Landlocked. Doris Lessing

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ did not know she was here ‘for a serious discussion’.

      ‘Oh it really is too bad,’ she said, and her voice shook, although she tried to make it ‘humorous’.

      ‘What’s going on?’ said Joss. He spoke gently. He had understood, already, that she was on edge through one of the intuitive flashes of understanding by which human beings in fact understand and regulate their behaviour with each other. He, too, now lit a cigarette and handed it to her. ‘Keep your hair on and tell your Uncle Joss all about it.’

      ‘It’s so damned silly,’ said Martha. ‘For months and months, nothing happens. Suddenly it seems the Africans are really starting something at last. Then we hear that there is Solly, with his oar well in, having his say. Well, naturally I suppose.’

      ‘Naturally,’ said Solly.

      ‘Yes. But here you are, it seems you’re with Solly?’

      ‘God forbid,’ said Joss, humorous. But Martha kept her eyes on him and at last he said seriously: ‘If you’re asking my advice, I think the contradictions should be kept out of it.’ This word, contradictions, was shorthand in this time for everything the Soviet Union did which went against what might be expected of that nation in her socialist aspect. Which meant, of course, everything. Except winning the war.

      ‘Ah,’ said Martha thoughtfully, and looked at Joss with interest. He smiled, as if to say: Yes, I mean it.

      ‘Except that it’s not for you to keep the contradictions out of anything,’ said Solly. ‘You don’t even know who these Africans are.’

      ‘Then why did you ask Matty here at all?’ said Joss.

      ‘An interesting point,’ said Solly, grinning. She looked at him – at first incredulous, then reproachful, then, seeing nothing but triumph, angry. She was blushing.

      ‘Nonsense,’ she said energetically to Joss.

      Joss had looked carefully at Solly, then at Martha, noting his brother’s air of triumph and Martha’s annoyance. He came to conclusions, and inwardly removed himself from the situation. ‘All that’s got nothing to do with me.’

      ‘Oh,’ said Martha, furious. ‘How absolutely – Solly said I was to come here because of some African group.’

      ‘Awfully touchy, isn’t she?’ said Solly to his brother, echoing, for Martha, a situation a decade old, and arousing in her a remembered confusion of bitterness that made her pick up her bag ready to go. She was white, and she trembled. Anybody would think something serious had happened.

      ‘Ah Matty, man,’ said Joss gently, ‘relax, take it easy. Don’t take any notice of my little brother. Everyone knows he’s just a troublemaker.’ With which he offered his brother an unsmiling smile: he stretched his mouth briefly across his face and let it fall into seriousness again. Solly sat and grinned, rocking his chair back and forth.

      ‘Look,’ said Martha direct to Joss, ‘I think your attitude is awfully … but I suppose you can’t help him being your brother. The point is this. Solly’s got this contact with an African group. But one of our people has a contact with it too, and he’s – Solly is – trying to blacken us. Well, I think he is,’ she added, fair at all costs, and even looking at Solly in a way which said: I hope I am not maligning you. Which look Joss noted, and so, Martha felt at once, misinterpreted.

      ‘Which of us has got a contact with this group?’ Joss asked Martha. She stared back in embarrassed amazement. Joss was asking her in front of Solly? Had Joss gone crazy? Or – was it possible? – had Joss, too, ‘gone bad’?

      ‘It is none other than Athen, your Greek comrade,’ said Solly, for Martha.

      Here Johnny Capetenakis came in, with two plates balanced on his two held-out palms, his face offering them a gratified smile which preceded the food like its smell – a hot teasing aroma of garlic, lemon and oil. He set before Joss, before Solly, spikes stuck with glistening pieces of lamb, lightly charred onion rings, tiny half-tomatoes, their skins wrinkled and dimmed with heat and their flesh sprinkled with rosemary, smooth whole mushrooms, curls of bacon striped pink and white. These were displayed on large mounds of yellow rice.

      ‘Without you, we’d die of hunger,’ said Joss.

      ‘I’m still using the saffron from before the war,’ said the Greek. ‘When it’s finished, then I really don’t know.’

      ‘You’ll have to grow it,’ said Martha.

      ‘The war’s going to end, cheer up,’ said Joss.

      Johnny stood smiling benevolently as the brothers began to eat. Then he went out.

      ‘Athen and Thomas Stern,’ said Solly.

      ‘Oh, is Thomas back in town, good,’ said Joss. He looked up for some bread and there was Martha, still standing and waiting. ‘I’m here,’ he excused himself, ‘to eat kebab with my little brother. I didn’t know there was anything else.’

      ‘Then I’m going.’

      ‘Yes. I’ll deal with my ever-loving brother for you.’

      ‘Obviously.’

      ‘What do you want me to do? If the Africans have started something – then about time too, and we should help them. And keep the nonsense out of it – the contradictions.’

      He did not look up – his head was bent over his food. Martha stood watching the brothers eat. She was hungry, but she had promised to eat with her mother. Inside her opened up the lit space on to which, unless she was careful (this was not the moment for it), emotions would walk like actors and begin to speak without (apparently) any prompting from her. This empty lit space was because of the half-dozen rooms she had to run around, looking after. The tall lit space was not an enemy, it was where, at some time, the centre of the house would build itself. She observed, interested, that it was now, standing there looking at the Cohen boys, the antagonists, that the empty space opened out under its searchlights.

      Feeling her silence, first Joss, then Solly, lifted their heads to look at her. She saw the two men, both with loaded forks in their hands, their heads turned sideways to look at her. She began to laugh.

      ‘She thinks we are funny,’ said Joss to Solly.

      ‘She’s laughing at us,’ said Solly to Joss.

      ‘Well, I’ll see you around, anyway,’ she said to Joss.

      ‘I don’t think you will.’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘I’m thinking of settling up North. I’m going up to spy out the land tomorrow.’

      ‘Ah, I see!’ Everything explained at last, Martha began to laugh again. She stopped, as she felt this laughter begin to burst up like flames, in the middle of the great empty space.

      ‘She sees,’ said Solly to Joss.

      ‘But what does she see?’ said Joss to Solly.

      ‘I might have known,’ said Martha. ‘Joss is leaving the country, and so of course СКАЧАТЬ