A chapter from a novel

Mbaekwe and Harold

(i)

Criticism-self-criticism meetings, whether intentionally or not, have the effect of generating feelings of confidence among some of those who take part, while their victims are pushed down further into the ranks of the lost.  But the power felt by those whose spirits win the day is usually short-lived for most, and cannot be upheld for long after the event.  This is one of the strange, if not paradoxical, surely dialectical ways in which power works in a hierarchical, monolithic organization of this kind.

***

Harold had already approached Mbaekwe and expressed some doubts about where he was going.  It was one thing stuck on a student campus waving red flags at distinguished academics when you were on a grant (probably as well as some financial support from your parents) and quite another trying to organize anarchic types down in London with loads of passion and hatred but not an idea in their heads, with the continual worry that your parents would come to hear of what you were up to and cast you out of house and home with nothing to your name.  “Imagine having to sign on!” thought Harold anxiously.  Mbaekwe had said Harold was acting like a petit-bourgeois, and he should have more faith in the Revolutionary Party, in its cultural analysis, and in the proletariat –but then Mbaekwe was “signing on” with his rich father back in Kenya, and his father had told him when he visited the Ritz that year, “I don’t mind what you do, my son, as long as you do it well.  If you’re a communist, be the best communist.”  That would not have been the reaction of Harold’s father.

Mbaekwe used to joke about Harold’s upper class attitudes, calling him a gentleman comrade.  However, the cultural differences between them were expressed on both sides.  Mbaekwe had a habit of sitting with others, sometimes on the stairs, with his hand down his trousers, presumably reminding himself of the existence of his “privates”, while he talked.  Most people would politely say nothing, suspecting perhaps that it was something normal in his country.  However, on one occasion, a group of them, one of them a woman, had copied him, as a joke, and hoots of laughter rang out, and Mbaekwe laughed embarrassedly, but he still carried on.  Then, one day, Harold said to Mbaekwe in front of several people: “Hey, Mbaekwe, do you have to sit there with your hand on your balls?” “What,” said Mbaekwe just a little embarrassed that an English gentleman had dared to mention such a thing, “do you find it disagreeable?”  “Well, yes, I do, actually,” said Harold.  And Mbaekwe consented to stop –although whether he discontinued his habit afterwards is not known.

Each time he talked to Mbaekwe about his problems, Harold went away agreeing to struggle, but when he got back to the rented house he was living in with the rest of his unit he felt miserable, even though Claire was so kind and willing.  The fact was that he did not want to go on living like this –he knew where it was supposed to be heading but he could see where it was in the “here and now” and where it might well be leading for him.  If he did what the Revolutionary Party wanted of him, he might well drop into total obscurity and economic misery, with half his life served out in Her Majesty’s Prisons.  It would make him dependent upon the leadership and he despised such dependence –“and for what?” he asked himself.  He was a person of little faith… though quite possibly greater realism, despite his enthusiastic acceptance of Manu’s Party line.

So a few days later he went to talk to Mbaekwe again.

“You want to leave?  Just as David wanted to six months ago?  And yet you persuaded him to stay, didn’t you?”

“That was different.  David is very green.  He hardly knows anything,” said Harold.

“Don’t you think you’re being rather condescending towards him just because he hasn’t had your opportunities?” said Mbaekwe.

 “Well, I didn’t come here to talk about David,” said Harold.  “I came here…”

“To talk about your-self maybe,” said Mbaekwe, his eyes twinkling.

Harold paused and looked down.  “Yes, I know it sounds selfish, but there you are.  That’s my background –it’s not the same for me as it is for….” But he stopped here.

There was a pause as Mbaekwe sat reflecting.  “Really, Harold, are you that much of a snob?  Are communists supposed to be snobs?”

“I’m not being snobbish, Mbaekwe, just speaking the truth.  It’s the same with you.  You went to the best schools and then to Trinity.  You have a degree in medicine.”

