Shikasta (13 page)

And then it was time for me to leave and go to Zone Six. I put the Signature into Sais's hand before everyone, and said that she was the custodian of it.

I did not say that it was the means of keeping the flow of SOWF from Canopus to Shikasta, but I knew they would soon believe it. And I had to leave her something to strengthen her.

Then I told them that I was going to return to Canopus and that one day I would come again.

I left the tribe one morning very early, as the sun was rising over the clearing that held the settlement. I listened to the birds arguing above me in the ancient trees, and I held out my fingers to a little goat who was a pet, and who came trotting after me. I sent it back, and I went to the river, where it was very wide and deep and strong, and would sweep me well away from the settlement so that no one would find my body. I let myself down into it and swam out into the current.

I now return to my visit in the Last Days.

It was necessary that Taufiq should cause himself to be born into the minority race of the planet, the white or pale-skinned peoples indigenous to the northern areas. The city he had chosen was not on the site of one of the Mathematical Cities of the Great Time, though some of the present cities were in fact built on such sites – it goes without saying, without any idea of their potentialities. This site had never been up to much. It was low, had been marshy for much of its recent history, when the climate had been wet. The soil was
always damp and enervating. Nothing about the place had ever been naturally conducive to the high energies, though for certain purposes and in certain conditions it had been attuned and used, though temporarily, by us. It was the main city of a small island that had, because of its warlike and acquisitive qualities, overrun and dominated a good part of the globe, but had recently been driven back.

Taufiq was John, a name he had used quite often in his career – Jan, Jon, Sean, Yahya, Khan, Ivan, and so on. He was John Brent-Oxford, and the parents he had chosen were healthy honest people, neither too high nor too low in the society, which, since it suffered the most cumbersome division into classes and castes, all suspicious of each other, was a matter of importance and of careful judgment.

Taufiq's undertaking was, in order to accomplish what he had to do, to become a person skilled in the regulations with which the various, always warring or quarrelling individuals, or sections of society, controlled themselves and each other. And he had achieved this. His youth had been spent intelligently, he had equipped himself, and was outstanding at an early age. Just as in higher spheres promising youngsters are watched by people they know nothing about, though they may wonder or guess, so in lower spheres of activity possibilities are prepared for those who prove themselves, and John was from childhood observed by ‘people of influence', as the Shikastan phrase goes. But the ‘influences' were by no means all of the same kind!

In this corrupt and ghastly age the young man could not avoid having put on him many pressures to leave the path of duty, and it was very early – he was not more than twenty-five years old – that he succumbed. Furthermore, he knew that he was doing something wrong. The young often have moments of clear thinking, which as they grow older become fewer, and muddied. He had kept alive in some part of him a knowledge that he was ‘destined' to do something or other. He felt this as pure and unsullied, but – more often and more deeply as he grew older – ‘impractical'. That he did know quite well what he was doing is shown by his tendency to
laugh apologetically at certain moments, with the remark that ‘he had been unable to resist temptation.' Yet these words on the face of it had little to do with the obvious and recognized mores of his society, which was why it was essential to laugh. The laugh paid homage to these modes and mores. He was being ridiculous, the laugh said … yet he was never without uneasiness about what he was doing, the choices he had made.

It was necessary for him to be at a certain place at a certain time, in order to play a role that was essential in our handling of the crisis that faced Shikasta. He was to aim for a position – not only in his own country's legal system – but a leading one in the system of northern countries which unified, or attempted to, that part of the northern hemisphere which recently had conquered and despoiled a good part of the planet, and which had until very recently been continually at war among themselves. He was to become a reliable and honest person, in this sphere. At a time of corruption, personal and public, he was to become known as incorruptible, unbribable, disinterested, straight-speaking.

But he was only just out of the last of his educational establishments, an elite one, for the production of the administrative class, when he took a false turning. Instead of going into a junior position in the Councils of the aforesaid bloc of northern countries, which was the position planned for him by us (and by him, of course, as Taufiq), he took a job in a law firm which was known for the number of its members who went into politics.

World War II was just over – Shikastan terminology. [See
History of Shikasta,
VOLS. 2955-3015,
The Century of Destruction
.] He had fought in it, seen much ferocity, spoiling, suffering. His judgments had been affected: his whole being – just like everybody else. He saw himself in a crucial role – as indeed he should – but one of the strongest of the false ideas of that epoch, politics, had entered into him. It was not as simple as that he wanted crude power, crude authority: no, he visualized himself ‘influencing things for the good'. He was an idealist: a word describing people who
described themselves as intending good, not self-interest at the expense of others.

