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

by Doris Lessing

  Luiz sat down, by Inez. Only Teresa knew why Luiz was here: they all knew Inez, at least by name, as a rich girl who gave money to the theatre. Conversation picked up, there was food and wine. Ben sat silent, his eyes on Luiz when they were not apparently looking for ways to escape. As for Luiz, all affability, he did not again inspect Ben as he had at first, but his glances at him were frequent, and each time he took in more information. Ben was not eating. Teresa was afraid he would go next door, and they would hear that thud, thud, thudding. Inez smiled a good deal, and her demeanour when looking at or talking to Teresa was all apology, though she did not know it. This usually so self-possessed, cool young woman was guilt embodied, and Teresa was uncomfortable. It was not an easy occasion. Soon Luiz said he had to return to his lab—yes, there was something he had to check, Sunday or not, experiments did not respect the calendar. He got up, and at his glance Inez, who had been preparing to stay, got up too. The two superior ones went off, in a little fussing of goodbyes and thank yous.

  And now people relaxed, and the fun and pleasantness returned to the occasion. But Ben went off to his room, and sat at the window, having put on his dark glasses: the afternoon sun was filling the sky with light, and struck white fire from the wings of seabirds.

  When the sounds of the visitors had gone he returned to the sitting room and found Teresa still at the table, and she was crying. She was in a trap and did not know what to do.

  ‘When can I go home?’ said Ben. ‘When is Alex taking me home?’

  Teresa stopped crying, because Ben had mentioned Alex: usually he did not. Ben must be really frightened.

  She did not reply.

  ‘Who is that man?’

  ‘He is a very clever man.’

  ‘What is he going to do with me?’

  This acuteness sharpened her forebodings. She acknowledged he was right with, ‘I don’t know, Ben, but he wouldn’t hurt you.’

  ‘I don’t like him.’

  Teresa didn’t like him either. Between her and Inez, in spite of their so different backgrounds, was the instinctive ease women so often feel with each other, but there was nothing like that with Luiz: his affability, the ever-smiling handsome face put all her instincts on the alert.

  Next day he telephoned and Teresa said, ‘I don’t like that, I don’t want to do that.’ Then Inez was talking to her, and Teresa said, ‘No, Inez. I am saying no.’ Ben was in the room and so she was inhibited. In the end she agreed that one Alfredo, a friend of Luiz and Inez, would come to talk to her—to her and to Ben.

  She put down the receiver and found Ben’s wide grin confronting her.

  ‘Ben, they want you to do something. It won’t harm you.’ Ben’s grin remained, and his eyes were roving everywhere. ‘It’s nothing much. And I’ll do the same things, with you.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘They want to do tests.’ She had to explain what she knew about tests, which was not much. ‘They want to take some of your blood and find out something.’

  ‘Why I am different from everybody?’

  ‘Yes. That’s it, Ben.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  It was lateish that evening when the doorbell rang: this Alfredo had to come from the research station, which was miles away, in the hills. Teresa saw that Ben was trembling, and said, ‘It’s all right, Ben. Don’t be frightened.’

  When the door opened, Alfredo was not a superior person but someone like Teresa, a large, brown man, with the same dark eyes and black hair, and as soon as they set eyes on each other they fell into using the accent of the region both had come from. But he had made the dangerous journey ten years ago: he was older than Teresa. He too had arrived in a favela, had got himself out, done many kinds of work, always bettering himself, using his wits and aided by the luck without which nothing can succeed, even for brave and resourceful souls, and ended up as far from his origins as he could ever have imagined possible: he was an assistant in the laboratory. That was what he was called, but in fact he was a general dogsbody. He drove people around, he cleaned equipment, scrubbed work benches, helped prepare samples, and, like Teresa, had learned some English—a good bit more than she had.

