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Go to the Beginning Blue Notebook (Anna's diary) (Brought to you by kat impatientreader.com) On 15 September 1954, Anna's entry reads that her married lover Michael is hinting that he's about to dump her, and the thought of their love affair ending is making her feel like she's about to dissolve. In order to fight off this feeling, she must use that part of her personality that Michael most dislikes: her critical, analytical side. She resolves to write down everything that happens to her for one day with complete objective accuracy. The next entry, dated 17 September, reports that she felt too depressed to write anything on the 16th. But she's going to do it now. She writes about waking up in bed with Michael and startling him out of a dream: he has nightmares often because the Nazis killed his entire family. Then he wants sex, but she's tense about her young daughter Janet waking up and intruding on them. She has sex with him anyway, and then he seems to resent her for leaving the bed to go to Janet right away. Anna gets Janet off to school and Michael off to work, and then puts on a dress that she knows Michael likes and runs down for some quick shopping at the grocer and the butcher. She does some food preparation for that night's dinner, tidies the flat, and gets ready to leave for her volunteer job with the British Communist Party. But then she realizes she has her period. She goes into about two pages of detail about that. Then she takes the bus to the office where she meets with nice Comrade Jack and cranky Comrade Butte to help them decide whether or not the Party should publish two bad manuscripts of fiction. Anna realizes that it is futile: the Party, concentrated in the authority of Comrade Butte, has already decided to publish these awful novels, and it's pointless to discuss it. She remembers Comrade Jack telling her that once Comrade Butte had been a witty young firebrand who wrote creatively and well. She realizes that each young Party member like herself (or like Comrade Butte a generation ago) turns into an old fossil if he or she stays too long. Essentially they switch places. No wonder Comrade Butte loathes her! She resolves to leave the Party. Anna returns to her desk nearby the secretary Rose who has a grimy neck and who shares a mutual antipathy with Anna. She sits, doing her "charity work": reading the miserable and emotional query letters that accompany the flood of manuscripts being mailed to the Party. Most of the manuscripts are unpublishable, but she feels it worthwhile to go visit the letter-writers if they seem particularly desperate, and give them the sympathetic ear or advice that one comrade should offer another in need. She tells herself she must leave the Party, and goes to Comrade Jack's office to speak with him. She conveys her disillusionment with the Party and its contradictions. Jack infuriates her by claiming that individuals such as him and her cannot see the whole, and the march of time will sort it all out. She resigns. He tells her that he thinks she's in danger because without her having to work for a living (she's covered by the royalties from Frontiers of War) or come to her volunteer position with the Party, she will sit and brood at home. Anna goes home, cooks dinner for Janet and puts her to bed, and then cooks a separate dinner for Michael. The hours pass and he doesn't show up. She knows he's back with his wife. She knows that he's breaking it off with her. Molly comes in and talks about Tommy and her disapproval for his "Tory" girlfriend, and about how she doesn't understand him. Then Molly leaves. Anna is all alone. Then she gets a phone call from Michael who says he's working late and won't be by. He says he's sorry about it if she's cooked for him. Anna goes to bed terribly unhappy. After the end of this entry, apparently Anna crosses out everything from the 15th and the 17th, and then writes a short dispassionate statement dated 15 September 1954 about how she's left the British Communist Party. She adds that Molly is worried about Tommy and that -- since Michael has decided to break it off with her -- she, Anna, must pull herself together. |
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