Ben, in the World: The Sequel to the Fifth Child

by Doris Lessing

  That beach, like the other beaches of Rio, was worked by gangs of thieves, mostly children or youths, and they had targeted Ben from when he came down out of the street to the sea’s edge. They have a trick that goes like this. A youth, or even a child, darts up to the victim and squirts on to his shoes blobs of grease, which perhaps he, or she, does not notice at first. Then suddenly there is a disgusting slug of pale fat on one shoe or both. Ben let out a shout of fury. The tricksters, for they work in teams, are running along parallel to the victim, are waiting for the moment he sees the grease and exactly then, one runs up and offers to wipe the shoe or shoes clean, stating his price. Ben had no money on him, and anyway he was crazy with rage. He took the grinning youth, who bent towards his feet with the cleaning rag, into his arms and began squeezing him, while he—not the youth, who had no breath in him—roared and shouted with rage. Instantly the rest of the gang came crowding up to rescue their colleague, and a strolling observer—the police—took note and came running. Ben was now intermittently visible, an arm, a leg, his head, inside a knot of struggling half—naked boys.

  Alex and Teresa, followed by their friends, were running towards the scene, which had silenced that part of the beach. Teresa was shouting, in Portuguese, to the policeman, ‘Stop, make them stop, he’s with us!’

  Who was? Ben was hardly to be seen; bellows and roars came from under the heap of assailants.

  The policeman began hitting a head, arms, a leg, whatever emerged, and grabbed some youth upwards by the hair. There was a shout that the police were there, and at once the heap of youths detached themselves and darted away, some of them bloody, one with an arm that looked broken. Ben was crouching, his arms protecting his head. His clothes had been torn almost off him. His shirt was in the hand of an escaping youth, and his sullied shoes had disappeared.

  Teresa began on a sharp but pleading argument with the policeman. ‘He’s with us—he’s with him…’ indicating Alex. ‘We’re making a film. It’s for television.’ This inspired plea made the policeman retreat, to stand a few paces off. He was staring at Ben, those hairy shoulders, that bushy face where the white teeth grinned painfully.

  Teresa put her arm around Ben, whose great chest was heaving, and who was letting out grunts which Teresa knew would probably become whimpers which must—she knew—provoke a reaction in this policeman whose face would cease to be scandalised, worried, and become cruel.

  ‘Come on, Ben,’ she said, walking him away. Alex was on Ben’s other side, but Ben did not look at him, only at Teresa, his poor face, where blood was trickling, a plea for her to save him.

  The policeman stood staring, but let them go off, the three in front, Alex, Ben and Teresa, the rest behind.

  In the flat people were still sitting around the table, hardly aware that Ben had gone and the others after him. They had never seen Ben in anything but clean clothes, smart clothes, and now they were shocked at what they saw.

  Teresa took Ben to the bathroom and—as the old woman had done—took off what remained of his clothes, without embarrassment, talking gently to him. ‘It’s all right, you’re safe now, don’t be frightened, poor Ben, stand in the shower, that’s right.’ And Teresa washed off the sand and dirt, stopped the blood from a scratch on his forehead, and put his torn trousers into the washing machine. She fetched clean clothes, dressed him, and he let her do all this, passive in her hands, turning around when she asked, lifting an arm or a foot.

  He was shocked, breathing badly, pale, and his eyes had in them a dark, lost look.

  She sat with him on his bed, rocking him, ‘It’s all right, Ben. I’m your friend. It’s all right, you’ll see.’

  That night which because of Alex leaving the next day she should have spent with him in his bed, Teresa was with Ben, who was lying dressed on his bed, not sleeping. She was holding his hand and talking softly to him. She was worried by his passivity, his indifference. This young woman who had seen everything in her short life of extremes of all kinds, knew very well that this Ben, the unknown, was in a crisis, was undergoing some kind of inner change.

  In the morning the two men went off to the airport, and Teresa was left in the flat with Ben, and enough money to feed them both. Ben’s own money was still mostly unspent.

