Landlocked by Doris Lessing Read Free Book Online Page B

you came in, you know when I was a poor boy selling newspapers on the street in Athens, if someone had told me then that a white person in Africa could be a socialist and that I would be the comrade of such a person, then I should have laughed.’
    ‘Well, you would have been right to laugh.’
    ‘Why do you say that? You have many bad thoughts, Martha.’
    ‘Is that a bad thought? Why? When the war’s over, you’ll go back and sell newspapers and you’ll live on tuppence-halfpenny. You’ll be poor again. Suppose I never leave this country, suppose I never can get out? Well, what do you imagine we’d have in common then?’
    ‘Martha, Martha. Why do you suppose this and that? After the war we will fight till we have communism in Greece, and then you will come to visit me in Greece and be my friend.’
    ‘Perhaps so.’
    ‘I wanted to see you and talk. Now you have to go.’
    ‘Yes. I’m late. I always seem to be late.’
    ‘How is Johnny Lindsay?’
    ‘He’s very ill. I do nothing but run from one sick-bed to another. And I hate it and resent it, I hate illness.’
    Athen sat smiling, his small neat hand enclosing her hot one.
    ‘My father’s dying. He lies and thinks of nothing but himself and his medicines. And Johnny’s dying—but he’s a good man, so he thinks of other people all the time.’
    ‘Well then, comrade Martha?’
    ‘Nothing. That’s all. My life’s always like this, it’s always been like that—very crude and ridiculous.’
    After a minute he took his hand away from hers and sat, straight, his two hands on his knees, looking at the wall. She felt rejected, but could not withdraw anything.
    ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘it’s time I went home. I live from day to day, waiting to be sent home. I am so much with my friends, in my mind, that perhaps I cannot be a good friend to my friends here.’
    ‘Haven’t you heard anything?’
    ‘They won’t send us back unless they have to—why should they send back six fully trained pilots when they know we’ll escape and join the communists the moment we get home? Of course not, if I were in their shoes I would keep us here too.’
    ‘I’m sorry, Athen. I suppose it’s the same for everyone—we just have to wait, that’s all.’
    ‘I want to talk with you about something important. If you have time when you have visited your father, then come to the Piccadilly .’
    ‘I’ll try. What is it?’
    ‘I’ve been talking to a man who lives in Sinoia Street. I want you to help him and his friends.’
    After a moment, she laughed. He waited, smiling, for her to explain.
    ‘ You have been talking to a man who lives in Sinoia Street. I’ve just come from Solly and Joss. They told me about contacts in the Coloured Quarter with the right sort of ideas who have contacts with Africans.’
    ‘Well, perhaps I might have said that too,’ he said, laughing.
    ‘Oh no, oh no, you wouldn’t, and that’s the point. Anyway, I’m going.’ From the door she said: ‘I saw Maisie this afternoon.’
    ‘That reminds me, Martha. I would very much like to talk to you about Maisie.’ She could not prevent herself searching his face to find out what he felt about Maisie, but he quickly turned to the window, away from her gaze.
    She found the books Johnny wanted, and went out. In the street she looked up: the window was already dark, Athen had turned the light out again. A hand fell on her shoulder, which remembered Solly’s touch and knew that this solid pressure was not his. She turned to see a brown stout young man smiling at her. ‘What are you doing, Matty? I waswondering who’d be in the office, and here you are standing gazing up into the sky with your mouth open.’
    ‘My mouth wasn’t open! How are you? I heard you were back.’
    ‘Only for a week. It’s still my fate to be banished in W…’
    ‘Then that’s a pity. Your study group’s collapsed.’
    Thomas Stern had been in this city the year before, for a couple of months, during