The Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing

Author:Doris Lessing
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction, Literary, General, Fiction - General, Mothers and daughters, Modern fiction, Time travel
ISBN: 9780394757599
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1988-04-12T21:23:25.761000+00:00

• • • • •

One afternoon I returned from a news-gathering excursion, and found my rooms had been disturbed, and in exactly the same way as the place behind the wall might be disturbed by the ‘poltergeist’, or anarchic principle. This was my thought as I stood there looking at a chair overturned, books spilled on the floor. There was a general disorder, an emptiness and, above all, an alien feel to the place. Then, one by one, specific lacks and absences became evident. Supplies of food had gone, stocks of valuable cereals, tinned goods, dried fruits: candles, skins, polythene sheeting - the obvious things. Very well, then - thieves had broken in, and I was lucky it had not happened before. But then I saw that possessions only retrospectively valuable were missing: a television set unused for months, a tape recorder, electric lamps, a food mixer. The city had warehouses full of electric contrivances no longer useful for anything, and I began to think that these thieves were freakish or silly. I saw that Hugo lay stretched in his place along the outer wall; he had not been disturbed by the intruders. This was strange, and no sooner had I become convinced of the inexplicable nature of this robbery than the sound of voices I knew well took me to the window. There I stood to watch a little procession of the goods being brought back again. On a dozen heads, children’s heads, were balanced the television, sacks of fuel and food, all sorts of bags and boxes. The faces became visible, brown and white and black, when they tilted up in response to Emily’s voice: “There now, we’re too late!’ - meaning that I was back and stood at the window watching. I saw Emily coming behind the others. She was in charge: supervising, looking responsible, annoyed -officious. I had not seen her in this role before, this was a new Emily to me. June was there too, beside Emily. I knew all these faces - the children were from Gerald’s household.

In a moment boxes, bundles and cases were filing into my living-room, the children beneath them. When the floor was covered with what had been taken, the children began to edge out again, looking at Emily but never at me: I might as well have been invisible.

‘And now say you’re sorry,’ she ordered.

They smiled, the feeble, awkward smile that goes with: Oh how she does go on! They were obeying Emily, but she was found overbearing: those embarrassed, affectionate smiles were not the first she had wrung out of them, I could see. I became even more curious about her role in that other house.

‘No, come on,’ said Emily. ‘It’s the least you can do.’

June’s thin shoulders shrugged, and she said: ‘We are sorry. But we have brought them back, haven’t we?’ My attempt to transcribe this is: ‘Aow, w’srry, ‘t wiv brung’m beck, ivnt wee?’

In this effort of speech was the energy of frustration: this child,

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