Shikasta (41 page)

I took some sand from the pot around the lilies, and gently strewed it over the still surface of the gleaming water. Gently. Not too much. Just enough so that when I looked in I could no longer see the beautiful exotic Miss Sherban, Rachel the nubile virgin.

Olga watched me do this. She did not say a word.

I leaned over the pool, to make sure I couldn't see myself, only the blurred outline of the beautiful moon, shining down from the stars.

By the morning, if Shireen and Fatima remembered, and chanced to look, all they would think was that the winds had blown dust across the sky and some had fallen into the pool.

Olga got up and took the baby off to the room it belonged in. Then she came and put her arm around me and said, Now come on, go to bed. And she led me into our quarter. She hugged me and kissed me. She said, Rachel, it really isn't as bad as you think.

She said it humorous but a bit desperate.

I said, Oh yes, it is.

And she went off to bed.

I went through to my little mud room. I sat on the door-sill, with my feet in the dust outside, and I watched the night. I was still in Fatima's best dress of course, with her precious bits of gold. Being in that dress that she had been in a thousand times was something I can't describe. If there is a word, I don't know it. The cloth of the dress was full of Fatima. But that wasn't it. It smelled of her and of her skin and her scent. It was as if I had put
on her skin over mine. No dress I have ever had in my life could possibly feel like that. It could never be that important. If I had a fragment of that cloth, wherever I was in the world, if I came on it in a drawer or a box, I would have to say at once, Fatima.

The feel of that warm soft cloth on my skin was burning me.

I understand that old thing, about a woman rending her bosom with her nails. If I had not been in Fatima's precious best dress that she would need to get married in, I would have raked my nails through the dress and into my bosom. And I would have raked my cheeks with my nails, too, but the blood would have hurt Fatima's dress.

I sat there all night until the light began to get grey. There were some dogs trotting about in the moonlight. The dogs were very thin. Three of them. Mongrels. So thin they had no stomachs, just ribs. I could feel their hunger. Living in this country I have a fire in my stomach which is the hunger I know nearly everyone I see feels all the time, all the time, even when they sleep.

Then I go into meals with the family and eat, because of course it is ridiculous not to. But each mouthful feels
heavy,
and too much, and I think of the people who are ravening. I am sure that even if I lived in a country where everyone had enough to eat all the time, and lived there for years, I would still have this burning in my stomach.

I did not go to bed last night. When the sun came up I took off Fatima's beautiful dress and folded it and put the earrings and the dozens of different bangles with it. Later I shall take these things over to her. One day soon I expect that I and Shireen will help Fatima into this dress so that she can marry Yusuf.

A letter from
BENJAMIN SHERBAN
to a college friend

Dear Siri,

Here is my promised account of the circus.

On the afternoon before leaving, George ‘received' – the only word for it I am afraid! – representatives of the three organizations he was to represent. The Jewish Guardians of the Poor. (Female, black.) The Islamic Youth Federation for the Care of the Cities. (Male, a very superior fellow, combining a brand of
marxist socialism peculiar to himself and I gather perhaps four others, with an ancient lineage of which he has no intention anyone shall remain in ignorance.) The United Christian Federation of Young Functionaries for Civil Care. (Female, brown.)

These three entrusted inordinate quantities of messages, briefs, reminders, cautions, and good wishes to their delegate and departed to three different far-flung areas of Morocco, well pleased.

I travelled with George only because he seemed to insist, and on our arrival we were put up in the house of one Professor Ishak. The usual interminable confabulations went on from dusk until after midnight, and again George seemed to need my support, otherwise I would have gone to bed. The pre-and/or post-conference junketings have never held any appeal for me.

Over a thousand delegates from all over the world assembled in the Blessings of Allah Hall, which is modern, air-conditioned, large, surrounded by snack bars, cafés, eating nooks attractive to east and west, north and south, and everything of the best. From the first moment the goodies were being eagerly sampled by one and all, but particularly by those delegates from Western Europe, and
most
particularly from the British Isles, who seem pleased enough to get even half a square meal inside themselves whenever the opportunity offers.

