Games of the Strong, Part IV: Valley

Neila escapes the Complex in Part IV. She becomes more fully herself, which means no more pretending to be loyal to the Complex, but does not mean becoming an active resistor. She goes into herself, becomes overtly alone.

Neila is revealed as a resistor to the Complex, but not because she freed the Island exiles. After the Island trip, guards greet Neila at her office and escort her to the top-floor office of the Complex Leader. She wonders if she faces promotion or censure. She even fantasizes about what she could do to “turn everything around” if she inadvertently became the Leader of the Complex because of their failure to comprehend her real sympathies. Her thoughts as she goes to meet the unknown are “I am not indomitable. I am not a hero. I am not an activist and I do not care for groups and ostentatious political stands. I am also a coward and fearful, although I do appreciate the efforts of the brave.”

She faces the actual Leader, to whom she is polite and proper, though she thinks of how he as “ruined thousands, killed thousands.” He reveals Serena, obnoxious Serena, who survived the lark of a boat ride that ended in disaster. Serena has returned, “thin and sunburned,” determined to destroy Neila.

The juxtaposition of opposites – expecting either promotion and censure, awe for and resistance to the Leader, relief and fear at seeing Serena – is what the whole novel plays with – each thing and its opposite, characters continually changing sides, nothing being as it seems.

Serena pins the disastrous results of the leisurely boat trip on Neila. Serena’s position is one of the few clear ones now; she is a loyal Complexer. Neila’s confessed cowardice and fear are revealed in the telling of the boat ride. As the boat sank, she decided to swim for help; she was the only swimmer on board. But she admits to us that she swam because she was scared. While she did gather help once ashore, the boat was not found.

Serena accuses her of purposefully trying to execute the companions on the boat. (All but Serena are confirmed dead.) Serena fingers Neila as the Chief Resistor. She assigns to Neila what she wishes she could be: Brave. “I was actually thrilled. Chief Resistor. But of course she was wrong. I would like to be Chief Resistor material, but I am not. I will never be.” And Neila sees in Serena the same cowardice she feels – a mirror of herself. She thinks, “You rotten, lying bitch, piously mouthing loyalties. Serena, as is always apparent, saves herself first.”

Neila is imprisoned in what sounds like a lovely room: double doors, a terrace, a garden. Neila is determined to just walk out of her prison. “I intend to flee, and I suppose it won’t be too hard.” And it isn’t. Neila buries her journals and her copy of The Scared Journey under a flagstone in her prison garden, “a little square gave.” The written words are abandoned. She walks, and those who see her assume she is just going for a stroll in the garden. She just keeps walking – on her own sacred journey.

She pretends to be crazy so that workers in the Fields dismiss her, ignore her. She is performing at first, but the performance slips toward reality. She goes a little mad – both removed and unaware while also very paranoid.

After a stop in a Fields town, she escapes the notice of a group of Complex soldiers posting wanted notices, which may or may not picture her. She decides to indeed head back to the Mountain to become a hermit there, and her crazy beggar routine becomes increasingly real.

As she walks, she thinks about Lak and questions everything, “I was doubting everything that every happened to me. I was thinking I had manufactured my love for him. My whole past life seemed vague, uncertain. Even The Sacred Journey and its lessons seemed like nothing as I walked, though I could remember my obsession with it. What did I care?”

When Neila takes a serious fall while walking on ice up the Mountain, she loses herself in crying.”What am I doing here?” Complex soldiers riding in a jeep capture her. As a prisoner, tied with rope, she rides down Mountain roads, and the jeep crashes. She is seriously injured and ready to die.

But, seemingly deus ex machina, Lak appears to save her. “’My Neila,” are his first words. Lak reveals some unanswered questions and keeps referring to “the plan.” But we have no idea what “plan” he means. We think maybe he is talking of some Resistor plan. But instead he quickly reveals that he let his own family be arrested and assumed that Neila left that very day because she knew they were to be arrested. He assumes she is the loyal Complexer that he himself is. He has been trying to crush the Resistors by infiltrating groups in the Mountain, and he thinks Neila is there to help him.

