The Day Stalin Died by Doris Lessing

First published: 1957

Type of plot: Coming of age

Time of work: March 5, 1953

Locale: London

Principal Characters:

• The narrator, a writer
• Jessie, her cousin
• Emma, Jessie's mother, the narrator's aunt
• Jean, a Communist Party associate of the narrator
• Beatrice, an old friend of the narrator from South Africa
• The host, the manager of a photography studio
• Jackie Smith, his friend and assistant

The Story

The day begins badly. The narrator receives a letter from Aunt Emma in Bournemouth, reminding her of a promise to take her cousin Jessie to have her picture taken that afternoon. Aunt Emma, Jessie's mother, wants the photos because she intends to show them to a television producer who visits his older brother in the boardinghouse where she and her daughter live. Aunt Emma hopes that Jessie will prove sufficiently photogenic to induce the producer to whisk her off to London to be a television star. Jessie is a broad-shouldered girl of about twenty-five who looks eighteen.

The narrator, forgetting all about the promise, has made other plans, which she is now obliged to cancel. She quickly tries to call off a date that she made with an American screenwriter named Bill. Bill, it seems, had some trouble with the House Committee on Un-American Activities, was black-listed, and could not find work in the United States. He is also having difficulty getting a permit to live in Great Britain. The narrator is trying to help him find a secretary and has gotten in touch with an old friend from South Africa, Beatrice, who is out of a job. The date was arranged to introduce the two. The narrator believes that these friends will get along because both have been involved in left-wing causes. (As she subsequently discovers, they prove not at all compatible.) It takes the narrator an hour to get in touch with Bill, only to discover that he has forgotten about the appointment. She then sends Beatrice a telegram because Beatrice has no phone.

Having freed the afternoon for Jessie, the narrator starts to get some work done in what is left of the morning. She has just begun when she is interrupted by a call from one of her Communist Party comrades, who says that she wants to see the narrator at lunchtime. The caller, Jean, is the narrator's self-appointed "guide or mentor towards a correct political viewpoint." Jean is the daughter of a bishop and has worked unquestioningly for the party for the past thirty years. Having divorced her husband when he became a member of the Labour Party following the Nazi-Soviet Pact, she now lives alone in a sitting room with a portrait of Joseph Stalin over her bed. Jean is disturbed about a remark that the narrator made the week before at a party meeting, that "a certain amount of dirty work must be going on in the Soviet Union." Jean arrives, bringing her sandwiches with her in a brown paper bag, and berates the narrator for flippancy. She tells her of the necessity of "unremitting vigilance on the part of the working class." She says that the only way that an intellectual with the narrator's background can gain a correct, working-class point of view is to work harder in the party to attain "a really sound working-class attitude." Jean recommends reading the verbatim transcript of the purge trials of the 1930's as an antidote to a vacillating attitude toward Soviet justice.

Jean's visit leaves the narrator, "for one reason or another," depressed. However, there is not much time to brood; no sooner has Jean left than a call comes from Cousin Jessie, who asks if the narrator can meet her in twenty minutes outside a dress shop, as she has decided to buy new clothes in which to be photographed. The narrator therefore quits work for the day and takes a cab to her rendezvous.

Jessie is waiting outside the dress shop when the narrator arrives; she is already wearing her new dress, but it does not seem any different from the clothes she usually wears. Jessie, almost by way of greeting, announces, somewhat aggressively, that her mother, Aunt Emma, is coming to the photography studio with them. Aunt Emma then emerges from a corner tearoom, and the three of them set off to take a bus to the studio. Between Aunt Emma and Cousin Jessie there is a constant tension, which sends off "currents of angry electricity into the air around them." Aunt Emma's bulldog eyes are "nearly always fixed in disappointment on her daughter." Whatever their divisions, however, mother and daughter share a mutual detestation of the lower classes, with which they carry on incessant guerrilla warfare. This form of entertainment, the narrator explains, is conditioned by their extremely dreary lives. Their conversation on the bus therefore is a constant running battle against the lower classes and each other.

They get off the bus; the entrance to the studio is not far away. As the three women hurry down the street, their heads under Aunt Emma's umbrella to protect them against the cold, drizzling rain, the narrator notices the announcement on a newsstand bulletin board that Stalin is dying. She stops and buys a paper but has only a brief moment to exchange words with the vendor, as Aunt Emma is obviously annoyed at being held up. Aunt Emma has more important things on her mind: "What do you think, would it have been better if Jessie had bought a nice pretty afternoon dress?" The studio is on the second floor. The stairs have a plush carpet and striped gold-and-mauve wallpaper; upstairs is a white, gray, and gold drawing room with a small crystal chandelier, the prisms of which tinkle from the reverberations of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. The studio is run by two very effeminate men, one of whom, the host, is a disturbingly outspoken racist.

The highly charged atmosphere makes all three women ill at ease, especially Jessie. "You don't look relaxed," the host tells her gently. "It's really no use at all, you know, unless you are really relaxed all over." To break the ice, the host suggests "a nice cup of tea" so that "our vibrations might become just a little more harmonious." Aunt Emma tries to steer the conversation in another direction and blurts out that Stalin is dying, or "so they would have us believe." The subject of the great man's demise produces only more trivialities. The host comments that he does not know much about politics but that "Uncle Joe and Roosevelt were absolutely my pin up boys" during the war, "But absolutely!" All this chitchat does nothing to calm Jessie's nerves. She now demands that they get "this damned business over with." The host happily agrees and asks for what use the photos are intended: dust jackets, publicity, or "just for your lucky friends?" Cousin Jessie answers that she does not know and does not care. Aunt Emma insists, "I would like you to catch her expression. It's just that little look of hers." Jessie clenches her fists at her mother. The narrator suggests that she and Aunt Emma absent themselves for a while, and Jessie goes into another room to be photographed.

Aunt Emma starts to ask about all the exciting things that the narrator has been doing that day. The only incident that the narrator thinks might be of interest to her aunt is that she had lunch with the daughter of a bishop. The conversation is interrupted by the reemergence of Cousin Jessie, who is more distraught than ever. She says that she is simply not in the mood and then has the whole session called off. Aunt Emma has never been more ashamed. Jessie could not care less. The three women leave the studio. The narrator leaves behind the newspaper that she has just bought. They say good-bye outside. Aunt Emma and Jessie get into a cab; the narrator gets on a bus.

When the narrator returns home, she receives a phone call from Beatrice, who says that she received the telegram and then says that Stalin is dying. The narrator says that she knows and tries to change the subject. Beatrice's call is followed by one from comrade Jean, who announces that Stalin is dead. Jean is crying and says that it is obvious that he was murdered by capitalist agents. The narrator remarks that it is not unusual for death to come naturally to people who are seventy-three. Jean tells her that they will have to pledge themselves "to be worthy of him." The narrator replies mechanically, "Yes, I suppose we will."