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

by Doris Lessing

  Ben did not respond. And Teresa was thinking, How about Ben? Alfredo won’t want me if he thinks I must look after Ben.

  When they got to José’s house Ben said he wanted to go to bed, and Teresa, afraid of what he might be feeling, joined him and lay there in the dark. Ben was not asleep. She could see the restless gleam of his eyes. He did not speak.

  She was listening to the men talking next door, seeing them in her mind’s eye. They were very different. José was a lean taut man, with a sharp-boned face, and wary eyes. He was pale-skinned under the sunburn, not an even coppery brown, like herself and Alfredo. She was thinking, Our children will be good-looking. They will take after Alfredo and me. We are nice-looking people. José is ugly and it is because he didn’t get enough to eat at one time in his life. She knew this was so by a certain unfinished look to him. At least we ate, Alfredo and me, we ate well, before the bad droughts began. And our children will be healthy. She was imagining Alfredo’s face, when he saw their first child. While these confident and self-respecting thoughts went on, her heart was beating with anxiety about Ben.

  In the morning Ben was silent and did not ask questions. While the car was being packed he stood staring at the mountains, and in between these long sombre stares, turned to look at them, his eyes puzzled, on guard. He began a stamping angry dance, letting out short roars of rage, and this went on until the car-packing was finished and the house was being locked. Then he stopped and stood staring up at those peaks, those cruel, tall, dark peaks. What she saw on his face made her go to him and put her hand on his arm, delicately, for fear of his anger. But he was not responsive to her sympathetic hand: he did not move, only stared, his eyes darkened by pain and by loss.

  Teresa was thinking, Then he knows. He must know. Somehow he has understood it all.

  In the car Teresa sat in the front, because of fear of feeling sick, knowing that Ben might be sick too: Alfredo was with Ben, and Teresa saw from how he sat that he was ready to reckon with Ben, if his anger broke out again.

  The road they were on was at first wide, with townships along it, and the odd hotel, and then became narrower and began to climb. The air was thin and sparkling and Teresa ceased to care about anything but sickness and the altitude headache that crashed in and out of her head in cold waves. The road twisted up the sides of hills and then down again, for these were foothills, and there were still trees, which became fewer, and there were no longer pits of shadow across the road. They were above the treeline. It was colder, and they stopped the car to put on jackets over their jerseys. Ben stood by the car and stared up, up, and then around, at the hills and peaks and rocky valleys where there was no one, and not a house anywhere. Late in the afternoon they reached the hotel, the last, on that road, which after here became a rough track. The hotel was used by prospectors, climbers, surveyors. They were the only people there. Teresa cared about nothing except that the movement had stopped, and she could sit with her eyes shut. Ben was silent. He stood by windows one after another and looked up. Alfredo went to order the right sort of meal—a light one because of the altitude sickness. And again arrived a tray with coca tea, which they all thankfully drank. They were over the 16,000-feet mark, and the only one who was not feeling the strain was Ben.

  ‘It’s that chest of yours,’ said José. ‘In this region everyone has a chest like yours, because the air is thin and you need big lungs.’

  ‘Who, everyone? Where are they?’ asked Ben. ‘There isn’t anyone.’

  It was a cold night, with cloud drifting past the windows: nothing to be seen. They went to bed early, José with Alfredo, Teresa with Ben. Teresa was awake, because of her headache, and Ben was awake. It was dark and stuffy in the room but the whiteness of the mist outside, lit by the lamp that hung over the entrance, sent a thin pallor into their room. Teresa was thinking that if she told Ben now, that his own kind, his people, did not exist, it would be no more than what was in his mind.

  They were up early, in a thin exhilarating thrilling air, the sun striking hard off the rock faces and the peaks. There was not a sign of mist, or of cloud. As they ate their breakfast, two men arrived; they planned to take off into the peaks, but return before it was dark. ‘Not a place to get lost in, when it’s dark,’ they said.

  And now, reorganisation of gear, of belongings. They retained one room and put into it all they would not need, because from now on they would use their feet. And the car was locked and left where the proprietors of the hotel could keep an eye on it. Each had a backpack, filled with warm things, water, food; and José had a little stove, and a pan.

  They were not going higher but keeping roughly on the same level. At least, José added cautiously, with an eye on Ben, not for today. The news that today would not see the end of their journey was received by Ben in silence: not easy to read his face, as he stared at the immensities around. What she believed she saw there made tears fill Teresa’s eyes and she turned away. Before setting off, the four watched the two new arrivals walk off, up, into a steep crag that was keeping the hotel in shade.

  That night they expected to find a hut, used by climbers, and tomorrow morning they would look for the rock face Alfredo remembered. Now they all had on their thickest jerseys and padded jackets, and all wore dark glasses. At first they were on a track, wide enough for a donkey, or a mule, but then there were paths, sometimes in shade, sometimes in sun. Alfredo kept stopping as paths diverged to make sure of the route: he and José argued about it. José said that they should choose the better-used paths, ‘because that is where the rock men go’. Meaning the archaeologists, the palaeontologists, who discovered things in the mountains that filled the museum down in Jujuy. He asked Alfredo why his particular rock face (he called it ‘your picture gallery’) had not been discovered.

