The Golden Notebook Read online

  But to return to Willi. He was the emotional centre of our subgroup, and had been, before the split, the centre of the big group—another strong man, similar to Willi, was now leading the other subgroup. Willi was centre because of his absolute certainty that he was right. He was a master of dialectic; could be very subtle and intelligent in diagnosing a social problem, could be, even in the next sentence, stupidly dogmatic. As time went on, he became steadily more heavy-minded. Yet the odd thing was that people continued to revolve around him, people much subtler than he, even when they knew he was talking nonsense. Even when we had reached the stage when we could laugh, in front of him and at him, and at some monstrous bit of logic-chopping, we continued to revolve around and depend on him. It is terrifying that this can be true.

  For instance, when he first imposed himself and we accepted him, he told us that he had been a member of the underground working against Hitler. There was even some fantastic story about his having killed three S.S. men and secretly buried them and then escaped to the frontier and away to England. We believed it, of course. Why not? But even after Sam Kettner came up from Johannesburg, who had known him for years, and told us that Willi had never been anything more in Germany than a liberal, had never joined any anti-Hitler group, and had only left Germany when his age-group became eligible for the army, it was as if we believed it. Because we thought him capable of it? Well, I’m sure he was. Because, in short, a man is as good as his fantasies?

  But I don’t want to write Willi’s history—it was common enough for that time. He was a refugee from sophisticated Europe stuck for the duration of the war in a backwater. It is his character I want to describe—if I can. Well, the most remarkable thing about him was how he would sit down to work out everything that might conceivably happen to him in the next ten years, and then make plans in advance. There is nothing that most people find harder to understand than that a man can continuously scheme to meet all the contingencies that might occur five years ahead. The word used for this is opportunism. But very few people are genuinely opportunists. It takes not only clarity of mind about oneself, which is fairly common; but a stubborn and driving energy, which is rare. For instance, for the five years of the war Willi drank beer (which he hated) every Saturday morning with a C.I.D. man (whom he despised) because he had worked out that this particular man was likely to have become a senior official by the time Willi needed him. And he was right, because when the war ended, it was this man who pulled strings for Willi to get his naturalisation through long before any of the other refugees got theirs. And therefore Willi was free to leave the Colony a couple of years before they were. As it turned out he decided not to live in England, but to return to Berlin; but had he chosen England, then he would have needed British nationality—and so on. Everything he did had this quality of careful calculated planning. Yet it was so blatant that nobody believed it about him. We thought, for example, that he really liked the C.I.D. man as a person, but was ashamed of admitting he liked a “class enemy.” And when Willi used to say: “But he will be useful to me,” we would laugh affectionately as at a weakness that made him more human.

  For, of course, we thought him inhuman. He played the role of commissar, the communist intellectual leader. Yet he was the most middle-class person I have known. I mean by this that in every instinct he was for order, correctness and conservation of what existed. I remember Jimmy laughing at him and saying that if he headed a successful revolution on Wednesday, by Thursday he would have appointed a Ministry of Conventional Morality. At which Willi said he was a socialist and not an anarchist.

  He had no sympathy for the emotionally weak or deprived or for the misfits. He despised people who allowed their lives to be disturbed by personal emotion. Which didn’t mean he wasn’t capable of spending whole nights giving good advice to someone in trouble; but the advice tended to leave the sufferer feeling he was inadequate and unworthy.

  Willi had had the most conventional upper-middle-class upbringing imaginable. Berlin in the late twenties and thirties; an atmosphere which he called decadent, but of which he had been very much a part; a little conventional homosexuality at the age of thirteen; being seduced by the maid when he was fourteen; then parties, fast cars, cabaret singers; a sentimental attempt to reform a prostitute about which he was now sentimentally cynical; an aristocratic contempt for Hitler, and always plenty of money.

  He was—even in this Colony and when he was earning a few pounds a week, perfectly dressed; elegant in a suit made for ten shillings by an Indian tailor. He was of middle height, lean, stooped a little; wore a cap of absolutely smooth gleaming black hair which was rapidly receding; had a high pale forehead, extremely cold greenish eyes usually invisible behind steadily focused spectacles, and a prominent and authoritarian nose. He would listen patiently while people spoke, his lenses flashing, and then take off the glasses, exposing his eyes, which were at first weak and blinking from the adjustment, then suddenly narrowed and critical, and speak with a simplicity of arrogance that took everyone’s breath away. That was Wilhelm Rodde, the professional revolutionary who later (after failing to get the good well-paid job in a London firm he had counted on) went to East Germany (remarking with his usual brutal frankness: I’m told they are living very well there, with cars and chauffeurs) and became an official with a good deal of power. And I am sure he is an extremely efficient official. I am sure he is humane, when it is possible. But I remember him at Mashopi; I remember us all at Mashopi—for now all those years of nights of talk and activity, when we were political beings, seem to me far less revealing of what we were than at Mashopi. Though of course, as I’ve said, that is true only because we were politically in a vacuum, without a chance of expressing ourselves in political responsibility.

