The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire

by Doris Lessing

  So it comes about that history does not record the names of these heroes. One may search in vain in records of events one has experienced on a day-to-day basis, knowing exactly what went on, and nowhere appear the names of the wonder-workers without whom these events would never have taken place.

  Incent, like the others of his sort, will not appear in the history books. Meanwhile, everyone is talking about him.

  ‘Yes, he was here last week. He had us up all night listening to him. He’s sincere, isn’t he?’

  ‘Oh, yes, you could say that, he’s sincere, all right.’

  ‘It was the most moving occasion I can remember,’ someone else may say thoughtfully. ‘Yes …

  When I returned to my lodgings, in the early morning, I found that Incent had already gone out. He had kept the woman of the house up listening to him nearly all night, so that she had a flattened and drained look.

  ‘He is a very feeling young one,’ she said, or murmured, out of semi-sleep. ‘Yes. Not like those Sirians. You and he come from the same place, he said. Is that so?’

  And that is what I have to contend with.

  When he returned at midday he was so intoxicated with himself he did not know me. He had visited Krolgul and Calder, and paid a flying visit to a near town which ‘is ready for the truth,’ and when he came striding into the little room at the top of the house where I sat waiting for him, it was with a clenched-fist salute and fixed, glazed eyes.

  ‘With me, against me,’ he chanted, and went striding about the room, unable to check the momentum which had been carrying him for days.

  ‘Incent,’ I said, ‘do sit down.’

  ‘Wi’ me, ‘gainst me!’

  ‘Incent, this is Klorathy.’

  “me, ‘nst me.’

  ‘Klorathy!’

  ‘Oh, Klorathy, greetings, servus, all power to the … Klorathy, I didn’t recognize you there, oh, wonderful, I have to tell you …’And he passed out on my bed, smiling.

  I then went out. I had arranged with Calder and his friends that our ‘confrontation’ should take place in one of the miners’ clubs or meeting places; but on the insinuation of Krolgul, Incent had, not consulting Calder but simply informing him, booked one of the trial rooms of the legislature for the occasion. This is where, usually, the natives are tried and sentenced by Volyens for various minor acts of insubordination. He had distributed all kinds of pamphlets and leaflets everywhere around the town announcing ‘A Challenge to Tyranny.’

  I myself went to Calder, and found him with a group of men in his house. He was angry, and formidable.

  I said to him that in my view the ‘confrontation’ should be cancelled, and that we – he, I, Incent and Krolgul, and perhaps ten or so of the miners’ representatives – should meet informally in his house or in a café.

  But since I had seen him, he had been immersed in Rhetoric. Furious that ‘the powers that be’ had ‘tricked’ him by substituting for one of their clubs a venue associated by them with the Volyen hegemony, furious with himself for being swayed by Incent, whom, when he was out of his company, Calder distrusted, angry because of Krolgul, who had sent him a message saying he had nothing to do with Incent’s recent manoeuvrings, he now saw me as an accomplice of Incent.

  ‘You and he come from the same place,’ he said to me, as I sat there faced with a dozen or so steady, cold, angry pairs of Volyenadnan eyes.

  ‘Yes, we do. But that doesn’t mean to say I support what he does.’

  ‘You are telling us that you and he come from that place, very far away it is too, and you don’t see eye to eye with him on what he is doing here?’

  ‘Calder,’ I said, ‘I want you to believe me, I have had nothing to do with these new arrangements. I think they are a mistake.’

  But it was no good: he, they all, had been subjected to burning sincerity from Incent for some hours.

  ‘We’ll meet you in that Volyen place. Yes. We’ll meet you there, and let truth prevail,’ shouted Calder, bringing a great fist down on the table in an obvious ritual for putting an end to discussion.

  And so that is what is about to happen.

  Krolgul is keeping modestly out of sight. Incent is still asleep, but tossing and starting up, smiling and emitting fragmented oratory, and falling back, smiling, to dream of the ‘confrontation’ – which I am afraid is hardly likely to go well.

