Doris Lessing

About two-thirds of the sacks of refuse had gone, and the pit she had seen was as if it had never been, under a litter of dead leaves where a couple of blackbirds foraged.

The door opened to show a young woman who was both tall and slender, and baggy and voluminous, for she wore battle dress in khaki and green, similar to an outfit that Alice had seen in an army-surplus shop not long ago.

"I am Alice," she said, as the girl said, "You are Alice," and then, "I am Muriel." Smiling nicely, Muriel stood aside for Alice to enter a hall where not a trace remained of the stacks of pamphlets, or whatever they were. Number 45 had no carpet on the floor; otherwise the two halls were the same. There was even a broom leaning in a corner.

"Can I see Comrade Andrew?" Alice said, and Muriel replied, disappointingly, "I think he is asleep." Seeing Alice's commenting face, Muriel said swiftly, "But he only got back at three this morning, and those Cha

She went into the room, while the man shut the door, smiling at Muriel, to exclude her.

This room had been cleared of all but two of the great packages. A low folding bed stood against a wall, with a single red blanket on it. It was untidy, but, then, he had got straight out of the bed to answer the scratching. There was a pillow without a pillow slip, and the old-fashioned striped ticking looked greasy. This little scene of the bed was different from the impersonality of the rest of the room, and suggested a rank and even brutal masculinity.

Yawning, not hiding it, the man sat down on an ancient easy chair on one side of the dead fireplace. She sat opposite in another.

"I was in France," he said easily. "Just a quick trip."

She found herself looking covertly at the bed, which had so much the air of being from a foreign country. Or perhaps from some different moral climate, like a war, or a revolution. He saw her examining the bed. He was still waking himself up. Suddenly he rose, went to the bed, tugged up the red blanket to lie straight, hiding the ugly pillow. He sat down again.

He remarked, "I got rid of what you saw in that hole out there. It's gone to where it can be of use."

"Oh, good," said Alice indifferently. The point was, he might or might not have sent, or taken, "it"; but so what? She didn't want to know.

"You must be wondering what it was. Well, all I can say is, it is something of which a very small amount goes a very long way."

A fine contempt was rising in Alice, because of his clumsiness. She said sternly, "In my view, the less people know about such things, the better." Meaning, the less she knew.

His eyes narrowed and grew hard; then he stiffly smiled. "You're right, comrade. I suppose I am off guard. I am a man who needs his sleep. Seven hours in the twenty-four, or I function less than my best."

Alice nodded, but she was examining him critically. She was finding him unimpressive. A stocky, stubby man. His hair, cut short, was flattened here and there, like an animal's fur when it is out of sorts. A stale breath came from him, sour, which was not only because he might have drunk too much. He should be watching his weight.

"I am glad you dropped in, Comrade Alice. I have been wanting to talk things over with you." Here he got up and went to the desk, to look for cigarettes, and stood with his back to her, going through the business of putting one in his mouth and lighting it. This procedure, during which he seemed to be returning to himself, a quick, efficient, considered series of movements, subdued Alice's criticism. She thought: Well, for all that, he's the real thing; and she allowed herself to feel confidence in him.

Then began a remarkable conversation, which went on for some time; it was getting on for five when she left. She knew that he was finding out from her what he needed to know - testing her - and that he must know, surely, that she allowed this, understood that it was happening. It was a dreamy, thoughtful sort of state that she was in, passive yet alert, storing up all kinds of impressions and ideas that she would examine later.

He wanted her to sever herself from "all that lot there; you are made of much better stuff than they are"; and to embark on a career of - respectability. She was to apply for a job in a certain firm with national importance. She would get the job because he, Andrew, would see that she did, through contacts that were already established there. He referred several times to "our network." Alice was to work in computers - he, Andrew, would arrange for her to have a quick course of training, which would be a sufficient basis on which an intelligent woman like her could build. Meanwhile, she would live in a flat, not a squat, lead an ordinary life, and wait.

Alice listened modestly to all this, her lids kept down.

She was thinking: And who is he? For whom would I be working? She had a good idea - but did it matter? The main point was, did she or did she not think that the whole ghastly superstructure should be brought down and got rid of, root and branch, once and for all? A clean sweep, that was what was needed. And Alice saw a landscape that had been flattened, was bare and bleak, with perhaps a little wan ash blowing over it. Yes. Get rid of the rotten superstructure to make way for better. For the new. Did it matter all that much who did the cleansing, the pulling down? Russia, Cuba, China, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all, they were welcome as far as she was concerned.

But she said, after a while, in a pause that was there for her to fill, "I can't, Andrew." And suddenly, arising from her depths, "A bourgeois life? You want me to live a middle-class life?" And she sat there laughing at him - sneering, in fact - all alive with the energy of scorn, of contempt.

He sat facing her, no longer tired now, or stale with sleep, watching her closely. He smiled gently.

"Comrade Alice, there is nothing wrong with a comfortable life - it depends on what the aim is. You wouldn't be living like that because of comfort, because of security" - he seemed to be making an effort to despise these words as much as she did - "but because of your aim. Our aim."

They stared at each other. Across a gulf. Not of ideology, but of temperament, of experience. She knew, from how he had said, "there is nothing wrong with a comfortable life," that he felt none of the revulsion she did. On the contrary, he would like such a life. She knew this about him; how? She did not know how she knew what she did about people. She just did. This man would blow up a city without five seconds' compunction - and she did not criticise him for that - but he would insist on good whisky, eat in good restaurants, like to travel first-class. He was working-class by origin, she thought; it had come hard to him. That was why. It was not for her to criticise him.