  The three men from the camp were united by nothing but the uniform, although they had been friends at Oxford. They acknowledged that the end of the war would be the end of their intimacy. They would sometimes even acknowledge their lack of real liking for each other, in the light, hard, self-mocking voice which was common to us all during that particular phase—to all, that is, save Willi, whose concession to the tone or style of that time was to allow freedom to others. It was his way of participating in anarchy. At Oxford these three had been homosexuals. When I write the word down and look at it, I realise its power to disturb. When I remember the three, how they were, their characters, there is no shock, or moment of disturbance. But at the word homosexual, written—well, I have to combat dislike and disquiet. Extraordinary. I qualify the word by saying that already, only eighteen months later, they were making jokes about “our homosexual phase,” and jibing at themselves for doing something simply because it had been fashionable. They had been in a loose group of about twenty, all vaguely left-wing, vaguely literary, all having affairs with each other in every kind of sexual combination. And again, put like that, it becomes too emphatic. It was the early part of the war; they were waiting to be called up; it was clear in retrospect that they were deliberately creating a mood of irresponsibility as a sort of social protest and sex was part of it.

  The most striking of the three, but only because of his quality of charm, was Paul Blackenhurst. He was the young man I used in Frontiers of War for the character of “gallant young pilot” full of enthusiasm and idealism. In fact he was without any sort of enthusiasm, but he gave the impression of it, because of his lively appreciation of any moral or social anomaly. His real coldness was hidden by charm, and a certain grace in everything he did. He was a tall youth, well-built, solid, yet alert and light in his movements. His face was round, his eyes very round and very blue, his skin extraordinarily white and clear, but lightly freckled over the bridge of a charming nose. He had a soft thick shock of hair always falling forward on his forehead. In the sunlight it was a full light gold, in the shade a warm golden brown. The very clear eyebrows were of the same soft glistening brightness. He confronted everyone he met with an intensely serious, politely enquiring, positively defere
ntial bright-blue beam from his eyes, even stooping slightly in his attempt to convey his earnest appreciation. His voice, at first meeting, was a low charming deferential murmur. Very few failed to succumb to this delightful young man so full (though of course against his will) of the pathos of that uniform. It took most people a long time to discover that he was mocking them. I’ve seen women, and even men, when the meaning of one of his cruelly quiet drawling statements came home to them, go literally pale with the shock of it; and stare at him incredulous that such open-faced candour could go with such deliberate rudeness. He was, in fact, extremely like Willi, but only in the quality of his arrogance. It was an upper-class arrogance. He was English, upper-middle-class, extremely intelligent. His parents were gentry; his father, Sir something or other. He had that absolute assurance of nerve and body that comes from being bred in a well-set-up conventional family without any money worries. The “family”—and, of course, he spoke of it with mockery, were spread all over the upper reaches of English society. He would say, drawling: “Ten years ago I’d have claimed that England belongs to me and I know it! Of course, the war’ll do away with all that, won’t it?” And his smile would convey that he believed in nothing of the sort, and hoped we were too intelligent to believe it. It was arranged that when the war was over, he would go into the City. He spoke of that, too, with mockery. “If I marry well,” he’d say, only the corners of his attractive mouth showing amusement, “I’ll be a captain of industry. I have intelligence and the education and the background—all I need is the money. If I don’t marry well I’ll be a lieutenant—much more fun, of course, to be under orders, and much less responsibility.” But we all knew he would be a colonel at least. But what is extraordinary is that this sort of talk went on when the “communist” group was at its most confident. One personality for the committee room; another for the café afterwards. And this is not as frivolous as it sounds; because if Paul had been caught up in a political movement that could have used his talents, he would have stayed with it; exactly as Willi, failing to reach his fashionable business consultant-ship (which he was born for) became a communist administrator. No, looking back I see that the anomalies and cynicisms of that time were only reflections of what was possible.

  Meanwhile he made jokes about “the system.” He had no belief in it, that goes without saying, his mocking at it was genuine. But in his character of future lieutenant, he’d raise a clear blue gaze to Willi and drawl: “I’m using my time usefully, wouldn’t you say? By observing the comrades? I’ll have a flying start over my rival lieutenants, won’t I? Yes, I’ll understand the enemy. Probably you, dear Willi. Yes.” At which Willi would give a small grudging appreciative smile. Once he even said: “It’s all very well for you, you’ve got something to go back to. I’m a refugee.”

