Chapter 8. The Notebooks

[The black notebook now abandoned its original intention to be divided into two parts, The Source, and Money. Its pages were covered with newspaper cuttings, pasted in and dated, covering the years 1955,56,57. Every one of these news items referred to violence, death, rioting, hatred, in some part of Africa. There was only one entry in Anna's handwriting, dated September 1956:]

Last night I dreamed that a television film was to be made about the group of people at the Mashopi hotel. There was a script ready, written by someone else. The director kept assuring me: ‘You’ll be pleased when you see the script, it’s exactly what you would have written yourself.’ But for one reason or another I never saw the script. I went to the rehearsals for the television film. The ‘set’ was under the gum-trees beside the railway lines outside the Mashopi hotel. I was pleased that the director had got the atmosphere so well. Then I saw that the ‘set’ was in fact the real thing: he had somehow transported the whole cast to Central Africa, and was filming the story under the gum-trees with even such details as the smell of wine rising off white dust, the smell of eucalyptus in hot sunlight. Then I saw the cameras come wheeling in to make the film. They reminded me of guns, in the way they pointed and swung over the group waiting to start their play. The play started. I began to feel uneasy. Then I understood that the director’s choice of shots, or of timing, was changing the ‘story’. What would emerge on the completed film would be something quite different from what I remembered. I was powerless to stop the director and the cameramen. So I stood to one side and watched the group (among whom was Anna, myself, but not as I remembered her). They were speaking lines of dialogue I did not remember, their relationships were altogether different. I was filled with anxiety. When it was all over, and the cast began drifting off, to drink in the Mashopi hotel bar, and the cameramen (who I now saw were all black, all the technicians were black) were wheeling off their cameras and dismantling them (for they were also machine guns), I said to the director: ‘Why did you change my story?’ I saw he did not understand what I meant. I had imagined he had done it on purpose, had decided my story was no good. He looked rather hurt, certainly surprised. He said: ‘But Anna, you saw those people there, didn’t you? You saw what I saw? They spoke those words, didn’t they? I only filmed what was there.’ I did not know what to say, for I realized that he was right, that what I ‘remembered’ was probably untrue. He said, upset because I was: ‘Come and have a drink, Anna. Don’t you see, it doesn’t matter what we film, provided we film something.’

I shall close this notebook. If I were asked by Mother Sugar to ‘name’ this dream, I would say it was about total sterility. And besides, since I dreamed it, I have been unable to remember how Maryrose moved her eyes, or how Paul laughed. It’s all gone.

[There was a double black line across the page, marking the end of the notebook.]