A Ripple From the Storm by Doris Lessing Read Free Book Online Page A

the next compartment a group of aircraftsmen were chanting in a variety of British voices: Join the army and see the world.
    The train whistle shrieked, but Martha and Jasmine, with a long experience of seeing trains off from platforms, did not move. They were both of them instinctively avoiding an emotional farewell. At last they leaped off the train when it was moving, and turned to see the faces of Jackie and William already absorbed into the mass of faces that crammed all the windows. The train trailed off, as they had seen it so often before, across the soiled and factory-littered veld, leaving a long smudge of wind-torn black smoke across the clear calm sunset sky.

Chapter Two
    Anton said: ‘Has anyone prepared an agenda?’ and Andrew remarked in reply: ‘It was you who convened the meeting, Comrade Anton.’
    ‘Yes, that is so, that is so.’ He had been leaning back against the wall on the bench, arms folded, watching the others come in: Andrew, Martha, Jasmine, Marjorie. Now he unfolded himself upwards off the bench and into the chair behind the small white deal table, with the movement of a hinged knife opening and shutting. He watched them all in silence, waiting. The large electric bulb over his head cast a strong white light and made him even more fair and pale than usual, taking the colour from his ice-blue eyes. Recently the women had been remarking to each other: ‘I hope Anton looks after himself.’ Or, ‘He doesn’t look strong, does he?’ Yet he was a strong man: he had the strength of extreme control, and the contradictions in the face added to the impression. The structure of bone was firm, narrowing too sharply towards the small pointed chin, yet it was an Oustinate chin. The skin which covered the thin flesh was fragile, very white, and scored with dozens of minute dry lines which quivered into tense meshes around the eyes and mouth, particularly the mouth, which, though not small, added to the impression that the upper half of the face was too spacious for the lower. Yet it was a mouth continuously focused with the pressures of his self-discipline.
    His contained intensity never failed to make people feel uncomfortable. Sometimes, after he had finished speaking, they might exchange a small grimace – not critical, they did not feel that – but as if they were confessing: ‘Heavens, we’ll never be able to live up to that !’ But if there was irony in it, it was a criticism of themselves and not of him who took upon himself a burden of self-discipline and thereby released them into the freedom to be comparatively irresponsible.
    There was something of this quality of ironical admiration in the air now, as they waited for him to begin speaking. But it seemed he was in no hurry to do so, and Jasmine at last said demurely: ‘Comrade Anton will now analyse the situation.’
    He lifted the icy shaft of his gaze at her, and said: ‘No, comrades, I will not. It seems to me that no one here’ – and now he looked with accusation at Andrew – ‘has ever considered what an analysis of the situation – a real, Marxist analysis of the situation means. At least, our situation in this country has never been analysed. Not once. We have been too busy to think. Yet a real communist never takes an action which does not flow from a comprehensive understanding of the economic situation in a given situation and the relation of the class forces. We have merely rushed into activity spurred on by revolutionary or so-called revolutionary phrases.’
    The contempt in this, aimed at the absent Jackie Bolton, affected Jasmine, who looked wistfully towards the place where he had always sat, crouched in a gap between a cupboard and the wall, radiating calm sarcasm.
    Martha was thinking uncomfortably: It’s all very well, but all this time Anton has been sitting here, listening and watching but he waited until Jackie actually left before exploding like this.
    Andrew said comfortably: ‘You are quite right,