Shikasta (52 page)

The ‘Trial' began straight away, on the first evening. The delegates were still arriving, were exhausted and some famished. Makeshift trestles stood about among sparse trees on the parched grasses, with jars of water and baskets of the local bread. These supplies vanished instantly, and everyone understood the signs of parsimony to come. The tents were going up over several acres. The first lootings had taken place and been stopped. Thousands of young people milled about. Some, from the extreme north, the Icelanders, the Scandinavians, were devastated by the heat. The deep burning skies were particularly noted by Agent Tsi Kwang. (She is from Northern Province.) The cicadas were loud. The usual dogs had arrived from nowhere and were nosing about for what they could find. At precisely four o'clock the word went around that the ‘Trial' would begin at once. And even as those travel-tired, hungry delegates crowded on to the hot stone seats under that scorching sky, with no preliminaries at all, the two groups of contenders filed down into the arena and took their places. The torches had not yet been lit, of course, but the children were in their places, two to a torch.

On the small wood tables were no books, papers, notes – nothing.

George Sherban stood by the table on one side, with his group, where the shade was soon to engulf them. On the other, in full sun, sat the frail old man, the white villain, whose history of course they all knew, since word of mouth is the fastest, if not most accurate, means of conveying information. Each young person on these tiers knew of George Sherban and that the villain had been of the old British left, had been imprisoned for crimes against the people, and rehabilitated, and brought here by the Youth Armies to defend an impossible case.

It was a restless crowd. They shifted about on the hard stone, grumbled because of the heat, the lack of microphones, that the ‘Trial' had begun even before many delegates had come. There were the greetings of people who might not have met for years or months, at some Conference perhaps halfway across the world. And there was an under-mood of desperation and of anxiety, which did not relate to the present scene at all, but to our general preoccupation that war is obviously imminent. And perhaps, even then, before so much as a word had been exchanged between accuser and accused, it was evident to everyone that the ‘Trial' was hardly central to humanity's real problems, that it is not enough to ascribe every crime in the book to any particular class or nation or race – I say this relying on your understanding, for I do not want it to be thought that my long (or so it seems to me) exile in these backward provinces has caused any softening of my ability to see things from a correct class viewpoint. But our human predicament is grave indeed, and it was not possible for those five thousand, the elected ‘cream' of the world's youth, to sit there in those surroundings face to face, in all their gaunt threadbare hungry desperation, and
not
to see certain facts writ clear.

They were allowed no more than half an hour for settling themselves, for the absorption of what they could
see –
of what they were being
forced
to
see –
when George Sherban opened the ‘Trial' by strolling forward two steps from the table and saying:

‘I have been elected to represent the nonwhite races in this Trial by – ' and he recited a list of something like forty groups, organizations, armies. Agent Tsi Kwang said the silence was profound, for almost at once the moving and the whispering and the coughing ceased as they all understood they had to remain completely still to hear anything at all. And this was the first opportunity they all had to absorb the assault on their expectations of the man's appearance.

He had no list in his hand, but recited the names, long ones some of them, and some often sounding absurdly bureaucratic (I make this comment relying on our old understanding
of the necessary absurdity of some forms of organization) without any aid to memory. He stood there, so said Agent Tsi Kwang, quite calm, relaxed, and smiling.

He stood back two steps, and waited.

