9th October, 1946

I came in last night from work into that horrible hotel room. Max lying on the bed, silent. I sat on the divan. He came over, put his head in my lap and his arms around my waist. I could feel his despair. He said: ‘Anna, we have nothing to say to each other, why not?’ ‘Because we aren’t the same kind of person.’ ‘What does that mean, the same kind of person?’ he asked, injecting the automatic irony into his voice — a sort of willed, protective, ironic drawl. I felt chilled, thinking, perhaps it doesn’t mean anything, but I held tight on to the future, and said: ‘But surely it means something, being the same kind of person?’ Then he said: ‘Come to bed.’ In bed, he put his hand on my breast and I felt sexual revulsion and said: ‘What’s the use, we aren’t any good for each other and never have been?’ So we went to sleep. Towards morning, the young married couple in the next room made love. The walls were so thin in that hotel we could hear everything. Listening to them made me unhappy; I’ve never been so unhappy. Max woke and said: ‘What’s the matter?’ I said: ‘You see, it’s possible to be happy, and we should both hold on to that.’ It was very hot. The sun was rising, and the couple next door were laughing. There was a faint warm stain of pink light on the wall from the sun. Max lay beside me, and his body was hot and unhappy. The birds were singing, very loud, then the sun got too hot and quenched them. Suddenly. One minute they were making a shrill lively discordant noise, then silence. The couple were talking and laughing and then their baby woke and began to cry. Max said: ‘Perhaps we should have a baby?’ I said: ‘You mean, having a baby would bring us together?’ I said it irritably, and hated myself for saying it; but his sentimentality grated on me. He looked obstinate, and repeated: ‘We should have a baby.’ Then I suddenly thought: Why not? We can’t leave the Colony for months yet. We haven’t the money. Let’s have a baby — I’m always living as if something wonderful is going to crystallize sometime in the future. Let’s make something happen now … and so I turned to him and we made love. That was the morning Janet was conceived. We married the following week in the registry office. A year later, we separated. But this man never touched me at all, never got close to me. But there’s Janet … I think I shall go to a psycho-analyst.

January 10th, 1950

Saw Mrs Marks today. After the preliminaries, she said: ‘Why are you here?’ I said: ‘Because I’ve had experiences that should have touched me and they haven’t.’ She was waiting for more, so I said: ‘For instance, the son of my friend Molly — last week he decided to become a conscientious objector, but he might just as well have decided not to be. That’s something I recognize in myself.’ ‘What?’ ‘I watch people — they decide to be this thing or that. But it’s as if it’s a sort of dance — they might just as well do the opposite with equal conviction.’ She hesitated, then asked: ‘You have written a novel?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Are you writing another?’ ‘No, I shall never write another.’ She nodded. I already knew that nod, and I said: ‘I’m not here because I’m suffering from a writer’s block.’ She nodded again and I said: ‘You’ll have to believe that if …’ This hesitation was awkward and full of aggression and I said with a smile I knew to be aggressive: ‘… if we’re going to get on.’ She smiled, drily. Then: ‘Why don’t you want to write another book?’ ‘Because I no longer believe in art.’ ‘So you don’t believe in art?’ — isolating the words, and holding them up for me to examine. ‘No.’ ‘So.’