The Memoirs of a Survivor - Doris Lessing

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lavender, roses, rosemary, verbena, conscious of memories assaulting me, claiming, insinuating. One was from my ‘real’ life, for it was nagging and tugging at me that the pavements where the fires had burned and the trees had scorched were part of the stuff and the substance of this room. But there was the tug of nostalgia for the room itself, the life that had been lived there, would continue the moment I had left. And for the garden, whose every little turn or comer I knew in my bones. Above all, for the inhabitant who was somewhere near, probably watching me; who, when I had left, would walk in and nod approval at the work of cleaning I had done and then perhaps go out to walk in the garden.

      What I found next was in a very different setting: above all, in a different atmosphere. It was the first of the ‘personal’ experiences. This was the word I used for them from the start. And the atmosphere was unmistakable always, as soon as I entered whatever scene it was. That is, between the feeling or texture or mood of the scenes which were not ‘personal’, like, for instance, the long quiet room that had been so devastated, or any of the events, no matter how wearying or difficult or discouraging, that I saw in this or that setting – between these and the ‘personal’ scenes a world lay; the two kinds ‘personal’ (though not necessarily, to me) and the other, existed in spheres quite different and separated. One, the ‘personal’ was instantly to be recognised by the air that was its prison, by the emotions that were its creatures. The impersonal scenes might bring discouragement or problems that had to be solved, like the rehabilitation of walls or furniture, cleaning, putting order into chaos – but in that realm there was a lightness, a freedom, a feeling of possibility. Yes, that was it, the space and the knowledge of the possibility of alternative action. One could refuse to clean that room, clear that patch of earth; one could walk into another room altogether, choose another scene. But to enter the ‘personal’ was to enter a prison, where nothing could happen but what one saw happening, where the air was tight and limited, and above all where time was a strict unalterable law and long, oh my God, it went on, and on and on, minute by decreed minute, with no escape but the slow wearing away of one after another.

      It was again a tall room, but this time square and without grace, and there were tall but heavy windows, with dark red velvet curtains. A fire burned, and in front of it was a strong fireguard, like a wire meat cover. On this were airing a great many thick or flimsy napkins, baby’s napkins of the old-fashioned sort, and many white vests and binders, long and short dresses, robes, jackets, little socks. An Edwardian layette, emitting that odour which is not quite scorch, but near to it: heated airless materials. There was a rocking horse. Alphabet books. A cradle with muslin flounces, minute blue and green flowers on white … I realised what a relief the colour was, for everything was white, white clothing, white cot and cradle and covers and blankets and sheets and baskets. A white-painted room. A little white clock that would have been described in a catalogue as a Nursery Clock. White. The clock’s tick was soft and little and incessant.

      A small girl of about four sat on a hearthrug, with the clothing that was set to air between her and the flames. She wore a dark blue velvet dress. She had dark hair parted on one side and held by a large white ribbon. She had intensely serious, already defensive hazel eyes.

      On the bed was a baby, being bundled for the night. The baby was chuckling. A nurse or attendant hung over the baby; but only a broad white back was visible. The little girl’s look as she watched the loving nurse bending over the brother was enough, it said everything. But there was more: another figure, immensely tall, large and powerful came into the room; it was a personage all ruthless energy, and she too, bent over the baby, and the two females joined in a ceremony of loving while the baby wriggled and responded and cooed. And the little girl watched. Everything around her was enormous: the room so large, warm and high, the two women so tall and strong and disliking, the furniture daunting and difficult, the clock with its soft hurrying which told everyone what to do, was obeyed by everyone, consulted, constantly watched.

      Being invited into this scene was to be absorbed into child-space; I saw it as a small child might – that is, enormous and implacable; but at the same time I kept with me my knowledge that it was tiny and implacable – because petty, unimportant. This was a tyranny of the unimportant, of the mindless. Claustrophobia, airlessness, a suffocation of the mind, of aspiration. And all endless, for this was child-time, where one day’s end could hardly be glimpsed from its beginning, ordered by the hard white clock. Each day was like something to be climbed, like the great obdurate chairs, a bed higher than one’s head, obstacles and challenges overcome by the aid of large hands that gripped and pulled and pushed – hands which, seen at work on that baby, seemed to be tender and considerate. The baby was high in the air, held up in the nurse’s arms. The baby was laughing. The mother wanted to take the baby from the nurse, but the nurse held tight and said: ‘Oh no, this one, this is my baby, he’s my baby.’ ‘Oh no, Nurse,’ said the strong tower of a mother, taller than anything in the room, taller than the big nurse, almost as high as the ceiling: ‘Oh no,’ she said, smiling but with her lips tight, ‘he’s my baby.’ ‘No, this is my baby,’ said the nurse now rocking and crooning the infant, ‘he’s my darling baby, but the other one, she’s your baby, Emily is yours, madam.’ And she turned her back on the mother in a show of emotional independence, while she loved and rocked the baby. At which the mother smiled, a smile different from the other, and not understood by the little girl, except that it led to her being pulled up roughly on the mother’s hand, and told: ‘Why aren’t you undressed? I told you to get undressed.’ And there began a rapid uncomfortable scrambling and pushing; she was trying to remain steady on her feet, while layers of clothes were pulled off her. First the blue velvet dress of which she was proud, because it suited her – she had been told so by voices of all kinds insisting against each other high over her head, but it had many little buttons up the inside of her arm and down her back, each one taking so long to undo while the big fingers hurt and bruised. Then off came the petticoat, quite fast but scratching at her chin, then long white tights too big for her which released a warm likeable smell into the air: the mother noticed it and made a grimace. ‘And now into bed with you,’ she said as she hastily pulled down a white nightdress over the child’s head.

      Emily crept into her bed near the window, hauling herself up by the head-rail, for to her it was a big bed; and she lifted a corner of the heavy red velvet to look out at the stars. At the same time she watched the two large people, the mother and the nurse, tending the baby. Her face was old and weary. She seemed to understand it all, to have foreseen it, to be living through it because she had to, feeling it as a thick heaviness all around her – time, through which she must push herself, till she could be free of it. For none of them could help themselves, not the mother, that feared and powerful woman, not the nurse, bad-tempered because of her life, not the baby, for whom she, the little girl, already felt a passion of love that melted her, made her helpless. And she, the child, could not help herself either, not at all; and when the mother said in her impatient rough way, which came out as a sort of gaiety, a courage that even then the child recognised as a demand on her compassion: ‘Emily, you should lie down. Off to sleep with you,’ she lay down; and watched the two women taking the baby into another room from where could be heard a man’s voice, the father’s. A ceremony of good night, and she was excluded: they had forgotten she had not been taken to say good night to her father. She turned herself over, back to the hot white room, where the red flames pulsed out heat, filled the heavy white clothes on the bars with hot smells, made red shadows in the caves behind the edges of the red curtains, made a prickling heat start up all over her under the heavy bedclothes. She took hold of the dangling red tassels on the curtains, brought them close to her, and lay pulling them, pulling them …

      This small child was of course the Emily who had been given into my care, but I did not understand for some days that I had been watching a scene from her childhood, (but that was impossible, of course, since no such childhood existed these days, it was obsolete), a scene, then, from her memory, or her history, which had formed her.… I was sitting with her one morning, and some movement she made told me what should have been obvious. Then I kept glancing at that young face, such a troubling mixture of the child and the young girl, and could see in it her solitary four-year-old self. Emily. I wondered if she remembered anything of her memories, or experiences, that were being ‘run’ like a film behind my living-room wall, which at the moment – the sun lighting

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