dusty answer (rosamond lehmann)

i finished dusty answer, and just in time too - while the book was in impeccable shape when i found it, it had been sitting on shelves in this family for the past 75 years or so and, well, i am guessing that i was its first (and probably its last) reader. the glue of the binding is breaking and the paper cover has begun to peel a little, despite my usual carefulness with books.

anyway, let me tell you about the book!
(spoiler alert: you might not want to read this if you still want to read the book for the simple enjoyment of it, because i am going to tell you what happens and how it ends!)

rosamond lehmann
(1901-1990)

the plot of "dusty answer" is simple, if you like: judith spends the duration of the novel trying to figure out who she loves, should love, should be loved by, or should not be loved by. her fixation is on roddy, although both martin and julian, who also lived next door to her as children, were kinder and nicer to her. when they grow up, judith is in for a bit of a surprise, - roddy sometimes plays along with her secret dreams, but also keeps odd company:

Tony Baring sat opposite and stared with liquid expressive blue eyes. He had a sensitive face, changing all the time, a wide mouth with beautiful sensuous lips, thick black hair and a broad white forehead with the eyebrows meeting above the nose, strongly marked and mobile. When he spoke he moved them, singly or together. His voice was soft and precious, and he had a slight lisp. He looked like a young poet.

so far so good, but -

Suddenly she noticed his hands - thin unmasculine hands - queer hands - making nervous appealing ineffectual gestures that contradicted the nobility of his head. She heard him call Roddy 'my dear'; and once 'darling'; and had a passing shock. (pp98-99)

not that roddy himself acts "unmasculine" - a little later he tells her about his past lovers: he's had "a French, an Austrian, a Russian - countless mistresses." (p.216)

then, there's jennifer baird, a stunning creature she meets at cambridge.

'Have you got a cigarette? Never mind... I've just learnt how to blow smoke-rings. I'll teach you.' More whistling. 'It's terrible to be so swayed by appearances. I'm afraid it's a sign of a weak character. Ugly people rouse all Hell's devils in me. And beautiful ones make me feel like the morning stars singing together. I want beauty, beauty, beauty.... Don't you? Lovely people round me, lovely stuffs, lovely colours - lashions and lashions of gorgeous things to touch and taste and look at and smell.' She flung her head back on its round white throat and took a deep sighing breath. 'O colours!... I could eat them. I'm awfully sensuous - I look it, don't you think? Or do I mean sensual? I always get them muddled; but I know it's unladylike to be one of them.' (pp.121-122)

jennifer's lust for life and her careless spontaneousness mesmerize judith.

'You love somebody, I think. Who is it you love?'

'I love nobody.'

Jennifer must never never know, suspect, dream for a moment....

'You mustn't love anybody,' said Jennifer. 'I should want to kill him. I should be jealous.' Her brooding eyes fell heavily on Judith's lifted face. 'I love you.'

And at those words, that look, Roddy faded again harmlessly: Jennifer blinded and enfolded her senses once more, and only Jennifer had power. (p.134)

when jennifer leaves cambridge, dropping out of school for mysterious reasons (to be with geraldine), she leaves judith a copper bowl that judith apparently had admired, with the comment that it was the nicest thing she'd ever owned, and more:

'It's all of me,' whispered Jennifer. (p.186)

left with questions, the promise of a letter with answers, and a copper bowl, judith focuses on roddy once again. she finally finds out, the hard way, that he is not the person she has been imagining for all these years after he takes offense at her passionate admission of her feelings towards him. after a romantic, secret midnight canoe-trip to a small island where he intends to say goodbye forever, and for some reason tells her he loves her (and they kiss passionately), she sends him a letter, which is causes the following exchange:

'Well,' - he hesitated. 'If a man wants to ask a girl to - marry him he generally asks her himself - do you see?'

'You mean - it was outrageous of me not to wait - to write like that?'

'I thought it a little odd.' (p.235)

they decide to never see each other again. heartbroken, still waiting for jennifer to explain herself in the promised letter, she moves on to martin, who introduces her to his mother and shows her his farm. he shoots a rabbit right in front of her, which reminds her of roddy who, unable to bear her sadness at the sight of a dead rabbit when they were children, buried the creature for her. reduced to a pile of sobbing misery, she lets martin comfort her and when he, too, tells her he loves her, she suggests he marry her, saying she would be his wife.

she knows it is the wrong thing to do, she does not love him, and breaks up the engagement a day later. they part, and never meet again. finally, julian, the last of the boys next door, finds her in paris, explaining that he had been waiting for his turn, and courts her. they have a great time together until they hear martin has died. their ways part. julian writes to her to tell her they also must not meet again.

finally, judith is on her own, and the long-awaited letter from jennifer arrives. jennifer also wants to not see judith again, explaining that while she still loves her, she does not deserve judith's love and concern. judith wants to see her again and they arrange to meet in cambridge. when jennifer doesn't show up, judith realizes she has come full circle and is now free.


i have to say the first hundred pages or so were tedious. the style, the character of judith, her thought patterns took some getting used to. the middle part, where she is at cambridge, is much more readable, more enjoyable because of all the beautiful descriptions and because things actually happen, while in the first part, it's mainly judith thinking about stuff.

