I won't tell Pedro he can be our child until you have agreed. They have built a big fire in the centre of the camp tonight and there is a big moon and it looks nice. They are telling stories about their escapes from the different places. What happens is, someone steps forward into the place just near where the fire is and then everyone is silent and then this person tells their tale. Then this person goes and sits down and another gets up. Or someone sings a song. Some of the songs are very sad. Some of them romantic. And then someone else steps forward and tells their tale of woe. There will be a lot of babies born soon. We shall have to feed them. The doctors are watching all the babies very carefully. Everything is being done the way you said.
I feel very lonely without you, I know you don't like it when I say things like that.
I know it is no good my asking you if you feel lonely without me because I suppose you'll just smile as usual.
Well my dear, I shall see you next week, please God.
Your Suzannah
From KASSIMSHERBAN
Dear Leila, and dear Suzannah. And hello! to Pedro and Philip and Anqui and Quitlan and Shoshona
And a very big kiss for little Rachel which is of course the most important thing of all. Tell her that and say I have a beautiful yellow bird for her.
Hello, hello and hello. I know that you Suzannah are waiting for me to say something about George but I can't, because guess what, when I caught up with him he was off North, and he said I was to manage by myself and gave me things to do and pushed me off. But he gave me your news Suzannah, and that's wonderful, and this time it will be a boy, that's what I think.
This is a completely new town. I got here last week. It is the strangest town. Of course it is all of wood and stones and lacquered paper, but the shapes are not what you'd expect, I haven't figured it all out yet. I came walking down the hill into it, and it was like a dream. And what made it worse was that I was scared. After all I am young, not even my best efforts can disguise that, and I am still in the old Youth Army uniform, because I can't find anything else, and after all they were running Youth Army people out of towns before the Third World War, and even killing them. The hunters hunted. Do you remember the song:
The hunters hunted,
The weapons turned -
When the hunters hunted,
The world burned...
That's all I can remember of it. I don't want to remember it I suppose. There seemed no place to hide when you heard that. How did we survive all that I wonder? - but I didn't mean to start on all that again. I keep deciding never to think of any of it again but my mind goes back to it.
Anyway, I came down into this town scared witless. I didn't know what to expect. At the very least I thought I would have to persuade them I was harmless. But that didn't happen. The town has a central square and a fountain. It is all done in stone. There were people standing about the square, and as I got into it, full of apprehension, it was the strangest thing, but I was accepted at once. No one expected me to be harmful. Can you imagine what that was like?
There is a guesthouse for travellers and for a week every traveller is given food, if not much, and then if there is work he can do he starts earning the food, and if not, he goes on somewhere else. I did not want to start work, because I was on a "fact-finding survey" so George said. So he said, and if you have to get facts, then you have to ask questions. Where better than in the guesthouse, and then the cafe, and the store, and the square again. It had dawned on me by then that it was the people who I was to meet - that was the point of the exercise. The people in the square and everywhere else answered any questions I asked. Facts. There are fewer facts in the world now than there were before the smash-up. A woman from the North, an Argentinian, took me to her house and told me what was happening there, and how the War had affected that area, and she made me meet others. It began to dawn on me then... all the time I was being reminded of something, I didn't know quite what, and I was lying awake every night trying to remember what it was, and even now I can't say much about it, but it is like what the other Rachel, and Olga, and Simon, used to tell me of how the three were taught by people just coming past, and how they learned things without there being actual lessons and timetables most of the time. I keep meeting people, and all of them seem to know at once who I am and what to tell me or where to take me. That is very peculiar. Something peculiar is going on, but I don't know what.
Take a simple thing like the shape of this town. There were no plans. No architect. Yet it grew up symmetrical and on the shape of a six-pointed star. I didn't realise it was a star until I walked up out of the town very early one morning, and when I looked down, trying to see if I could notice anything different, I was able to see the star-shape. But no matter who I ask, no one seems able to say anything about plans or a master plan or anything like that. And there is another thing. When I walked down into this town, I was taking it absolutely for granted, but absolutely, that there were going to be different factions and the rulers and the armies and the police and I would have to watch my step and be careful what I said. Do you realise how we have all had to do that? Do you? Of course I don't mean the little ones, not little Rachel, but even Philip or Pedro. All the time watching our step. It has been drilled into us. But after a couple of days I felt a great relax all over my body, like yawning and stretching, and then I suddenly understood I wasn't afraid of doing the wrong thing and landing in prison or ending up as butchers' meat. I simply couldn't believe it. I can't believe it even now. I haven't seen anybody fight. I haven't seen a riot or walls being smashed down or stones being thrown or people being dragged off screaming or anything like that at all. There is a very old Indian here, and when I was talking to him I said things like this I've written here, and he said, you are the child of great misfortune and now you must learn differently. Did yon know that when the old explorers came here long ago there were Giants here? The old Indian told me that, he had learned it in what he called the White School - does that take you back? - but it was true, because his grandfather and his great-grandmother knew all about it. Well, I wouldn't like to be asked what facts I have got from being here, but I am leaving tomorrow. I have been hoping that the people who were kind to me in this town would say: In the next town, look up so and so. But they haven't. I am walking with four others. An old Israeli, he was a scientist in Tel Aviv, and a girl from the old United Arab Emirates, and an old woman from Norway - she got here somehow - and another woman with two children from the Urals. They' wanted to stay here and find work but there isn't any, but there is news that people are wanted thirty miles off in another new town.