  ‘You’ll see for yourself,’ said Alfredo.

  They said this in front of Ben in English, but he did not ask questions, only followed José, who followed Alfredo. Teresa came behind, where she could watch Ben. She was pretty sure Ben knew the truth, but then on to that bearded face appeared a look of such longing, such wonder, that she felt it was a child she was looking at, who was expecting tomorrow’s promised marvels, and then that look disappeared and she saw only sadness.

  It was a hard day for them, though they were not climbing much higher. Sometimes they moved along paths in deep shadow between tall crags, sometimes they walked along the edges of precipices. Their chests hurt—though, it seemed, not Ben’s—and they had headaches, in spite of José’s potions of coca tea, which he dispensed from vacuum flasks. They stopped in mid-afternoon, because there was a hut, not more than a rough shelter made of logs, which must have been brought up here on beasts, because there were no trees. Alfredo said he remembered the hut, which had been in a better condition then: there were gaps in the logs where they had settled and some slates on the roof had slipped. No one had used it for a long time, only some small animal, who had left droppings. They made the place clean, and stacked their things around the wall. José collected bits of twig and lichen for a fire, but there was so little of this material it was decided to save it till dark. The night fell early, because of the tall peaks all about, but there was time for Alfredo to establish the route for tomorrow: he clambered about among the rocks, stopping at an implacable rock face or on the edge of a precipice. As the cold struck, and the sun dropped out of sight, they were inside, with their blankets arranged around the little fire. Their heads were ringing with the height, and no one wanted to eat much. The other three were waiting, their nerves on the alert, for Ben’s, ‘Where are my people? Where will we find them?’

  Alfredo had a tiny radio, but it was not working well. A faint tinny music jigged from somewhere thousands of feet below; voices, male and female, faded in with fragments of news, a phrase from a song, words of a speech—they switched it off.

  The fire was tiny, a mere flicker on the log walls. Through the chinks in the logs could be seen a cold light. Out they went, and all stood t
ransfixed. No pollution in these mountains and the stars were a cold coruscating brilliance, flashing fires of blue, red, yellow, pressing down towards them, and the Milky Way was flung across the sky like a road to somewhere. Seeing those stars thus, clean and clear and unconcealed, was like revisiting a memory. They were silent, struck into awe, and then from Ben they heard a rough tuneless singing, and saw that he had begun to move—he was dancing and singing to the stars.

  ‘They’re talking!’ he shouted. ‘They’re singing to us.’

  Trying to open their minds to what Ben could hear, the three seemed to hear a high crystalline whispering, a tiny clashing, but Ben was exulting, ‘The stars are singing, they are singing!’

  He danced on, bending and bowing and stretching up his arms to the stars, stamping and kicking up his feet, and whirling about and around, on and on, while the watchers shivered and held themselves in their blankets.

  And on he went; and on, till they thought he would fall down from exhaustion, there, outside the little hut built between the rocks and the crags whose tops pierced the field of stars.

  It seemed to them that hours were passing, while they were shivering themselves into insensibility, and first Teresa, then the men, retreated into the hut for warmth, from where they saw Ben moving about in the starlight through the chinks and heard his hymn to the heavens.

  Later he was quiet, and they went out and saw him standing with his arms outstretched and his head back, silent, looking up, and up. The crackling brilliance overhead had moved its patterns, and star shadows had reached across the bare space to where Ben stood. He was in a trance, or an ecstasy, and then at last he let his arms fall, and stood still and began to shiver. Teresa brought him inside, and put blankets around him. He sat where she had arranged him, staring into the remnants of the fire, and he began his low rough singing again. He was far from them, and from consciousness of them. They spoke in low voices not to rouse him from this state he was in. They did not sleep, but kept a vigil, with him.

  In the morning, when they opened the door, the hut was still in shadow, while the sky spread gold and pink among the peaks.

  They warmed themselves with hot tea, and walked about outside the hut to get the stiffness out of them. Not Ben, he was lost in his dream, whatever it was: they did not know. They left everything in the hut, and walked off in single file on a narrow path with a tall black cliff on one side, and on the other a slope of black rock down to a rocky valley far below them. Above them floated a condor marking their progress along the slippery path. After a couple of hours Alfredo said, ‘It’s here. I remember it.’ He struck off sharp to the right through a crack in the cliff, where they had to creep and clamber and support themselves on tiny ledges and protuberances, and then they emerged into a big flat space, with crags towering all around, and, in front of them, a tall rock face. It was now about ten in the morning. The sunlight was on the other side of the barrier of rock they had come through, and above there was a bright sunlit sky. Alfredo was moving about, along the base of the rock face, stood nearer…moved back…went forward again, shook his head…shifted to this side, and then to the other, saying, ‘No, not here, yes, it’s here,’—went off, came back, and suddenly a shaft of light came weakly over a peak, but immediately strengthened, and reached the rock face at its edge.

