The Sirian Experiments

by Doris May Lessing Little Dorrit

  In every scene there is a focus… a centre… and Nasar was not that centre here. Nor were the Puttiorans. At an arm’s distance from Nasar, on a wide seat, which was not as low as the others, so that she looked down on her guests, sat a woman who dominated everything. She was exceedingly beautiful. She was more than that. I am certainly not talking of the aesthetic here, but of a sexual fascination, which was immediately and instantly evident, and which I had seen nothing to compare with for many ages.

  Every breeding female has this quality, often briefly enough. But in certain conditions this sexual attraction can be concentrated and maintained by an effort of individual will, if the social circumstances permit. Of myself I can that I am pale and blonde; but of her I can say only that she gleamed and shimmered. Her hair was of fine gold, elaborately dressed, with a mass of little waves and curls, and very fine plaits, like twisted gold wires, on either side of her broad, smiling face. Her eyes were grey blue and widely set under shining blonde brows. Her long white hands were displayed, unadorned, in her lap. White feet were in jewelled sandals.

  On her bare arms were heavy gold bracelets made of repeated and interlocked V’s, which very slightly compressed her flesh, in a calculated manner. Now these bracelets were of the exact pattern prescribed for previous practices set by Canopus, those that had been superceded by the “suggestions” sent to me before I began this visit. I looked quickly around again and saw that nearly everyone there, male and female, wore bracelets, earrings, anklets, or an association of colours that were almost accurate, for in each place I observed them, a pattern on a hem, or a design on a skirt, they had, as it were, slipped out of true—and now I understood why Nasar could not easily meet my eyes. Though he was in fact now rather sullenly gazing across at me, not so much defiantly as in reckless sombreness.

  I understood a good deal as I stood there, smiling calmly. For one what it was they wanted of me now: the three Puttiorans all wore the earrings of the current prescription—they and I wore them, not one of the others, and not Nasar. Who, of course, if he were being ruled what had been prescribed, would not be wearing them at this occasion. Just as I should not, had I not been commanded and brought here in the way I had.

  I saw that the eyes of every individual there glittered at the armbands, the headband, the earrings I wore, and as I wondered why the Puttioran who had fetched me had not simply taken them, realised that of course he must be afraid, or that is exactly what he would have done.

  Still no one had moved, or made a sign of greeting. I took then a great chance, which made me quite cold, and inwardly confused for a moment: I stepped forward, with “Canopus greets you!” and glanced at Nasar to see how he took this, as I gestured to a girl servant to bring forward a chair that stood by the wall. This was a chair similar to the one used by the beauty, who was, I had decided, hostess there: I seated myself on her level, a short distance from her and from Nasar, and clapped my hands without looking to see if this was being obeyed—a custom taken from another recent visit of mine—and when a goblet was presented to me of some crystalline material, was careful not to let a drop of it touch my lips, while I pretended to sip.

  “I understood that you were from Sirius?” remarked the fair one, clapping her hands as I had done, and accepting a fresh goblet—this was done to put me at my ease. To encourage me to drink?

  This the most dangerous moment of my meeting with these decadents. I could not afford to hesitate, and I smiled, merely, and with a rather amused little glance at Nasar, as to a fellow conspirator in a harmless joke: “If it has amused Nasar to say that I am, then why not?” And I laughed. And did not look at him, but smoothed my skirt.

  He had now to challenge me. I knew that if he did, it would probably mean the loss of my life, let alone the ornaments they all coveted so much. I sat at ease, pretending to sip the intoxicant—pretty rough stuff, too, nothing tempting in it—and examining the scene quite frankly and with apparent enjoyment.

  I cannot begin to convey how it dismayed and disgusted me.

  The signs of a degenerate class are the same everywhere and always: I will not waste time in details. But I have seen them too often, and in too many places, and their perennial reappearance can only weary and dismay. The smiling ease, the cynical good nature that is so easily overturned when challenged and becomes a snarling threat; the carelessness that is the mark of easy success; the softness of the flesh; the dependence on ease; the assumption of superiority over inevitable slaves or serfs or servants who, of course—everywhere and always—are their real and often evident masters… here it was again, again, again.