It is a week later. When I came down the hill into this town I was looking to see if it has a shape, you bet, and it has. It is beautiful, a circle, but with scalloped edges. The wavy edges are gardens. It is made like the last one I wrote about. It has the same paved centre, a circle, and a very beautiful fountain, with a basin, round, in a local stone, a yellowish rose colour. The basin is shallow, a couple of inches, and the water trickles into it in patterns, and there are patterns in the stone shining up from under the water, and there are the same patterns in the roofing of the houses and the floor tiles and everywhere. It is the most beautiful place I can remember. Again, no one knows anything about plans or architects, it just grew up, or so it would seem. Again I am in the guesthouse. We are all still together, but the woman with the children has got work in the fields and also in the laboratory, and the scientist has, too. As for the others, no luck so far.
Again people talk to me and tell me things. I just move from one to another. I know all about this area and this town and who is in it and what they do and what they have done before the War and what they think. I have the most peculiar thoughts. They are the most extraordinary and outrageous thoughts, but I am having them and so I propose to stand by them. Tomorrow I am moving on with the Arab girl and the old woman from Norway. They haven't got work. Also a new travelling companion, a jaguar who walked into the guesthouse
last night and lay down and was still with us in the morning. We thought he was tame but no one knows him. We gave him some maize porridge and some sour milk, and we expected him to turn up his nose but he didn't. Apart from the jaguar there is little Rachel's yellow bird, not a real one, it is made of dried grasses, and a very fine mongrel dog who has taken a fancy to me and he and the jaguar gallop along on all sides of us when we walk abroad.
A week later.
This time the town which we came up the hill to is octagonal, but we didn't work that out until we were well inside it. It is composed of six linked hexagons. The hexagons are gardens. The lattice is buildings. Again these buildings are strange considering what we are all used to, of bricks and adobe and dried grass screens and lacquered paper. Everything is very light and airy. The central place is a star, and it has a fountain, making patterns of stone and water that echo each other. There are patterns on the walls and floors - different ones from the patterns in the last town. The old Norwegian woman got work in the kitchen of the guesthouse. The girl from the United Arab Emirates is with a man she met at the fountain. That leaves me and the jaguar and the dog. I have spoken with a lot of people in this town. Now I am going to have to say it. Regardless. This is what I have been thinking about all the way along these roads. We used to believe George was so special, well I am not saying he isn't. Not that I thought all that much about it then. I just went along with everything. But there are a lot like George. Did you realize that, you there, Suzannah and everyone? These people I keep meeting in the towns and the ones that are on the roads and walk with us a little way and then go off into the pampas or the forests again, as if they had expected to meet us and had something to say, well, these people are George-people. They are the same. I know this is impossible, but it is the conclusion I have come to. There are more and more George-people all the time.
It is the same in this town as everywhere else. Now I am getting used to walking into a town with my stomach muscles relaxed and not in a twist and not on my toes all the time in case something comes out at me from some corner, and not having to look out for the local Camps, and not feeling scared to death if I see a group of young people, the way we all were. Yes of course I wasn't exactly old myself. Do you suppose that living in a town has been like this in the past? I mean, people relaxed and easy and things happening the right way without laws and rules and orders and armies? And prisons, prisons, prisons. Do you think that is possible? Well, it is an outrageous thought, but suppose it is true?
It is four months later. I have been to four more towns, all new ones, a triangle, a square, another circle, a hexagon. Do you know something? People are leaving the old towns when they can and making new towns in new places, in this new way. Doesn't that make you think different thoughts? The people talk about the old towns and cities as if they are hell. If they are like what our cities used to be then they are hell.
I have had quite a few different travelling companions and heard all kinds of stories. From all parts of the world. Suzannah I think you are right when you don't want to hear talk of the events in Europe, etc. I didn't think you were right and in fact I despised you. I am telling you this Suzannah because you are so kind and you won't mind. I have noticed something. As I go along these roads I am sometimes alone with my faithful jaguar and dog but sometimes with others, and when talk starts about the awfulness, then it is as if people are not hearing. Not that they are not listening. Not hearing. They look vaguely at you. Blank. Do you know what I think. They can't believe it. Well sometimes I look back and it is such a little time, and I can't believe it. I think that dreadfulness happens somewhere else. I don't know how to say that. I mean, when awful things happen, even to the extent we have all just seen, then our minds don't take them in. Not really. There is a gap between people saying hello, have a glass of water, and then bombs falling or laser beams scorching the world to cinders. That is why no one seemed able to prevent the dreadfulness. They couldn't take it in.
