Shikasta

by Doris May Lessing Little Dorrit

This has happened several times. She loves doing it. It is because she admires me for being so educated and able to do what I like. So she thinks. She thinks I am marvellous. My life seems quite beyond her and utterly amazing.

  Yesterday afternoon she put all this on me and then made up my eyes. She made my lips a dark sultry red like a tart's. She stood me in front of the cracked glass in the neighbour's room, and the women came crowding around to watch. They were all excited and delighted. Then she took me back to her sister's rooms and sat me down to wait for supper. Yusuf was coming. I said to her she was mad. But it was the wrong note, I could see that. She had to do it. Meanwhile, Shireen was all worldly-wise and smiling. Naseem came home, worn out. Thin as a rake because he does not eat what little there is for him, he always gives it to the children. He laughs when he sees me. Then in comes Yusuf. He is handsome, with dark liquid eyes. A sheikh of Araby. He laughs. He pretends I am his bride. It is funny and sweet. As if everyone is forgiving everyone for something. I say to them, cross, that all this is silly because I have no intention at all of getting married. But I am quite wrong to say it, because it is a sort of game. They are making an alternative event. A possibility. Their lives are so narrow. They have so little. So here is this spoiled western girl Rachel. But they like her really. But they have to manage her. And after all, she might marry Yusuf, who knows! Strange things do happen! Yusuf might fall in love with Rachel! Rachel might fall in love with Yusuff! A romance! But of course they don't believe this for a moment. And so it is a sort of acted-out possibility, no hard feelings. It was a feast. Vegetable stew and meatballs. They hardly ever eat meat. And I had insisted on bringing in a pudding Mother had made for us. It was a pudding of yoghurt and fruit. Shireen made sure the children stayed up to get some of it, after their share of the stew. She couldn't waste the chance of their getting some nourishment into them.

  There I sat, all dolled up, a sacrificial calf. It was a lovely meal. I adored it. All the time I was furious. Not at them. At the awfulness of this poverty. At Allah. At everything. And it was all ridiculous because Fatima and Yusuf might just as well be married already. There is that strong physical thing, and the antagonism. They quarrel as if they are married, and are sure of each other.

  After the meal, the feast-feeling faded away. The children were excited and a nuisance. Everything was a mess. Naseem and Yusuf went to a cafe. Shireen put the kids to bed. Fatima cleaned things up. Then she sat with me and said, Do you like him Rachel? Quite seriously, but laughing. I said, Yes I like him and I shall have him! Oh, you are going to marry him then? Yes, I shall marry him, I said. She laughed, but looked grave, in case there was a chance in a thousand I might mean it. And I kissed her so she should understand of course I wouldn't marry her Yusuf. At the time I was wanting to howl and weep. But I personally think on reflection that I am extremely childish and they are not.

  Then Fatima took me into the court.

  It was a night with a moon, last night.

  People were sitting around in the shadows of the court. We sat by the pool. It is a tiny rectangular pool. The lilies in the earth pot at one end were smelling very strong. Olga was there, sitting quietly in the dusk. She had one of the babies on her lap. It was asleep. I don't know where George was or Benjamin. Olga knew I was in with Shireen and Naseem and Fatima because I had asked to take the pudding. She knew about Yusuf. She was worried in case I hadn't behaved well. She didn't want me to have hurt their feelings.

  When I came out and sat by the pool with Fatima she was looking at my face to see if I had behaved well. So I gave her a look which meant Yes I have.

  The moon was overhead. It should have reflected in the pool. But there was this dust on the water. Also little bits of twig. Also bits of paper. The water is never clean. A woman will take a child that has made a mess and wash it there. Or someone will bend and splash water over his face, in the heat. Olga began by trying to stop people using the water but she has given up. She says by now they must be immune to any germs. Fatima leaned forward, and began carefully with the side of her palm to scoop the dust and rubbish off the water. Then Shireen came out from her quarters and she sat by Fatima and she too creamed off the dust. She knew what Fatima was up to, but I didn't. And Olga didn't. They were obviously up to something. This went on for some time. People sat quietly around, tired after the hot day, watching the sisters using the sides of their palms to scoop off the dust and wondering what would happen next.