  And this is what happened.

  Towards the end of Incent’s long sleep, its quality changed and he became inert and heavy. He woke slowly, and was dazed for some minutes. Clearly, he could not remember at once what had happened. Where was the ‘dynamic,’ vibrant, passionate conspirator? At last he pulled himself up off the bed and muttered, ‘Krolgul, I must get to Krolgul.’

  ‘Why?’

  He looked at me in amazement. ‘Why?’

  ‘Yes, why? There is no need for you ever to have anything to do with Krolgul.’

  He subsided again on the bed, staring.

  ‘In a few minutes we have to make our way to the Hall of Justice, room number three, in order to talk to Calder and his mates,’ I said.

  He shook his head, as if trying to dislodge buzzing thoughts.

  ‘Arranged by you,’ I said.

  ‘Klorathy,’ he asked from his old self, tentative, stubborn honest, ‘I have been a bit crazy, I think?’

  ‘Yes, you have. But please try to hold on to what you are now, for we must go to this so-called trial or confrontation.’

  ‘What are you going to do with me?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, if you can maintain yourself as you are now – nothing. Otherwise, I’m afraid you must undergo Total Immersion.’

  ‘But that’s terrible, isn’t it?’

  ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.’

  The council chamber or judgment room of the Volyen administration is arranged to demonstrate the principles of justice: right and wrong; good and bad; punisher and punished. On one side of the circular chamber, which is panelled with some shiny brown stone so that the movements of the individuals inside the chamber are reflected in the gleams of dull colour, stands the apparatus of judgment itself: an imposing chair or throne, subsidiary but similar thronelike chairs, boxes for the accusers and witnesses – most of them bound to be hostile to the pitiful representatives of the natives on the other side of the court, where a dozen bare benches are ranged.

  Two focuses of opinion is what this Volyen court is designed to hold; if opinion can possibly be the word for what always ends in the imprisonment and torture or execution of the people on one side of the court, whereas those on the other side go off to their homes to be refreshed and made ready for another day of determining justice.

  But we were three focuses of opinion, and instinctively, without need for argument, we made our way to the area where the lowly benches stood, ignoring the pomp of the court itself, and arranged them into a rough triangle. Calder and those with him took their places on one side. Krolgul, though with hesitation that looked rather like an attractive diffidence, sat all by himself on another. As usual, he was wearing clothes assembled to seem like a uniform that summed up a situation: a sober tunic in grey, baggy service trousers, and a grey-green scarf around his neck, of the kind used by everyone here to shield his eyes from the glare that comes off the still-unmelted glaciers and snow fields. He looked the picture of responsible service.

  But really he was confused. That was because of his creature Incent, who was tagging along with me in a dulled, exhausted condition that made it seem as if he had been drugged or hypnotized. And that was what not only Krolgul but also the Volyenadnans thought had happened. Calder, in fact, did not at once recognize the glossy and persuasive Incent in this pale, slow youth who slumped beside me on the bench. And it certainly did not suit me either, for it was Incent whom I wanted to put forward a point of view not Krolgul’s.

  Just as Krolgul had wanted Incent to speak for him.

  And so there we were, sitting quietly on our benches, and
no one spoke.

  Nor was this a situation without danger, since the use of this court for such a purpose was of course not allowed. Incent had shouted, entirely on impulse, from some platform in the poor part of the city, ‘We shall take our cause to the heart of Volyen itself!’

  So ‘Volyen itself’ could be expected to show up at any moment, in the shape of the police, if not the army.

  At last Calder stood up, though there was no need for anyone to stand: he stood because he had been taught by the Volyens that he must stand in the presence of superiors. A great slab of a man, dense and heavy in texture as the schists and shales and compacted clays he worked with, he looked at Incent and remarked, ‘Our young hero doesn’t seem to have much to say for himself today.’

  I said, without standing, that Incent, as he and all the Volyens knew, had had plenty to say, in fact had not stopped talking for days, if not weeks, and had keeled over exhausted only a few hours ago. I said this in a low, humorous voice, to match the quiet, almost ironical tones of Calder.