  And now Ben came out of his room, and did what he had not before: he sat down at the big table, instead of in a chair at the side of the room, out of the way. He sat there looking around the empty room and watched Teresa tidying and cleaning and obediently ate what she cooked for them both.

  He had indeed changed. There had been something about that scene at the sea’s edge, the deliberate deception of the youths, and then the attack, and how he was helpless under it in spite of his great strength—there were so many of them, and they were using on him holds and pressures that had immobilised him—his rage had disappeared, leaving him sorrowful because of his knowledge of his physical helplessness during those few moments—perhaps three minutes, even less. Always, until then, he had kept with him a knowledge of that strength of his, and that he did have some resort; a last defence, and he was not entirely at the mercy of others. But he had been helpless, and there had been cruelty, viciousness, the intention to hurt him.

  He said to Teresa, ‘When am I going home?’

  Teresa knew that he had been in London, and that probably was what he meant, but she said cautiously only that she was sure Alex would take him home.

  ‘I want to go home,’ said Ben, ‘I want to go home now.’

  When Teresa had finished tidying and cooking she brought Ben fruit juice and sat beside him, with her glass of juice. He hoped that she would put her arm around his shoulders so that her soft black hair would fall on him, and she did. ‘Poor Ben,’ she said. ‘Poor Ben. I am sad for you.’

  ‘I want to go home.’

  Teresa wanted to go home too, and, like Ben, hardly knew where the place was she could rightfully call home.

  This was her story. She had been born in a poor village in the north—east of Brazil where now drought was killing animals and filling the fields with dust. She remembered dryness and hunger and watching their neighbours leave for the south, for Rio, São Paulo. Then her father said they must leave, they would all die if they stayed: father, mother, and four children, the eldest Teresa. For part of the way they were on a bus, but then it was a question of a bus or eating. They walked for days, eating bread and stolen maize from fields which were getting greener as they went south. Then they were in a crowded favela outside Rio, where houses were built one above another up a hillside, and where the higher you were the better, because of how sewage washed downhill when it rained. With their last money they made a shelter of plastic sheets on sticks, and below them were shacks like theirs and better houses, between paths that were becoming the sharp gashes of erosion. There was no money left. The father, together with the other poor men, tried to get work, fought for any work at all, and sometimes did get work for a day or two. They were hungry, they were desperate. Then something began which Teresa did not at first understand, though she did know the girls from the favelas earned money with their bodies. Her father said nothing, her mother said nothing, but she could read their faces, which said that she could feed this family of six people. Teresa spoke to the girls who were already feeding their families. They hung around the barracks where soldiers came out at evenings, or went to cafés where the petty criminals were. Most of these girls took it for granted they were low, they were rubbish, and that they could hope for nothing better. To get higher meant money for a good dress and shoes, and the moment there was money in their hands it went to their families. Teresa was a clever girl, clear—sighted, and she had no intention of remaining a soldiers’ whore. At the start she went with another girl, to see how things went, and easily attracted a soldier who took her standing against a wall, and gave her enough reais to buy food for a couple of days. Teresa was sick with terror of disease, and with fear that she would never get out of this life. She went with sold
iers for as long as it was needed to save enough money for a dress and shoes, while giving her mother the rest. ‘Is that all?’ her mother said, taking the reais from her: her voice was rough, her eyes ashamed, and she scolded Teresa all the time, though they had been friends. The inhabitants of the favelas, when they watched the girls go out at dusk, made angry remarks, and the men would come after them as they returned, trying to force them to give them sex for free.

  Teresa had been a good girl who went to church; the priest and the teacher in school liked her and told her parents this daughter of theirs was a gift from God. She had become someone people shouted ugly names after. She felt ugly. For those weeks of walking from the north she had worn old jeans that had holes in them and a shirt that had been her father’s. This was what she still wore, here, to entice custom and was why she could charge so little. There was no proper place to wash. Her hair was greasy. She knew she smelled bad.