  I had wondered often enough if on Canopus, or in her Empire, this rule applied, but as I was actually thinking that Nasar’s presence here, subjugated and used, was an answer, he lifted his bronze eyes direct at mine and shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, fair Canopean.”

  And he turned away, with an air so defeated, so angry, that I did not know what to do. But I knew, at least, that I had survived a very dangerous moment. It would have been piquant, to say the least, to end my life here, on this degraded planet, with these demoralised creatures.

  “Am I not to know the name of my hostess?” I asked.

  “Your host is Nasar,” she said, in that voice I absolutely expected: it was lazy, rich, suggestive: her voice, just like her appearance, could make you think of one thing, one thing only, and even if you had never experienced it. For I had not! I had read of it all, certainly—I had made a study of pathology. But it had so happened that my career in the Service had begun very young, and that while our Empire has suffered periods when I might very well have been at risk myself, I was always occupied, well away from the Mother Planet.

  But sitting there in that gilded, amiable, pleasure-loving scene, which had over it a sort of silky dew if it were drenched in ethereal honey, looking at the smiling glistening woman, it was not necessary to have experienced it! I understood it all, and only too well—because I was being affected I sat there, trying to preserve a correct, if not an official, air. For one thing, I ought not to be wearing these artefacts, which were too powerful, even if they had been put out of exact use by the fact that they were not in alignment with the other dispositions of the practice that had been disturbed by the interruption by the Puttioran.

  For another, it is of course not the ease that to turn your back on an area of life is the same as to abolish it! Often enough, and even with Ambien I, I had understood very well what a seductive realm lay there, just for the effort of saying: Yes! Of course I had known—been aware of—watched for—guarded—that door, or entrance, which watchfulness is in itself way of signifying a disposition to enter into something. This was what I was seeing. And what I was understanding. Oh yes, the woman was magic! And as I thought that word, I understood that she was a daughter of old Adalantaland; I remembered this full smiling ease of the flesh, the glisten—but there and in that time it had very different function. The wonderful females of that island had been in a correct alignment—or almost; of course I remembered how they had begun to slide away: yet one could sense their oneness with their surroundings. But this descendant of theirs had all the magnificence of the physical, but in addition a witchery that had slipped out of its place, had become sufficient to itself. As I looked at Nasar, tense and miserable there in his low seat, and then at her, I did not have to be told anything: I felt it. And I began to be afraid: it very a very easy door to open, just one little step, one little decision—and suddenly I found myself thinking of Klorathy as I had never done yet: I was amazed and appalled: it seemed as if there, beckoning me, was a smiling playful amorousness, which was certainly not what I was in search of—in wait for—when thinking of companionship with Klorathy… with Canopus. And this lighthearted amorousness was in itself an antechamber where I could very quickly indeed descend to something very different. What I saw there, in front of me now—nothing lighthearted about that! Nasar was gazing sombrely at the woman’s indolent lolling arm, and on hi
s face was a look of such pain that… but she was saying again: “It is Nasar who is your host.”

  “I think not,” I said smiling, as pleasantly as I could… and I heard rather than saw the Puttiorans mutter to each other—or rather vibrate together, a twanging sound added to the whining repetition of the music that was working on my nerves as much as the general atmosphere.

  “Her name is Elylé,” said Nasar abruptly. “This is her house. And we are all her guests—aren’t we?—your guests or your captives?” and he laughed, flinging back his head pouring down the fiery intoxicant.

  “Her willing captives,” said a dark smiling lisping youth, who had about him every sign of the spoiled rich. He rose from heaps of cushions and sat by Elylé’s chair, and, grasping her hand with a rough painful movement, began planting kisses up and down the forearm. She hardly moved, did not look at him—but at Nasar, who had gone pale.