Neila recounts no emotions here. She loved him. But he was always this bad guy. Neila simply acts. She sets up a trap so that he will fall to his death. She is not sure if it works, but she doesn’t see him again. The last words of the novel: “I shall do what I have to do, and then start the struggle all over again.”

Memories of my mother’s ways in Part IV:

My mother took great pleasure in her clothes and was always searching for and picturing her ideal clothes (and the ideal shoes and the ideal bags). In a town near the Fields, a ticket vendor gives Neila the shirt off his back, and convinces a restaurant owner to offer her a place to clean up and sleep. And a blue cloth is left for her to use. Neila voices what my mother would have felt: “The ticket vendor’s shirt felt soft and light. It came far down my thighs, almost to my knees…I wrapped the blue cloth around me so that it formed a long skirt and I tucked the long ends of the vendor’s shirt into it. I felt wonderful, renewed.” I can imagine my mother enjoying the clothes in just this way.

My mother could assign feelings to food she ate, such as black and white cookies – she had to take equal, alternating bites of each side, so as not to offend either side. Neila is fed in the Fields restaurant: “I ate it all, trying to use the etiquette of the Fielders, not mixing different kinds of food and taking equally from each dish in turn, so that no dish or type of food would be affronted at being first or last, favored or disfavored.”

My mother used to be so annoyed at the unreality of action movies, when the hero (a la Indiana Jones) would fall, be beaten, get seriously hurt in some way, and yet keep going. In the Mountain, after her fall, Neila expresses just such a thought: “In books and films when people are hurt, they rarely cry. They seem to grit their teeth, and give a small groan, a grimace, and then they carry on. Yet when I fall I find that my body is out of my control and needs to cry to heal itself, to recover from the shock, and to get fit to continue.” My mother wanted to assert what would be the reality of the situation.

I love seeing these bits of her, hearing her voice, used to fill out a fiction.

Games of the Strong, Part III: Island

The last sentence of Part II is “What a lark.” The first of Part III is “Now that I am out of the hospital, I have to sit and write again.” The change in mood is clear.

We don’t yet learn what exactly happened on that frivolous, ill-fated boat ride.

Neila is now the Minister of Information because Wils is dead, we assume in the unexplained boating accident. She has a high-profile, decadent office; it is a corner office with six windows and carpeting and a sofa. (Side note: my mother writes “sofa,” but I thought my use of “couch” was from her. Maybe this was an editor’s hand; I am reading the U.S. edition.) We know where Neila stands, still seeing herself as a resistor, though she plays along without actually supporting the Complex agenda.

In Part II, before the boat ride, Wils warned Neila about writing too much: “’You’re too involved with writing things down. Don’t do it. I’m trying to warn you.’” Was he threatening her or helping her? Was he a loyal Complexer? A resistor? Neila assumed he was threatening her – despite the fact that they had become lovers.

When Neila finally reveals what happened on the boat ride, we are told that neither the boat nor the bodies were found. Did the others all drown? Perhaps it is predictable that someone could have survived. The possibility that Neila will be revealed as a resistor is wide open.

Questions answered:

In this part of the novel, the reality of the Island, to where resistors are exiled, is revealed. What and where is the Island? Who is there? Is it a prison setting? The 10,000 resistors there are in exile with nothing to support them on the previously uninhabited and inhospitable Island where it rains for most of the year. But what Neila finds on her visit to the Island deepens the mystery of Lak, her beloved who disappeared after Part I. He is not there with his family. But his coded letters from Part II of the novel mention sea air. Did he escape capture? Where is he?

In addition, Neila meets an old man who knew her parents, who died in a car crash when she was a baby. She learns unexpected information about them. They were resistors, but they really did die in a car crash; they were not murdered as she suspected. And her mother had an affair with an unnamed Complex official.

Taking action:

Neila is ineffective and misunderstood throughout this part of the novel. Though she has authority in the totalitarian regime, she can’t change it and can’t do anything overt about the injustice of the Island. Her foster family even believes she turned them in as resistors. She defends herself, but no one trusts her, not the resistors, not the Complexers

Not words, not writing, but action is Neila’s turning point.

