The Good Terrorist

by Doris Lessing

  “You are Russian. Like Andrew. Oh, you speak perfect American, of course.” Alice laughed, from nervousness. But she was fuelled by the most sincere anger. She had never been able to stand being treated like a fool. She was being treated like one now.

  He made some internal adjustment or other, sighed, sat up straight in his chair, as if reminded by an inward monitor that one didn’t slump in a chair, and looked at her. He said, mildly enough, “Comrade Mellings, as it happens I am an American. From Michigan. I am an engineer, and when I have finished certain little assignments here, that is what I shall return to do. Do you understand?” He waited for her to reply, but while she was listening to him, her gaze fixed on his face, the gaze was a little glassy, because her mind was hard at work. Why could he not be an American? His accent was perfect, better than Andrew’s! No, it was his style. It was something about him. What were Americans, then? (She even shut her eyes, allowing Americans she had known to appear in her mind’s eye, for examination.) All the ones she had met—which, she reminded herself, were mostly young and belonging to the network of international wanderers and explorers but, nevertheless, real Americans—were quite different. There was a quality—what was it? Yes, there was a largeness, an openness, a looseness … there was a freedom, yes, that was the word. Whereas this man here (and she opened her eyes to make comparisons with what she had been examining on her inner screen, to see him most curiously watching her) was tight and controlled, and looked as if he couldn’t make a spontaneous movement if he tried. He looked, even though he sat “relaxed”—presumably that was meant to be an informal pose—as if he wore an invisible straitjacket and had never been without it, ever, in his life. His very molecules had got into the habit of being on guard.

  “You are not American,” she concluded. “But I don’t care anyway. You are not to bring any more of that stuff here. We won’t take it in.”

  “You will do as you have contracted to do. As was understood,” he said, very soft, very threatening. She felt this way of conveying threat had been taught to him: method 53 for intimidating the subject. The contempt she felt for his obviousness was putting her out of his reach.

  “I told you, we haven’t contracted for anything.”

  “You have! You have, Comrade Mellings!”

  “When did I? It was never even mentioned. It wasn’t mentioned once.”

  “How could it not have been mentioned? Did you or did you not accept money from us, Comrade Mellings?”

  This did set her back a bit, and she frowned, but said, “I didn’t ask for the money. It was simply given to me.”

  “It was just given to you,” he said, with polite derision, mild, to match his general style.

  “Yes. All I knew about it was when Comrade Muriel, you know, the woman who looks like a goose, handed me a packet with five hundred pounds, just before she went off to her spy course in Lithuania or wherever.”

  This time he went properly red, a raw beef red, and he did actually glare at her, before recovering himself. Again he sat himself up straight, reminded, perhaps by his anger, that even when one was sitting relaxed at a table, nevertheless one’s knees should be set together and one should at the most have one elbow on it.

  “If Comrade Andrew or anyone else said anything about spy schools anywhere at all, then it’s just a pack of nonsense.”

  She thought about this, taking her time. “I don’t think it was nonsense. Where have Muriel and Pat gone to? They’ve gone off somewhere for training. Well, I don’t care anyway. I’m not interested in America or Czechoslovakia or Russia or Lithuania. None of us are. We are English revolutionaries and we shall make our own policies and act according to the English tradition. Our own tradition.”

  He said cautiously, after a considerable pause, “It is of course understandable that you owe first loyalty to your own situation. But we are dealing with a struggle between the growing communist forces in the world, and capitalism in its death throes. That is an international situation, which means that policies must be formulated from an international point of view. This is a world struggle, comrade.”

  “I don’t think you quite understand,” said Alice. “We are not taking orders from you or from anyone else. Not from anybody,” she added.

  “It’s not a question,” he said slowly, emphasising each word, “of what you have or have not decided, comrade. You cannot renege on agreements already made.”

  She completed the circular argument by repeating, “But not by us.”

  His violently hostile eyes were hastily shielded from her, as he lowered his gaze.