  At once a figure stood out from the black shining depths of the rock, where, deeply immersed in the shine, were other figures, that needed the sunlight to bring them forth. The shaft of light became a flood and there they all were, a gallery of pictures, Ben’s people. He had taken a step forward, then another, stood in front of the rock, as the three stayed behind him, letting him take possession. Now the sun was hard and full on the rock face, and it was crammed with pictures, at least forty of them, and several were like Ben, except for what they wore. Were those strips of bark? Skins? They were real clothes, of supple stuff that fell in folds, and were belted at their middles and held on their shoulders by metal clasps. The clothes were coloured, not merely grey and brown, but reddish, blue, green. The hair of these people fell to their shoulders, longer than Ben’s now, and they were big-chested. They had beards, but not all, no those must be the females, the ones without beards; and they were smaller, and more delicately built, though they stood solidly on their feet. They were not carrying weapons, though several held what seemed to be some kind of musical instrument. Ben stared. What he was thinking now the others did not know, but their hearts were beating, certainly not only from the altitude, but from fear of what he might be feeling. Ben stood forward, and stroked the outline of a female who seemed to be smiling at him. Then he bent forward and nuzzled at her, rubbing his beard over her, and letting out short cries that were greetings.

  The silence then was dreadful, dreadful. Their breathing, harsh and laboured, emphasised it.

  Ben’s back was still turned to the others. And there he stood stroking that other, who smiled back at him from the depths of the black rock. And now the sunlight was thinning, slipping and sliding across the rock, and as it did, one after another the people disappeared. Soon, only a few were left, on the very edge, and Ben stood touching, stroking, the female creature. Then the sun left her and they heard his howl, as he flung himself against the rock and crouched there.

  The sun had lifted itself away from the scene. The pictures had gone. Past Ben’s crouching figure they could see, if they stared hard enough into the shiny rock, the faintest outlines of what had been so strong and alive a short time before. Easy to see how people could walk past that rock face and see nothing—nothing unless they were lucky enough to catch just that right moment when the sun fell at a certain angle.

  Ben straightened himself, his back still to them: he was taking his time turning to face them. He had been betrayed so dreadfully by these three who called themselves his friends—so he must feel; and they were afraid of what they would see. But he didn’t turn, seemed to hang there by the rock face, one fist resting on it. Then he did turn himself about, with an effort: they could see it was hard for him. He seemed smaller than he had been, a poor beast. His eyes did not accuse them: he was not looking at them.

  Teresa dared to go to him and put her arm about him, but he did not feel it, or know she was there. He stumbled along beside her on the long walk back to the hut. On the path that had the precipice below it he did stop a moment and look down, but went on at a touch from Teresa. In the hut they put more fuel on the little fire and made tea and offered him some. He did not see them. Then—and it was so sudden they at first could not move—he left them and went bounding back along the path they had just come from. A silence. Then Teresa understood, and was about to run after him, but Alfredo put his arm around her and said, ‘Teresa, leave him.’

  They heard a cry, and a slide of small stones, and silence.

  They slowly got up, slowly followed him. They made their way to where the precipice fell away from the path. There was Ben, far below, a pile of coloured clothing. His yellow hair was like a tuft of mountain grass.

  The three teetered there on the edge, peering over, their arms stretched out to hold on to each other, for balance. A gust of wind blew from an edge of blue air where the path turned a corner, just ahead, strong enough to make them move back on this path which was not much more than a ledge over space, to stand with their backs to the rock. Now they could not see Ben, only the other side of the valley, rising up into cliffs and crags.

  Alfredo said, ‘When we get back to the telephone at the hotel, we can ring Professor Gaumlach and tell him what has happened.’

  ‘I shall ring,’ said José. ‘He won’t know who I am. I won’t mention you or Teresa.’

  ‘He will be angry with you,’ said Alfredo. ‘You can tell him that even an animal has the right to commit suicide.’

  ‘It will take them a day or two to get around into the valley—they will need mules,’ said José.

  Alfredo said, ‘The condors won’t leave much of him.’

  And there was a
condor. It appeared from over the mountain behind them, and floated down past them, and circled over the valley. They could see the sun shining on its back.

  ‘Never mind,’ said José. ‘They can know about a whole person from just a little bit of finger bone.’

  ‘They will want to know what he was doing up here,’ said Alfredo.

  ‘Are you going to show them the rock pictures?’ asked José.

  ‘Let them find the pictures for themselves,’ said Alfredo.

  Another condor was dropping from the mountain peaks across the valley.

  Teresa had not contributed to this discussion.

  José said, ‘Teresa, you are silly to cry. It’s a good thing, what Ben did.’

  Alfredo said, ‘But Teresa knows that.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Teresa. And added, ‘And I know we are pleased that he is dead and we don’t have to think about him.’

  Acknowledgments

  My grateful thanks, as always, to my agent Jonathan Clowes, and in particular for the contributions he has made to this story of Ben Lovatt, the Fifth Child.

  And my gratitude too to Suzette Macedo for her advice on the Brazilian part of the book; and to Martin Copertari who helped me with information about conditions in north-west Argentina, a splendidly beautiful part of the world.

  About the Author

  Doris Lessing’s most recent books include The Fifth Child; Love, Again; and Mara and Dann, as well as two autobiographical volumes, Under My Skin and Walking in the Shade. She lives in north London.

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