  “Nasar,” said she, in her soft beguiling voice, “is not as willing a captive as you,” and she looked at Nasar, with a laugh, challenging him—willing him. I saw there a truly dreadful struggle in him. He was being drawn forward by her seductiveness, her frank and open invitation, and at the same time he was fighting in himself to resist her. Everyone in the room watched the struggle. And what happened at last was that he gave a great gasp, leaned forward from his seat, lifted her white arm, and having gazed it with shudder that shook every part of him, kissed the hand, but negligently, and even clumsily—so did the conflict in him manifest itself. He sank back in his seat, staring in front of him, then took another great gulp from his goblet.

  He said harshly: “This desiccated bureaucrat of a Sirian is shocked by us.”

  There was an indrawn breath and from the Puttiorans a louder thrumming. I could not laugh this off.

  I said, “It is very clear that Nasar is not himself.” This was certainly obvious to everyone and saved me.

  The cringing youth at Elylé’s knees, his mouth on her forearm, now lifted his face to lisp: “We all want to know what that material is your dress is made of—fair Sirian!” He felt his daring, for he glanced up at the woman to see how she would take it—she frowned and withdrew her arm. “My dress is made of Canopean crepe,” I said.

  “That is certainly true,” confirmed Nasar: he was breathing harshly, and his eyes seemed fixed on the beautiful woman and the youth who, snubbed, was literally grovelling on the floor, his curly head on her nearly bare feet. And I could see it was all he could do to stop himself from doing the same.

  “Can I feel it?” asked a girl sitting near me. She wore a blue glittering skirt, but her breasts were bare, except for a pattern of jewels over the nipples. Her black hair hung down to her waist, she was dark skinned, dark eyed, very slight. There were no two individuals alike in this room: the genetic mix was very wide.

  She got up, and bent to finger my dress. It was cut full, but was sleeveless—not so dissimilar from their style as to be a comment on it, but the fabric was one I had not previously been familiar with myself, rather like a fluent and supple metal. Glistening white, impossible to crease, it flowed through the fingers as you attempted to fold or settle it, and if it had not been so ample I would have been embarrassed, because where it did touch the flesh, it showed its contours—in my case, as Nasar had said, certainly “desiccated”; and it was a measure of how the atmosphere of this rich perverse villa and its emotive music affected me that I was full of wild regret that this was so, and that I was not like Elylé, whose very presence fascinated and drew and stung.

  As this girl fingered my skirt, in a moment half a dozen others had crowded forward, handling first the stuff of the gown, and then their hands straying over my armlets and touching my head where the circlet gleamed. “What’s this material?” they were murmuring, and asking each other, as if I were not there! As if I were some kind of dummy on which these things were displayed… And then I felt the weight of the circlet lift from my hair and I was just in time to put up my hand to stop the thief from slipping it off. I was being pressed down in my seat by the weight of thieving hands and fingers.

  Past a cluster of heads bent all around me, I could see Elylé sitting in her chair, longing to come forward and handle me with the rest, but her pride forbade it. Nasar had turned his head sharply, and was staring too at the scene, and I could see he was alarmed for me… And I certainly was in great danger.

  I stood up, and dislodged the greedy ones, so that they fell, and lay about on the floor laughing foolishly, drunk and helpless.

  “Perhaps you could take off your bracelets and your headband,” said Elylé, “and let us see them. I for one would love to see them closely.” As she said this the tones of that indolent voice struck into me, so that I felt them in my senses as a pang, a song.

  “No,” I said, “I shall not do that.” She looked at Nasar—and this look’s command I was able to feel in myself.

  He sighed at the strength of the pressure on him: sweat started out on his face—and he said to me in a hurried voice: “Yes, take them off…” And he added, “This is a command.”