  Then Naseem came back from the cafe. He had been gone only an hour. He was tired, and kept yawning. He stood for a while leaning against a wall watching the sisters. Then he sat down by his wife, close but not too close, because they behave with dignity in public. He was close because he wanted to be. His leg and thigh was at least six inches from Shireen's folded-up leg, but I could feel the warmth of their being close. I could feel the understanding between them, in their flesh. They were conscious of every little bit of each other, even though they scarcely looked at each other and Shireen went on clearing the water. I was amazed by that thing between them. I mean the strength of it. If I could only understand it. Those two sitting there together in the dusk on the edge of the little pool, with the moon shining down - all the rest of us might just as well not have been there. I don't know how to say it. I was staring at them and trying not to.

  And all the time Shireen went on competently scooping and skimming, and Fatima scooped and skimmed. And I was sitting there, all dolled up. Then the pool was clear. It was a little dark rectangle of water with a slit of moon shining brightly in it.

  Then Fatima, smiling and delighted, and Shireen, smiling and pleased, came to me, one on either side, and gently pushed me forward to look in the pool.

  I didn't want to. I felt ridiculous. But I had to. Naseem was sitting there, cross-legged, alert, watching, smiling, very handsome.

  I was made to look at myself. I was beautiful. They made me be. I looked much older, not fifteen. I was a real woman, their style. I hated the whole thing. I felt as if Shireen and Fatima were holding me and dragging me down into a terrible snare or trap. But I loved them. I loved that strong physical understanding between Naseem and Shireen and I wanted to be part of it or at least to know what it was. It wasn't just sex, oh no.

  The girls kept exclaiming over my reflection and softly clapping their hands, and making Naseem bend forward to look into the pool and then he clapped his hands, partly sardonic, and partly genuine. And the other people around the pool were smiling.

  I was afraid of George coming in and seeing this charade going on. Because he hadn't seen what had led up to it. I could feel the tears start running and I hoped no one would notice. But of course Shireen and Fatima noticed. They exclaimed and kissed me and scooped the tears off my cheeks with the side of their palms that were still damp from the pool, and they said I was beautiful and lovely.

  Meanwhile, Olga sat there watching, holding the sleeping baby. She did not smile. Nor did she not smile.

  Olga, I will put down here as a fact, is not beautiful. This is because she is always tired and doesn't have time. Olga is English to look at, in spite of her Indian parent. She has the stubby solid look. She has dyed blond hair that is not always properly dyed. She has dark eyes that are sensible and considering. She is in fact too fat. This is because she forgets to eat sometimes all day, and then goes ravenous into the food cupboard and absentmindedly crams in bread or anything that is there to fill herself. She doesn't care. Or she will eat pounds of fruit or sweet stuff instead of a meal while she is writing a report.

  She has nice clothes which she buys all at once to get it over with, but then she forgets about looking after them.

  She sat there looking at this daughter of hers, who was so beautiful and exotic.

  She was most interested in it all. I knew perfectly well she was thinking that all this would be good for me. Educational. Just as living in this poor building in this poor part of the town is good for us.

  I could not stop crying. This disturb
ed the girls very much. Suddenly they did not understand it at all. Soon Naseem made them go off with him to their rooms, but first Shireen and Fatima hugged and kissed me, affectionate and concerned, and I wanted to howl more than ever.

  I stayed there on the edge of the pool. So did Olga. Then the others went off to sleep. They all had to get up early and they are tired with their hard lives.

  That left Olga and me. I leaned forward and took a good look at the glamorous beauty. I have got thin in the last year. Sometimes I look at myself naked. The Queen of Sheba has nothing on me. Breasts and lilies and goblets and navel and the lot. But I don't want it. How could I want to be grown-up and marry and have six kids and know they are going to die of hunger or never have enough to eat.

  When there was no one but me and Olga, and no chance of anyone coming out into the court, I did something I had been wanting to, but I couldn't while Shireen and Fatima were there. I loved them too much.

