He didn’t respond.
‘It must be in the hands of the estate – the family lawyer, Morris Phillips, at Phillips, Fox & Masel. You remember him? His sons run the firm now. A good deal of money and some shares.’
On his second oyster, he said, ‘The solicitors did track me down – I’d had other business with Morris from time to time.’
‘And?’
‘I gave it to the Party.’
She didn’t say anything.
He said, ‘It would’ve, well, hindered me. Contaminated me in some way.’
She was not sure why she was dismayed. It was, after all, his inheritance. And she had given some of her inheritance to the International School in Geneva.
‘But when, and if, the Communist Party comes to power, you – as a top official, a commissar – will be well paid.’
‘Ah, but there will be no great difference between what I earn, if I am socialist president, and what a waitress such as Janice earns. Even you accept that inheritance is grossly unjust to poor kids – gives rich kids a flying start.’
‘From each according to ability, to each according to need?’ she said.
Frederick frowned. ‘Anyhow, it’s not what we do or what we’re paid, as long as everyone has enough to eat and a roof. It is that we do our work well that makes work good for us – a good society allows us to find the work we are able to do well. Gives everyone a fair go.’
She watched him as she ate her oysters. The sauce was successfully made.
He said, ‘And, by the way, we say now, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his work.” ’
She could see he enjoyed teaching.
He went on, ‘Back in the early 1930s, Stalin abolished wage equalisation. Skilled workers, he argued, should be paid something more than unskilled.’
She said, ‘I rather like the older doctrine of “according to need” . . . I must be more of a socialist than you. The Good Society does not measure itself by its geniuses or millionaires or great artists; more by how decently the low-achievers – those not so good at much, those with low IQ scores – live and are treated. The winners can look after themselves.’
But she found herself cautious about how she argued with her brother. He had thought all this through. Or the Party had. Even though she had heard these sorts of arguments, back in the Café Landolt and the other cafés of Geneva before the war, and more so in Vienna after the war, she had never really done much more than throw in a smart, superior comment. She suspected that he would outplay her in an argument.
She broke from the subject and asked him rather abruptly, ‘What should we do about us? Us – as brother and sister?’
‘What, then, is to be done?’ He looked at her as if assessing a painting in an art museum. ‘I have thought about this. At first, I thought perhaps it was better we not meet. But we have to face the objective reality: we are indeed brother and sister and we live in the same town. But what is the question? Can a consciousness be developed from this relationship that will benefit us?’
He continued looking at her with unblinking eyes. ‘Do you follow me?’
Did he always talk like this? ‘In so far as your language equates with everyday language,’ she said, laughing.
She wondered if he was, in part, mocking himself, but she could see that there was a methodology at work.
He thought for a second and said, ‘As for my language, well, that can’t be helped – the Party vocabulary is disciplined, the words we use are packed with theory and conclusion, all the hard thinking that Lenin and others did. Perhaps it is a form of telegraphese. An educated communist uses these words to save time and to be precise. You need to do some more reading, Edith.’
Perhaps he was right. Perhaps she had been rather mentally numbed by the collapse of the League.
She decided to talk on his terms, in so far as she understood them in any precise way. ‘What consciousness do you think can be developed from us acknowledging a brother and sister relationship?’
‘I am more concerned with false consciousness. Around the biological objective reality of our being brother and sister, there are old ideologies – remember that in feudal days we would be part of a productive family unit. There is still some of that attitude hanging over from the feudal past. Under bourgeois ideology, as my sister, you would’ve been offered the same work in the factory but paid less . . .’
She broke in, ‘And it would still be the case.’
He doggedly continued, ‘You would get the job in the weaving factory, not me – we would’ve been forced to compete against each other.’
She said, ‘And under communism?’
‘Already in the Soviet Union, the government takes over many of the responsibilities of the family. But as far as you and I are concerned, I’m more interested in analysing what impediments it brings to my role here and now.’
He ate some food and then continued, ‘There was a revolutionary in Russia named Nechaev – he was not a communist – who wrote something called The Catechism of the Revolutionary. He said if he, the revolutionary, had any relations with parents, friends or lovers, and if he allowed himself to be swayed by these relationships, he was no longer a revolutionary. Stalin has said something similar. I was relieved when Mother and Father died because I did not have to in any way consider them in the conduct of my life. That was, in part, why I shot through – to cut myself free. I do now have to consider you. I have a sister in the enemy camp.’
The revolutionary teacher was now strongly present. She found this hardly believable. So. She was a problem to him. Well, he was probably an even bigger problem for her.
‘Do you think the Bloomsbury crowd renovated marriage?’
‘Who?’
‘Sackville-West, Harold Nicolson – did you know he nearly became Secretary-General of the League? – the writer Virginia Woolf. All those people who made their own rules about marriage and sex.’
‘Intelligentsia. They play games. They are not making a revolution. Lenin said we cannot really deal with family relations and the renovation of marriage at this point in the revolution; it will be solved when we have socialism.’