  The silence went on for a time, and Alice remarked, quite in her good-hostess manner, putting people at their ease, “It seems to me that your Comrade Andrew has goofed things up. Isn’t that it? And you are sorting it all out?”

  She heard his breathing come too loud. Then slow and regular as he controlled it. His eyes were not available for inspection. Everything about him was tight, clenched, even his hand, where it lay on the table. “Well, don’t get so uptight about it. With so many in the KGB—millions of you, aren’t there?—yes, I know that is for the whole of Russia, only some of you are out keeping an eye on us—well, there are bound to be some inefficient ones.” His glance upwards at her did quite frighten her for a second, and she continued bravely, even kindly, for now she genuinely wanted to set him at his ease, if possible, having won the advantage and made him accept her point of view: “I am sure the same is true of our lot. I mean, what a shitty lot, that is, if even half of what you read in the papers is true.…” This last part of the sentence was her mother, straight; and Alice wondered that her mother should be speaking so authoritatively and naturally from Alice’s own mouth. Not that Alice minded. Dorothy Mellings’s voice sounded quite appropriate, really, in this situation. “Getting caught the way they do all the time. Well, I suppose we wouldn’t be likely to hear about yours: you’d just rub them out. I mean, that’s one thing about having a free press.”

  Now he moved his position, apparently trying to relax, though he had a fist set upright on the table in front of him. His look at her was steady, his breathing normal; some turning point had occurred in the conversation, if conversation was the word for it. Some decision had probably been taken. Well, so, that was all right. He’d go off in a moment and that would be that.

  But he showed no signs of moving yet.

  Well, let him sit on there, then. What she really wanted to think about was not him, or why he was here, but tonight, and the adventure that awaited her with Jocelin, with whom, at this moment, she felt an almost sisterly bond, in contrast to the murky complicated feeling she had about this Russian. This foreigner.

  She remarked, “I do think that part of our problem—I mean, now, between you and me—is what is referred to as a culture clash!” Here she laughed, as Dorothy Mellings would have done. “Your traditions are so very different from ours. In this country you really cannot turn up and tell people what to do or think. It’s not on. We have a democracy. We have had a democratic tradition now for so long it is in our bones,” she concluded, kindly and smiling.

  What was happening with him now was that he was thinking—as, after all, happens not so rarely in conversations—But this person is mad! Bonkers! Round the twist! Daft! Demented! Loco! Completely insane, poor thing. How was it I didn’t see it before?

  At such moments, rapid and total readjustments have to take place. For instance, the whole of a previous conversation must be reviewed in this new, unhappy light, and assessments must be made, such as that this person is really beyond it, or perhaps is showing only a rather stimulating eccentricity, which, however, is not appropriate for this particular situation.

  Alice had no suspicion that any such thoughts were in his mind; she was happily afloat, all kinds of reassuring and apt phrases offering themselves to her as though off a tape coiled in her mind that she did not know was there at all. If, however, she could have seen her own face, that might have been a different matte
r; for the upper part of it, brows and forehead, had a worried and even slightly frantic look, as if wondering at what she was saying, while her mouth smilingly went on producing words.

  “And I think that was probably Comrade Andrew’s problem.” (Here the scene on the bed came into her mind, and she actually gave her head a good sharp shake to get rid of it.) “He seemed to have a good deal of difficulty in understanding Western culture patterns. I hope you don’t think too badly of him. I thought very highly of him.”

  “So you did, did you,” he remarked, not enquired, in a quite good-humoured way. Everything about him said he would get up and go.

  “Yes. He seemed to me a fine person. A really good human being.”

  “Well, I am glad to hear that,” said Comrade Gordon O’Leary from Michigan or Smolensk or somewhere, who now did in fact get up, but in slow motion. Or perhaps that was how Alice saw it, for there was no doubt she was not feeling herself. Lack of sleep, that was it!

  “Someone will come for the matériel tonight,” he said.

