Read Online The Summer Before the Dark by Doris Lessing - Free Book Online Page A

and she realised that she had been going in the right direction inthe first place. Again she set herself to go north. The poor seal had scars on its sides: it had been humping overland to reach the sea, and had torn itself on rocks and on stony soil. She was worrying that she did not have any ointment for these wounds, some of which were fresh, and bleeding. There were many scars, too, of old wounds. Perhaps some of the low bitter shrubs that grew from the stones had medicinal properties. She carefully laid down the seal, who put its head on her feet, off the stones, and she reached down and sideways and pulled some ends of a shrub. There was no way to pulp this green, so she chewed it, and spat the liquid from her mouth on to the seal’s wounds. It seemed to her that these were already healing, but she could not stop to do any more, and she again picked up the seal and struggled on with it.
    Kate knew of course that she was about to be flipped from one suave impersonal Organisation into another, in a matter of hours, by means of a suave impersonal Airline. She was, like us all, acquainted by radio, television, films, with the international civil service and their manner of life. But it did not happen like that. On the eve of her departure the strike was definitely called off, and she was sure of her flight; by next morning there was another, of the administrative staff. Kate took the train to Paris where she expected to take a plane to Rome. In Paris she was told the roads to the airport were blocked that day by a demonstration of alien workers, mostly Spanish and Italian—she would be unlikely to get off the ground that day. She took the train to Rome. There it was a question of leaving one circuit of machinery—railways, to link with the other, air travel. There were traffic jams, muddles, all kinds of delay, but she was able at last to make the switch; rather late, however. In Turkey her surroundings were as she had expected:a sleek car took her, by herself, through people who could never expect to sit in such a car, unless their job was to drive or maintain it, and, shielded from her surroundings in every way but through her eyes, she talked French with the chauffeur. The hotel was like, in spirit and style, the building for Global Food. Her room was like the undemanding box she had left. But because she was late, having been so much delayed, she arrived at the same time as the incoming delegates—a thousand small necessary things had not been done, and they were a translator short. She did no more than see her luggage to her room, then presented herself: irritation focussed on her; she was now personifying the spirit of inefficiency about which all over this vast hotel the delegates were complaining—just as she had been complaining yesterday and the day before, in London, Paris, and Rome.
    A whole floor had been given to the conference. The large room in which the deliberations would be held was like the one which she had just left, and which she was almost thinking of as “home.” It was fleshed in shining wood from ceiling to the floor, which, however, was not thick carpet, but tiles, whose pattern was copied from a mosque. In the middle of this room was a vast table, this time rectangular, set with headphones, switches, and buttons. It was now her task to see that each place was equipped with paper, for doodling and scribbling during fits of boredom when delegates spoke too long, and with pencils, and biros, and water. Or rather, she did not do this herself: she was making sure that the hotel employee whose responsibility it was had not forgotten. His name was Ahmed, a young man, fattish and pale, invincibly agreeable and smiling, her counterpart, her ally, her brother. He spoke French and German and English; was happy she had what he lacked—Italian and Portuguese; he knew everything about the hotel trade, but had not before assisted at a Conference—or rather, while he knew business conferences, expected