The Four-Gated City

by Doris Lessing

  She was now ready for the next stage. Over this Jack would spend a lot of thought, for it was enjoyable to choose just exactly that degree of ‘wrongness’ for a particular girl. As he said:’ You can get a raw girl from Western Ireland for instance, and if you can get her to neck just past her limit under a crucifix that would do the trick. Mind you, you have to choose the right size and style of crucifix.’

  It could be any such incident. For instance, there had been a girl who prided herself on her broad-mindedness and lack of convention. She had in the middle of a formal tea cried:’ Where’s your loo, Jack. I’ve simply got to spend a penny.’ With gravity he escorted her to the door of the lavatory, held it open for her, and then went in with her. As she hesitated, he remarked, ‘I always know whether my girls really love me or not by whether they will show they are mine by letting me stay with them.’ This threw her into total confusion. First, she had not known she was ‘one of his girls’. Or that love came into it, or was going to. She might ask him to leave the room; or hesitate then squat down, smiling.

  Soon the girl would be wondering why she was not being kissed, for probably she had not been. He talked a great deal about his sex life, in vaguely horrifying terms, but he treated her formally except for the lightning flashes of filth or the sudden gesture. It would be the girl who would, out of nervousness or curiosity, make the first move. And at this point Jack went into a great emotional act of some kind, it didn’t matter what. That he loved her‘But not like that’. Or he did love her sexually but realized she was the sort of girl who would not be satisfied with ‘just sex’. Or he had five girls already, and would not be able sexually to meet her needs. She would then reassure him, and they got into bed, in his remarkable room, all black and white austerity in the middle of his house which was like a brothel. (It was not a brothel: the brothel was elsewhere; this was a breakdown area.) Again, she would be manipulated into accepting some posture or act or technique, it didn’t matter what, which was just one degree beyond what she considered right. When the act was over, she would have been continually assured that this particular act was not only the essence of real sexuality, and that Jack was its exponent, and that her talent for it was extraordinary, but that it was considered beyond the pale by the conventional world (left undefined-but’them’ as distinct from ‘us’ was introduced at this point). She would have enjoyed an extreme of sexual pleasure; mixed or not, according to her disposition with pain; but also mixed with moments of angry rebellion and humiliation which she, not he, had overcome.

  Soon she would, to show she trusted Jack, sit in the room while he made love (usually quite differently from the way he did it with her), or make love with him while some man or girl watched.

  After each such act, she would suffer violent reactions against him against what she had done. But he never approached her, persuaded her, forced her, except in ways such as that he would appear outside the window of the shop where she was working, looking pale, distressed, a tragic ghost among men, and stand there for an hour, two hours, sending her speaking looks. Then vanish without a word. If she rang him up, or dropped in, she would hear: ‘I can’t live without you, you know that.’ Five minutes later, he would say with a vulgarly casual laugh:’ And you can’t live without … (some vividly disgusting phrase, or one she would consider disgusting). Can you? Oh, I know you.’

  After some months of this treatment, her will was broken, she would do anything he asked, and she began to go on the streets, but only in a very refined sort of way to start with. To show that she trusted him. He would choose a man for her, wait outside some room until the act was over, and take her back home with him, thanking her humbly all the way. He would not take the money at first. It was often she who suggested the second act, because he would not: perhaps a faint suggestion had been left that she had not done well, the customer was not satisfied. In due course she moved into the house, owned by Jack and a man from Glasgow. There were several girls there. They catered for men and women whose tastes were as much for psychological sadomasochism as for the physical. In fact, the girls might come to Jack for a ‘normal screw’ because of the perverts that used the house, which was extremely profitable and had many highly respected citizens as customers. Jack frequented public occasions of all kinds to find customers and new girls.

  He did not keep the one he had found among the Marchers-or it looked as if he hadn’t. Outside Lyons, she went away, leaving him alone. Now he glanced towards Martha, and wondered whether to acknowledge that he had seen her. But he had decided that she was without profit. That is, a battle of wills had resulted in stalemate. Having understood that her anger because ‘he was so stupid he didn’t see that she saw through every move he made’ was in fact part of the mechanism towards submission; she had said she would make love so-and-so but not such-and-such. He had said she was un-feminine-always a sure ploy with emancipated women. Characteristically, she was made to feel herself unfeminine for desiring to enjoy feminine satisfactions; everything was stood on its head and became its opposite in Jack’s house.

  But he could only enjoy the process of breaking down.

  The one thing she had never found out was, how consciously he used these techniques, which were identical with those used in torture; and in certain armies, and some religious orders where the novice’s will has to be broken: and in some brands of psychoanalysis? The common factor in all these is that a part or area of the person manipulated has to be made an accomplice of the person who manipulates.

  Martha had learned that she would do well to be frightened-not of Jack. So they had separated, after a brief encounter.