  “It’s not here,” improvised Alice smoothly. They couldn’t have this Russian, this foreigner, creeping all over their house. Not with all those bombs and things upstairs. The next thing, he’d be telling them what to do with them. Giving them orders! Well, he’d never understand; he was a Russian; they had this history of authoritarianism.

  “Where is it?” He whipped about on her, standing very close. She had stood up, holding on to the back of her chair. Now he didn’t look smooth and clerkly and nothing. All the terror that she might reasonably have felt during the last half hour swooped down into her. She could hardly stand. He seemed enormous and dark and powerful looming over her, and his eyes were like guns.

  “It’s on the rubbish tip at Barstone. You know, the local rubbish dump, the municipal dump.” Her knees seemed to be melting. She was cold, and wanted to shiver. She had understood, but really, that this was indeed a serious situation, and that somewhere she had gone wrong. Without meaning to. It was not her fault! But the way this man was looking at her—nothing like this had ever happened to her before. She had not known that there could be a situation where one felt helpless.

  He was so angry. Ought he to be so angry? He was white, not red, a leaden white, with the effort—she supposed—of holding himself in, the effort of not hitting her. Of not killing her. She knew that was it.

  She should not have said, in that casual way, “rubbish dump,” that the stuff was on the rubbish tip. Yes, that had been foolish. Hasty. Perhaps even now she should say, No, I was joking, the cases are upstairs. But if she did, he would go upstairs and find Jocelin at work, and then …

  She felt she might faint, or even begin to weep. She could feel tears filling her, beginning to press and exude everywhere over her body.

  He said, “I am by myself. I have a car. I need someone—better, two people—to go out to this place and get the packages.”

  “Oh,” she said, breathlessly, her voice sounding weak and silly. “I shouldn’t do that. Not in full daylight. There might be people there. Rubbish vans emptying rubbish, for a start. It would be dangerous.”

  “It would be dangerous?” he enquired. Again she felt he might easily kill her, do something he could not stop himself from doing. “We can’t have that lying around on a rubbish dump,” he said.

  “Why not? Have you ever seen one? It’s full of all kinds of stuff. Acres of it. A couple of ordinary brown packages wouldn’t be noticed much.” She was beginning to feel better again, she noted.

  “Two new, large, unopened packages?” he enquired, his face close to hers, eyes quite dislocated with anger.

  “All the same, I’d wait till tonight.”

  “I’m not waiting till tonight. Get two people down here. Men. There are men in the house, aren’t there?”

  She said, cold, almost herself again, “I and another girl carried the cases”—she was going to say “upstairs,” but caught herself in time—“to the car.”

  “Then two women. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, it does matter,” she informed him. “Don’t give us orders. Don’t you understand, you can’t give us orders, we aren’t Russians.”

  Her eyes were shut, not so much because she did not feel well (in fact, she felt better) as because she could sense his hatred for her enclose her. Well, that was it, she was going to be killed. A movement, the sounds of footsteps; she opened her eyes and saw him going off. But at the door he stopped and turned and said very quietly, with an extraordinary intensity of contempt, of personal dislike, “Don’t imagine that this is the end of it, Comrade Mellings. It is not the end, far from it. You can’t play little games with us like that, you’ll see, Comrade Mellings.” And his face convulsed briefly, in that movement of cheeks and tongue which if continued would have ended in the action of spitting. And he stood with eyes narrowed, staring at her, determined to mark her, force her down, with the strength of what he felt.

  And now this was the man himself, absolutely what he was. She knew this, knew she saw him. This was not the smoothie, the conforming spy who had been taught to control every movement, gesture, look; but something behind that. This was power. Not fantasies about power, little games with it, envy of it, but power itself. He embodied the certitudes of strength, of being utterly and completely in the right. He knew himself to be superior, dominant, in control. Above all, in the right.

  He went out, shutting the door—she noted—gently. No loud bangs that might alert neighbours.

  She went swiftly to the sink and was sick.