And in parentheses I report here that this was true of a good many of our citizens – to borrow a Shikastan word – of that time. They turned into wrong and destructive paths believing that they were better than others whose belief in self-interest was open and expressed, better because they, and they alone, knew how the practical affairs of the planet should be conducted. An emotional reaction to the sufferings of Shikasta seemed to them a sufficient qualification for curing them.

The attitudes outlined in this paragraph define ‘polities', ‘political parties', ‘political programmes'. Nearly all political people were incapable of thinking in terms of interaction, of cross-influences, of the various sects and ‘parties' forming
together
a whole, wholes – let alone of groups of nations making up a whole. No, in entering the state of mind where ‘politics' was ruler, it was always to enter a crippling partiality, a condition of being blinded by the ‘correctness' of a certain viewpoint. And when one of these sects or ‘parties' got power, they nearly always behaved as if their viewpoint could be the only right one. The only
good
one: when John chose a sect, he was in his own mind motivated by the highest ideas and ideals. He saw himself as a saviour of some kind, dreamed of himself as leader of the nation. From the moment he joined this group of lawyers, he met with very few people who thought differently from him. On various occasions members of our staff attempted to influence him, tried to remind him, indirectly of course, but none of them succeeded: the ways of thinking and being that he had taken to the borders of Shikasta were now so buried in him that they surfaced only rarely, in dreams, or in moments of remorse and panic that he could not ascribe to their right cause.

He had temporarily been written off. If it happened – so the judgment went on Canopus – that by some at present unforeseen processes Taufiq would ‘come to himself' – many such revealing phrases were common on Shikasta – and very often people apparently quite lost to us, at least temporarily,
did ‘come to themselves', ‘see the light', and so on, quite often due to some awful shock or trauma of the kind Shikasta was so prodigal with, then, and then only, could trouble be spent on him. We were all so pressed, so thinly spread, and the situation on the planet so desperate.

One of my tasks was to observe him, to assess his present state, and if possible, to administer a reminder.

He was in his early fifties: that is, he was well past the halfway mark in the pitifully brief life which was all that Shikastans could now expect. As it happened he was scheduled for a longer life than most: his final assignment called for him to be about seventy-five when he would represent the aged. A
respected
representative: though at the moment it was hard to see how this could be brought about.

He lived in a house in an affluent district of the city, in a style which he would have described as moderate, was not excessive contrasted with what was usual then in that geographical area, but according to how it was to be judged very soon after – by global standards – in a shameful, wasteful, and profligate way. He had two families. A first wife had four children by him, and lived in another part of the city. His present wife had two children. The children were all indulged, spoiled, unfitted for what lay ahead. The women's lives were devoted to supporting him, his ambitions. Both felt for him emotions characteristic of anyone who had ever been close to him. He was a person who had always provoked people into extremes of liking and disliking. He influenced people. He changed lives – for good and bad. A powerful inner drive (something supremely valuable which had as it were slipped out of true) had caused his life – and again this was hardly unusual in those times – to resemble where a swathe of forest fire had passed: everything extreme: blackened earth, destroyed animals and vegetation, and then stronger brilliant growth to follow, a change in the genetic patternings, potential of all kinds.

In appearance he was ordinary: dark hair, dark eyes in which even now I liked to imagine I could see traces of those far-distant ancestors, the Giants. A pale skin which possibly
came from the genetic freaks among the Giants. His sturdy energetic body reminded me of the Natives. But of course by now there were so many admixtures, from the Sirian experiments, the Shammat spies, and others.

Like all people in public life at that period, he had public and private personalities. This was governed by the fact that no such person could ever tell the truth to the people he was supposed to represent. Some sort of attack in the personality was essential equipment: persuasiveness, forcefulness, charm. And it was necessary to use methods that in other times, places, planets, would have been described as deceitful, lying, and in fact criminal. The qualities prized in ‘public servants' on Shikasta were, almost invariably, the most superficial and irrelevant imaginable, and could only have been accepted in a time of near total debasement and falseness. This was true of all sects, groupings, ‘parties': for what was remarkable about this particular time was how much they all resembled each other, while they spent most of their energies in describing and denigrating differences that they imagined existed between them.