She enjoyed a secret smile about herself and Ambrose – they had renovated marriage.
‘You don’t know about Bloomsbury?’
His body moved defensively, his fingers locked. ‘I know the category.’
She would leave that. ‘The Dreiser story must have had special meaning for you? A particular meaning?’
He became animated. ‘Yes, I was interested that you mentioned that story and I thought about it again. The children go on with their lives without considering their parents. But the story’s real message is that economics determine the nature of families – they have to go where the capitalist system wants them to go. If the parents can’t support the children, they’re dumped. If the parents become a burden, they’re dumped. Dog eat dog.’
She had not quite read it that way. ‘Most families aren’t like that.’
He shook his head. ‘Edith, Edith – families are an economic unit.’
‘The New World was built by people who had to break from their parents – had to migrate to survive. Split up.’
He stared out the window. ‘I think I have the personal will to be a true revolutionary. I see my life as part of the revolutionary capital placed at the disposal of the Party.’
He frowned, and his face now seemed to show a disappointment with himself. He looked at the floor and said, ‘To be honest, there are times even now when I feel I only come close to being a true revolutionary.’
She couldn’t stop herself laughing, but swallowed it back. ‘How close?’ She measured the air with two fingers. ‘This close?’ She then brought them closer together. ‘This close?’
He was forced to join her humour and he held up two fingers very close together. ‘This close.’
She wondered if his view of the revolutionary included the will to violence. She found this pose of
ruthlessness so difficult to believe, yet this . . . commissar voice, which he slipped in and out of, was also compelling, causing her momentarily to forget that he was her brother. She understood, even appreciated, his attitudes. More than she expected. Probably more than he suspected. An organiser, she could see, was some sort of dedicated teacher, or campaigner. She had been a bit like that when she had been with the League.
‘But we are not in a revolution, at least that I can see. Nor likely to be. I suppose we are more likely to be at war with the communist nations. And I suppose you would then be on their side? What does a revolutionary do in a non-revolutionary situation?’
She could see the animation again, his love of being the answerer of questions. ‘We are always in a nascent revolutionary situation. Every argument, every tedious meeting, every strike is moving us towards revolution – there are things to be done to bring about a revolutionary situation. And as for the next war, I suspect that it’ll not only be the communists who will be on the other side, I suspect that much of the Australian workforce will fight with the communist side. And the intelligentsia. I suspect that many doctors and nurses and teachers and so on will go over to the communist side if there’s a war. Remember, 89,000 Australians voted communist at the last election. In every capitalist country, large parts of the working class and intelligentsia will go over to the communist side.’
She found this a surprising view. She realised that she did not really know the Australian people, had been away too long. She decided to let this issue pass as being too complicated for conversation. She suspected that much of what he was saying might be too complicated for this conversation, would require her to do some reading.
He went on, ‘Did you know that Secretary Lance Sharkey was gaoled for saying what I have just said?’
‘Here in Australia?’
‘For three years.’
‘I hadn’t heard about that.’
‘He was gaoled by a so-called Labor government. Lance was a fierce man. He’s something of a hero to me. I learned a lot from him – how to talk theory to the workers. He got three years. Just been released.’
‘I didn’t think we gaoled people for speaking their mind.’
He shook his head as if contemplating her naivety. ‘The Australian Irish working class would’ve fought with the Germans against the British in the First World War if they’d had a chance.’
She decided to leave politics, where she felt she was at a disadvantage, and said, with a soft uncertainty, ‘Isn’t there something, just by blood, and the shared childhood, which binds us in some way? We do have some . . . I suppose it could be called spontaneous affection.’
He nodded. ‘The spontaneous element represents nothing more or less than an emerging consciousness in an embryonic form. Not necessarily a trustworthy consciousness.’
She then again conceded her confusion as a way of breaking out of the rhetoric. ‘I don’t pretend to understand kinship. Never had to. Nor do I pretend to understand fully what you are saying.’ She felt, if not defeated, then hopelessly incapacitated in the conversation.
‘And perhaps we are no longer a brother or a sister,’ he said, with his short family laugh. The laugh, his tone, she thought, showed some uncertainty to his part. But she had nothing much to add to the kinship question beyond recognising that, yes, if they were serious – deadly serious – political enemies, how would that allow them to relate as brother and sister? He could jeopardise her chances with External Affairs.
The conversation rambled on and he continued to refer to anything she said only when it seemed to serve his line of political thought. He was trying to win her into his mental framework. She admitted to being unclear about the word ideology.
‘Conservative democratic ideology is a sort of mesh on our brains made up of so-called political wisdom, appeals to tradition and eternal truths, so-called human nature, which is supposed to give indisputable answers to all political questions and is used to suppress the opposition and block change. I suppose you could say that the communist uses hard experience and scientific analysis to get to the bedrock reality underneath all this. But it is easy for the workers to be overwhelmed by the propaganda in newspapers and put out by the churches and to lapse again into the fog of this ideology. Lapse back into false consciousness. The conservatives themselves are in this fog, this false consciousness, never facing its cruel reality as long as it returns a profit.’