Neila decides to take 300 exiles, the most that will fit on the ferry, back with her and let them escape, swim through the shallows, before the ferry docks. She gives the ferry to a handful of resistors who remain aboard in order to help the remaining Islanders escape.

But her action is ineffective and awkward. They exiles don’t trust her, and we don’t know if they follow through on the full plan. Neila observes, “I was forcing this rescue on these miserable wretches and risking everything.” Barm, the resistor and writer Neila interviewed in Part II, is now on the Island. Neila appeals to him: “’They won’t let me rescue them.” He replies, “Why should they give you that glory?”

Everything changes for Neila after the Island trip, but not because she has helped the resistors. This action seems to go unnoticed, as least for now. It is not this boat ride to the Island that brings change, but the frivolous one from Part II.

More about writing:

I believe my mother includes her own writing process in the narrative. The chapter begins: “It is difficult to start again. I have forgotten the mood, the reasons I am doing this. But if I do it scene by scene, episode by episode, one step at a time, everything will come together.” It is as if she retained what she wrote to keep herself writing the novel as part of Neila’s story.

And, on the Island, Neila and Barm again discuss writing. Neila tells him, “Someone has to write it down,” meaning the truth of the Island. Barm replies, “Then you write it down. You go home and sit down and write it all down. As for me, I’ve grown beyond paper and pens.” In this exchange, there is ambivalence about writing, a questioning about writing.

And, like a writer, Neila admits the possibility of conflicting versions of stories: "I am always interested in versions of the truth," as my mother was. 

The New York Times and my mother

A few links to reviews I stumbled upon in The New York Times: 

The Life You Hide May Be Your Own, by Coral Lansbury, July 30, 1989. 

The review of the reprints of The Hottest Night of the Century and Games of the Strong gave me a new perspective on my mother's writing. But Lynne Sharon Schwartz takes the reviewer to task in her Letter to the Editor: Crushed by Australia?, August 27, 1989.

Unloved in Manly, by John Crowley, September 13, 1992. 

Not so glowing, but an interesting review of Longleg. 

And this is a fabulous exchange to read:  

1) The bad review of Dancing on Coral (the winner of the Miles Franklin Award): In Short - Fiction - Dancing on Coral, by Roger Freidman, May 24, 1987. 

2) The Letter to the Editor in reply: Dancing on Coral, Glenda Adams, June 28, 1987. My mother takes him down.

1978: last bit

The mother's helper is named here, A. (I'm sticking with initials except for my own name, which I retain since it is mine to share), and I am left with my mother's question at the end, with no personal memory of the story.  I have a question of my own: How did my mother, who did not have money to spare, hire a mother's helper? Maybe this was such a bad experience, she never hired one again.

Keep in mind this is more of a journal -- my mother trying to catch the moment for later use -- with some artistry but also with some things that one might omit from another draft, such as the continued use of "disgruntled."

1978 last bit

“T. and I were students together,“ I said lightly, to include [the mother’s helper], to make her feel like one of the family. “But we didn’t know each other then. It wasn’t till we started to teach that we got to know each other.”

The children had started to hit each other. T. and I got up. A. stayed with her cup of tea. It was her first day, I thought, she must have felt strange, in this exciting city.

T. cooked dinner. I set the table. R. came home. Now there was a head of beautiful curls. Brownish red Welsh curls. But cut wrong.

“He ought to see to it,” T. said, “Beautiful hair like that, massacred, because he won’t pay more than £1.50.”

We ate. T. and I cleared the table. I did the dishes. R. and A. sat drinking their coffee. Not talking to each other. R. probably didn’t know what to say to a young American [student turned] mother’s helper with a new BA in drama. And A. wasn’t interested in anyone. Just disgruntled.

The children were bickering again. I gave mine a bath, then she asked A. to read her a story.

“Sure,” I said.

“Sure,” A. said and read a bit of Charlotte’s Web followed by Paddington Plays Golf.

I went up to give my littley her goodnight hug and kiss. A. stood by. Disgruntled.

“Lovely room,” I said. “We’re lucky to get a place at all in London. A room each. I thought you and Cait would have to share.”