  Teresa understood at once that sending Alfredo was a brilliant tactic: they were clever people all right. Not only would she, Teresa, be reassured, seeing one of her own people, but Ben could find this friendly fellow easy to like and to trust. Ben sat with them at the table, trying to understand what they were saying—all animation as they spoke of their childhoods, their vicissitudes, their escape from the favela. Because he did not understand, he used his eyes. He knew this man did not mean him harm, and because Teresa liked him so much Ben did too. But at the end of all that talk Teresa said, ‘Ben, they want you to go with me and have some tests. But I’ll have them too—first me and then you. You’ll see that I’m not hurt, and then you won’t be worried.’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ said Ben.

  While all the nostalgic chatter had been going on, Alfredo had been observing Ben, and now he said, ‘They want to find out about your people.’

  ‘I don’t have any people. I’m not like my family—at home. They are all different from me. I’ve never seen anyone like me.’

  ‘I’ve seen people like you,’ said Alfredo.

  Ben’s response was such that what Alfredo might have been going to say next simply fled from his tongue. Ben was leaning forward, his eyes all gratitude, tears were rolling down into his beard, and he was pressing those great fists together: he seemed to have been lit from within by fires of joy.

  ‘Like me? People like me?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alfredo, and knew that he should be going on, but could not destroy that happiness there, in front of him. Ben was letting out now short choking sounds, but those tears were not spilling out because of a heavy-weighted heart, but because he was too happy to bear it, and he got up and began a stamping dance around the room, letting out short barking roars which the two observers knew meant that a lifetime’s sorrow was being dissolved away.

  Meanwhile Teresa was looking enquiringly at Alfredo: she knew there was more he should be saying, but knew too that like her he was awed into silence by what he saw.

  ‘People like me,’ Ben was chanting, ‘like me, people like Ben.’ And he interrupted his dance to ask, ‘Just like me?’

  ‘Yes, just like you.’

  ‘Will you take me to them?’

  And now, this was the moment when Alfredo should come out with the truth, which would put an end to this joy. He simply could not do it. As for Teresa she was thinking that she had had no idea of the weight of sorrowful oppression on Ben’s heart, though she had known he was miserable, had been concerned for him. This exultation, this exaltation, it was a reaction to something she had not been able to imagine. This was because she had never experienced anything like it. She had been unhappy, she had been frightened, but what could he have been feeling all this time?

  Ben’s dance went on, so noisy that Teresa was worrying about the people downstairs: but perhaps they were out. And then Ben came back to the table, sat down and said to Alfredo, ‘Will you take me tomorrow?’

  ‘It’s a long way off,’ said Alfredo. ‘A long way from here. In the mountains, a long way.’

  ‘And first we must go to the place to have tests, you and me,’ said Teresa.

  ‘We don’t have to,’ said Ben.

  ‘Yes,’ said Teresa.

  ‘Yes,’ said Alfredo.

  And as Ben knew that meeting his people at last was dependent on his agreeing to the tests, which had now come to seem to him quite a minor thing to be undergone before Alfredo could take him to the mountains, he agreed to go tomorrow with Alfredo and Teresa: Alfredo would come and fetch them.

  He did not sleep, and Teresa lay on her bed, sometimes weeping, sometimes miserable, and thinking too of Alfredo whom she knew was a man for her. He liked her. If this business with Ben had not been there between them, that night she might have spent drea
ming of Alfredo. But those tests—she was afraid. All she knew was, they would take blood. She did not like the sound of that, but knew it was done all the time. There would be injections, and she was afraid of those. Modern medicine had passed her by, except for when she had gone to the doctor to be checked for venereal diseases, and that had been an ordeal she never wanted to repeat. Yet Inez spoke of tests and injections as if it had never occurred to her that people might be afraid of them.

  And she was thinking, too, of Ben lying awake, too full of joy to sleep.

  Before Alfredo had gone off she had managed to whisper, while Ben was out of earshot, ‘Did you really see people like Ben?’

  ‘Pictures,’ said Alfredo. ‘I found them in the mountains when I was working in the mines. Pictures on the rocks—ancient people did them. You know, like the pictures on the rocks at home. Only much better than at home. Not all cracked and broken.’

