireplace.

On one side of the room the mother sat with her boy-infant, always in his damp wool. Her arms were about him, she was absorbed in him. In a large chair set against the curtains the soldier-like man sat with his knees apart, gripping between them the small girl who stood shrieking. On his face, under the moustache, was a small tight smile. He was 'tickling' the child. This was a 'game', the bedtime 'game', a ritual. The elder child was being played with, was being made tired, was being given her allowance of attention, before being put to bed, and it was a service by the father to the mother, who could not cope with the demands of her day, the demands of Emily. The child wore a long nightie, with frills at wrists and at the neck. Her hair had been brushed and was held by ribbon. A few minutes ago she had been a clean neat pretty little girl in a white nightdress, with a white ribbon in her hair, but now she was hot and sweating, and her body was contorting and twisting to escape the man's great hands that squeezed and dug into her ribs, to escape the great cruel face that bent so close over her with its look of private satisfaction. The room seemed filled with a hot anguish, the fear of being held tight there, the need for being held and tortured, since this was how she pleased her captors. She shrieked: 'No, no, no, no… helpless, being explored and laid bare by this man.

The mother was indifferent. She did not know what was going on, or what the little girl suffered. For it was a 'game' and the squeals and protests were from her own childhood and therefore in order, healthy, licensed. From her came a blankness, the indifference of ignorance. She cooed and talked to her stolid open-mouthed infant while the father went on with his task, from time to time looking at his wife with a wonderfully complex expression — guilt, but he was unaware of that; appeal, because he felt this was wrong and ought to be stopped; astonishment that it was allowable and by her, who not only did not protest, but actively encouraged him in the 'game'; and, mingled with all these, a look that was never far from his face at any time, of sheer incredulity at the impossibility of everything. He let his knees go slack, and pretended to release the child, who nearly fell, reached for a knee to steady herself, but before she could run away, was caught again as the knees clapped together on either side of her. The exquisite torture began again. 'There, there, there, Emily,' muttered the great man, flooding her in an odour of tobacco and unwashed clothes. 'Now then, that's it, there you are you see,' he went on, as the fingers thicker than any of her ribs dug into her sides and she screamed and pleaded.

This scene faded like a spark or like a nightmare, and the same man was sitting in the same room but in a chair near the bed. He wore a heavy brown dressing gown of some very thick rough wool, a soldier's garment, and he smoked and sat watching his wife. The large healthy woman was discarding her clothes in a rapid efficient way on her side of the bed near the fire: only now it was summer, and the fireplace had red flowers standing in it. The curtains hung limp and still, very white, but drawn back to show areas of black glass which reflected the man, the room, the movements of the woman. She was unaware of her husband, who sat there watching her nakedness emerge. She was talking, she was creating her day for him, for herself: 'And by four o'clock I was quite exhausted, the girl had her half day, and Baby was awake all morning, he did not have his sleep, and Emily was very trying and demanding today… and… and…The plaint went on, while she stood naked, looking about her for pyjamas. She was a fine solid woman with clear white flesh, her breasts small and round. The nipples were virginal for a woman who had had two children: small and with narrow pink aureoles. Her plentiful brown hair fell down her back, and she scratched first her scalp, then under one arm, lifting it to expose wisps of long brown hair. On to her face came a look of intense satisfaction which would have appalled her if she could have seen it. She scratched the other armpit, then allowed herself to scratch, voluptuously, with both hands, her ribs, her hips, her stomach. Her hands did not stray lower. She stood there scratching vigorously for a long time, a couple of minutes, while red marks appeared on the solid white flesh behind the energetic fingers, and from time to time she gave a great shudder of pleasure, masked as cold. Her husband sat quiet and watched. On his face was a small smile. He lifted his cigarette to his mouth and took a deep lungful, and slowly let it out, allowing it to trickle from half-open mouth and nostrils.

His wife had finished with her scratching, and was bundling herself into pink-spotted cotton pyjamas, in which she looked like a jolly schoolgirl. Her face was unconsciously greedy — for sleep. She was already in imagination drifting to oblivion. She got efficiently into bed, as if her husband did not exist, and in one movement lay down and turned her back to him. She yawned. Then she remembered him: there was something she ought to do before allowing herself this supreme pleasure. She turned over and said 'Good night old thing,' and was at once sucked down and lay asleep, facing him. He sat on, smoking, now openly examining her at his leisure. The amusement was there, incredulity, and, at the same time, an austerity that had begun, from the look of it, as a variety of moral exhaustion, even a lack of vitality, and had long ago become a judgement on himself and on others.