A.’s room was identical to Caity’s. Bed, desk, 6 X12 or so. Shower next door. Toilet. Sweet, really.

A. said nothing.

Uh, oh, I thought again. What the hell’s up with her?

1978: mother's helper

This next part of the story from the little notebook focuses more on the mother's helper, who is finally named  (though I am again using only the first initial). I feel for the mother's helper -- even though she may have been a royal pain in the butt and not well-suited to her job. 

1978 continued

My mother’s helper [descended into/came downstairs to] the kitchen. Feet first. [Bead] sandals (in my day they were called [Roma] sandals and wound up the leg and tied), grey socks, Diane Keaton trousers, [Laura Ashley/Liberty] blouse, a five-year-old [Giddon’s] of London riding jacket, long straight brown hair, disgruntled face. My eyes took in the disgruntlement, my heart sank, my inner voice said, uh oh, what’s up with her? We’d been in London only two hours, ten minutes in the flat in Hampstead. Here we were, 20 feet from the beautiful heath, with the top floor of Victorian house to ourselves, a view of St. Paul’s dome and the radio tower to one side, trees and heath on the other. And already disgruntlement.

“Ha, ha, well, well,” I said.

“Let’s have tea, “ said T.

The mother’s helper asked where the nearest shops were. Just two minutes to little South End Green with [Rumfold’s] home made bread, delicatessen, patisserie. Everything, and I mean everything, three miles from the center of London.

“And a florist?” My mother’s helper asked.

“And a florist,” T. said.

And the mother’s helper said she’d be back in a moment. And she was, while our tea was still hot, with a bunch of flowers. For me? For T.?

“For my room, “ she announced. “There’s no color in it and I need color.” No color.  [I understood] why she was grumpy. And T. hauled out a vase from the back of a cupboard for the flowers for A.’s room, which, alas, had no color.

“But there are flowers  in the garden," T. said and pointed through the window to where her two and my one were fighting over the swing after only ten minutes. 

Tricky to have a room, I thought.

And when she came down, T. made a fresh pot of tea.

We sat, T., A. and I and drank tea. I asking T. for news, gossip, anything; A. looking disgruntled still even though she now had color in her room.

1978: curly hair

I am typing up a small book of notes my mother kept from a summer in 1978 while traveling around Western Europe. The 17 small pages are full of her handwriting, which is pretty but often hard to read. Anything in brackets are dual phrasings she hadn't chosen between or bits she crossed out. I've used only the first initial for the one name included. This is only the first two pages of notes in Lion Brand notepad:


1978
They’re all wearing their hair curly in London. At least they were that particular summer. Quite remarkable. A nation of curly headed women, overnight so to speak.
I had seen T. just [the summer / twelve months] before. Blonde, straight hair, absolutely perfectly cut, swinging around as she yelled at her children, no different from fifteen years before when we were TAs sharing an office, sharing Rothman’s King Size, and giggling at the fact that we were teaching Sanskrit and old Javanese to Sydney undergraduates, who were practically our own age. My hair at the time, as always, was brown and straight, no swing, not even when I yelled at my child.
[This] particular summer, T. had a head of gorgeous little curls. Her children were a year older and things were more peaceful. The little curls wiggled as she smoked and made pots of tea.
“T.,” I shrieked, or maybe I just said it [when I saw her], “Your hair. [Curly.]” I was very impressed.
T. moved her Benson & Hedges around and put on the tea kettle. The little curls wiggled. She told me everyone had switched to [curly hair/permanents]. Soft, not like in our mothers’ day.
I grabbed the arm of my mother’s helper. “Look at that.” I said. “My old friend T., from way back. We were young together. Now she has curly hair.”
The mother’s helper, who seemed to know about these things, inspected the curls. She told T. that she shouldn’t comb it so much. The curls would stay rounder, curlier. T was making them drag out by combing her hair.


(To be continued... The next bit is more about the mother's helper, of whom I have no memory, but I was only 7 years old.)

