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

by Doris Lessing

  ‘Are we going to find my people today?’

  ‘No, not today, Ben, they’re away in the mountains.’

  ‘Those mountains down there?’

  ‘No, those are small mountains compared with the big ones. You’ll see for yourself.’

  The plane descended in Paraguay, and people got on and off, and then what they saw beneath them were green-and-yellow plains, and cattle, and soon they would be in Humahuaca. Antonio and Alfredo between them had decided that it would be much better to arrive there, with the miners and engineers and other workers for the mines, than in Jujuy, where they might look at travel documents more seriously. As the plane came down it could be seen that a lot of people were drifting along below them towards the mines. No one made a fuss here about frontiers, or how people crossed them: thousands of people—who could say how many?—traversed frontiers which in their minds were no more than imaginary divisions.

  At the little airport building Teresa was prepared to bring forth her identity paper, but the man at the desk recognised Alfredo: he had once worked in the mines himself. Alfredo said Teresa was his sister. The official did give Ben another look, but waved through this big bulky man who in this crowd did not seem so remarkable.

  Meanwhile the plane they had come on departed for the short hop to Jujuy: on it were mostly workers bound for the tobacco plantations there. Alfredo had telephoned a friend to ask him to come with his car to Humahuaca, to meet them. He had not arrived yet. They sat on chairs under a tree, glad of the shade. It was stingingly hot. Teresa said she had a headache, the altitude was getting to her. Ben said he felt fine: he did not seem able to take in the concept of altitude, until Alfredo pointed to the Andes, and said that Ben must imagine the sea at the foot of the mountains, and then imagine himself climbing up, counting with each step.

  ‘Is that where we are going to find my people?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  Ben sat smiling, making the rough little sounds that were a song, if you knew him.

  They were watching people coming past them, to the mines.

  ‘Mines need workers,’ said Alfredo. ‘And they don’t ask questions.’

  ‘And what questions could they ask you?’ she asked, feeling she was on the edge of a precipice. ‘What are you afraid of in the airport in Jujuy?’

  ‘When they took me on at the institute they asked where I had worked. I said Jujuy. I didn’t say Humahuaca: never tell them more than you have to. So if they wanted to get me into trouble over getting Ben out of The Cages, and driving him down to Rio, then they would have telephoned Jujuy. But I think they won’t bother with that, I am sure they have worse plans in their mind for Ben.’

  They were talking in Portuguese, and Ben heard his name and said, ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Only that we took you away from that place.’

  Alfredo went on, in Portuguese, using the local accent they shared, which was almost impossible for an outsider to understand, as if afraid of someone overhearing—though there was no one within earshot. ‘But there’s something else, Teresa. When I came here to the mines it was because I was in trouble. That was seven years ago. But they keep records—the police have my name from that time.’

  And he told her a story she felt she had heard so often she could have taken the words from him and gone on herself.

  Getting out of the favela had been as difficult for him as for her. He had been in a street gang, committed petty crimes, and the police knew him. One night there had been a fight between him and the gang leader—a knife fight. The boy had not been killed, but he was hurt quite badly, and he blamed Alfredo, though it was he who started the fight.

  Alfredo decided to remove himself from Rio. Three years later, with money saved and skills learned in the mines, he returned. The street gang he had been part of had gone—disappeared, and the boy whom he had wounded was dead, because of another fight. Alfredo was a man now, full of responsibility and competence: he had got work easily, and ended up at the institute.

  Now this was where Teresa should tell him about herself, and it was so hard for her, her voice got lower, and stumbled, and was inaudible. She had to tell this man, whom she knew she loved, that she had been a whore. Alfredo was embarrassed. He shifted about as he sat, even seemed about to get up and walk away. ‘Teresa, you tell me another time. You tell me when you want to.’

  ‘But I must tell you. I have to tell you.’

  ‘Listen, Teresa, you forget, I came to the favelas, just like you. I know about…I have a sister there still. She hasn’t got out yet. Later I will help her.’ He leaned forward, smiling, though she knew it was not easy for him, and took her hand. ‘We will help her together, Teresa.’

  ‘Are you talking about me?’ Ben asked again.

  ‘No, about us,’ said Teresa, in English.

  Now Alfredo’s friend, José, arrived with his car, and they drove the ninety kilometres to Jujuy. The two sat in the front, talking, and Teresa was with Ben in the back. She knew he would feel sick: it was an old rattly car.

  The mountains rose up on their right, and they were in their shadow.

  ‘Are we going tomorrow?’ Ben asked.

  ‘No. We have to arrange things to take with us.’

  ‘When are we going?’

  ‘Perhaps the day after.’

  She was trying to make herself say, ‘Look, Ben, you don’t understand, we haven’t explained it well…’ But she could not get it out. What are we going to do? she was asking herself. How are we going to tell him?

  José had been with Alfredo working in Humahuaca. When Alfredo left, and Antonio, he took a course in mining engineering, which lifted him out of the rut of common miners. He had a little house in Jujuy. He had a wife, who worked there. Most weekends he came home to her. She was not there now: she was visiting relatives.

