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This chapter-by-chapter summary contains plot spoilers!
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The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing: Pages 543 – 556
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Blue Notebook: (Brought to you by kat impatientreader.com) Anna goes through several days of feeling immense jealousy because she knows Saul is sleeping with her and several other women at the same time. She confronts him several times and he either lies or tells her it's none of her business.
One time when he goes out, she enters his room and reads his private papers: letters from girls in the U.S. and France who plead with him to write back, and diaries detailing his sexual conquests. One sequence concerns a woman named Mavis in Detroit who slashes her wrists out of unrequited love for him; this strikes Anna as uncomfortable foreshadowing of her own situation. She turns to the journal entries concerning herself and feels stricken that he wrote he doesn't enjoy sex with her. Out of contempt, she puts his papers back sloppily so he'll know she's been snooping.
She thinks to herself that the cold, calculating womanizer of these diaries doesn't sound like the warm man that she's attracted to. But then she realizes that she doesn't sound like herself in her own journals either – that the act of writing is a distortion.
Anna confronts Saul about his obvious illness and digs for the cause. He admits he's not well but says he tries to hide it so as not to burden others. She telephones a doctor, seeking a diagnosis over the phone for Saul's time-confusion and his several "selves." The doctor thinks Anna's "friend" is really herself, and urges her to come in for an appointment. She in turn urges Saul to go in for an appointment.
He remarks bitterly that they're fueling each other's fantasies: he allows her to keep house and act like they're a married couple, and she in turn expects that he will go put himself through psychoanalysis like she did. He asks why he should pay for it when she's willing to give him treatment for free.
Anna realizes that her anxiety state is permanent and that she and Saul are both going completely nuts. All they do every day is hang around together in the house, lose track of time, have sex, and argue.
Anna goes to visit her daughter Janet who is absorbed with boarding school and has no real connection to her anymore. Anna feels as though she's never had a child. She returns home. Saul plays some jazz records for her. Then their mutual good mood dissolves into more bickering. They argue about him sleeping around. She says they are both mad, and are megalomaniacs: he believes himself to be the United States personified, and she believes herself to be womankind personified.
That night Anna has the joy-in-destruction nightmare with the spiteful energy embodied in Saul. The next day he keeps threatening to go out and sleep with other women, and daring her to do something about it. Finally he starts yelling that she's the most jealous woman he's ever met, and he goes into a huge tirade that she stops listening to. Suddenly he snaps out of it and apologizes and carries her to the bed.
Anna realizes that he does this whole cycle of bullying/comforting deliberately. She's furious at herself for allowing him to patronize her. She starts screaming back at him that, like all Americans, he has mother-issues and he's trying to provoke her into punishing him. Then they have sex. Afterwards, Saul starts talking in different American accents as if to different women. He's totally lost his grip on reality. Anna is afraid he's going to drag both of them into total madness.
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