  I cannot describe, even now, how this affected me. It was a command from Canopus: this, despite everything, was what it was. And from a man who was in appearance, even in manner—or some of the time—Klorathy, who I had been thinking of as one might open doors for me, say to me what I longed to hear… and when he said, “This is a command,” I was struck silent. What I was thinking was I had been warned of this moment! That he had known of it… or of something like it that must present itself. I was thinking, as I remembered Klorathy, his presence, his manner, what he was, that no matter how I suffered—and I was suffering in every particle of myself—I must resist.

  “I have already said that you are not yourself,” I said coldly. “Canopeans do not command Canopeans.”

  “But perhaps they do command Sirians,” said Elylé and laughed her fat low laugh.

  “Perhaps they do,” I said, “but I don’t know about that. What I do know is this: these things that I wear are not ornaments. And those who use them wrongly will suffer.”

  Again I heard, or felt, Nasar struggle with himself. The sombre, sullen struggle went on, and his breathing sounded against the low fluttering vibration of the three Puttiorans, who had crowded up to me and stood close enough to snatch off what I wore—if they dared. And they still did not dare, and that was what gave me courage to go on. For I was reasoning as I stood there, my mind working as fast it had ever done, that Nasar himself must have given warnings, even as he had weakly parted with these things as ornaments…

  “Is that not so, Nasar,” I said, forcing him with my will to turn and look at me. He sat upright, his hands loosely held around his goblet—which was trembling, because he trembled. He looked at Elylé, who was smiling at him—and yet there was fear in her smile.

  “Yes, it is so,” he muttered at length.

  And now there was a long pause, the scene again seemed to freeze, as it had when I entered. I stood quiet, empty, my will on Nasar. The three Puttiorans, the grey-green stonelike men, with their dull eyes, and their fluttering humming lips, had turned to look at Nasar, and they were waiting for him to make a sign… it was a sign that had been agreed upon before I entered this place. I understood a great deal in that moment.

  And again the moment stretched itself… and I looked, at my ease, from one face to the next… first the beautiful Elylé, Adalantaland’s fallen daughter, and the besotted youth who had returned to slaver over her hand, and the others on the floor, silly and sprawling, and the almost naked servants, who were watching, with the mask-faces of servants everywhere and at all times—and what I was seeing struck me into an inner acknowledgement of something. These faces for that moment were all vacant, yet this was because within themselves they had been attacked by an inner questioning: they were lost, vague, dissatisfied, restless—they gripped their fingers against their palms or bit their lips; their eyes roamed everywhere, they sighed, they twisted themselves, and they
sat staring emptily.

  Oh, I knew very well what I saw: it was a variation of the existential question, or affliction—how could I not recognise something I knew so well, so very well, and in all its manifestations? Their clutching and sneaking and wanting after what I wore now—what Nasar had worn at other times—were nothing else but symptoms of that deep and basic yearning.

  What I was thinking disarmed me. I felt as if I was on a level them and no better, and had no right to withhold anything from them. If at that moment Nasar had said: “Canopus commands… I would have handed over everything I had on.

  But Nasar saved me, saved himself.

  He was slowly struggling to his feet—the struggle was shown in the tenseness of heavy limbs, as if his longing simply to fall on the floor and put his lips on the smiling warmth of Elylé’s flesh was weighing him—he did straighten, and then, gasping, turned towards me.

  “It is time Canopus left,” he remarked, in a heavy, dreamlike voice. I could see that if she spoke to him then he would simply fling himself at her feet and that would be the end of it.

  “Yes, it is. And Canopus will now leave,” I said. I put my hand at Nasar’s elbow, afraid at this last moment that he would simply shake me off in repulsion because this touch was not hers.

  “Nasar,” she said softly, and the sound of it struck through me and I could feel him shiver.

  “Come,” I said softly. He gave a sort of groan and left himself in my hands. Gently directing him, I went with him through the parting in the gaily coloured curtains beyond which we could see the verandah with its exquisite pillars, the glowing braziers.

  Just behind us I could sense the three Puttiorans.

  We went to the edge of the verandah. On a long low bench one of the revelers lay sprawled, his cheek in his vomit—the sight of it seemed to strengthen Nasar.