  They enjoyed each other’s company. Although Paul would have died rather than admit (in his role as future officer-in-industry) a serious interest in anything, he was fascinated by history, because of his intellectual pleasure in paradox—that is what history meant to him. And Willi shared this passion—for history, not for the paradoxical…I remember him saying to Paul: “It’s only a real dilettante who could see history as a series of improbabilities,” and Paul, replying: “But my dear Willi, I’m a member of a dying class, and you’d be the first to appreciate that I can’t afford any other attitude?” Paul, shut into the officers’ mess with men who for the most part he considered morons, missed serious conversation, though of course he would never have said so; and I daresay the reason he attached himself to us in the first place was because we offered it. Another reason was that he was in love with me. But then we were all, at various times, in love with each other. It was, as Paul would explain, “obligatory in the times we live in to be in love with as many people as possible.” He did not say this because he felt he would be killed. He did not believe for a moment he would be killed. He had worked out his chances mathematically; they were much better now than earlier, during the Battle of Britain. He was going to fly bombers, less dangerous than fighter planes. And besides, some uncle of his attached to the senior levels of the Air Force had made enquiries and determined (or perhaps arranged) that Paul would be posted, not to England, but to India, where the casualties were comparatively light. I think that Paul was truly “without nerves.” In other words, his nerves, well cushioned since birth by security, were not in the habit of signalling messages of doom. They told me—the men who flew with him—that he was always cool, confident, accurate, a born pilot.

  In this he was different from Jimmy McGrath, also a good pilot, who suffered a hell of fear. Jimmy used to come into the hotel after a day’s flying and say he was sick with nerves. He’d admit he hadn’t slept for nights with anxiety. He would confide in me, gloomily, that he had a premonition he would be killed tomorrow. And he would ring me up from the camp the day after to say his premonition had been justified because in fact he had “nearly pranged his kite,” and it was sheer luck he wasn’t dead. His training was a continual torment to him.

  Yet Jimmy flew bombers, and apparently very well, over Germany right through the last phase of the war, when we were systematically laying the German cities in ruins. He flew continuously for over a year, and he survived.

  Paul was killed the last day before he left the Colony. He had been posted to India, so his uncle was right. His last evening was spent with us at a party. Usually he controlled his drinking, even when pretending to drink wild with the rest of us. That night he drank himself blind, and had to be put into a bath in the hotel by Jimmy and Willi and brought around. He went back to camp as the sun was coming up to say goodbye to his friends there. He was standing on the airstrip, so Jimmy told me later, still half-conscious with alcohol, the rising sun in his eyes—though of course, being Paul, he would not have shown the state he was in. A plane came in to land, and stopped a few paces away. Paul turned, his eyes dazzling with the sunrise, and walked straight into the propeller, which must have been an almost invisible sheen of light. His legs were cut off just below the crutch and he died at once.

  Jimmy was also middle-class; but Scotch, not English. There was nothing Scots about him, except when he got drunk, when he became sentimental about ancient English atrocities, like Glencoe. His voice was an elaborately affected Oxford drawl. This accent is hard enough to take in England, but in a Colony it is ludicrous. Jimmy knew it, and would emphasise it deliberately to annoy people he didn’t like. For us, whom he did like, he would make apologies. “But after all,” he would say, “I know it’s silly, but this expensive voice will be my bread and butter after the war.” And so Jimmy, like Paul, refused—at least on one level of his personality—to believe in the future of the socialism he professed. His family was altogether less impressive than Paul’s. Or rather, he belonged to a decaying branch of a family. His father was an unsatisfactory retired Indian Colonel—unsatisfactory, as Jimmy emphasised, because, “He isn’t the real thing. He likes Indians and goes in for humanity and Buddhism—I ask you!” He was drinking himself to death, so Jimmy said; but I think this was put in simply to round off the picture; because he would also show us poems written by the old man; and he was probably secretly very proud of him. He was an only child, born when his mother, whom he adored, was already over forty. Jimmy was the same physical type as Paul—at first glance. A hundred yards off, they were recognisably of the same human tribe, hardly to be distinguished. But close to, their resemblances emphasised their total difference of fibre. Jimmy’s flesh was heavy, almost lumpish; he carried himself heavily; his hands were large but podgy, like a child’s hands. His features, of the same carved clear whiteness as Paul’s, with the same blue eyes, lacked grace, and his gaze was pathetic and full of a childish appeal to be liked. His hair was pale and lightless, and fell about in greasy strands. His face, as he took pleasure in pointing out, was a decadent face. It was over-full, over-ripe, almost flaccid. He was not ambitious, and wanted no more than to be a Professor of History at some univer
sity, which he has since become. Unlike the others he was truly homosexual, though he wished he wasn’t. He was in love with Paul whom he despised and who was irritated by him. Much later he married a woman fifteen years older than himself. Last year he wrote me a letter in which he described this marriage—it was obviously written when he was drunk and posted, so to speak, into the past. They slept together, with little pleasure on her side, and none on his—“though I did put my mind to it, I do assure you!”—for a few weeks. Then she got pregnant, and that was the end of sex between them. In short, a not uncommon English marriage. His wife, it appears, has no suspicion he is not a normal man. He is quite dependent on her and if she died I suspect he’d commit suicide, or retreat into drink.