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You could brush your hair and change your shirt, or you could wear last week's shirt and last night's braids, or you could put on cloth of gold and dust your shaven scalp with diamond powder. None of it would make the slightest difference. The old woman would look a little less, or a little more, grotesque.
One keeps oneself neat out of mere decency, mere sanity, awareness of other people.
And finally even that goes, and one dribbles unashamed.
"Good morning," the young man said in his gentle voice.
"Hello, Noi. "
No, by God, it was not out of mere decency. Decency be damned. Because the man she had loved, and to whom her age would not have mattered-because he was dead, must she pretend she had no sex? Must she suppress the truth, like a damned puritan authoritarian? Even six months ago, before the stroke, she had made men look at her and like to look at her; and now, though she could give no pleasure, by God she could please herself.
When she was six years old, and Papa's friend Gadeo used to come by to talk politics with Papa after di
"What? My head's dull. I had a terrible night." It was true. She had slept even less than usual.
"I was asking if you'd seen the papers this morning."
She nodded.
"Pleased about Soinehe?"
Soinehe was the province in Thu which had declared its secession from the Thuvian State last night.
He was pleased about it. His white teeth flashed in his dark, alert face. Pretty Laia.
"Yes. And apprehensive."
"I know. But it's the real thing, this time. It's the begi
She agreed with him. She herself had felt that certainty. But she could not share his delight. After a lifetime of living on hope because there is nothing but hope, one loses the taste for victory. A real sense of triumph must be preceded by real despair. She had unlearned despair a long time ago. There were no more triumphs. One went on.
"Shall we do those letters today?"
"All right. Which letters?"
"To the people in the North," he said without impatience.
"In the North?"
"Parheo, Oaidun. "
She had been born in Parheo, the dirty city on the dirty river. She had not come here to the capital till she was twenty-two and ready to bring the Revolution. Though in those days, before she and the others had thought it through, it had been a very green and puerile revolution. Strikes for better wages, representation for women. Votes and wages-Power and Money, for the love of God! Well, one does learn a little, after all, in fifty years.
But then one must forget it all.
"Start with Oaidun," she said, sitting down in the armchair. Noi was at the desk ready to work. He read out excerpts from the letters she was to answer. She tried to pay attention, and succeeded well enough that she dictated one whole letter and started on another. "Remember that at this stage your brotherhood is vulnerable to the threat of... no, to the danger... to... " She groped till Noi suggested, "The danger of leader worship?"
"All right. And that nothing is so soon corrupted by power-seeking as altruism. No. And that nothing corrupts altruism
no. Oh for God's love you know what I'm trying to say, Noi, you write it. They know it too, it's just the same old stuff, why can't they read my books!"
"Touch," Noi said gently, smiling, citing one of the central Odonian themes.
"All right, but I'm tired of being touched. If you'll write the letter I'll sign it, but I can't bothered with it this morning." He was looking at her with a little question or concern. She said, irritable, "There is something else I have to do!" .
When Noi had gone she sat down at the desk and moved the papers about, pretending to be doing something, because she had been startled, frightened, by the words she had said. She had nothing else to do. She never had had anything else to do. This was her work: her lifework. The speaking tours and the meetings and the streets were out of reach for her now, but she could still write, and that was her work. And anyhow if she had had anything else to do, Noi would have known it; he kept her schedule, and tactfully reminded her of things, like the visit from the foreign students this afternoon.
Oh, damn. She liked the young, and there was always something to learn from a foreigner, but she was tired of new faces, and tired of being on view. She learned from them, but they didn't learn from her; they had learnt all she had to teach long ago, from her books, from the Movement. They just came to look, as if she were the Great Tower in Rodarred, or the Canyon of the Tulaevea. A phenomenon, a monument. They were awed, adoring. She snarled at them: Think your own thoughts! That's not anarchism, that's mere obscurantism.-You don't think liberty and discipline are incompatible, do you?-They accepted their tongue lashing meekly as children, gratefully, as if she were some kind of All-Mother, the idol of the Big Sheltering Womb. She! She who had mined the shipyards of Seissero, and had cursed Premier Inoilte to his face in front of a crowd of seven thousand, telling him he would have cut off his own balls and had them bronzed and sold as souvenirs, if he thought there was any profit in it-she who had screeched, and swom, and kicked' policemen, and spat at priests, and pissed in public on the big brass plaque in Capitol Square that said HERE WAS FOUNDED TP SOVEREIGN NATION STATE OF A-IO ETC Em pssssssss to all that!:. And now she was everybody's grandmama, the dear old lady, the sweet old monument, come worship at the womb. The fire's out, boys, it's safe to come up close.
"No, I won't," Lama said out loud. "I will not." She was not self-conscious about talking to herself, because she always had talked to herself. "Laia's invisible audience," Taviri had used to say, as she went through the room muttering. "You needn't come, I won't be here," she told the invisible audience now. She had just decided what it was she had to do. She had to go out. To go into the streets.
It was inconsiderate to disappoint the foreign students. It was erratic, typically senile. It was un-Odonian. Pssssss to all that. What was the good working for freedom all your life and ending up without any freedom at all? She would go out for a walk.
"What is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice. "
On the way downstairs she decided, scowling, to stay and see the foreign students. But then she would go out.
They were very young students, very earnest: doe-eyed, shaggy, charming creatures from the Western Hemisphere, Benbili and the Kingdom of Mand, the girls in white trousers, the boys in long kilts, warlike and archaic. They spoke of their hopes. "We in Mand are so very far from the Revolution that maybe we are near it," said one of the girls, wistful and smiling: "The Circle of Life!" and she showed the extremes meeting, in the circle of her slender, dark-ski