  I took some sand from the pot around the lilies, and gently strewed it over the still surface of the gleaming water. Gently. Not too much. Just enough so that when I looked in I could no longer see the beautiful exotic Miss Sherban, Rachel the nubile virgin.

  Olga watched me do this. She did not say a word.

  I leaned over the pool, to make sure I couldn't see myself, only the blurred outline of the beautiful moon, shining down from the stars.

  By the morning, if Shireen and Fatima remembered, and chanced to look, all they would think was that the winds had blown dust across the sky and some had fallen into the pool.

  Olga got up and took the baby off to the room it belonged in. Then she came and put her arm around me and said, Now come on, go to bed. And she led me into our quarter. She hugged me and kissed me. She said, Rachel, it really isn't as bad as you think.

  She said it humorous but a bit desperate.

  I said, Oh yes, it is.

  And she went off to bed.

  I went through to my little mud room. I sat on the door-sill, with my feet in the dust outside, and I watched the night. I was still in Fatima's best dress of course, with her precious bits of gold. Being in that dress that she had been in a thousand times was something I can't describe. If there is a word, I don't know it. The cloth of the dress was full of Fatima. But that wasn't it. It smelled of her and of her skin and her scent. It was as if I had put on her skin over mine. No dress I have ever had in my life could possibly feel like that. It could never be that important. If I had a fragment of that cloth, wherever I was in the world, if I came on it in a drawer or a box, I would have to say at once, Fatima.

  The feel of that warm soft cloth on my skin was burning me.

  I understand that old thing, about a woman rending her bosom with her nails. If I had not been in Fatima's precious best dress that she would need to get married in, I would have raked my nails through the dress and into my bosom. And I would have raked my cheeks with my nails too, but the blood would have hurt Fatima's dress.

  I sat there all night until the light began to get grey. There were some dogs trotting about in the moonlight. The dogs were very thin. Three of them. Mongrels. So thin they had no stomachs, just ribs. I could feel their hunger. Living in this country I have a fire in my stomach which is the hunger I know nearly everyone I see feels all the time, all the time, even when they sleep.

  Then I go into meals with the family and eat, because of course if is ridiculous not to. But each mouthful feels heavy, and too much, and I think of the people who are ravening. I am sure that ever if I lived in a country where everyone had enough to eat all the time, and lived there for years, I would still have this burning in my stomach.

  I did not go to bed last night. When the sun came up I took off Fatima's beautiful dress and folded it and put the earrings and the dozens of different bangles with it. Later I shall take these things over to her. One day soon I expect that I and Shireen will help Fatima into this dress so that she can marry Yusuf.

  A letter from BENJAMIN SHERBAN to a college friend

  Dear Siri,

  Here is my promised account of the circus.

  On the afternoon before leaving, George "received" - the only word for it I am afraid! - representatives of the three organisations he was to represent. The Jewish Guardians of the Poor. (Female, black.) The Islamic Youth Federation for the Care of the Cities. (Male, a very superior fellow, combining a brand of marxist socialism peculiar to himself and I gather perhaps four others, with an ancient lineage of which he has no intention anyone shall remain in ignorance.) The United Christian Federation of Young Functionaries for Civil Care. (Female, brown.)

  These three entrusted inordinate quantities of messages, briefs, reminders, cautions, and good wishes to their delegate and departed to three different far-flung areas of Morocco, well pleased.

  I travelled with George only because he seemed to insist, and on our arrival we were put up in the house of one Professor Ishak. The usual interminable confabulations went on from dusk until after midnight, and again George seemed to need my support, otherwise I would have gone to bed. The pre- and/or post-conference junkettings have never held any appeal for me.

  Over a thousand delegates from all over the world assembled in the Blessings of Allah Hall, which is modern, air-conditioned, large, surrounded by snack bars, cafes, eating nooks attractive to east and west, north and south, and everything of the best. From the first moment the goodies were being eagerly sampled by one and all, but particularly by those delegates from Western Europe, and most particularly from the British Isles, who seem pleased enough to get even half a square meal inside themselves whenever the opportunity offers.