  It was a neat little house, with three rooms, and a kitchen, and a shower. There was television and radio. It was like the house Alfredo had been sharing near the institute: it was like houses for people of their kind all over the world.

  They ate their supper, with the television on, but no one was watching it. Ben was in his dream, and the men were talking, and Teresa watching and listening. She was pleased Alfredo had this good friend—had two good friends, because this made her feel supported herself. A man with good male friends—she knew the value of that, for a wife. Her father had had his friends, in that time that seemed long ago, in their village, but since coming south, no friends, only his wife. In the favela, no men to sit around with, and talk. He drank, alone. He got drunk.

  Teresa knew that since she had met Alfredo half the weight and worry of her life had been lifted off her. Already, so soon after knowing him she found it hard to imagine what it had been like, alone, with only herself to depend on.

  When it came to the time of going to their rooms then there could be no doubt that Alfredo would be with José, and not only because they had not finished exchanging news. Now, if she had been alone in the house with Alfredo—but he lifted his hand to her, with a smile, as a goodnight and went with José. It was she who had to be with Ben because he trusted her. She was thinking that in Alex’s place Ben had his own room, but now there were two beds, within touching distance. She put on a nightshirt, in the shower room, and found Ben lying dressed on his bed when she returned. She knew it was because in his imagination he was already beginning the journey into the mountains. He was smiling up at the ceiling, and he asked, ‘Will we start early?’

  ‘Not tomorrow, Ben. I told you.’

  She turned out the light at the door and went into her bed, thinking that since she had known Ben he had been most of the time sick, frightened, cowed, and she had not seen him as he really was, happy and confident. Even in the half dark of the room she could see that face of his, and he was smiling. This was the moment when she should say, ‘Look, Ben, there’s been a mistake…’ But moments, then minutes, passed and she was silent.

  I’ll talk it over with Al
fredo and with José too, and we’ll work out how to explain it to him; but what nonsense was this, she was thinking. Ben expected to meet his own kind, and he was not going to let the dream go. If they said, ‘But Ben, better if you didn’t see them, they are poor wretched people,’—he would want to meet them. If they pretended to find a place in the mountains where the people had been, and then said, ‘They seem to have moved away somewhere,’ Ben would go on searching, for his need was so great. Teresa tried to imagine what it was like, believing yourself to be the only person in the world like yourself, knowing you are alone, dependent on chance kindnesses, used but then abandoned—but she couldn’t imagine it, only a panic of emptiness and aloneness that gripped her, making her cold and sick. But we have to tell him, we have to, she was repeating to herself, as she fell asleep, and woke to see Ben standing over her. Outside was a strong yellow moonlight and the room was light enough. Ben had his jacket and trousers off, and what she saw there, in his hand, made her sit up and say sharply, ‘No, Ben, no, stop.’ He was bending over her, and she did not know if he intended only to look at her, or…He straightened, his hand dropping away from a shrinking penis.

  ‘You should go back to bed, Ben,’ she said.

  He did so, silent, obedient, and lay awake. So did she. He said angrily, ‘Rita liked me. She liked me. You don’t like me.’

  ‘Yes, I do, Ben. You know I do.’

  She heard his breathing: it was rather like a child’s who is about to burst into tears. She thought that this…man, whatever he was—strong and full of energy when he wasn’t miserable—had his instincts; and what had he been doing for sex, for women? Rita was a long time ago—months. She knew that as he lay there, snuffling a little, he was thinking that when he met his people there would be a woman for him. Soon his breathing changed, and he was asleep. She did not sleep. As soon as the light came she was up and dressed and went to the kitchen to make coffee. The smell of it woke the men.

  The door between this room and Ben’s was closed but even so she was speaking in a low voice, telling them that they must explain things to Ben, they must, it was cruel to go on like this.

  ‘He will find out,’ said Alfredo. ‘He will see for himself.’

  ‘I am afraid,’ said Teresa, but did not mean for herself, or for them, but first Alfredo and then José assured her that they would all be together and if Ben was angry they would defend her, and themselves. Alfredo saw she was not reassured and said to José that Teresa was fond of Ben. ‘And I am too. He’s not just a—beast.’

  ‘He feels things the way we do,’ said Teresa.

  And here Ben came in, smiling, as eager for the new day as a child, and before he could ask, ‘Can we leave today?’ she told him that today was for doing the shopping.

  They all went together in José’s car to buy more warm things for the mountains, plastic cans for water, a blanket each, food. That took all morning.

  Then Teresa complained again of her headache: the altitude was making her feel sick.

  José brewed coca tea and made them all drink it, for the altitude sickness. She slept away the afternoon, while the men went off to see someone, and Ben fidgeted about in the sitting room.

