The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [151]
She calmly sat down, and when he seemed to be looking about for milk, or sugar, she pushed a half-empty bottle of milk towards him, and a quite pretty old cup with sugar in it. She could see that these domestic arrangements did not meet with his approval.
She waited, her mind at work on what it was about him that disturbed her.
“The American revolutionaries depend on this liaison, so that their aid can reach the Irish revolutionaries,” he said.
“What American revolutionaries?”
“As you know, Comrade Mellings, large numbers of honest Americans wish to aid the Irish in their fight against the British oppressor.”
“Yes, but most of them are just ordinary people; they aren’t revolutionaries.” There was considerable contempt in this for him—for his inexactness.
He was now staring down at his mug, as if examining her was not yielding him the information he needed, and the mug might provide inspiration.
“Just let’s get this clear,” she said. “You are supposed to be an American supplying the Irish comrades with matériel?” She had not meant to sound so raw and derisive.
He said, still looking at his mug, “Yes, I am an American, Gordon O’Leary. Third-generation American. An old Irish-American family. Like the Kennedys.” He laughed, for the first time. The laugh offered her this joke like a present, and he looked full at her, with confidence.
“And Comrade Andrew is an American too?” she enquired, her voice quite stifled with derision.
“Yes, he is an American. Of course. But I think his family came from Germany.”
“Oh, for shit’s sake,” she said. “Comrade Andrew is about as American as …” She looked straight at him, with the full force of her essential innocence, her candour, and said, “And you are not an American. You couldn’t be an American, not in a thousand years.”
His pale, obedient cheeks coloured, and his breathing changed as he dropped his dangerously angry gaze. Regaining control, he said, “But I can assure you I am. Why shouldn’t I be?”
“You are Russian. Like Andrew. Oh, you speak perfect American, of course.” Alice laughed, from nervousness. But she was fuelled by the most sincere anger. She had never been able to stand being treated like a fool. She was being treated like one now.
He made some internal adjustment or other, sighed, sat up straight in his chair, as if reminded by an inward monitor that one didn’t slump in a chair, and looked at her. He said, mildly enough, “Comrade Mellings, as it happens I am an American. From Michigan. I am an engineer, and when I have finished certain little assignments here, that is what I shall return to do. Do you understand?” He waited for her to reply, but while she was listening to him, her gaze fixed on his face, the gaze was a little glassy, because her mind was hard at work. Why could he not be an American? His accent was perfect, better than Andrew’s! No, it was his style. It was something about him. What were Americans, then? (She even shut her eyes, allowing Americans she had known to appear in her mind’s eye, for examination.) All the ones she had met—which, she reminded herself, were mostly young and belonging to the network of international wanderers and explorers but, nevertheless, real Americans—were quite different. There was a quality—what was it? Yes, there was a largeness, an openness, a looseness … there was a freedom, yes, that was the word. Whereas this man here (and she opened her eyes to make comparisons with what she had been examining on her inner screen, to see him most curiously watching her) was tight and controlled, and looked as if he couldn’t make a spontaneous movement if he tried. He looked, even though he sat “relaxed”—presumably that was meant to be an informal pose—as if he wore an invisible straitjacket and had never been without it, ever, in his life. His very molecules had got into the habit of being on guard.
“You are not American,” she concluded. “But I don’t care anyway. You are not to bring any more of that stuff