For a few moments, Mbaekwe became serious –something in his head identified with Harold and he tried to fight it, but it wouldn’t go away, so he ignored it and said:

“And what will you say when the workers start coming around?  That you’re dealing with a bunch of uncultured dummies?  It’s laughable what you’re saying, Harold.  Haven’t you heard of learning from the masses?  You wouldn’t stand a chance where I come from –people believe in the most hellish superstitions there –oracles and witches.  How could you with that attitude expect them to make a revolution based on the scientific teachings of Marx and Engels, which is what we’re supposed to be about, isn’t it?”

And he looked at Harold a little wildly, as his earlier reflections on his own family back home returned –Harold sensed this:

“Look, I know we are supposed to be setting up a core group of professional revolutionaries.  OK, so some of us are more educated than others, but the workers and peasants are in a thoroughly different category from the students we’re gathering around ourselves.”  He was playing for time.

“And so you persuaded David to stay,” said Mbaekwe.  “You persuaded him to become what you want to relinquish.”

“You mean...” Harold’s voice trailed off.

“Yes, I mean that this is a party of leaders.  You no longer want to be a leader of the proletariat,” broke in Mbaekwe.

Harold looked embarrassed.

“And why?” said Mbaekwe.  And finding a track through his misgivings, he continued: “Was it because if David had left it would have made you look bad?  Is that why?  You know that he’s well thought of, and he was bullied by Carlos at that meeting, because Carlos is like that –a bully, an intellectual one.  Of course, David should have stood up for himself, but Carlos is not so easy to stand up to, especially in a crowded public meeting, even if you know a bit of Marxism and don’t take his statements too personally,” Mbaekwe smiled.

Mbaekwe and Harold sat looking at each other.  But then Mbaekwe came back on the offensive, this time with a will:

“You have no principles then!  Well, I care a lot.  Who’s to say Claire –or David –will not desert the ship just as you are doing when he hears you are going?  Then we’re back to square one.  Have you already told anyone you’re thinking of leaving?”

Harold remained silent, looking straight ahead of him.

“Christ, Harold!  Don’t you realize what you are doing?  Have you stopped being a Marxist-Leninist?”

“No.” said Harold.

“Then why leave the Party?”

“Because I’m unhappy.  I’m miserable, in fact.  I’m not myself.  This is no life.  We have no time for ourselves; I’ve almost forgotten who I am.”

Mbaekwe stood up looking agitated as Harold’s words hit a trapped nerve somewhere.  But he continued with his offensive mode:

“You are a petit-bourgeois.  All you think of is yourself.  You know the line of the Revolutionary Party: fight self and serve the people!  And yet you persist!”

Harold looked up at Mbaekwe as he said these words because it was clear to him that Mbaekwe was really addressing himself.  And as he said these words Mbaekwe, pining himself deep down for what he had been telling others, sarcastically, was a decent petit-bourgeois life, felt how hollow his words sounded.

Harold sat quietly looking ahead as if straining to hear something in the distance; he was thinking but also not daring to say: “If you want to throw me out, go ahead.  I’m ready to leave anyway.”

Mbaekwe looked at him, eyes blazing.  “O.K., Harold, I’ve got work to do, so you’d better leave, unless there’s anything else you want to tell me?”  Harold said there wasn’t and left.  But when he had gone, Mbaekwe continued to think about him.  He liked Harold a lot, but he realized that he was going to lose him, no doubt about it, and he would have to make something out of this for the Party.  The Party, he thought to himself, must profit from such negative experiences, never mind how I feel –he had seen Harold as one of the pillars of his organization and yet his departure now looked inevitable.  It must be turned to the Revolutionary Party’s advantage.  And he continued to feel bouts of sadness and desolation.