  He was examining Lynda carefully. He would be attracted by Lynda’s look of illness, and by her country lady’s clothes. Martha could see it was a toss-up whether he would come over. She wondered what sort of approach he was thinking about … a taxi came and she stopped it. He turned slightly to watch the two women get in. When Lynda was looking the other way he smiled a conspirator’s smile at Martha, as it were saying: get her for me. She managed a cool nod and smile, at which he could not prevent a small grimace of admiration, which was nevertheless mixed with annoyance: he would spend some minutes inventing humiliations for her. As the taxi turned a corner, he went back in search of fresh prey in the park where hundreds of people still waited to leave. The head of the column must have reached Trafalgar Square long ago.

  When Martha got back home, she found Mark had forgotten about people coming, and he had gone up to work. But Patty was upset, Lynda was upset: Mark and Martha would therefore have to cook dinner, organize an unknown number of baths, provide clothes for those who had got wet … in a frazzle of bad temper they did these things, while the unsightly image of Patty bewailing the end of love upstairs made it impossible for them to look at each other, two middle-aged people, with kindness, for they were in that condition where not only any possible present loves were made pathetic, but their past loves were nullified too. They could not believe that Mark, Martha, or indeed anybody else, could have lain in young arms, rocked on their own heartbeats, and not been thinking all the time of-Patty upstairs.

  But this, the most lamentable of middle-aged ills, has its antidote in the young with their immortal flesh; and as soon as the house was flooded with what seemed to be at least two dozen youngsters demanding baths and a lot to eat, even Patty came downstairs, sensible, and with a washed face and tidy hair.

  After supper, they all went up to Mark’s study: it had become a’tradition’. This had become true after the second of the Marches, and while they all joked about a tradition three years old, nevertheless, to the study they went.

  The study no longer looked anything like a room. Perhaps more like a medieval tent or pavilion decorated or hung with tapestries that had a theme: at any rate, there were no empty walls left. Not even a ceiling, which now had on it, printed in black ink, by Mark who got on to a stepladder to do it, dates and facts about space travel, such as: 16 September 1959: A rocket launched from th
e earth lands on the moon. And this fact, or statement, would have fixed by it a star, or marker, in some colour (Mark used about a dozen of them) which connected it with one, or several facts, or statements in different parts of the room. For instance, the first moon rocket had (among other symbols) a mauve triangle by it; the mauve triangle occurred in other parts of the room, stuck by facts objective and subjective, one of them being a typed statement: Night of 14th 1959: Lynda dreams that a great glaucous eye which is struggling to maintain life, receives in it a dart, or arrow: rains of tears from the eye, flooding everything below in a dark stain. Another mauve triangle connected with an entry on the fourth wall: According to the finding of Soviet scientists the moon is a breathing organism. And another: Must be careful next week: full moon. Always sets me off. (Dorothy’s handwriting).

  This particular area of the room had begun with some notes found among Dorothy’s belongings after her death. There were boxes of papers, which included loose sheets, notebooks, etc. It seemed that these had begun with a sort of diary, but of the most routine domestic sort, and that Dorothy had used this to try and keep herself on an even keel, to balance herself into normality.’Must remember to order new light bulbs’ - that sort of memorandum. These had developed into accounts of domestic transactions, first as an aid to exact memory, apparently to be used in possible controversies with firms, or even in legal cases, and then had become, in a soured frustration, a way of letting off steam, like letters to herself.

  ‘3rd March, 1955. Men delivered telephone directories, only for upstairs, not for us. Told them another set needed. They said would bring “tomorrow”. 4th March. No directories. Rang exchange. They said no record of this number. I pointed out this was not possible. Said would look into it. 5th March. No word from exchange. Asked Mark to exert authority. He offered me old directories. This is not the point. Rang Exchange. Waited for connection for fifteen minutes. Got woman who had no record of previous call. Said would inquire. Would ring back. Did not. 6th March. Rang Exchange. Was told I had been ringing the wrong department from the beginning. “We have some new staff here.” Was given another number. Rang it: A Mr. Getnert said would ring back. Did not. 7th March. Wrote to Centre. 8th March. Acknowledgement of letter from Centre. 10th March. A man came around to investigate “a complaint”. I asked for new telephone directories. He said he would look into it. 11th March. A man delivered a directory. Only Α-D. Asked him for the other three. Said he had run out, would drop some in “tomorrow”. 12th March. No directories. Rang the number that they said was the correct one. No record of any previous calls. Asked Mark to intervene. All right, but if that is being difficult why bother to expect anything at all. Are we paying for this service or aren’t we? He offered me the three missing directories. Took them. 20th March. Telephoned for a taxi for Rosa last night. Had not used that taxi rank for some time. Got telephone call from Exchange saying complaints from the number I had been ringing, no longer taxi rank, but private house, a woman woken from early night. Exchange: “Why don’t I use up to date telephone directories? “I told her why not. Said she would look into it.”

  This was one of the succinct entries. Some covered months.

  When’the left wall’ had been begun, it was considered a joke, or in bad taste, or some private act of retribution on the part of Lynda towards poor Dorothy. But it was Mark who continued, doggedly, to adorn, or fill the wall; and with seriousness, so that they had to consider, in seriousness, what he said: which was that this wall represented factor X; that absolutely obvious, out-in-the open, there-for-anybody-to-see fact which nobody was seeing yet; the same whether it was a question of a rocket failing to get itself off a launching pad, or the breakdown of an electric iron the first time it is used, or a block of flats or cooling towers collapsing.