I have understood that the vague blank look is from the past. It is not what we are now. Do you think it is possible it is not so much we forget things that are awful but that we never really believed in them happening.
But have you noticed that everyone is different now? We are all much more lively and alert and don't need to sleep all the time and we are all of a piece and not all at sixes and sevens. Do you know what I mean?
I have lost my faithful jaguar. I was walking up and up, along a quite high narrow path, among grasslands, and there was a shepherd, quite of the old sort, with a dog and a donkey. I was worried about the jaguar. The dog I could order about but not the jaguar. The shepherd, who was a young man with a wife and two small children in a nice little house on the hillside was worried too. But my big dog made friends with his dog. And then the jaguar went and lay down a little apart from the dogs. The woman came out of her house with some milk in a basin and he drank it. I slept the night there and then went on alone because my jaguar decided to stay with the shepherd and the woman, and as I went off I saw him helping the shepherd round up some sheep, with the two dogs.
So I was quite alone for twenty miles or more. And then I saw someone ahead of me, and thought That looks like George. And it was George.
He told me you have had your baby, Suzannah, I am glad, and it is a boy. George said he is going to be called Benjamin so I suppose our Benjamin is dead. Benjamin and Rachel.
For a long time in the guesthouses and walking along by myself I was thinking of questions I wanted to ask George, and I asked him first of all about the towns, and how they came to be like that, and he said they are functional.
He said that you over there are building a town and it is like the old Star of David. I said, how did you know what it had to be and where. His reply to that was, wait a little and you will see.
He took me first of all to one of the old towns, not a big one, it was on a branch of the Rio Negro. I hated being in it, I felt sick and uneasy from the moment I got into it. And it is a dying town. People are leaving it. Everywhere buildings are collapsing and not being rebuilt. All the centre was quite empty.
I said, Why?
He said, the new cities are functional.
I could see he wasn't going to explain, I had to work it out.
We stayed the night in a broken-down hotel. It was awful. People are still suspicious and frightened in these places. I felt ill and I could see George didn't feel good. All the next day we walked around the town quite aimlessly. People noticed George, and they wanted to talk to him. He talked to them. Or they would simply follow him. They all looked so desperate and needful.
In the evening he just walked away from the town and about three hundred people followed us, though he had not said one word about their coming too. It was cold that night, and it was wet and misty, and we were all pretty miserable, but we walked on steadily with George and still not a word had been said about what was happening.
When the sun rose it was cold, cold, cold and we were all hungry.
George was standing on a hillside, a steep rocky one, and there was a plateau above us. The birds were wheeling about overhead as the sun came up and they shone in the sunlight. I have never been so cold.
George remarked, in a quite ordinary sort of voice, that it would be a good idea if we made a town there.
People said, Where? Where should we start?
He didn't reply. Meanwhile, we were all dying of hunger. Then there was a flock of sheep and another shepherd, and we bought some sheep and made a fire and cooked some meat, and got ourselves fed.
Then we were roaming about over the hillside and the plateau. There were about twenty of us doing this. Suddenly we all knew quite clearly where the city should be. We knew it all at once. Then we found a spring, in the middle of the place. That was how this city was begun. It is going to be a star city, five points.
We found the right soil for bricks nearby and for adobe. There is everything we can need. We have already started the gardens and the
fields.
Some of us go into the decaying town every day to get bread and stuff, to keep us going.
The first houses are already up, and the central circular place is paved, and the basin of the fountain is made. As we build, wonderful patterns appear as if our hands were being taught in a way we know nothing about.
It is high up here, very high, with marvellous tall sky over us, a pale clear crystalline blue, and the great birds circling in it.
George left after a few days. I walked with him a little way. I said to him, What is happening, why are things so different?
So he told me.
George says he is going into Europe with a team. He says that you knew he would be going, but not that he would be going now, and that I should tell you that when his task in Europe is finished, his work will be finished. I did not understand until he had left that it meant he would die then and we would not see him again.
So here we all are.
I am writing this, sitting on a low white wall that has the patterns on it. People are all around me, working at this and that. We are in tents in the meantime, everything makeshift and even difficult but it doesn't seem so, and everything is happening in this new way, there is no need to argue and argue and discuss and disagree and confer and accuse and fight and then kill. All that is over, it is finished, it is dead.
How did we live then? How did we bear it? We were all stumbling about in a thick dark, a thick ugly hot darkness, full of enemies and dangers, we were blind in a heavy hot weight of suspicion and doubt and fear.
Poor people of the past, poor poor people, so many of them, for long thousands of years, not knowing anything, fumbling and stumbling and longing for something different but not knowing what had happened to them or what they longed for.
Shikasta Page 47