He gave her a grin, as if realising he was playing the teacher role too hard, beyond the natural course of conversation. She also gained the impression he was now trying to avoid the communist jargon.
‘I’m not sure I grasped “false consciousness”.’
‘Were you in the London blitz?’
‘Yes.’
‘Remember Churchill and the rest praising the so-called patriotic resilience of the workers who were bombed out, how they dusted themselves off and went to work?’
She nodded.
‘The workers had no other option but to dust themselves off and go to work – they needed the money. And if they had decided not to return to work – say, demanded evacuation to the countryside – they would’ve been forced to work at bayonet point. Churchill was sowing false consciousness into their minds to get them to work.’
She nodded. ‘What if, as a sister, I’m your opponent?’
‘Why would you be?’ He became impatient. ‘Why would you be? You are an intelligent woman. You are experienced in the affairs of the world. You lived through the Depression. You have seen the cruelty of capitalism. Why would you be an opponent?’
‘Let us assume that I am. What then?’
He nodded. ‘Then we would be political opponents. And I would’ve failed to recruit you.’ He looked at her, obviously not ready to accept her as an opponent. But he left the matter for now and said, ‘The oysters were good. Remember eating the oysters off the rocks at Jerry Bailey?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Why was she so pleased when he showed ordinary pleasantness, showed his brother self? ‘I suppose they come from our part of the coast. When we eat them we are tasting our childhood.’
He smiled and nodded. ‘Do you fear that I might incriminate you?’ he asked.
‘If the Communist Party is made illegal, there’s that possibility, I suppose. You and those associated with you would be, I imagine, rounded up. Even sisters.’
‘They will need a mighty big prison. The Menzies government has a list of seven hundred people for immediate arrest when the legislation is passed. You may not have heard of Operation Alien?’
She shook her head.
‘There are plans for internment camps. For Russians living here and for Party members and, I suppose, also for members of the New Housewives’ Association and what they call “communist fronts”.’
‘Are you preparing to go to prison?’
He shrugged and said, in his Party voice, ‘They can gaol a communist, but they can never gaol the historical truths on which communism is based – one man can die, but the Party cannot be shot.’
‘That’s rather melodramatic, Frederick.’
‘I will be even more melodramatic, Edith – governments build the prisons they need; prisons define the society. Tolstoy said that nothing tells us more about a society than its prisons.’
What sprang to the front of her mind were the stories about GULag, which ran the prison camps of the Soviet Union. ‘What about the camps in the Soviet Union?’
‘Exaggeration. Most of it’s propaganda. And a revolution requires that you remove saboteurs and disrupters from the general population.’
She had a realisation that even democracies adopted the methods of authoritarian states – had inclinations in that direction. She didn’t say it.
The second course arrived.
They fell into another uncomfortable silence as Janice moved the dishes from the tray to the table.
Edith lifted the dish covers and checked the dishes. As usual, she did not hold high hopes. The cookin
g at the hotel only approximated the French dishes after which they had been named.
Again she was made conscious that, over the last months, Janice would have been observing Ambrose and her more closely than did your usual servant. Day-to-day silent scrutiny of nosey servants was something one could adapt to, but to have someone observing you politically was something else. In the everyday conversations between Janice and her, as Janice cleaned the rooms, there had been no hint that Janice was political. Looking back, she realised that she should have detected that Janice’s accent was not working-class. It also occurred to her that it could have been Janice who had alerted Frederick to her presence in the hotel.
Discomfort hovered everywhere.
Janice apologised that the dishes weren’t hot enough and again left the room. Again she and Frederick did not exchange any conversation.
After she had left, Edith said, ‘For God’s sake, Frederick, you and Janice don’t have to play this stupid game. I am discomforted.’
‘It’s easier this way. What would you have us do? Invite her to join us?’
‘That would be preferable.’
She let it go. So did he.
He ploughed on. ‘Ultimately – soon – you must decide which side you are on, Edith. We are coming to that historical point where the world has to decide.’
‘And you and I must decide what weight we give to being brother and sister in your scheme of things.’
Neither of them seemed to have any way of advancing this question.
They ate. She said, ‘The snapper comes from our coast.’
‘It’s good.’
She sensed that he did not pay much attention to the art of the table. She said, ‘With the sauce tartare they’ve got the mayonnaise, chopped onions and gherkins right, but I can’t find the capers.’
He shrugged.
‘What did you feel,’ she asked Frederick, ‘at the time of our parents’ deaths?’
‘Morris contacted me. They knew where I was most of the time. How did I feel? Mother and Father were dead. There was nothing to do. As I said earlier, it freed me.’
She saw herself in the League days as dedicated – in the League they were all finding their way to a new order of things. She was now severed from her cause – call it internationalism, world government. Would she ever find her way back to the cause? Any cause? ‘Did you feel sad?’
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