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Go to the Beginning Red Notebook (continued) (Brought to you by kat impatientreader.com) Finally the official part of the meeting dies away, and Anna offers to make tea. While she's doing this, she remembers a story sent to her by a comrade in Leeds. Initially she had thought that the story was a parody, but then realized it was dead serious. She then realized that it could be read as a parody or as a serious story, and this further brought home to her the fragmentation and division of language and one's experience. So she reads the story to the meeting. It concerns Comrade Ted from Leeds, England who is thrilled beyond words to get invited to the Soviet Union. He goes and is put up in a marvelous hotel by a wonderful delegation of comrades. He sits at his hotel table, making notes far into the night because he wants (p.289) "to keep a record of every precious moment." Then some younger comrades tap at his door. They turn out to have open, simple faces, and they are wearing workers boots. They politely ask Comrade Ted to come with them, and take him on a drive to the Kremlin, and then through the complex to an unpretentious room where Comrade Stalin is working with shirtsleeves rolled up far into the night as everyone knows that he does. Comrade Ted is about to die of happiness, and things get even better because Comrade Stalin humbly asks his opinion about the Soviet Union's foreign policy towards Britain. Ted speaks at length, outlining several ideas, and Comrade Stalin humbly and appreciatively thanks him. And Ted goes back to his hotel room in tears of gratitude that he has experienced the greatest moment of his life. Anna finishes reading this story to the writers' group, and the others just look at her. Then they all laugh harshly and bare their teeth at each other in open hostility. The meeting ends on this uncomfortable note. Yellow Notebook (Anna's new autobiographical novel) Ella, who was dumped by Paul in the last installment, is sent to Paris by her kindly editor to negotiate for the rights of a melodramatic French story to be published as a serial in the English women's magazine that employs Ella. In reality, Ella's editor is not especially interested in obtaining the French melodrama, and is just trying to give Ella a vacation. In Paris, Ella can't stop thinking about Paul and feeling vulnerable and alone. She hates herself for letting her relationship with Paul transform her: before Paul, she would have had a great time in Paris, talking to strangers and flirting with Frenchmen. She goes to meet with the French editor with whom she must negotiate for the rights to the melodrama. He is a big, ox-like man and they go to lunch where he ogles all the women who pass by. His fiancée shows up, and Ella realizes that the poor woman is ugly and keeping her man only because he needs her money. Ella thinks that she'd rather be dead than be the fiancée. A few days later, she must catch her flight back to Britain. The plane has mechanical problems which necessitate unloading all the passengers back to the Paris airport, then loading them all back on the repaired plane. Everyone, including Ella, is afraid to take the flight at that point, but they all do. Only an American man sitting next to Ella shrugs it all off with robust good humor. His name is Cy and he and Ella chat. He's a brash, energetic brain surgeon who fascinates and repels her. By the time they get to Britain, she accepts his invitation to dinner the following night. They meet for dinner, and he talks about himself. He's married. He also is highly ambitious and achieves everything in life that he sets out to do. Ella finds herself physically attracted to him, and propositions him. He's happy to oblige, and they tumble into the sack, but sex for him is over in about two seconds. He's very thrilled with how good it felt for him, and has no idea that he's done nothing to satisfy her. Ella finds herself liking him a lot for his good-humored personality even while she seems to sneer at his lack of complexity. She also frets about her suspicion that she might not ever be able to have an orgasm with a man with whom she's not in love. Why can't she just be like this American man? she wonders. Men are such simple creatures! She goes home and tells her housemate Julia that she had a date with a man who was not real great in bed. |
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