He now put his cigarette out, and got up from the chair, gently, as if afraid of waking a child. He went into the next room, which was the nursery with its red velvet curtains, its white, white, white everywhere. Two cots, one small one, one large. He walked delicately, a large man among a thousand tiny items of nursery use, past the small cot, to the large one. He stood at the foot of it and looked at the little girl, now asleep. Her cheeks flamed scarlet. Beads of sweat stood on her forehead. She was only lightly asleep. She kicked off the bedclothes as he watched, turned herself and lay, her nightgown around her waist, showing small buttocks and the backs of pretty legs. The man bent lower and gazed, and gazed… a noise from the bedroom, his wife turning over and perhaps saying something in her sleep, made him stand straight and look — guilty, but defiant, and above all, angry. Angry at what? At everything, that is the answer. There was silence again. Lower down in this tall house a clocked chimed: it was only eleven. The little girl tossed herself over again and lay on her back, naked, stomach thrust up, vulva prominent. The man's face added another emotion to those already written there. Suddenly, but in spite of everything not roughly, he pulled a cover over the child and tucked it in tight. At once she began to squirm and whimper. The room was much too hot. The windows were closed. He was about to open one, but remembered a prohibition. He turned himself about and walked out of the nursery without looking again at the two cots, where the little boy lay silent, his mouth open, but where the girl was tossing and struggling to get out, to get out, to get out.

In a room that had windows open to a formal garden, a room that had a 'feel' to it of another country somewhere, different from the rooms in this house, was a small bed in which the girl lay. She was older, and she was sick and fretful. Paler, thinner than at any time I had seen her, her dark hair was damp and sticky, and there was the smell of stale sweat. All around her lay books, toys, comics. She was moving restlessly and continuously, rubbing her limbs together, tossing about, turning over, crooning to herself, muttering complaints and commands to someone. She was an earthquake of fevers, energies, desires, angers, need. In came the tall large woman, preoccupied with a glass she was carrying. At the sight of the glass the girl brightened: here at least was a diversion, and she half sat up. But already her mother had set down the glass and was turning away to another duty.

'Stay with me,' pleaded the girl.

'I can't, I have to see to Baby.'

'Why do you always call him Baby?'

'I don't know, really, of course it is time… he's quite old enough to… but I keep forgetting.'

'Please, please.'

'Oh very well, for a minute.'

The woman sat on the extreme edge of the bed, looked harried, looked as she always did, burdened and irritated. But she was also pleased.

'Drink your lemonade.'

'I don't want to. Mummy, cuddle me, cuddle me…'

'Oh, Emily!'

With a flattered laugh, the woman bent forward, offering herself. The little girl put her arms up around the woman's neck, and hung there. But she got no encouragement. 'Cuddle me, cuddle me,' she was crooning, as if to herself, and it might just as well have been to herself, since the woman was so puzzled by it all. She suffered the small hot arms for a little, but then she could not help herself — her dislike of flesh raised her own hands, to put the child's arms away from her. 'There, that's enough,' she said. But she stayed, a little. Duty made her stay. Duty to what? Sickness, very likely. 'A sick child needs its mother.' Something of that sort. Between the little girl's hot needful yearning body, which wanted to be quieted with a caress, with warmth, wanted to lie near a large strong wall of a body, a safe body which would not tickle and torment and squeeze; wanted safely and assurance — between her and the mother's regularly breathing, calm body, all self-sufficiency and duty, was a blankness, an unawareness; there was no contact, no mutual comfort.

The little girl lay back and then reached for the glass and drank eagerly. The moment the glass was empty the mother got up and said: 'I'll make you another one.'

'Oh stay with me, stay with me.'

'I can't Emily. You are being difficult again.'

'Can Daddy come?'

'But he's busy.'

'Can't he read to me?'

'You can read to yourself now, you're a big girl.'

The woman went out with the empty glass. The girl took a half-eaten biscuit from under the pillow and picked up a book and read and ate, ate and read, her limbs always on the move, tossing and rearranging themselves, her unoccupied hand touching her cheek, her hair, her shoulders, feeling her flesh everywhere, lower and lower down, near to her cunt, her 'private parts' — but from there the hand was quickly withdrawn, as if that area had barbed wire around it. Then she stroked her thighs, crossed and uncrossed them, moved and twisted and read and ate and ate and read.

There lay Emily now on my living-room floor.

'Dear Hugo… dear, dear Hugo — you are my Hugo, you are my love, Hugo…'

And I was filled with that ridiculous impatience, the helplessness, of the adult who watches a young thing growing. There she was enclosed in her age, but in a continuum with those scenes behind the wall, a hinterland which had formed her — yet she could not see them or know about them, and it would be of no use my telling her: if I did she would hear words, no more. From that shadowy region behind her came the dictate: You are this, and this and this — this is what you have to be, and not that; and the biological demands of her age took a precise and predictable and clocklike stake on her life, making her exactly like this and that. And so it would go on, it had to go on, and I must watch; and in due time she would fill like a container with substances and experiences; she would be delivered by these midwives, some recognisable, understood, and common to everyone, some to be deduced only from their methods of operation — she would become mature, that ideal condition envisaged as the justification of all previous experience, an apex of achievement, inevitable and peculiar to her. This apex is how we see things, it is a biological summit we see: growth, the achievement on the top of the curve of her existence as an animal, then a falling away towards death. Nonsense of course, absurd; but it was hard to subdue in myself this view of her, shut off impatience as I watched her rolling and snuggling be side her purring yellow beast, to make myself acknowledge that this stage of her life was every bit as valid as the one ahead of her — perhaps to be summed up or encapsulated in the image of a capable but serene smile — and that what I was really waiting for (just as, somewhere inside herself she must be) was the moment she would step off this merry-go-round, this escalator carrying her from the dark into the dark. Step off in entirely… And then?