Shikasta (46 page)

He drove me back after the children had gone to bed. We brought in some of the helpers from the Camp. We kept picking up Youth on the road. The truck was so overweighted it had to crawl. Benjamin said two things during this drive back. One. That I should have a boyfriend. I knew that meant I am unhealthy about George. I said to him, Don't bother, I know you mean George. But you are quite wrong about what I feel. So he said, I understand perfectly well. I am not an idiot. But if you are waiting for someone to turn up as good as George you are going to be a virgin all your life. At this we were silent a good bit. I was angry, needless to say, but I was feeling that I was unjust, because I could see he meant it well and he had spoken not at all in his usual style. He said, After all, we are both of us going to have special problems because of George, aren't we? I digested all this. Then I said, I am
not
going to add to the population of the Children's Camps. At which he said, I've known only one girl who has so resolutely chosen to live in another century. May I present you with an elementary manual on birth control? At which
I
said, I don't know why you think I am some sort of an idiot. I have thought about it. I am not interested in the sort of partnership couples set up now, no children, no home, they might just as well not be married. Why do they bother? Well, said Benjamin, being
humorous,
there is this thing called sex. Well, I said, I'll apply to you for a healthy and congenial partner when 
I can't stand it any more and I think I can't find one for myself. At this we began laughing. I cannot remember ever having this kind of nice easy time with Benjamin before. Not ever. For the first time I really like Benjamin.

But then he said he wanted me to ‘undertake' the Camp for the girls which is the partner to his Camp. I said of course I couldn't, how could I, I couldn't possibly run a thing like that. He said, Why not? I didn't know how until I did it. And anyway I don't ‘run' the Camp. The helpers do it.

At this we got into an argument, but
not
a painful one. The helpers come from the Youth Camp, all about our age, eighteen and nineteen years old. It is always the younger people in every Youth Camp who do the looking after the children. There are no women in the boys' Camp, and this is what we argued about. He said, It was a Moslem country. I said, I didn't care if it was Moslem or Mars, it was cruel to have all those boys without a woman in sight. He said, What did I suggest, a mother-figure for each shed of fifty boys? I said, No, but half the helpers should be girls. He said, Good God, he has the mullahs breathing down his neck as it is, but if there were girls working with the boys day and night, the Authorities would go crazy. I said, They were a filthy-minded lot. He said, I was being a westerner and showing no insight. I said I didn't care about all that, it was very simple, it was common sense to have some women.

I went out with Benjamin to the girls' Camp. There is no contact between the two, in spite of there being only five miles between them, and quite a lot of brothers and sisters being separated. But every week the brothers and sisters are taken separately to a neutral place in the Youth Camp, and spend some hours together. I suppose it is something. I had not said one word of criticism about this, because I had made up my mind not to, but Benjamin said, Well what do you suggest?
  –
just as if I had criticized.

The Camp is identical with the boys' Camp. The girls and the boys wear the same clothes, a sort of suit of light white or blue cotton, trousers and short-sleeved tunics. The boys wear keffiyehs. The girls wear tight little caps over light muslin veils.
Today a wind was blowing dust and sand everywhere and all you could see were dark eyes over the veils that were wound around mouths and nostrils. I wished I had a veil myself.

The helpers are mostly Tunisians and of course some Chinese. They all enjoy looking after the children. There are long waiting lists in the Youth Camps to work in the Children's Camps.

The day was the same as the day in the boys' Camp.

In the afternoon I was in the thatched shelter where they had lunch, and some bands of little girls crept out from where they were supposed to be resting in their sheds and stood around watching me. I was a new face. I wasn't in uniform. I wore a short red dress over some pale blue trousers. The dress had short sleeves. I was quite proper. But I was very strange to them. Exotic. Not because of my looks. In fact I look like them. I said hello and was friendly, but they were serious and silent. They kept staring and crowding in and in. I had such a sense of them crowding in on me, not smiling, thousands and thousands and thousands of them. What will they be when they grow up? But they seem grown-up already with hard little faces and hard careful eyes. I sat down on the mat and hoped they would come and sit by me. They pressed in around me, looking down at me. I said to them, Please sit down, come and talk to me. First one slowly sat, and then they all did, all at once. And they sat very close and stared and said nothing. Then Benjamin came striding along, and they all ran away at once, without even a glance back.

Benjamin said, Come into the administration hut. That was because we were creating a disturbing sensation being together in the all-girls Camp. So I did. It was just an administration hut, like one anywhere.

He said, Well will you do it? I said, But what am I to do?

Be
here, he said, quite fierce and urgent, and I saw how
he
saw what he was doing. You must be here, and always be available for everyone at any time and see that things are coordinated.

I said I would think about it.

After supper he gave another sermon, practically word for word the same as last night's. Everyone adored it. Love and good will all around. I suppose I could learn to give a sermon, there's obviously nothing in it since everyone does it all the time, political
speech or sermon, what's the difference.

It was nearly night when we left. The girls were all in lots of fifty, with two girls my age one in front and one behind for each batch, marching around and around the Camp for exercise, keeping in step, singing away. The moon was coming up.

I said I'd think about it and I am.

Today I had decided I would not take on the girls' Camp. No sooner had I decided than George came back. He brought two children, a boy and a girl. One for one Camp and one for the other, I suppose? Kassim and Leila. Parents died of cholera. They are here in this flat. Very quiet. Behaving well. They go off into George's room when he is out and shut the door. I suppose they cry.

I was in the living room by myself. George came in and sat down. All the doors open. Anyone can come in any time and that is the point. But we were alone for a change. I said, All right, I've seen the Camps.

