The Notebooks

The Black Notebook

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‘Hallo,’ exclaimed Paul, ‘here comes another bird. No it doesn’t.’ A pigeon cleaved towards us, saw us and swerved off and away in midair, nearly settled on the other clump of trees, changed its mind and sped into the distance. A group of farm labourers were passing on the track a couple of hundred yards off. We watched them, in silence. They had been talking and laughing until they saw us, but now they, too, were silent, and went past with averted faces, as if in this way they might avert any possible evil that might come from us, the white people.

Paul said softly: ‘My God, my God, my God.’ Then his tone changed, and he said jauntily: ‘Looking at it objectively, with as little reference as we can manage to Comrade Willi and his ilk - Comrade Willi, I’m inviting you to consider something objectively.’ Willi laid down his book, prepared to show irony. ‘This country is larger than Spain. It contains one and a half million blacks, if one may mention them at all, and one hundred thousand whites. That, in itself, is a thought which demands two minutes’ silence. And what do we see? One might imagine - one would have every excuse for imagining, despite what you say, Comrade Willi, that this insignificant handful of sand on the beaches of time - not bad, that image? - unoriginal, but always apt - this million-and-a-little-over-a-half people exist in this pretty piece of God’s earth solely in order to make each other miserable …’ Here Willi picked up his book again and applied his attention to it. ‘Comrade Willi, let your eyes follow the print but let the ears of your soul listen. For the facts are - the facts - that there’s enough food here for everyone! - enough materials for houses for everyone! - enough talent though admittedly so well hidden under bushels at the moment that nothing but the most generous eye could perceive it - enough talent, I say, to create light where now darkness exists.’

‘From which you deduce?’ said Willi.

‘I deduce nothing. I am being struck by a new … it’s a blinding light, nothing less …’

‘But what you say is the truth about the whole world, not just this country,’ said Maryrose.

‘Magnificent Maryrose! Yes. My eyes are being opened to - Comrade Willi, would you not say that there is some principle at work not yet admitted to your philosophy? Some principle of destruction?’

Willi said, in exactly the tone we had all expected: ‘There is no need to look any further than the philosophy of the class struggle,’ and as if he’d pressed a button, Jimmy, Paul and I burst out into one of the fits of irrepressible laughter that Willi never joined.

The Notebooks

The Black Notebook

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One Comment

  1. Naomi Alderman December 9th, 2008 at 3:47 pm

    This conversation is beautifully done. They are discussing, I think, the horror of life. Not just the fact that the white people in Africa are oppressing the black people, but the terrible fact of human cruelty and destruction which needn’t have anything to do with class or colour or gender.

    They have been playing with and slaughtering animals for amusement or interest or sport.

    Now they turn to discuss the state of the country they’re living in, which could be a paradise but isn’t. Why isn’t it? If this were a Catholic novel, some mention would now be made of original sin. If it were The Lord of the Flies, it would start talking about the darkness at the heart of man. Paul talks instead about “some principle of destruction”. Willi, who is a fundamentalist about his Communism cannot see that any explanation is needed beyond “the philosophy of the class struggle”.

    But Paul is touching on something fundamental here; perhaps clearer to him than to the others because he’s the one that’s so good at destruction. Willi’s communism imagines that the world can be perfected. Paul is saying: how can the world ever be perfected since human beings so enjoy causing pain and suffering in any being they can exercise dominion over?