John had become a national figure by the time he was forty. This was because he was in certain positions and places: not because he was more than ordinarily competent, or had more than the usual grasp of public affairs – seen from local viewpoints, of course. He was handicapped because of his self-division. His suppressed inner qualities made him disappointed with what he was. He knew he had greater qualities than any he was using but did not know what they were. This restlessness had caused him to drink too much, indulge in bouts of self-denigration and cynicism. He was not respected in ways that matter, and he knew it. He was only another among the hundreds, the thousands, of the politicians of the globe of whom nothing much was to be expected – certainly not by the people they were supposed to represent. These might work, fight, even commit crimes to get ‘their' representatives into power, but after that they did not consider they had any responsibility for their choices. For a feature, perhaps a predominant feature of the inhabitants of
this planet, was that their broken minds allowed them to hold, and act on – even forcibly and violently – opinions and sets of mind that a short time later – years, a month, even a few minutes – they might utterly repudiate.

At the time when I located his dwelling, and positioned myself (of course well ensconced in Zone Six) where I could take in as much as was needed to make my decisions, and to influence him, if possible, he was in a period of intense emotional activity.

He had choices to make. Inwardly he knew this was another crisis for him. The political faction he represented had just been deprived of power. His faction had been in and out of a governing position several times since the Second World War (or as we put it, the Second Intensive Phase of the Twentieth Century War) and it was not this that was affecting him. Pressure was being put on him (indirectly by us) to return full-time to his legal firm and become active there, for he would be enabled to cultivate that kind of reputation which is most solidly based: among people who work in the same sphere as oneself. If he did this, it would still be time for him to take on a series of cases in ways which would be useful. The other work offered to him was in the Councils of the northerly bloc of countries. But it was a high position, he did not have the qualities to sustain it, and we knew that he would not be in exactly the right place to take up the defence of the white races at the moment when they were to be threatened with extermination. He would not have the necessary qualities. From our point of view, his acceptance of this post would be a bad mistake.

His present wife thought so, too. She had an inkling of what could happen. She did not like him as an impassioned sectarian. Neither had his first wife. Both women in fact had married him because of being attracted to his hidden unused powers or potential, which he then did not fulfil, and this was the real reason for their dissatisfaction with him – which fact they did not understand, and this caused in them all kinds of bitternesses and frustrations. This second marriage was likely to break up. Because of all this he was in mental breakdown.
His home was a seethe of emotions and conflict. [See
 History of Shikasta,
VOL. 3012,
Mental Instability During the Century of Destruction.
SECTION 5. PUBLIC FIGURES.] He had broken down before, and had prolonged treatment. In fact, most of the politicians of that time needed psychiatric support, because of the nature of their preoccupations: an unreality at the very heart of their everyday decision-making, thinking, functioning.

I watched him for some days. He was in a large room at the top of his house, a place set aside for his work, and where his family did not enter. Because he was alone, the ghastly charm of his public self was not in use. He was pacing up and down, his hair dishevelled (the exact disposition of head hair was of importance in that epoch), his eyes reddened and unable to maintain a focus. He had been drinking steadily for weeks. As he paced he groaned and muttered, he would bend over and straighten himself, as if to ease inner pain; he sat and clasped himself with both arms, hands gripping his shoulders, or he flung himself down on a day-bed and slept for a few moments, starting up to resume his restless pacing. He had decided to take the position with the northern bloc. He knew this was a mistake, and yet did not know. His rational self, the one he relied on – and indeed he possessed a fine, clear reasoning mind – could see nothing but opportunities for his ambition … which was never described to him in terms other than ‘progress', ‘justice', and so forth. He imagined this northern bloc becoming ever more powerful, successful, satisfying to all concerned. And yet the general collapse of the world order was apparent to everybody by then. That problems were not to be solved by the ways of thinking then accepted by partisan politics was also evident: certain minorities, and some of them influential ones, were putting forth alternative ways of thought, and these could not but appeal to John, or Taufiq … and yet he was committed to patterns of partisan thinking, and must be for as long as he was a politician. And he did not want his marriage to break up. Nor did he want to disappoint these two children as he had the children of his first marriage – he feared his progeny, as
the people then tended to do. But of that later.