Landlocked (29 page)

So many jokes had been made about the ‘little bit of paper’, it was as if the bit of paper, when it arrived, was the product of the jokes. There it lay, a thrice-folded sheet of foolscap in which was stated, in five and a half lines of print, that Anton Hesse and his wife Martha were both British citizens.

The two stood examining the paper, each holding it by a corner, each waiting for the other to speak: so many decisions had been postponed until this bit of paper arrived. At last Anton spoke: ‘So, here it is. And now you have decisions to make.’ With which he went off to the bathroom.

The fact that Anton had chosen
not
to announce decisions—this was in itself a decision or an announcement.

Martha began to tremble with anger: not only because of Anton’s walking off, literally washing his hands of the thing, but (to her surprise—she thought she was long over that childishness) because she, born of so-British parents had been deemed not-British and then as arbitrarily allowed to be British. Though the emotion itself was infuriating, since ‘what did it matter what nationality one was’? And what could be more ridiculous than being angry, just as if a button had been pushed, about something one had been living with and making jokes about for four, five years?

And what sort of a monster was she to be angry about Anton’s saying: ‘And now you have decisions to make,’ when this was his way of covering deep hurt? For Anton had not yet discovered any relations alive in Germany. When he got information, it was of death. The Hesse family ranged from a pure Jewishness that merited (Anton’s grim joke—it was for some months a joke he made continuously in various forms) a pure death in the gas chambers to
branches apparently not Jewish at all whose members (like all the other good Germans) were killed by bombing, or as soldiers on the Russian front, or by starvation. Anton Hesse was linked with the fate of his country so deeply and by so many fibres that the cataclysm which had engulfed Germany had also engulfed him who had fled from it and had been living so many thousands of miles away. And now the Communist Party in East Germany did not reply to his letters, to his demands to come home. They simply did not answer. Nothing. Silence. The old Germany which would have killed him, was dead; and the new Germany would not answer his letters.

A traveller from Europe who had visited Berlin which stood divided and in ruins said: ‘What do you expect? As far as they are concerned, you are a spy, anyone from the West is.’

At which Anton had, after a pause, nodded, and said, very dry, very cold: ‘Of course. They are entirely in the right. I would take the same attitude myself.’

If he wished to live in East Germany, they told him, he must travel there and take his chances. From all over the world, refugees travelled back to East and West Germany and he must do the same.

‘They are in the right,’ he said.

Now he stood in the bathroom, bent over the washbasin, a man absorbed in the business of washing his hands. Martha stood in the front room watching him. She watched him shake the drops of water off his hands into the basin. A few drops scattered on the wall. He carefully took a cloth to wipe the wall dry, then he bent close to peer at the wall—yes, it was dry. He took a small towel and dried his hands. Then he examined his fingernails, then he looked into the shaving-glass and ran a long, white hand over his right cheek. Finally he returned to the front room, smiling. He sat down, flinging one leg across the other, and began examining his hands, back and front, with a calm smile.

‘The divorce is nothing but a formality,’ said Martha. ‘I asked Mr Robinson.’

It cost Martha a good deal to say this—though of course the decisions had been made a long time ago.

Now Anton nodded; smiled, and said: ‘Yes, my researches into this subject confirm Mr Robinson’s view.’

The drawling tone he used for this, a kind of formal superciliousness, was not aimed at Martha, or at Mr Robinson, but at the processes of bureaucracy. Thus he had joked, drawling, about the little bits of paper.

‘If we start proceedings now, it will take about six months. Because there’s a long waiting list for divorces.’

‘Naturally. The war has held up civilized life long enough. Serious matters like divorce have had to wait.’

Martha laughed, quickly. This judicious humour of Anton’s, a creaking into irony, was new in him, a result, apparently, of his social life at the Forsters’: and she was grateful because of this Anton who could smile, laugh, even if with difficulty. There was a look of pride on his face at such moments, and he would glance at her as if to say: And you call me pompous!