Opening speeches at nine a. m. George delivers one of them. All things to all men. Not to mention women. Half of the delegates are female and not a bad-looking bunch even to my connoisseur's eye. There were nearly as many different uniforms as delegates, of every shade imaginable, and the place was like a sample room of a dye factory. Medals blazed. Ribbons glowed. Is it really possible that so much valour, intelligence, accomplishment, devotion to every conceivable variety of duty, were all together at the same place, and at the same time?

Your poor friend was not among those in uniform. I wore my post-Mao tunic, and the badges of our college. George wore a cotton suit that could give offence to no one, and with it his three badges, the Jewish Guardians of the Poor, the Islamic Youth Federation for the Care of the Cities, and the United Christian 
Federation of Young Functionaries for Civil Care, thus outtrumping, and outmanoeuvring any number of local interests even trying. He was of course as handsome as the evening star (as I overheard some delicious morsel whisper) and there wasn't a soul, male or female, left unmoved at that winsome modest manly form.

The subject of the Conference being the general togetherness and cooperation and sharing of information and love and good will (etcetera and so on) among the Youth Organizations of the World, of course it was necessary first of all, before descending to these perilous shores of unanimity, to establish boundaries, banish misconceptions, and stake claims. The familiar verbal aggressions (yawn yawn) began at once.

Battle was joined by the Communist Youth Federation (European Branch, Section 44) for Sport and Health, with a few routine references to running dogs of capitalism, fascist hyenas, and so-called democrats.

A conventional, indeed modest, opening move.

It was countered by the Scandinavian Youth Section of the League for the Care of the Coasts with references to tyrannical enslavers, jailors of free thought, and perverted diverters of the true currents of soaring human development into the muddied channels of repetitive rhetoric.

In came the Soviet Youth in the Service of the World (Subsection 15) with opportunistic revisionists and scavengers of the riches of the marxist theoretical treasuries.

Were the delegates from the Socialist Democratic Islamic Federation of North Africa content to remain silent? Deteriorated inheritors of the corrupted revolutionary ethics, and contaminators of the true ideals of the socialistic heritage by self-appointed custodians of dogma – was the least of it.

And now, what said the Chinese Youth Representatives of Peace, Freedom and True Liberty? You ask, do you? With earnest dedication to exact definition, they offered: the use of superstitious and archaic religious dogmas to enslave the masses, and the empty rhodomontade of bankrupt pawns of the antediluvian economic system.

Insulters of the absolute and eternal truths enshrined in the Koran!

Unleashed oppressors! Rancid invective!

Polluters of the true heritage of the ever-welling mental wealth of mankind's toiling masses!

This dazzling exchange was halted by the Norwegian Youth Against Air Pollution, her blond plaits swinging, and her breasts all agog, while she shouted that this was feeble hogwash masquerading under the guise of free and flexible thinking and was no more than she expected from so many male prisoners of their own decaying doctrines.

But here in came the plenipotentiary from the British Young Women's Armies for the Preservation of Children, disagreeing with Norway on the grounds that in her opinion, Delegates 1 and 5 had been correct, but Delegates 3 and 7 certainly
not,
and as for her, she could see only racism among the humanistic hogwash, and prejudice blatantly evident in the fat guzzlers in the styes of post-imperialistic self-indulgence.

This took us to the first break, and we thronged out, brothers and sisters all, laughing and jesting and exchanging addresses and the names of hotels, and the numbers of hotel rooms, and those who had insulted each other five minutes before were observed to be already cemented in the closest friendship.

Half an hour later we were at it again.

I will not weary you with the names and styles of the purveyors of antique insult, but merely transcribe some of my observations, the first one which comes to mind being the absolute necessity of the animal kingdom (what our elders have left us of it) to occasions of higher mentation.