  And, if they, ‘the children’, were to say ‘yes, of course’ without going on to consider its extensions and ramifications then, why did they, ‘the children’, think that he, Mark, spent so much time on manipulating this damned room? For himself? -well, partly, it got one’s mind clear, it helped to fit one fact with another, which, say what one liked, was the hardest possible thing to do-but no, he did it for them. He was supposed to be bringing them up, wasn’t he? God knows he (and here he switched to the collective), they; he, and Lynda and Martha, weren’t making so much of a job of it, but if he could not transfer to them this, what this room signified, in its potentialities for glory and horror, then he might just as well not have troubled to have them taught to read and write at all.

  After supper, the first person up in the study was Paul, still in a flush, not merely of healthful effort, but of accomplishment, because he had won an invitation from Karl Holdt to visit him and to spend a week. This had been announced at supper, and everyone had cheered-half-ironically of course, though Paul could never see why his achievements were greeted with this reservation. But underneath his pleasure was a worry: which was why he came fast to the ‘grown-ups’ - Martha, Mark, Lynda, who sat in the big study chairs, among and under the diagrams and charts, drinking brandy, like travellers lingering together briefly before starting on a very dangerous journey.

  He sat on the floor, and looked at them.

  ‘You are upset, ’ said Lynda, ‘because Karl Holdt says you can’t bring Zena to Germany too?’ Paul nodded. ‘And you want us to look after her while you are gone, but that isn’t the point?’

  ‘Well, ’ he said, ‘I’ve only just understood …’ Here, suddenly, his eyes filled with tears. He had not meant them to-such weakness was for him the worst of self-betrayals. Aggressively, then, he brought out:’ All right then, all right, but do you realize, Zena and I have been together, for over two years?’

  ‘What did Herr Holdt say?’ asked Martha.

  ‘But…’

  ‘Well, who else? You’ve been with him all day! And he’s obviously made an impression!’

  ‘What’s the matter with him!’

  ‘Nothing, who said there was?’

  Oh I thought-you’re all so anti-German. I thought … yes you are, you are, all of you, you keep pretending not to be … I’d rather Karl Holdt than you-today has been one of the real days, it’s been an important day, ’ he said, leaning forward as if he were trying to impress this on them with his good looks. But his looks were dazzling. He was not quite eighteen, a boy, all physical, a glossy, beautiful boy. His charm took one’s breath. It was not at all that light of beauty which had visited good-looking but after all quite ordinary Francis, though only briefly: no, it was built in, into aquiline features, dark liquid eyes, movements like an animal’s. Yet he moved through London where a beautiful boy was a dozen times more in danger than even the most marvellous girl, quite safe because-he was not interested? He still maintained that he and Zena had never done more than kiss. He maintained it shrilly, as a point of self-esteem. He spent hours on his clothes, on his appearance: yet was shrilly contemptuous of people who found him attractive. And in moments like these, when trying to impress on others the importance of a stage of growth in his understanding, he both leaned forward all dark dissolving eyes and imperious charm, yet seemed to wish that he could dissolve or exorcize his beautiful self by an act of will-for otherwise who would take him seriously?

  ‘Today I’ve seen something, not only about Zena.’

  ‘Well then, tell us?’ That was Lynda.

  ‘You’re the one I don’t think I’d have to tell, ’ said Paul, as if in

  Oh?’

  ‘If you hadn’t had a rich husband-well money then, if there wasn’t Martha, what would have happened to you?’

  Lynda took in breath; and kept Mark, ready to comfort, or assuage, quiet with a nod.

  ‘Of course I’ve thought, ’ she said. ‘My guess is, I’d probably be in-Abandon Hope. Joke, ’ she added. ‘I mean, I’d be sunk-destroyed.

  A wreck, cracked with drugs in some mental hospital. They’d say I was badly “deteriorated” or …’

  ‘All right, ’ said Paul. For her
voice had risen and shaken.

  ‘I didn’t mean to … Karl Holdt said-he was in a concentration camp as a boy, did you know?’

  ‘We don’t know him.’

  ‘Yes. Two years in the camp. Then five in a Displaced Persons Camp. He got out when he was eighteen-that’s my age.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He might have been my mother. I mean, if she hadn’t been a woman and got to England

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When he saw I would like to bring Zena to Hamburg, he said, no, he was sorry.’

  A violence of grief was ready to shake tears out of Paul; he was red with keeping them in.

  Lynda said:’ What you are saying is, you know you can’t look after Zena for ever: and you don’t think we will-and you think she’ll… not be happy, ’ she ended lamely.

  ‘Thanks!’ he said, savage. ‘Happy-brilliant word. Without me … She hasn’t anything but me … yes, but Karl was talking to me, he was being kind-he was explaining something, he said. All over the world there’s a layer of people-like a stain in water-like a coloured seaweed-of people out of the concentration camps and the labour camps-those places. And what they know about life is so awful no ordinary people can stand them-so they keep quiet. They have to. Karl said, if they didn’t shut up, ordinary people would lock them up again.’