why did i read the book in the first place?
because i was curious. the book itself, the physical object, was interesting to me (see previous post about albatross books), and seeing that rosamond lehmann was involved with the bloomsbury group and also quoted by simone de beauvoir made me even more curious. also, i will admit that the comment (on wikipedia) that "dusty answer" was a succes de scandale was a selling point. :)

this book is all about emotions, muchly so because judith is nothing but emotions and wonderings.

the men we meet in 'dusty answer' are unmasculine (tony), plain (martin), and hypermasculine (roddy), its women childlike (mariella, who even after having born her son still acts and looks like a child), unfeminine (geraldine, mabel) and hyperfeminine (jennifer).

judith is trying to find her way through this maze, and it is only toward the end that she realizes how much power she holds over how people react to her, how they see her. in the end, she realizes she as one single person had enough power to break apart the circle of familiar friends of the kids next door.

books from strangers / whistling for elephants

i am reading. a novel. and loving it. i got this book from a complete stranger, via the public bookshelf the mercator foundation set up downtown. the whole thing is simple enough:

it's a simple construction that keeps the books safe from wind and rain, while still letting you see what's there.  people can just take what they're interested in and / or drop of books they no longer need or want to share. of course a fair share of the books are lame old things but i continue to be surprised by some of what i find there. i stop by there at least once a week, have a look and tidy up the shelves a bit. i think every city, every town should have one of these! what a brilliant idea!

anyway, this is what i found on the public bookshelf yesterday:

1967 ladybird book, good shape

which, while fiction, is not the book i was talking about in the introductory sentence of this post. :) but i did want to mention this, because it is a neat little item - i remember when i volunteered at the reading oxfam bookshop we had a number of customers who came in for these little books especially; collectors who were looking for specific editions and many of whom found at least some of what they were looking for on our shelves. finding this on the public bookshelf was a big surprise for me - sure, i can see where the english-language romance novels, thrillers, and chick lit might come from, but to my knowledge these old ladybird books would have come from - a british / anglophile family or collector (more likely a collector, since it is in such good shape). 

anyway, this is the "real" find for this week:

whistling for the elephants
by sandi toksvig

part of what piqued my curiosity here was that i had heard neither the title nor the name of the author before, and it did not look like chick-lit. i opened the book at the beginning and ran into the main character, a girl named dorothy:

I was ten. Almost certainly I was wearing a short tartan kilt (Clan McLadybird), a white shirt, a very neatly tied tie, a blue blazer and a peaked sailor's cap which hid my long curly ginger hair. No-one made me dress like that. It was a kind of school uniform I had invented for myself. In the photos the combination tie and skirt made me look a strange boy / girl hybrid. My face, born with a frown, was obscured by the peak of my hat. I had spent most of my early childhood shielded from a full view of anything. The cap and I were inseparable. I was, even in my tender years, trying to develop a rakish look. I spent many hours trying to persuade people to call me Cap'n instead of Dorothy. It didn't work. Not a popular child. Not even with my parents. 

by then i knew dorothy and i would be fast friends. :) she is a truly intriguing girl who is not so much raised as she just sort of grows and raises herself. her most prized possession is a "piece of illuminated manuscript" that illustrates the structure of the animal kingdom according to (supposedly) 10th century chinese thought. reading up on this just now, i found this is a direct quote also cited by borges (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Emporium_of_Benevolent_Knowledge's_Taxonomy to read this thing - quite poetic really!) first it seems that the reason dorothy (never dottie!) sees this item as a treasure is because it was the only gift she ever received that was unasked for, even unexpected, but this whole theme of animals is deeply woven into the fabric of this novel and no doubt will play a vital role in her story. the "real" relationships, actual rapport, happens only between humans and animals here, among people who are just figuring out how to live after WW2.

dorothy's british family move much and, as we join her, have just moved to america, and for the first time, they could become a real family in a real home - maybe. probably not. the relationship between her and her parents is somewhat... antiseptic.

the book is full of great character descriptions and little observations dorothy makes concerning those around her, such as this when she has entered an (assumedly) abandoned grand house and admires a large painting full of animals:

"We shall have a Chinese Garden of Intelligence." I jumped as a voice spoke behind me. I thought for a second it came from the picture. "A Great Menagerie. Like King George at Windsor or the Duke of Bedford. Tropical princes shall come and bring us barbaric offerings of tigers, leopards and creatures no man has ever seen before. We shall have such a collection that the Emperor of Abyssinia will hear of it and wish to come." 

I turned but couldn't see anyone. Then, amongst the great drapes which covered the walls, something moved. A giant insect woman. All in brown. Its wings closed about itself. It spoke to me. 

"No one, not even in Egypt, China, India or Rome, will be able to boast of such exotica."

The huge bug shimmered toward me. She was maybe in her late thirties but when you're a kid everyone just looks old. She was probably as old as Mother, just less set in aspic. 

in any case, since i got the book yesterday i've read almost half of it and can't wait to read on. i am glad i checked the bookshelf yesterday, and - thanks, stranger, for sharing this book with me!