  She understood why Alfredo had not been able to tell Ben the truth. She ought to tell him herself—and could not. That happiness of his, it seemed to fill these rooms, she could feel it surrounding her. She could hear Ben’s grunts and sighs and little roars when she got up to go to the kitchen to get herself some water. His joy was so great that it had to escape from him in sounds that made her smile, although she was so nervous about tomorrow.

  Next morning Ben was dressed and brushed and ready and sitting at the table looking at the door when Alfredo came. First, there would be a car journey, but he was ready for it.

  They drove along the front, Ben averting his eyes from the dazzle off the waves, and then went away from the town and through lush fields where cows grazed up to their middle in grass, towards the hills ahead. Ben sat gripping the edge of the windows, which were down to give him air, but even so he felt sick, and Alfredo stopped the car so Ben could get out. Teresa did too. Ben was sick, and then stood at the edge of the road gazing at the hills: he was thinking of how to run away, but remembered that Alfredo had promised…and he got back into the car which was soon going up a twisty hill road. He gripped Teresa’s hand, he was feeling so bad, but she said, ‘Look, look, Ben,’ and he opened his eyes to let out a grunt of fear, because above them three men were floating down under big coloured things like square wings. Ben had never imagined anything like them, and he said, ‘What is it, what are they doing?’ And Alfredo said it was all right, they were only sky fliers—‘You know, Ben, they are like umbrellas and they carry them down slowly.’ The three got out of the car and stood gazing up, up, up, while these sky men floated down past them, aiming for a landing place that was well out of sight down the curving road. Ben’s mouth was open, as he stared.

  ‘Could we do that?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, we could,’ said Alfredo, understanding very well how not only Ben, but Teresa too, must be feeling oppressed by the rich clever world where people could leap off into air under umbrellas and feel safe, because their lives had always been safe. ‘We could if we had the money.’

  ‘Money,’ said Ben. ‘Where is my money?’

  ‘It’s in the safe in the flat,’ said Teresa. There wasn’t all that much of it left, but Teresa was sure that whatever else Alex did, he would be careful to replace what she had spent.

  ‘Would you like to do that?’ asked Alfredo, really curious about how Ben saw these sky men, who were disappearing downhill as they watched.

  Ben was silent, staring, and they did not know what he thought.

  Back they got into the car, and up they went through hills. Beautiful they were and Teresa thought so, and was grateful to be seeing them, but Ben was sitting with his eyes shut. They had to stop again, so he could be sick.

  When they reached what they had heard described as ‘the institute’, imagining a building, what they saw was something like a town: a lot of low buildings were scattered about, and among them taller imposing buildings, one of which announced itself in large black letters as a hospital. But everywhere over the world is flung a kind of grid or net of hospitals, chemists, laboratories, research institutes, observation stations, and their functions blur and blend. Ben and Teresa were still looking for ‘the institute’ when the car stopped outside a building in no way different from a dozen others. Alfredo opened the car doors for them. He was looking nervous, apprehensive. This was because he had been ordered on no account to go near a certain group of buildings, nor to tell Ben and Teresa anything about them. What went on in these buildings everyone who worked here was ashamed of, or, if not ashamed, then defensive, even though their work lay in very different areas. By now Alfredo was more than interested in Ben—everyone had to be that—he was sorry for him, and guilty, too, because when he had mentioned those rock pictures, telling Ben he had seen people like him, he had not been thinking, and what he had achieved was something so bad he had not begun to measure it. At some point Ben would have to be told the truth, and disappointment was not the word for what he would feel then. Meanwhile, a nearer worry: what were these people—and Alfredo did not much like his employers—planning for Ben? Their warning not to let Ben know about the bad place—or ‘The Cages’ which is how most people described it—meant that some kind of harm was intended. Alfredo liked nothing about this situation, only Teresa, and when he told her these tests were not so bad, and gave her a smile he meant as reassurance, it said much more. Ben and Teresa were taken inside a large room that had all kinds of apparatus in it, and Alfredo parked the car; he had hoped to return to be near Teresa, but he was given other duties.

  In the room were two young women wearing white overalls. One was Inez, who had had to borrow an overall: it had been decided her presence would reassure Ben. He was frightened, and so was Teresa, but she was determined not to show it.