  She had to force herself to go into a shop as she was and buy a dress. She was afraid they would simply throw her out. She knew exactly what she wanted: she had seen the dress on a rail, from the pavement. She walked in, the money in her hand, and said, ‘I want that one.’ She knew she could not try it on, being so dirty. The assistant took her money, and put the dress in a bag, giving Teresa cold angry looks. ‘I want you to keep it here for me—just for a few days,’ said Teresa.

  The assistant did not want to, but Teresa’s pleading eyes did speak loudly enough to make her change her mind. She would put the bag aside, but only for a week. Teresa knew she could not take that dress into the favela: her mother would have it off her, to sell for food. And Teresa privately agreed that her mother would be right. She knew too well the anguish of watching children ask for food that wasn’t there.

  Teresa was stood up against a wall, in the dark, and even in daylight, until she had money for good shoes. She got the dress from the shop, and put it on, a red dress, with a cleavage, but not too much, tight at the waist—she was a different person. She did this behind a bush in a public garden. She put on the shoes, high-heeled, delicate: she was going to find it hard walking in them. And now she had to find a way to clean herself, and this needed more courage than anything she had done. She went boldly to a big hotel, one of the best, and into it, as if she belonged there. The hardest was walking in those shoes so people would think she was used to them. The employees in the hotel lobby did take a good look, but thought she was off to join some man in his room. She found a toilet, and no one else was there. She lifted up that dress and, using a rag she had brought with her, washed her legs and up to her waist; slipped the dress down and washed armpits and breasts. Tempted to take the soap away, to give her family, pride stopped her: I’m not a thief, she decided. Someone came in, hardly glanced at Teresa, used a cubicle, came out, washed her hands, standing beside Teresa who was washing her hands.

  The intruder went. Now Teresa was clean, except for her hair, and she had to take her biggest risk yet. She washed her hair, unable to hear properly for that time, and was lucky enough to have her hair out of the basin, while she was standing leaning back to squeeze water out of it, when a woman came in, and stared, but did not say anything. She left. Teresa combed her wet hair. She knew that now, clean, in her new red dress, her tall white shoes, with her hair smooth and sleek she was as good as anybody, and she walked out of the hotel and sat down at a table in the sun, so that her hair would dry. It was late morning. She did not know how to judge the people there, tourists mostly, except for the girls whom she knew to be from the favelas, like herself. Like herself, they were all good—looking. With a nice dress and shoes and the price of a drink a pretty girl from one of the worst slums in the world could sit at a table outside a fine hotel and no one would say a word. A waiter might, though. The other customers might not know who they were, the waiting girls, but the waiters would have understood it all.

  But when one came, she ordered an orange juice and sat there, by herself, a long time. She saw one of the girls go off with a man into the hotel. At last a man did come to sit at her table, and she had to be courageous. He was a tourist, and spoke ten words of Portuguese. He was a German. He asked how much, she told him a sum so enormous she waited for him to laugh at her: but this was a famous hotel, she knew that, and everyone here was well—dressed, and very well—fed. He said, yes, he agreed. Now she had a bad moment: was he going to ask her if she had a room? But no, he took her arm and they walked back through the town to a smaller hotel, where no one stopped him, with her, going to the lift. She was carrying with her, in the glossy bag of the dress shop, her old clothes, which did not smell nice. She managed to leave this bag in the lift, as they went out of it.

  This man liked her, and asked her to come every day—he had a week here. This was a stroke of luck: she did not know yet how big a one it was. But perhaps it was not only luck. She was beautiful, she discovered, looking into the long mirror in the room. She was beautiful and she had an aptitude for sex. She did not mind him. He was not like the soldiers.

