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‘Anna, I need it. When someone needs something you give it to them.’ She said nothing.
‘I shall ask nothing, make no demands and go away when I’m told.’
‘Oh quite,’ said Anna. She was suddenly angry; she was shaking with anger. ‘None of you ask for anything - except everything, but just for so long as you need it.’
‘It’s the times we live in,’ he said.
Anna laughed. Her anger went away. His laugh was sudden, loud, relieved.
‘Where did you spend last night?’
‘With your friend Betty.’
‘She’s not my friend. She’s the friend of a friend.’
‘I spent three nights with her. After the second she told me she loved me and would leave her husband for me.’
‘Very square.’
‘You wouldn’t do a thing like that, would you?’
‘I might very well. Any woman would who liked a man.’
‘But, Anna, you must see … ’
‘Oh, I see very well.’
‘Then I needn’t make up my bed?’
Anna began to cry. He came over to her, sat beside her, put his arm around her. ‘It’s a crazy thing,’ he said. ‘Moving about the world - I’ve been moving about the world, did they tell you? - you open a door, and behind it you find someone in trouble. Every time you open a door, there’s someone there in pieces.’
‘Perhaps you choose your doors.’
‘Even so, there have been an astonishing number of doors which - don’t cry, Anna. That is, not unless you enjoy it, and you don’t look as if you do.’
Anna let herself fall back on the pillows, and lay silent. He sat hunched up, near her, plucking at his lips, rueful, intelligent, determined.
‘What makes you think that on the morning of the second day I won’t say: I want you to stay with me.’
He said carefully, ‘You’re too intelligent.’
Anna said, resenting the carefulness: ‘That will be my epitaph. Here lies Anna Wulf, who was always too intelligent. She let them go.’
‘You could do worse, you could keep them, like some I might mention.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘I’m going to put my pyjamas on and come back in.’
Anna, alone, took off her dressing-gown, hesitated between a nightgown and pyjamas, and chose the night-gown, knowing by instinct he would prefer pyjamas - a sort of gesture of self-definition as it were.
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About
The Golden Notebook is a collaboration between if:book London and Apt.
Principal funding by Arts Council England.
HarperCollins, the publisher of The Golden Notebook, digitized the book for us and generously gave permission to reproduce it here in its entirety at no cost.
Additional support from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and New York University
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