The old white man in his chair then spoke up. His voice was weaker than George Sherban's, though clear, and the silence was absolute. It seems to me that this was a silence of more than hatred or contempt, for even Agent Tsi Kwang commented that he made ‘a figure you had to think about'. For one thing, I believe that most of the youth do not see an old or elderly person from one year's end – or decade's end even – to the next, except as ancient creatures hurrying away from them in fear, or as clothed skeletons lying on the streets waiting for the Death Squads, or perhaps in glimpses of them forgotten in institutions waiting to die of neglect and famine. The youth do not
see
the old. They are not programmed to see the old, who are cancelled, negated, wiped out, ‘removed from the honourable record of history', as Tsi Kwang so happily puts it. She was unable, she said, to take her eyes off the ‘old criminal element'. The sight of him filled her with ‘a correct and concrete loathing'. She felt he should be wiped off the face of the earth ‘like a beetle'. And similar remarks, quite reasonable in the circumstances. You will have observed that I quote this agent as often as I do – and intend to throughout this account – because of what might perhaps be described as the classic correctness of her viewpoint. She can be relied upon always to supply the apt comment. The other agents, none of them up to her level, have been useful to me in my attempt to present a picture of appropriate light and shade.

What the old ghost said was that he represented the white races – and at that point there was no reaction of boos or jeers, only silence – and he had been appointed to do this by … and here there was no long list of organizations from every part of the globe, but only ‘The Combined Coordinating Committee of the Youth Armies'.

He remained silent in his chair, while George Sherban stood forward again and called up loudly and clearly the
following words, pausing between phrases, and looking around the tiers.

‘I open this Trial with an indictment. This is the indictment. That it is the white races of this world that have destroyed it, corrupted it, made possible the wars that have ruined it, have laid the basis for the war that we all fear, have poisoned the seas, and the waters, and the air, have stolen everything for themselves, have laid waste the goodness of the earth from the North to the South, and from East to West, have behaved always with arrogance, and contempt, and barbarity towards others, and have been above all guilty of the supreme crime of stupidity – and must now accept the burden of culpability, as murderers, thieves and destroyers, for the dreadful situation we now all find ourselves in.'

Throughout this there was not a sound, but as he ended and stood back, the great crowd let out a hissing groan, and ‘it was more frightening than if we had cursed the villains or hurled insults at them'. This is the comment of another of our agents, not Tsi Kwang, who confined herself to: ‘No stone was left unturned to shame the criminals standing at the bar of history'. Another comment was from a letter written by Benjamin Sherban, intercepted by us. ‘Farce has ever been my meat and drink, but I tell you that if I hadn't eaten too long and too full of sheer bloody lunacy so that I can't react any longer, I would have dropped dead from fright at that hissing.' I quote this as contrast to our ever-admirable and to-be-relied-on Tsi Kwang. (You will remember that Benjamin Sherban was standing immediately behind the Defendant.)

It is clear that the white contingent stood their ground with difficulty, looking straight in front of them, and not at the furious brown, black, and golden faces confronting them, and holding their positions only with an effort of will. There was a long and intense silence. The old white did not move. The two children on either side of his chair deliberately raised their heads and stared up and around the tiers of faces. It seems that Benjamin Sherban maintained a characteristic lounging and almost casual posture.

The sun was already going, the shadow had engulfed
George Sherban's contingent, and the evening had arrived: a warm, gritty, uncomfortable evening.

‘I am now going to call my first witness,' shouted George Sherban – and these were the last words he was to say for many days. He was never absent from the ‘Trial' while it was in progress, but he kept himself inconspicuous among the group on the Prosecution side.

The first witness was brilliantly chosen. (From a certain point of view.) She was a delegate from Shansi Province. A girl of about twenty. She was, of course, well fed and neatly dressed and looked healthy and at once the atmosphere lost tension. We are not popular. This is the penalty we have to pay for our superiority! (I rely on our old understanding of the subtle, and necessary, and often ironic shifts and changes of events.) It is not that our Chinese Youth behave incorrectly. On the contrary, they are at all times enjoined to correct behaviour, wherever they may find themselves. But the fact is that they do enjoy certain advantages from the very nature of our Beneficent Rule, and – in short – it was not easy for the underprivileged Europeans, and the representatives of the Emergent Nations, to identify with her. Our Agent Tsi Kwang commented that she was pleased that the first witness was Chinese, and then ‘disturbed', for she felt it was ‘impertinent in a way she couldn't grasp without further analysis'. The comment by the unfortunate Benjamin Sherban was: ‘What a thing a crowd is! A conglomeration of
unstable elements,
would you say? If the Devil may quote scripture …'

This witness recited, for no more than fifteen minutes, slowly and clearly – as was the style imposed on everyone – the crimes committed by the white races on China, and ended (this was to prove the conclusion or summing-up of nearly every witness) ‘… and were always guilty of insulting and inhuman contempt, and of stupidity, and of ignorance of the Chinese people and our glorious history.'