  At the end of the week with the German she took her mother more money than she had ever done, at one time. But it was not all she had, and she was becoming obsessed with the danger she was in, carrying wads of money taped under her breasts. Banks were not for people like her. She did not even have an identity card yet, and knew that if the police caught her she would be in bad trouble. She stood in line for a day and got her card, a piece of paper saying she was Teresa Alves. She felt let down by this identity card, which did not match what she felt about herself. And the card did not solve her problem with the money. A certain shopkeeper would keep money for customers, for a price, but she did not trust him. Yet she had to, and did give him half of what she had.

  She did not go to the tables outside that first hotel for a week, and when she did, she had bought another dress, a green one, and she had been to a real hairdresser for the first time in her life. She was by far the prettiest woman at those tables, and she got another customer at once, a Greek. Her career at that hotel went on well, for a couple of months. The family was being fed. Her nest egg was growing. And she was planning how to escape being a tart. She was less afraid than she had been, in the time of the soldiers, about disease, but she was nervous, although she had been to a doctor who told her she was all right—so far.

  Being a whore was expensive. She knew that her profession was costing her, in clothes and expensive drinks and make—up and the hairdresser and paying a maid in the hotel to keep her good clothes safe for her, what her father had earned in years of his life of being a poor farmer.

  Then she had another lucky break: she was lucky, she knew. One of her customers, an American working in the theatre, used her for information about local manners and mores, took her on trips to check out locations, asked her to translate simple things—by now she knew some English, not much, but enough to make it seem that she knew much more. And so she was becoming known in that world: television, film, theatre, and was offered work. And she gave up whoring, though she would earn less money being respectable. She went back to the favela every few days; she had a cheap room in Rio: at last she had a place to keep her money and her clothes. Her mother said to her with bitterness that soon she would take herself off, ungrateful daughter, and leave them all to starve. But Teresa could never do that, and her mother knew it. Both understood the mother was angry out of shame. Now Teresa told her that she had a good job, but her parents did not believe her, but pretended to, to save her face—and theirs, so they were not living off a tart’s wages.

  The family was better off than many in the favela. The father had built a little brick house with an iron roof, where the rain banged and thundered. There were two rooms and in them not six people, but three, mother, father, and a sickly little girl. The two boys, the one nearest to Teresa, fourteen, and the one down from him, twelve, had joined the gangs of boys that roamed the streets, stealing, taking what they could. If they did return home it was only to demand some money and they were
off again. Sometimes Teresa saw a gang of street kids, looked out for her brothers and saw them rushing past, or idling with blank eyes, on the pavement edges. Drugs. They took them and they sold them. She scolded them, but knew she ought to be afraid of these cool, cruel street children who killed for the sake of a handful of reais. But she had helped bring them up, recently had fed them, and so she felt she had the right to scold. She gave them money. And then had to keep a lookout for the gangs, because it might not be only her brothers she could expect to come demanding money.

  Two years ago Alex had employed her, when he was working on the play, and they had become lovers. She made a favour of it to begin with, did not want him to think she went with the job. But he would not have minded, or even noticed, much. He was fond of her, relied on her, and had no idea at all of the dirty roads she had travelled, at first literally, from her faraway dying village, and then, using her body to escape from poverty. He took things as they came, and in Rio there was lovely Teresa, and she was certainly not more than he deserved. He was used to the good things in life and he liked being liberal with his money. ‘I have a mother,’ she said. ‘I give her money.’ And he gave Teresa money, a good salary, more than he would have done if there had not been this mother.

  When Teresa allowed herself to think about her situation she was attacked by panic. On her entirely depended her mother, her father, and the sickly child. She was scheming how to rescue her brothers. The trouble was, her room in the flat of a minor singer who let the room to keep herself eating was tiny, and she could not ask her brothers there. If she earned more, got a better place?—but she was not prepared to go back to prostitution. Responsibilities sat on her shoulders like heavy sacks she had to carry. She was seventeen, though she pretended to be twenty-two, just as she put on a show of knowing more English than she did. She often dreamed of her village, though it had been so poor and life so hard: at least she had been looked after. She yearned to have somebody between her and the dangers that surrounded her. It was her mother’s strong arms she wanted, and she knew it.