  Tidily she swirled away all that nastiness, scrubbing and cleaning, though she had to hold on with one hand, her knees were so weak. She took herself, actually staggering, to the lavatory, for terror, it seemed, sat in her bowels. She came back, holding on to door edges and door handles, to the kitchen, where she collapsed on the table, face down, arms sprawled out, limp as a rag. She had never before felt anything like this physical weakness. She lay there for perhaps half an hour, while strength slowly returned.

  Then Jocelin came in, hardly glanced at her—so she couldn’t be so obviously in a ruinous state—and said that she must have strong coffee: not sleeping did not suit her. If she started now, she was sure she could get ready the appropriate explosive device for their work tonight. She spoke in an abstracted way, but with the cold relish that was her way of showing the excitement that, Alice knew, would shortly again be restoring herself. To hasten the healing process, she went up with Jocelin to her workroom, taking a chair with her this time, and watched those careful, intelligent hands at work. And soon she did feel so much better she had almost forgotten Comrade Gordon O’Leary. She thought vaguely: We’ll have to decide about whether to take those packages to the rubbish tip or not. As things are, he’ll believe they have already been found and taken off somewhere. So far behind her now did her real terror seem that she actually thought: Well, that’ll give him a bad moment or two. Serve him right. She told Jocelin about him as if he had been some sort of importunate salesman she had sent packing.

  “Who the hell do they think they are?” Jocelin agreed.

  Their elation began to fill the whole house, like the aromas of one of Alice’s soups, and for a while they were all up there, watching Jocelin at work, joking about how they would like to use this bomb or that. Tower blocks of flats. Police-computer information storage. Any information storage systems, for that matter. Certain housing estates. Any nuclear shelters that had been built anywhere, for it was only the rich who would benefit from them. Nuclear power stations.

  This game got wilder and noisier, until Caroline pointed out that Reggie and Mary would be in soon. Jocelin was left to her work, and the others dispersed about the house, but kept meeting on landings, or in the kitchen, for today it was hard not to be in one another’s company, to share this tide of excitement, of power.

  Everything went well that night, which was a Thursday. Reggie and Mary came in long enough to collect a few things; they were off
for the weekend. A stroke of luck: it meant they could all spend that evening together. They gathered in the kitchen, laughing, joking, as if they were drunk. But no one drank. And Jocelin was quiet, self-absorbed, set apart from them by the necessities of her task.

  She decided that it would be better if there were three in all, not two, because of lifting that heavy cement post. They competed for the honour, and Jocelin chose Bert. Faye was disappointed, and a little bitchy. Roberta said, “Never mind, there’ll be other times.”

  At a quarter to four, Jocelin, Bert, and Alice quietly left the house. All the windows in the little street were dark. In the main road the lamps seemed to be withdrawing light back into themselves; their yellow was thickening as a cool abstract grey stole into the sky. Along the pavements between the lamps it was dark. Low down in front of them this darkness agitated itself, and became a small black-and-white dog, trotting with a modest and thoughtful air from somewhere to somewhere. There were no people in this street, and no one in the little street where they had to do their work. The whole business took a minute, with Alice and Bert heaving up the bollard, and Jocelin placing the bomb under it. The bollard stayed upright. They did not run off, but walked slowly to a corner, then walked fast. Some minutes after they reached home, and were in the kitchen drinking chocolate, they heard the thud of the bomb. It was louder than they expected.

  They sat around, not joking now, but tense, even irritable, longing to go and see, but Bert said that criminals always tried to visit the scene of the crime and the police counted on that.

  Jocelin actually went off to bed. Then so did Faye and Roberta. The others could not. At about nine Caroline strolled down, through busy streets, found the area roped off with red and yellow tapes “like a street fair,” she said, and the police all over the place. There seemed to be quite a bit of damage. Windows blown in, for instance. They woke Jocelin to tell her this. She was upset; she had intended to fragment the bollard and a certain area of the pavement. She, too, went down to look, and came back gloomy. Her calculations had not been correct. She returned to her workroom, saying she wanted to be alone to think.