  The assistant had been carefully instructed. She asked Ben to ‘help’ Teresa by sitting close to her and holding her hand while she sat on the edge of a low table, and held out her arm to have a rubber tube put on, and then inflated, and her blood pressure taken. Then it was Ben’s turn. He was grinning, which reassured the assistant, who didn’t know what that meant, while his blood pressure was taken. He hated the rubber tube tightening around his arm. Then Teresa was told she would have blood removed from her arm. She shut her eyes and averted her face as the syringe filled with dark blood. And now Ben: would he agree?

  ‘Come on, Ben,’ said Teresa, ‘now you must do it too, like me.’

  Ben allowed the needle to go in, and watched as the barrel filled with blood. This scene was not new to him: he had had tests done, when he was a child. He was more used to them, in fact, than Teresa, whose childhood had certainly not included expensive medical care. So far, so good. And now, eye tests. Another woman came in from somewhere to do these. Ben had undergone tests recently with the oculists in Nice, so he did not mind these.

  Ears…Inez asked Teresa to ask Ben if he had had ear tests, and Teresa said, ‘Why not ask him yourself?’ Her voice was low and bitter; she was finding herself unable to look at Inez, who was guilty and defiant.

  ‘Have you ever had hearing tests, Ben?’ Inez asked.

  Ben knew that his hearing was sharper than anybody’s, but all he said was, ‘Yes.’

  He put up with the instruments poking into his ears, and the light being shone in.

  And now urine: Inez was expecting him to pee in front of them all—like an animal, Teresa thought—but Ben took the flask and looked about him for cover. ‘A screen,’ ordered Inez, and to Teresa her voice sounded sharp and scornful. Behind a screen Ben peed, and brought back the flask.

  They cut off a bit of his hair, and parings from his nails, and shavings of skin.

  All this Ben put up with, silent, stolid—grinning.

  Now they wanted to put clamps on his head to measure brain activity, but when Ben saw the apparatus he backed to the door, wanting to escape, and Teresa’s encouraging cries (prompted by Inez) that she would do it too, did not persuade Ben.

  Inez said, ‘Very well, we’ll do the x-rays.’

  Teresa
permitted herself to be x-rayed—for the first time in her life. It was a long process. Legs, arms, feet, pelvis, spine, shoulders, neck. They did not suggest doing the head, so as not to frighten Ben. He stood by, watching, and as the photographs were processed and held out to Teresa and to him, he seemed interested, looking at Teresa’s bones.

  ‘Have you ever been x-rayed?’ asked Inez.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ben. ‘I broke my leg once.’

  Inez’s impatient sigh suggested that he might have told them that before, but all she said was, ‘Then you won’t mind doing it for us, will you?’

  He went through it patiently, Teresa beside him, and Inez on guard.

  And now it was getting on in the afternoon.

  Ben said, ‘I’m hungry.’

  They did not want to cause comment by taking him to the canteen. Sandwiches were brought. Teresa was hungry. Ben could never easily eat bread, but he took out the meat fillings and ate them. Teresa asked for fruit, and when it came he eagerly ate it.

  Now Inez said he must have the wires attached to his head for brain tests.

  ‘No,’ he said. Then he shouted, ‘No, no, no, no!’

  They had planned to test the workings of his digestive system, his circulation, his breathing: there were a great many more to do, but the tests on his brain were considered the most important, and Ben shouted, ‘No!’ and began stamping about.

  Inez went out to the telephone, her slim compact little body in its white overalls showing a determination that Teresa understood.

  ‘I want to go home,’ said Ben, meaning the place in Rio.

  Inez came back, smiling brightly and falsely, not looking at Teresa, who knew that deceptions were being planned, and said that Alfredo would take them both back.

  The swooping looping drive back down through the hills made Ben sick, and they had to stop twice. At last they were driving along the sea front, and then were in the flat. Alfredo came in long enough to say that they wanted Ben to go back tomorrow for more tests. He knew that Ben was going to say no, and he did.