  Opening speeches at nine a.m. George delivers one of them. All things to all men. Not to mention women. Half of the delegates are female and not a bad-looking bunch even to my connoisseur's eye. There were nearly as many different uniforms as delegates, of every shade imaginable, and the place was like a sample room of a dye factory. Medals blazed. Ribbons glowed. Is it really possible that so much valour, intelligence, accomplishment, devotion to every conceivable variety of duty, were all together at the same place, and at the same time?

  Your poor friend was not among those in uniform. I wore my post-Mao tunic, and the badges of our college. George wore a cotton suit that could give offence to no one, and with it his three badges, the Jewish Guardians of the Poor, the Islamic Youth Federation for the Care of the Cities, and the United Christian Federation of Young Functionaries for Civil Care, thus outtrumping, and outmanoeuvring any number of local interests without even trying. He was of course as handsome as the evening star (as I overheard some delicious morsel whisper) and there wasn't a soul, male or female, left unmoved at that winsome modest manly form.

  The subject of the Conference being the general togetherness and co-operation and sharing of information and love and good will (etcetera and so on) among the Youth Organisations of the World, of course it was necessary first of all, before descending to these perilous shores of unanimity, to establish boundaries, banish misconceptions, and stake claims. The familiar verbal aggressions (yawn yawn) began at once.

  Battle was joined by the Communist Youth Federation (European Branch, Section 44) for Sport and Health, with a few routine references to running dogs of capitalism, fascist hyenas, and so-called democrats.

  A conventional, indeed modest, opening move.

  It was countered by the Scandinavian Youth Section of the League for the Care of the Coasts with references to tyrannical enslavers, jailors of free thought, and perverted diverters of the true currents of soaring human development into the muddied channels of repetitive rhetoric.

  In came the Soviet Youth in the Service of the World (Subsection 15) with opportunistic revisionists and scavengers of the riches of the marxist theoretical treasuries.

  Were the delegates from the Socialist Democratic Islamic Federation of North Africa content to remain silent? Deteriorated inheritors of the corrupted revolutionary ethics, and contaminators of the true idea
ls of the socialistic heritage by self-appointed custodians of dogma - was the least of it.

  And now, what said the Chinese Youth Representatives of Peace, Freedom and True Liberty? You ask, do you? With earnest dedication to exact definition, they offered: the use of superstitious and archaic religious dogmas to enslave the masses, and the empty rhodomontade of bankrupt pawns of the antediluvian economic system.

  Insulters of the absolute and eternal truths enshrined in the Koran!

  Unleashed oppressors!

  Rancid invective!

  Polluters of the true heritage of the ever-welling mental wealth of mankind's toiling masses!

  This dazzling exchange was halted by the Norwegian Youth Against Air Pollution, her blond plaits swinging, and her breasts all agog, while she shouted that this was feeble hogwash masquerading under the guise of free and flexible thinking and was no more than she expected from so many male prisoners of their own decaying doctrines.

  But here in came the plenipotentiary from the British Young Women's Armies for the Preservation of Children, disagreeing with Norway on the grounds that in her opinion, Delegates 1 and 5 had been correct, but Delegates 3 and 7 certainly not, and as for her, she could see only racism among the humanistic hogwash, and prejudice blatantly evident in the fat guzzlers in the styes of post-imperialistic self-indulgence.

  This took us to the first break, and we thronged out, brothers and sisters all, laughingand jesting and exchanging addresses and the names numbers of hotel rooms, and those who had insulted each other five minutes before were observed to be already cemented in the closest friendships.

  Half an hour later we were at it again.

  I will not weary you with the names and styles of the purveyors of antique insult, but merely transcribe some of my observations, the first one which comes to mind being the absolute necessity of the animal kingdom (what our elders have left us of it) to occasions of higher mentation.

  Running dogs, and hyenas, we have had already, but soon entered fat cats, pigs - to the indignation of the Semites, Arabs and Jews - cooing pigeons of hypocrisy, snakes (slippery and otherwise), poisoned shellfish from the shores of mental pollution, crocodiles, and rhinoceroses charging blindly through the subtleties of the marxist revelation.