Gradually, it dawned on him.  His thoughts ran roughly as follows: “Phone him in a week or two, ask him to come and see me for coffee, next Saturday, and make sure his unit and others are in attendance.  Then we’ll throw him out, basically doing what Manu taught me.  And maybe I’ll kill more than two birds with one stone –we’ll hold the initiative and the others will stick more closely to us –I hope.  Claire might be a problem, but I think he’ll just walk out on her.  The thing is to treat David and the others in the friendliest way, once Harold has been dealt with.”  Deeper down, he had already thought to himself: “If I fail on this, I’ll fail completely.  I’ll have been no good as a communist.”  What he thought would happen then can only be imagined.

 (ii)

The meeting took place in a house that had been rented for a couple of weeks for “Party business.”  Everyone –about 20 of them –sat around the walls, some on cushions, some on chairs or stools, and so on.  Mbaekwe began by talking about culture, pointing to glossy photos of half-dressed models in magazines because he knew they had an effect on the men (because they certainly had an effect on him), and making critical comments about them, while unable to stop relishing them.  After that, he talked about the general situation in the world –the U.S. war in Vietnam.  The question of culture was intertwined with the discussion of world events –how the U.S. imposed its ”Coca-cola Culture” on the Third World, how terrible it was that the youths in Africa and India were listening to the Beatles, and so on.

They drank tea and ate some digestive biscuits.  Then Mbaekwe turned casually to Harold who was sitting beside him and said, “How is married life, then, Harold?”

Although Harold should have been expecting anything, he was taken by surprise at the audacity of this remark, dropping part of the biscuit he was eating on to the floor and using his foot to scrape it not very surreptitiously under his chair.  After all, he wasn’t actually married to Claire –they were just living together.

“If you mean living with Claire, it’s fine, very good,” he stuttered and tried to smile, looking questioningly at Mbaekwe who looked back at him, almost glaring, and not at Claire who looked bemusedly at him from across the room.  Then Mbaekwe’s eyes wandered around the room at everyone.

Finally, he said: “Good.”  Then, “I paid a visit to number 107 Elsingham Road last Wednesday.  Betty let me in as everyone else had gone to work or to whatever it is you do. The first thing I saw was cigarette ends –everywhere!”  He stopped as some people started giggling, but as he looked serious their faces also became serious.

“Kitchen sink full to the brim with washing up” –he made an embracing gesture with his arms and some people had to suppress their smiles –“plastic plates with half-eaten Chinese food all over the place –even in one of the bedrooms.  Unmade beds –I didn’t venture into your boudoir, Harold, just looked through the door...”

Silence.  And then: “I mean, is that how communists live?  Is this how the leaders of the proletariat conduct their lives?”

Harold and Claire and some others had started to look a bit amused, but tried not to blush as they took in the second part of the statement.  Mbaekwe turned to David:

“You live there, David.  What do you think of this?”

“It’s not very good,” said David in a low voice.

“Not very good,” Mbaekwe repeated with a confident air, and one could hear the tones of Manu there too.

“And you, Claire, what have you to say about all this?” said Mbaekwe.

Claire looked ahead with a nervous smile –she could say nothing except “Mmmm...  Aahh.”

“Come on, Claire, is that how communist revolutionaries live?” Mbaekwe demanded.

“N…no,” she said feebly –you could hardly hear her, and the entire room had fallen silent.

“Then,” said Mbaekwe, raising his voice a little, “why do you people stand for it?  Are you really communists, or are you liberals?”

“Communists,” said Harold quietly.

“Ah,” said Mbaekwe, holding his hand towards Harold, “so you are a communist.”  And he smiled at everyone.  “So, Harold Maxton, Esquire, although you have more experience being a communist than anyone else in your cell, why do you live like a lumpen?”

Harold winced –he reminded himself that he could have seen this coming and should have quit when he met Mbaekwe a couple of weeks ago –and said: “I don’t think that’s quite fair, My…”

Mbaekwe broke in –“You don’t think that’s quite fair.   How gentlemanly of you!  I suppose you speak as a parliamentary revolutionary, Harold, or are you just a petit-bourgeois communist?”

