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Chapters (37)
  1. THEFORGOTTEN
  2. CHAPTER ONE
  3. CHAPTER TWO
  4. CHAPTER THREE
  5. CHAPTER FOUR
  6. CHAPTER FIVE
  7. CHAPTER SIX
  8. CHAPTER SEVEN
  9. CHAPTER EIGHT
  10. CHAPTER NINE
  11. CHAPTER TEN
  12. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  13. CHAPTER TWELVE
  14. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  15. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  16. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  17. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  18. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  19. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  20. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  21. CHAPTER TWENTY
  22. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  23. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  24. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  25. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  26. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  31. CHAPTER THIRTY
  32. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  33. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  34. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  35. EPILOGUE
  36. SOURCES
  37. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This was not what she wanted to do for the rest of her life, typing out patents and partners’ correspondence. Dear Sirs, Further to my communication of the 5th, inst. Her eyes had been opened, dazzled, as if her past life had been a chrysalis and now she was free to fly. The typing pool was a stupid use of her talents. She would like to write. Forget her dreams of travel, living among the aborigines. She could be a journalist. A serious writer. The U & LR had encouraged her, but she had nothing new to say that they’d be interested in. The bomb would blow them all up. There was nothing distinctive to write about that, not as a woman, except to point out that it was men who were the bellicose ones and women who picked up the pieces, and if women wanted to ban the bomb they should back up principles with action. What was original in that?

She wanted to write about Lieselotte, what had happened to her, what happened to women in war. Most of her new friends in the Partisan Coffee House had left the Communist Party after Hungary, but they still had a soft spot for Russia. No Soviet soldier would do that, comrade. Communism respects women as equals. Well, that wasn’t true, but they’d never believe her. Besides, she wanted to know if those husband-comrades helped around the house or whether the women went home from work and did the laundry and the cleaning and the mending. She doubted there was equality in revolution. Women were invisible.

She wanted to say more, that rape wasn’t just in Germany. It had happened to Russian women by German soldiers. Chinese women by Japanese. Rape had no borders, no ideology. Rape was a weapon, every bit as vicious as a bayonet or a pistol. But who would agree with her? They wanted to read about imperialism and the Third World, Stalinism and Communism. They wanted to read about the Cold War and proxy war, NATO and disarmament, culture and consumption, and even though they said to draw on personal experience, she wasn’t sure it meant her experience. Well, if they didn’t want it, then Peace News might be interested.