It was by now nearly seven, and the arena was a well of dusk. The tiers were in semi-darkness. Our delegate, having finished, returned to stand with the others in the shadows, as
the tiers called applause and clapped. But it was not the tumultuous applause that might have been expected for the first of the ‘witnesses', and that would have been forthcoming (I say this in a spirit of dispassionate comment) if the first witness had been an American Indian – for instance. No, the emotional temperature had dropped, and this is a conclusion quite inescapable after study of the various agents' reports. And besides, I am writing as the – I hope not altogether unskilled – organizer of a thousand public events.

The torches were then lit. It was done like this: from four different aisles through the tiers were seen descending great flaring lit torches, and under them shadowy figures that turned out to be of different colours, gold, brown, black, and white. They ran with these torches across the arena, inevitably evoking associations of the Olympic games, and similar emotional international occasions from the past, and handed the torches to the children who stood waiting to take them. The children were dressed in the various uniforms of their organizations. They reached up on tiptoe – this detail was mentioned by all the agents, so it clearly made an impression – to put fire to the bundles of reeds that stood out from the arena walls. One after another torches flared up, and illuminated the arena. This little ceremony was watched with great attentiveness. There was a murmur of appreciation. What this murmur meant was interpreted differently by the agents.

The lighting ceremony took some time. Being the first there were snags. One torch fell from its place, the two children retreated, an older girl leaped down from the tier just above and took charge, inserting the torch again in its sconce, and helping the children to light it, skilfully – and dangerously – using the remains of a torch that had been carried down through the tiers: all this was obviously unpremeditated and unorganized, and in tune with the informal atmosphere. Another torch had burned up too bright, and was sending up tongues and wings of flame too close to the people in the rank above, and it had to be brought down, put out, and another put in its place. By the time all
this was done, the atmosphere was loose and relaxed, the delegates were chatting to each other, and it was quite dark. It was a hot and dusty dark, and the stars were not strong enough to relieve it. Below, the two opposing groups faced each other. And strong in the wavering and flaring light, was the old white man, sitting quite still, with his two children, white and black, on either side.

The moon came up from a bank of low cloud. I swear this was stage management! It was a half-moon, but brilliant, and Venus was near it. The setting was quite perfect for a Torch Pageant, or Banner Event, or a Dragon Dance.

Nothing happened for a few minutes. It is evident that everyone was silenced by the beauty of the scene, the drama of the arena. Then it was observed that the group on the prosecution side was conferring. Informally. That everything was to be kept informal had been indicated from the start, and then confirmed, and confirmed again. People from both groups had already left them and gone to sit in the tiers, and others had replaced them – a continual coming and going. The first ‘witness' had made her way back to the Chinese Delegation. Which, incidentally, had been put prominently and distinctively in a bloc in the very best position, low down and halfway between the two groups. This was the only national group which was allotted a special position and marked with a banner – the only one, in other words, to which attention was directed throughout the ‘Trial'.

After a few more minutes of starlight, the rising moon, the ambiguous arena, and, of course, the charming children who were bravely and earnestly attending to the flaring torches – one of the group, but not George Sherban, strolled forward to confer with the accused, and then this person, a girl, shouted up that it was felt by the contenders that the proceedings had been opened, everyone knew how things stood, and people must be tired and hungry, and perhaps it would be a good thing if the Trial should be ended early, just for this one night. Did everybody agree?