Harold looked across the room, expressionless.  Claire looked at the carpet, suppressing the sobs that started to well up in her throat.

“Hasn’t anyone anything more to say about this state of affairs?”

After some minutes had gone by, while people gazed in silence at the dull wallpaper and the peeling paint, David piped up from the other side of the room: “I agree with Mbaekwe that our house is a disgrace.  We should have a cleaning rota –but Harold has never implemented one.  He doesn’t spend much time in the house but comes back late and eats and then we talk together, but these chores get forgotten about.  He seems a bit high and mighty and wants us to do all the cleaning.  I don’t know what he does all day...”

“Bravo!” said Mbaekwe, and he thought to himself, “David’s jumped for the bait!”  And David smiled shyly, savouring the moment.

Then Betty said: “Harold doesn’t go out every day.  He goes out in the morning for a little while but he doesn’t stay out long.  Then he comes back and reads and listens to his radio.”

“Aha!” said Mbaekwe, thinking “and now we’re getting somewhere.”  “But why don’t you do some of the cleaning, Betty, if you are at home so much?”

“I still clean up my own room and used to do a lot more than that.  But when I used to come home in the evening I could see that the place was all upside-down again.  I didn’t join this party to become an unpaid char-lady for others.”

“So even though Harold was at home, no cleaning was done?” said Mbaekwe.

“That’s right,” said Betty pertly.

And David came in again: “He treats us as if we are lower mortals.  He uses the place as if it was his palace and we are the servants.”

People started laughing and Mbaekwe laughed as well.  So their resentment was coming out nicely now, he thought, just as Manu said it would.

“Have any of you anything to add to this,” said Mbaekwe, looking round the room. “David?” he said, looking at him.

“Harold gets up later than anyone else and expects his breakfast to be made for him, and then he does who knows what all day.  We have to stick to the program, but he doesn’t seem to have one.  He goes down to see his parents every other weekend –I don’t know how he can afford it –so our meetings are all arranged around his life.  If we all did that we’d never have any meetings,” said David.

Harold looked at David in horror; then, as everyone gazed at him in wonder, he got up from where he was sitting, put his jacket on and put his satchel over his shoulder.  He had finally made a decision and was not going to be harassed any more by people who were just acting as Mbaekwe’s sycophantic instruments.

“Where are you going, Harold?” said Mbaekwe straining his neck round to look up at him.

“I’m leaving.  I’m obviously no use to you anymore and I don’t see any point in listening to any more of this –you can say what you like about me after I’ve gone –be my guest!  I resign.”  And he walked out of the door.  However, when he tried to close it behind him it got stuck in the carpet, so that he had to move the carpet back with his foot and carefully close it again without banging it in an attempt to make his departure as undramatic as possible.

***

Like a reflection of Harold’s recent departure, something else happened a little while later.  By this time, David was living in the house rented by Mbaekwe and some of the others, and on his way home, he saw a headline in the Evening News about Lin Piao, the second-in-command after Mao in China:

Lin Piao killed in plane crash.

That night, he told Mbaekwe about it.  Mbaekwe went on cooking and just looked across at him seriously over his shoulder.  “Is it true?” said David.  Mbaekwe smiled.

“But it’s on the front page of the newspapers,” said David –“I suppose you’re going to tell me not to believe everything I read in the papers.”  Mbaekwe smiled at him again over his shoulder.

Then Mbaekwe said: “Let’s wait and see what Hsinhua has to say.  For the time being I’m treating it as bourgeois propaganda.”  He had to wait several weeks for confirmation and little in the way of explanation.

So Mao was left but Lin Piao could be forgotten.  And if you did not forget him, if you refused to forget him, then you would have to be forgotten, and you too would have to be purged.  But if you forgot Lin Piao you would be washed clean again, all your sins would be excused.  And, however absurd you may think this was, there were strong reasons for staying.  However, we are not here to polemicize.