  ‘Well, then?’ demanded Calder. I noted with pleasure how he sat down again.

  ‘May I suggest,’ I said, ‘that you state the position. After all, it is you and your people who would suffer the consequences of any action.’

  ‘That’s right, that’s right,’ came a chorus from the men behind Calder. And I saw that this was indeed what they had all been saying to one another: ‘It is all right for him, isn’t it, but it is us who’ll be going to prison for it.’

  I had taken a risk, of course, because I did not want Krolgul to stand up and launch himself into oratory. I wanted the tone kept low and sensible. He was lounging there on his bench, watching everything without seeming to, and trying to make Incent meet his eyes so that he could once again get the boy under his influence.

  I could feel Incent beside me as a blank, a void. He was not Krolgul’s then, nor was he himself; he was not acting as a conduit for the strengths and powers of the planet so that Krolgul could tap them; he was not letting the virtues of Canopus drain away through him. He was nothing. And I hoped I could keep him so until the healing powers of Canopus could begin to work.

  Krolgul maintained silence. He was banking on getting Incent back under his will.

  Calder, after consulting briefly with his fellows, remarked in a bluff but angry voice: ‘We are here because you people invited us – Volyen or Sirius or Canopus, it’s all the same to us. Our situation has become intolerable, and we’ll listen to any suggestion.’

  ‘Neither Volyen, nor Sirius, nor Canopus – but Shammat,’ I said. ‘Krolgul of Shammat.’

  I risked a great deal in saying this. For if Canopus was not much more than the reminder of long-ago tales and legends, then Shammat was nothing, no more than curses and expletives whose source they had forgotten.

  ‘Shammat, is it?’ said Calder, and he was getting angry. His mechanisms were being overloaded; he could not take it all in. ‘Well, whoever it is, we are here, to listen. So which of you will start?’

  I said softly, ‘Why not you, Calder?’

  Calder said angrily, standing up to do so, ‘Our situation is this, that we all of us work, day and night, for all of our lives, which are short and difficult and painful, and the results of our work go to Volyen. And that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘And,’ I prompted, ‘according to Krolgul of Shammat, you ought to remedy this by rising, though how this “rising” is to be done is not specified, and by murdering Grice the Governor-General? That’s it, isn’t it? And your troubles will then be at an end.’

  When they heard it stated like this, there was a stirring and murmuring among the men around Calder. Who stood up and said, for the benefit of invisible recorders and spies: ‘I have never said that, or anything like it, nor has any one of us.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘but that has been the theme of certain recent speeches. And I have said that there might be alternative things to do. And I am prepared to put them forward.’

  And now Krolgul acted. He did no more than, as it were, murmur or remark to himself, ‘Greasy-guts Grice. Grice the Greedy.’ And remained seated, hands locked around his knees, smiling as if listening to some secret music.

  At this Incent stirred and came to himself. ‘That’s it,’ he shouted, or half-shouted, the smile that goes with his self-hypnosis back on his face, ‘Grice … Grim-guts … Greasy …’ And subsided again.

  ‘Well, our young master has woken up, it seems,’ remarked Calder.

  Meanwhile, I had observed that straight ahead of where I sat, high on the brown wall, was reflected a pale patch where there had been nothing. A glance behind me and up showed a small opening above the throne of judgment, and in it was Grice’s face, as pallid, as sick, as suffering as it had been yesterday when he was listening to the oratory in the square.

  But so far no one else had noticed it.

  I said, loudly and firmly, ‘I will now make a short summary of what I think you might do –’

  But Krolgul was on his feet, in the posture of the worker’s emblem, and he was shouting: ‘Death to the tyrant, death to Grice, death to …’ And Incent had come to life again, and was standing there beside me smiling. ‘Death,’ he was stuttering, but his voice was gathering force, ‘death to the Volyen bully, death …

  Is it possible, Johor, that we sometimes tend – I put it no stronger than that – to overestimate the forces of reason? I emphasize here that Calder is a solid, sensible man, whose life is spent in exact assessments, judgments, in measure.