Games of the Strong, Part II: Peninsula

Part II of the novel, Games of the Strong,  focuses on language and writing. Neila has become official translator and news writer. And she eventually becomes Wils’ speech writer. And we learn the novel itself is Neila’s writing, her journal. She hides under her own bed so no one, especially the detestable Serena, will walk in and see what she is doing, no one will see her light: “I imagine the lights, written by Serena: ‘OFFICIAL COMPLEX SPEECHWRITER FOUND WRITING SUBJECTIVE LITERATURE UNDER HER BED … LITERATURE HAS BEEN BURNED … BED HAS BEEN FUMIGATED … SUBJECT JAILED’”

Neila is feeling unsure and less than capable, yet she receives promotions and additional responsibilities in the Complex that have to do with writing. Wils, her superior, the Minister of Information, former resistor or pretend resistor, current Complexer and “an enemy,” gives her increasing responsibility: “’You are liked here and it is particularly pleasing when a woman shows she can handle the responsibility of a man. It sets a good example. You are wanted to represent us at the conference.” Neila privately notes his avoidance of “active and personal” language as common in the Complex.  And, instead of the Serena in her imagination, Neila is promoted to write the lights: “I have been told I am to do the news lights from now on. What excellent luck for me. The Whole complex will see my writing on the news tower.” (The personal side: my mother wrote the Times Square “zipper” news ticker in the 1960s for a bit.) Then, after intelligence and personality tests and a strange meeting with a psychiatrist, she is promoted again: “I Write position papers and speeches for Wils, and I am on my way up. I have been given a new office and a higher rank…I have a new desk and three windows to myself. ”

She thinks the Complex authorities, including Wils, are fools to trust her because she is actually against the Complex, but she also thinks she is less capable. She also kind of likes her higher rank and her new office. Though Neila does not become indoctrinated by the increased power, she remains passive except for her writing: her answers on the psychological tests, veiled resistor references in a speech and the writing of her journal itself.

Yet she becomes comfortable in Complex life during her Peninsula tour and while speechwriting for Wils. She and the older Wils even become lovers. “It has been fun and I am no longer constantly afraid, which is why I can sit here under the trees and write this in front of our little group.”

Neila’s insecurity comes out even when, or especially when, interviewing to Barm, the ex-resistor (or current resistor) and famous writer, Neila worries, “I was so afraid Barm would think me stupid that I had a list of questions prepared.” But the questions themselves are stilted, stupid, “They were dull and obtuse.” She can see the flaws in her own writing – yet she would feel unprepared for the interview, for speaking, without writing.

Through Neila and her encounter with Barm, my mother offers some thoughts on writing: Neila observes, “His language is straightforward… It gives a strength to his writing that is unique here. Most writers, who have generally come from high Complex families, strive to imitate masters from elsewhere, which gives their already stilted Complex language a peculiar deadness.”

 Barm not a likable or easy fellow. He worries his wife: “I think it is Barm who makes her anxious.” And Neila thinks he is “a difficult person to be with.” But he is interesting, even inspiring: He says, “’There has always been a mysterious voice that keeps coming back and asking me, “What are you and what do you want?” That voice sets my soul in turmoil. And I am still trying to answer it.’” Neila answers, “I have that turbulence.” My mother had it. I have it. Is it a writer’s turmoil?

Neila’s interest in writing comes out in other ways: “I find I am collecting poems and stories written from the point of view of someone dead.” She remembers writing such a story herself when she was 10 years old. The first-person tale was about a boatload of shipwreck survivors whose dinghy sinks. A class “clever boy” dismisses her, “’How could they know it was quiet if they had drowned?’” And Neila is affected: “After that, I was so uncertain that I felt I had to borrow images.”  (I wish I could ask my mother if this is autobiographical – I have a vague memory of her telling me this childhood story.)

In light of Neila’s childhood story, it is probably not coincidental that Part II ends with a boat ride – and a boat sinking, though we don’t learn of the sinking until Part III.

Side note: In my mother’s next novel, Dancing on Coral, the protagonist is Lark Watter. The ominous phrase “What a lark” at the end of Part II as Neila’s Complex group gets on the boat for a leisurely ride reminds me of the next Lark.