  At supper Alfredo and José told Teresa they had a plan for her. She could stay here in this house, with José’s wife, who worked in Jujuy and kept her weekends free for when José came from Humahuaca. That morning they had been to see a friend who worked in the local television station—a small one, nothing like the splendid provisions of Rio, and if she was patient there would certainly be something for her. Meanwhile, there was the archaeological museum, she could try there. Jujuy attracted tobacco men, mining men, experts of all kinds, and they needed people like Teresa to look after them. What did she think? Would she stay in Jujuy? asked Alfredo, and she answered at once, yes. Ben was listening to this conversation as a child does when the talk does not concern him, but Teresa thought, and for the first time, What are we going to do with Ben? If we send him back to Alex, that Professor Gaumlach will get him. I can’t ask José’s wife to take in Ben, too. They had scarcely thought of Ben’s future: it had been so urgent to get him out of Rio, out of danger. It rather looked as if she—and that meant Alfredo (but why should he say yes to it?)—was now responsible for Ben. Or perhaps he should be sent back to London, to this Rita Ben talked about.

  ‘What time will we go tomorrow?’ asked Ben.

  ‘When we’ve got all the things into the car,’ said José.

  ‘Are we taking them to the people?’

  ‘No, we need them,’ said José. ‘It will be cold.’

  ‘Why do they live in a cold place?’

  ‘You’ll see,’ said Alfredo, after a pause, when the three pairs of eyes met, and separated again at once, in case Ben should see their anxiety. But he had seen: oh, yes. Ben understood very much more than ever people knew.

  ‘Why did you say it like that?’ he wanted to know. ‘Is there something wrong with them?’

  ‘No,’ said Teresa, and José came in with the reminder that it was not yet eight o’clock, and why not all four visit a certain hotel, and see for themselves the night life of Jujuy?

  Ben said he did not want to: Teresa said that he had liked sitting on the pavements in Rio and watching life going on, hadn’t he?

  The hotel was a gimcrack place, far removed from the stately edifices along the famous beaches of Rio. There were coloured lights on its outside, isolating it from the rest of the area, and in the main room it was bright, crammed, noisy. The entrance of the four was hardly noticed, and as for Ben, the place was full of strong bulky men. Food was arriving at the tables, but the bar that filled a wall was what people came for. All along the bar stood men, mostly from the tobacco estates, eyeing the bold loud young women who were there for them. The four found a table and squeezed themselves in; Ben did not look happy: the noise was affecting him. It was upsetting Teresa too, in her present state, with headache and nausea only just held at bay. And she was watching the girls and assuring herself that she had never been so pushy and noisy, she was sure of it; telling herself that they, like herself, probably had families to support—and wishing she had never come. Then she saw a young woman she had last seen at a café table outside the first hotel she had used, in her new dress. She was afraid she would be recognised and greeted and that José would know about her. That wouldn’t be nice for Alfredo. She shrank back behind Alfredo, who noticed it, looked to see why, understood, and said to her that they need not stay long. Meanwhile José had been accosted at the bar by a girl he obviously knew very well: they were exchanging pleasantries.

  ‘How long has José been married?’ asked Teresa, and as Alfredo laughed, she said, ‘If I had to wait for you in Rio I’d be jealous.’

  She thought Ben wouldn’t understand, but he said, ‘Why, Teresa? Why are you jealous of Alfredo?’

  ‘We were joking,’ said Teresa, watching José with the woman. Then, in a low voice to Alfredo, ‘No, I wasn’t joking.’

  ‘But you’ll keep me out of trouble,’ said Alfredo.

  At this point José came back with beer for him and Alfredo, juice for Ben, and coca tea for Teresa. ‘Tomorrow will be difficult,’ he said to her. ‘We will be going much higher, and you’ll feel bad if you don’t drink this tea.’

  ‘Do my people drink this tea?’ asked Ben.

  ‘Judging by you they won’t have to,’ said José. ‘Where did you get those lungs?’ Then he laughed, in a knowing conspiratorial way, and said, ‘I said that as if they existed.’ He said it in Portuguese, sharing the cruel joke with Teresa and Alfredo. In Portuguese: but Ben had caught it, caught something. ‘Why are you laughing?’ he said to José. He was all at once full of suspicion.

  ‘We make bad jokes,’ said José, in English, and then in Portuguese: ‘This Ben is quick off the mark.’

  ‘Why did you say that? Why did you say my name, Ben, what are you saying about me?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ said Teresa, thinking that t
his José was not sensitive to people’s feelings, not like Alfredo. Then she thought, But Ben shouldn’t be finding out the truth like this, in this unkind way.

  ‘What is it?’ demanded Ben, looking into their faces, one after another.

  And now this was the moment when she could say, ‘Ben, there’s been a misunderstanding…’ But she could not make herself do it. She kept quiet. Alfredo looked uncomfortable, seemed apologetic—towards her, she noted, as if this awkwardness had been hurtful for her, not Ben. José returned to the bar to say something to the woman—an acquaintance, or more—Teresa reassured herself that José was not Alfredo.

  Alfredo said to José that they should leave. He knew Teresa did not like the place. José would not have noticed. Meanwhile, poor Ben was sitting there morose, looking around with suspicious eyes as if not only the three of them but everyone had become his enemy. Teresa walked by the girl from Rio feeling that her past had put out a tentacle and was pulling her back into it. As the two walked to the car, Ben coming along behind, watching them suspiciously, Alfredo put an arm around her and said, ‘But you’ll stay with me, Teresa? You agree? And when we come down from the mountains we will get married.’ He had said this in Portuguese, and now said in English, for Ben, ‘Teresa and I are going to be married.’