He waited.

I did not say anything, so he said, Have you told Benjamin? I said Yes, and he said at once, very concerned, but putting up with it, Then he must be upset.

Yes, he was, I said. He sat there waiting, and so I said, I have been thinking about how we were brought up. He said, Good! 
–
And I've had a thought you will approve of … He was already smiling, very affectionate. I said, How many people in the world have been brought up as we have been?

He nodded.

All the time, more and more Camps, enormous schools, everyone herded about, slogans, loudspeakers, institutions. He nodded.

I went on talking like this. Then I said, But all the time, a few brands plucked from the burning. Well I don't think I am up to it.

He sat back, he sighed, he recrossed his legs – he made a lot of quick light movements, as he does when he is impatient, and
wishes that he had the right to be.

Then he said, Rachel, if you start crying, I am going to get up and go out. He had never spoken like that before.

But I wasn't going to give in. I felt as if I were definitely in the right.

Then he said, These two children, I want you to look after them.

Oh, I said, you mean, not Benjamin, not the Camps?

No. They come from a family like ours. Kassim is ten, and Leila is nine. It would be better if they did not go into the Camps. If it can be managed.

I was sitting there thinking of what it would involve. Of our parents, and how they had brought us up. How can I do anything like that? But I said, All right I'll try.

Good, he said, and got up to go.

I said, If I had agreed to work in the Camp, then I couldn't have looked after Kassim and Leila. Who would you have asked?

He hesitated, and said: Suzannah. This really, but
literally
took my breath away. I just sat there.

Suzannah is kind, he said. This was not a criticism of me, but a statement about Suzannah. He nodded, smiled and went away.

Today George came into my room, and he said he is going off on a trip again. Everywhere, through all the armies in Europe and then down to India, and to China. It is going to take him a year or more.

I could not take this in. It seemed to me he had only just got back, and we hadn't even talked properly yet.

George said, Rachel, this will be my last trip.

At first I thought he was telling me he would be killed, then I saw that wasn't it. What he was saying was, it would not be possible after that to make his sort of journey.

He told me that a lot of people will be coming here, and he would leave me with instructions of what to say.

Not Simon and Olga? I asked and he said, No.

Of course I knew what he meant.

Then, just as I was thinking that now Benjamin is sensible and
nice he can help with everything, George said, Benjamin will be coming with me. This was more than I could stand, all at once. George sat, quite relaxed and easy, watching me, concerned, but wailing for me to be strong. I didn't feel able.

George said: Rachel, you've got to.

I didn't have any breath in me to say anything. George said, I won't be leaving for a month, and went out.

Then I went off to lie down.

Today it was announced that the All-Glorious Pan-European Socialist Democratic Communist Dictatorships for the Preservation of Peace welcome the Benevolent Tutelage of the Glorious Chinese Brothers. Well, why bother? What a joke!

But when George heard it on the radio he was very serious. I said to him, But you knew it was going to happen, obviously? He said Yes, but not so soon. He sent a message to Benjamin by someone leaving from the Peace Café (because the telephone wasn't working again) to come as soon as possible. He spends a lot of time with Benjamin now. Every afternoon. He goes out to the Camps, and he is with the children, and then he goes with Benjamin to have supper in the café. Benjamin has had an invitation from the Chinese to go to Europe. He is flattered. He is ashamed of being flattered.

Every morning early before breakfast, I bring Kassim and Leila to my room and I teach them geography and Spanish. And the history of recent politics and religions. This is what George says they should learn. When I get back from teaching at college in the afternoon I teach Kassim and Leila Portuguese and geohistory. Otherwise they are with George all the time. Olga and Simon have hardly noticed the children. It is too much for them. Olga has gone back to work at the hospital. She is fighting a battle with bureaucracy. Well, what's new! Simon is taking a week's holiday because he had a minor heart attack. George told him he must. They talk a lot, or sit quietly together. The other day Olga said, I feel as if I have finished what I had to do.

I said to her, Olga, do you mean, it doesn't matter now because
we three are grown up? Olga said, Something like that. I said, But I don't think I am grown up. She was
affectionate,
and said, Well, hard lines! And so we laughed. This is how things are with us at the moment.

This evening George and Benjamin were in the living room and about ten people who had come to see George. One of them was from India, and she talked about a girl called Sharma, and from Benjamin's reaction I realized she was a girl George was interested in. There was a packet of letters from the girl to George. When the visitors left, and George went off with Kassim and Leila somewhere, Benjamin was with me. I said, Who is the girl?

I could see that if I wasn't careful we would slip back into the awful quarrelling way we used to be in.

She seems to have taken George's fancy, said Benjamin. It was
he
who was keeping us nice and sensible and not quarrelling and I was grateful.

I said, Is it serious?

I thought you were going to say, What about Suzannah!

I was in fact thinking about Suzannah.

At this point I saw that I would start shouting at Benjamin, if I didn't leave the room, and that would have been unfair, because he hadn't done anything. So I got up and left.

I slept hardly at all thinking of this girl and George. I dreamed. It was awful, everything taken away from me. I know I am not being strong. This afternoon George came into my room when I was teaching the children Portuguese and I knew it was because he knew I wanted to talk about this girl. He nodded and the children went out. Then he sat in a chair opposite to me, and leaned forward and looked straight at me.

He said, Rachel, what is it you want me to say?

I want you to say I love this girl, she is the most marvellous girl in the world, she is beautiful and sensitive and intelligent and remarkable.

All right, he said, I've said it. And now, Rachel?