‘One of us has to divorce the other,’ said Martha, continuing this conversation which they had had before. But not for some months—the arrival of the piece of paper, after years of waiting, had been a shock.

‘That’s logical enough.’

‘We can go on living in this flat because of the housing shortage, but one of us has to deny our bed to the other. I mean, we have to swear it in Court.’

And now Anton scrutinized his long hand, back and front, and a smile almost arranged itself on his face. And Martha thought: No, please don’t make a joke now, because I couldn’t laugh at it.

The point was, to use the language of the courts—conjugal relations had been resumed. A phrase which, as far as Martha was concerned, would do to sum it up. But for Anton it was not so simple—which was why this conversation was taking place. When Anton had gone into the bathroom, leaving her alone, she had known perfectly well that even now if she had put her arms around him, and
murmured
Anton, suppose we—
then there would be no divorce.

As far as Martha was concerned, when they occasionally lay side by side in the narrow single bed, it was from good nature, from courtesy. But not long ago Anton had said: ‘We don’t do so badly, do we, Matty?’

And Martha could see that he really thought so.

She did not understand any of this, but it was because of Thomas. As far as she was able to sum it up, or even to think about it—which she tried not to do, because of the grief which accompanied thoughts of Thomas—her experience with Thomas had been so deep, in every way, that she was changed to the point that—but here it was that she was unable to go further.

Was she saying that because of the relationship she had had with Thomas, she was spoiled for anyone else? Surely not, it should be the other way around! But she did not know what had taken place between her and Thomas. Some force, some power, had taken hold of them both, and had made such changes in her—what, soul? (but she did not even know what words she must use) psyche? being?—that now she was changed and did not understand herself.

Surely she ought to have some inkling, be able to answer some of the questions? Here she was, Martha Quest—well, if you like, Martha Knowell, Martha Hesse (but she did not feel herself to be connected with any of these names) but here she was, a woman living now, many thousands of years after the human race had begun to think, to make statements about its condition, and surely she ought to be able to say: Such and such a thing has happened to me because I and Thomas loved each other.

But she could not use the word Love, for she did not know what it meant.

What did it mean that she had been married to Anton, when she knew quite well that when they parted, which would be soon, they would not even be able to hear what the other said, even for a short time.

So how could she say she had been married to Anton, and ‘in love’ with Thomas? Though of course she had never
been ‘in love’ with Thomas; that particular fever, in its aspect either of sickness or of magic had had nothing to do with it. But what had been the essential quality of being with Thomas?

Well, she did not know. Something rather ordinary, perhaps? As if she had been eating superlatively good bread for some months, taking it for granted that of course one had good bread, and then, this marvellously simple good thing vanishing, she had looked around and found that after all there wasn’t much around. Yes, the best thing about being with Thomas (and this had been the essence of her self-deception and precisely what had prevented her from understanding the rarity of the combination Thomas, Martha) was that to be with Thomas was as natural as breathing. And even the long process of breaking-down—as they both learned to put it—for the other; of learning to expose oneself, was something they did together, acknowledging they had to do it. And to admit that it had been easy, because they were only putting into words each other’s thoughts. There had never been anything they could not say aloud, as soon as they thought it.

Last week she had walked into the office in Founders’ Street and there was Thomas. He was on the point of leaving for some village miles away. He had said to her: ‘Martha, do you ever think about when we loved each other?’

‘Well, what do you suppose?’

‘Yes, I know.’ He looked at her, frowning. Not at her—the frown was because he was having difficulty with finding thoughts. ‘You and I together—that wasn’t really what either of us expected, Martha.’

‘No. And all the time I was actually thinking—well, after all, I’m waiting to go to England, so this doesn’t really count.’

‘Yes. I know. And I used to think: this woman, she suits me better than any of the others—no, you’re smiling, you’re offended, you didn’t understand what I said!’

‘Yes, I did. Yes, that just about sums it up.’

‘I’ve been trying to think about it—something happened between us—I mean, not just loving each other.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘No one knows anything about that sort of thing, that’s what I’ve been thinking. We haven’t any idea about it really.’