  And certainly, as Incent stood there, swaying a little, still deadly pale but strengthening fast, Calder was smiling in a half-pitying embarrassment.

  I asked, in a low, calm voice, ‘Calder, am I to have my say?’

  ‘If they will let you,’ said Calder, with a half-derisive, half-admiring laugh, and nodded at the two, Incent and Krolgul, in their heroic stances, chanting, ‘Death to …

  ‘Only you can stop them,’ I remarked.

  Calder said, ‘Let him speak …

  Krolgul at once stopped, with a sardonic, contemptuous shrug, and sat down again in his familiar posture that managed to suggest a modest and unassuming personal worth and at the same time an ineffable superiority.

  Incent chanted on, until Calder half stood up and said to him, ‘Sit down, lad; let the opposition have its say.’ And Incent, gasping, sat, giving me appalled, apologetic looks, and then Krolgul looks of apology and of complicity.

  I said: ‘What you have to do is diversify your economy.’

  I knew this would be inflammatory, because of its simplicity and because it was unexpected.

  Volyenadna was a mining planet. That was what it was. That was what it had been, for as long as the history allowed by Volyen recorded.

  A silence. And then Krolgul allowed himself, first of all a long, silent heave of laughter, and then a burst of laughter. Now laughter from the Volyenadnans. From Incent, a blank, heavy look and a loose jaw. I was particularly concerned for him: after all, if I could not save him, return him to himself again, then …

  ‘Let him speak,’ said Calder, but on his face was a heavy sneer.

  I said: ‘You are a slave planet, as Krolgul says you are. A rich planet, whose wealth goes elsewhere.’

  ‘To Greasy-guts,’ remarked Krolgul, in a low, as it were meditative voice.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘For generations the results of your labours have been taken from you. But it was not always thus. Have you forgotten that before you were the subjects of Volyen, you were the subjects of the planet Maken, and before that of planet Slovin, and both took from you the minerals you mined? But before that you were the conquerors. There was a time when you dominated Volyendesta and Volyen itself –’

  ‘With what?’ inquired Krolgul. ‘Ice and snow?’

  ‘As the ice retreated, and you spread over the tundra, you multiplied, and did not find enough to eat or to keep you warm. You stole spaceships from Slovin, who landed here on a foraging trip, and
you used them to travel to Maken and to Volyen, and you made others, and you terrorized four planets and took from them, just as now everything is taken from you …

  Calder listened to this with some derision. ‘You are saying that we were blood-sucking imperialists, just as Volyen is now?’

  ‘I am saying that you have not always been slaves and the providers of riches for other people.’

  ‘And you are suggesting that …

  ‘You are a rich prize for Volyen, and you will be for whoever succeeds Volyen, since empires rise and fall, fall and rise. Volyen will disappear from this planet, just as Maken and Slovin grew weak and disappeared, and just as you grew weak and were overthrown from the planets you had conquered. But whoever succeeds Volyen’ – I could not, of course, even hint at Sirius here, for that was a word that could be breathed only to Ormarin, he was as yet the only one strong enough to hear it, and Krolgul himself does not know how soon Volyen will collapse in on itself and become a subject – ‘whoever will come after Volyen will use you in the same way, if you don’t make sure they won’t. But you could make yourselves stronger. You could become farmers as well as miners and –’

  Krolgul was laughing, sobbing with laughter. ‘Farmers,’ he cried, while Calder’s followers laughed. ‘Farmers – on this ice lump of a place.’ But his contempt for the planet suddenly showed too plainly, and Calder did not like it.

  ‘Farm what?’ he asked me, directly.

  ‘If you will listen to me, you and your people, I will show you. Yours is not the only planet with these conditions.’

  ‘And what makes you think that Volyen will allow us? She wants to keep us as we are; she’s interested in our minerals, and nothing more.’

  ‘But,’ I said, ‘you have a Governor-General who in my view would listen to you.’