Running dogs, and hyenas, we have had already, but soon entered fat cats, pigs – to the indignation of the Semites, Arabs and Jews – cooing pigeons of hypocrisy, snakes (slippery and otherwise), poisoned shellfish from the shores of mental pollution, crocodiles, and rhinoceroses charging blindly through the subtleties of the marxist relevation.

And what of natural phenomena, could we do without them?

After lunch, which was most ample and amicable, once again
bringing much-needed sustenance to certain hungry ones, we returned to the hall, united in beaming fondness for each other, and I noted: dawn dews bringing the refreshing life of Islam to the empty sands of irreligious impiety. Flowers of Our Master's Thought. (Whose Master? I forget.) Tsunamis of ignorant obscurantism. Sandbags of obstinate misinterpretation. Tainted winds from poisoned minds. Stagnant pools of dogma. (Again, I forget which pools. Marxist? Islamic? Christian? And who cares?
They
certainly did not!) Waterspouts of confusion. Depleted reservoirs of bankrupt theory. Badlands where nothing grows but the parched thistles of dying creeds. Deserts of internecine strife. Clouds of superficial brotherhood. King Canutes trying to hold back the ever-springing seaswells of Marxist inspiration. Clay feet. Dusty but unbowed heads. Eroded brain cells. Quicksands of … overflowing rivers of … mildewed boughs of …

And thus we arrived at our evening meal, and it could be observed that some of us were putting back everything we could, our first square meal ever from the look of some of us. And then, the dance! There we all were, male and female, a perfect flowerbed of colourful uniforms, and some girls with a tentative blossom or two in their hair, and even one or two in proper
dresses!
These had suitors around them in what a disapproving maiden called ‘a sexual assault,' but it was only one carping voice in a perfect feast of love and harmony. Making my usual enquiries, performing my usual one-man survey, I discovered that for many of these poor deprived souls, this was their first ‘real' festival, meaning the first time they had encountered others than their own kind, having never met any but socialist revisers, Islamic New Thoughtists, or whatever. These were particularly having the time of their lives, absolutely stunned by the richness of thought possible in this teeming world, ‘oh brave new world that has such people in it!' and had to be protected from their inexperience by certain watchful souls, myself among them (deputed to this end by George), for while there was nothing against people waking up in beds they had
chosen,
we were trying to prevent sad awakenings in the dawn in the arms of
perfect strangers.
And so to bed. (Alone.) But George was up
talking away all night as usual.

Next day a feeling of urgency was making itself felt, for the real meat of the agenda had still to be set before us, but no, the preliminaries were not yet over.

A military mode prevailed. Target identification obscured by empty rhetoric … automated invective … calibrated marksmanship on the sociological front … keeping enemy positions in the sights of social revolutionary acumen … target identification obscured by faulty weapons of analysis … vigilance on the ever-shifting frontiers of social change … booby traps in the social sector … invincible battalions of dialectic … depth-bombing of our intellectual bastions … fatally low-altitude penetration of theoretical bases … pointless camouflage of an already collapsed ideological position … demolition of … destruction of … spin-off from … checksights … height-finding … range-finding …

You think that this
must
be the end? Well, nearly, we had reached the mid-morning break, with only the rest of the day left for our real purposes.

But there were still a few mutterings from the dying storm … bourgeois communists … bourgeois socialists … bourgeois democrats … bourgeois technocrats … bourgeois pseudophilosophs … bourgeois pessimists … bourgeois optopolymaths … bourgeois bureaucrats … and bourgeois racists and bourgeois sexists.

With an hour left to lunch and the hounds of time snapping at our ever-moving heels, we got down to it, and since by then we were all cemented into one soul, we passed without debate resolutions about unity, brotherhood, co-operation and so on. These being the principles which we all serve. And it was after lunch easily and quickly agreed that it was urgently necessary to establish subsidiary armies and camps and organizations for the innumerable young children without homes and parents everywhere. A subcommittee was elected to deal with this, on which I was abashed to find myself, since I had no such expectation. I know that George put Alt up to it, but I have no proof and I don't mind, at least it is useful. In fact urgently necessary.