‘Or about anything else, if it comes to that.’

‘Ah, well, now—but I can’t afford to admit that, Martha, no, I can’t. I spend all my time shouting at poor, bloody half-savages: plant this, plant that, dig boreholes, clean your teeth, wash your children. I wouldn’t be able to do that if I was thinking: I don’t know anything.’

A few days ago Martha had visited Maisie. ‘Isn’t it funny, Matty? Now I go to bed with people and you know, I don’t really care? I mean, I like it, don’t get me wrong. I like enjoying myself for them, but it’s quite different. I feel quite different, as if I’m in another room. Do you know what I mean, Matty? I mean, perhaps it’s because of my husbands being killed and then Andrew turning against me like that?’

Well, Martha knew what she meant, or thought she did—for how could one be sure if one knew what other people meant? It was the phrase, in another room. Yes, that was it. A couple of weeks ago, being alone in a small town with Jack Dobie, she had spent the night with him. Now, as far as he was concerned, they were having an affair and he was madly in love. His phrase. But Martha, ‘enjoying herself’ well enough, and even thinking—Good Lord, what sort of a fool is it who does without sex, even for a day, had been, was, in another room.

‘Do you know, Matty, I’ve discovered something. The reason why they like me, they like sleeping with me—’ Maisie, offering these intimate facts to Martha, would not use the words that went with them; she could say, they like me, but not, like sleeping with me, without a quick, frowning look at Martha to see how she was taking it. ‘The reason they like sleeping with me, if you know what I mean, it’s because I can do it so well because I feel as if I was somewhere else. I mean, when I think of Andrew, before he turned against me, I mean to say!’

It is likely, Martha said to herself, drawling it, as Anton drawled out the words he found so hard: ‘there is evidence
to suggest’ that Thomas, when he went off to Israel, took a good part of me with him. A cliché. How many other clichés are there that I’ve been using all my life and never thought they meant something, after all? Because it
is
as if some part of me has died. What part? Or it is in another room, looking on. Yes. And the joke is, I’m going off to England (I am going to the sea, oh, soon, soon, because I shall go crazy soon if I can’t reach the sea), I’m going off to ‘begin life’ all over again, but how can one begin life, begin anything, when a part of oneself is Thomas’s prisoner saying, with him, that no one knows anything about anything?

‘The point is,’ said Martha, ‘Mr Robinson says the judges are all quite sensible and human these days. Because where could we desert each other
to
, if we decided to move out? One of us has to swear on oath that we have dramatically moved our bed into another room. We’re lucky to
have
another room, the way things are…We don’t actually have to move our bed, we just have to swear to it.’

A long silence. Martha and Anton sat on either side of the tiny room—so small their legs almost met in the middle. They looked at each other. They were both of them embarrassed at this sudden intrusion of the law (long-expected though it was) into their precarious balances. They had not expected this embarrassment, this pain for the other’s situation.

After all, they had been married for four years. According to their lights they had nothing to reproach themselves with. It had almost been an arranged marriage, could almost be described as a marriage of convenience. Here they sat after four years of it, and at least they had given each other space to find consolation, they had not quarrelled—not destructively, at least; had not done each other damage. Martha had behaved well, by waiting until Anton was naturalized; Anton had behaved well, by taking it for granted that she
would
behave well. They had both of them behaved in what both would describe as a civilized way. So while they were not married, nor ever had been, there was nothing to be ashamed of. And they felt for each other a kind of dry, patient compassion—well, that was something.

‘Let’s toss for it,’ said Martha.

She expected Anton to say she was frivolous. Instead, he smiled, took out a coin and said: ‘Heads or tails?’

‘Tails.’

He won. And would therefore next day instruct his lawyer to sue Martha for divorce unless she immediately restored conjugal rights.

Meanwhile, they separated to attend to other business; Martha to find out how soon she could get a passage to England, and he to visit the Forsters, who expected him to lunch. He had not said anything at all about going to Germany.