Shikasta (45 page)

Very well then. The new items for today are: (1) Ban on eating any fish anywhere around coastlines. Extinction fishermen. The great nations challenging each other in the middle of oceans over deep-sea fish. The Antarctic seas showing signs of poisoning in the fish. (2) Food in the British Isles now down below World Minimum Standard. Third World Countries say they have no compunction in starving Europeans who have always treated them like dirt. They are getting their own back. Charming. (3) There are four million people in prisons and penal camps in Europe. They are there to die. Mostly old people. (4) There is a
new bad famine in Central Africa. (5) Cattle diseases. Sheep diseases. Pig diseases. Trees dying. The Governments are saying this is not pollution as such. (6) Youth Armies are on the march.

Good for them.

That is enough for one day.

Olga came back from the famine yesterday. She looked awful. I ran her a hot bath and put her into it. I felt as if I was her mother. I made her eat some sandwiches. I put her into bed. She was quite dazed and gone. I sat with her while she lay in bed. I turned the lights off when she asked so she could see the stars through the window. I understood sitting there that Olga will not live long. She is worn out. More than that. She is far away from me. From us all. When she is with us, you would say she is being absentminded if you didn't know her. Olga is never absentminded, because she is always interested in everything going on. What is happening is that she is going away inside.

Today in the living room there was George and some people, mostly Chinese, not official Chinese. Mother was sitting with us. George was telling them where to go, what to do, what not to do. Then Benjamin came in. He has become quite different now he is so successful. That is malicious.
Now that he is so useful.
That is the exact truth. But he is bluff King Benjamin. He wears a uniform invented by himself of jeans and bush shirt and keffiyeh. Usually he sits and listens but today he must have had something very good happen because he was full of himself and kept breaking in and talking. The Chinese were waiting for him to shut up. But he didn't. George just waited. But Benjamin seemed too large for the room, he is so big and everyone else in it was small in comparison and well behaved and courteous. Suddenly Olga began crying. It was out of exhaustion. I could see quite clearly that years of Benjamin had suddenly become too much. She kept sobbing, Oh do stop it, stop it, Benjamin. He was absolutely
devastated.
He collapsed. George signed to me, and I took Olga out and put her to bed again. In a minute Benjamin came to the room, and asked to be let in. He sat by Olga and held her hand. She was still crying. He was crying. I was crying.

Simon came back today with his Peripatetic Hospital. He has been working twenty hours a day for weeks. He and Olga sit in the living room like two ghosts. They hardly talk. I see they don't need to. I see that our family often sit in the living room for hours and say practically nothing, George too. George has been spending hours sitting with Olga and Simon saying not a word. Being
with
them. Benjamin came marching in and asked about Simon's trip. By then Simon had recovered a bit. He said this and that, and then Thank God they were Chinese. Meaning the Overlords. (People's Representatives.) Where he had been travelling. I have seen that Simon and Olga often say Thank heavens he or she or they were Chinese. But what I am suddenly asking myself is,
Why
the Chinese? I mean, why is it that absolutely everywhere you go there are Chinese. Ever so efficient and useful of course. Never put a foot wrong. Tact personified. Simon and Olga say, common sense personified. Last month when Olga went to the famine, she actually grabbed a Chinese from some office or other and took her too because they are worth their weight in gold. In common sense. There are six Chinese doctors in Simon's Peripatetic Hospital.

This afternoon has been peculiar. George came back from college at three. He lectures there on Systems of the Law. Because he says it is a good thing that people are reminded that such a thing as Law is possible. Then I saw they were all hungry so I gave them what we had ready for supper. They were two Germans, three Russians, one Frenchwoman, a Chinese, and one Britisher. When George came in and greeted them and sat down, at once there was something different. An atmosphere. Usually what happens is that there is some small talk, and news about what is going on, and then George begins to
talk in his way.
Sometimes you can catch when he begins, and sometimes it is all happening before you have seen it. People who know him watch for it. But those who don't, blunder about spoiling it all. Until they catch on. This afternoon I could see at once these were people who had been with him before, somewhere on his trips. There was the attentive atmosphere. But there was something wrong too. It was someone there who was wrong. I wondered who? Someone
there was dangerous. I saw it was the Britisher, Raymond Watts. Once I had seen it I couldn't understand why it had taken me so long. It was obvious that he was a spy. I saw that the others who had arrived with him had not seen this but they knew something was wrong. Slowly one after another they got it. It was very nasty. Soon everyone was sitting looking at Raymond Watts. Who was uneasy and false. He was scared. He had good reason to be. I was waiting for George to say something. Or do something. But he sat smiling as usual. Then the others, the Russians first, got up and said they were going. I could see it was all dreadful. The others went out after the Russians. Not Raymond Watts. George looked at me. I stayed. He went out into the lobby with the others, and he was there some time. I tried to talk with Raymond Watts but he was shaking and sweating. The voices from the lobby were loud and angry. I knew they were wanting to kill Raymond Watts and George was saying no. Then they went off and George came back and nodded at me and I went. Later I said to George, Are they going to kill him? George said, No. I told them that Raymond would change. I thought a bit, seeing quite a few things. I said, Oh, it has happened before. George began to grin. I saw that it had. Often? George said, There are as many spies as not, these days. He was looking at me. I knew perfectly well what was coming, more about me toughening up. George said, First of all, people have to eat. And then, for many people, being a spy or something of the kind is the obvious thing. They have not been given an alternative. Don't you see? No, I said, I don't see. At which point, he said, Rachel, you really must try to be stronger. You have had a sheltered life in many ways. That made me angry. I said to him, What has been sheltered about it? He said, First of all, you have never been tempted to do something you shouldn't because someone you loved was hungry or because you were hungry. And secondly, you have been all your life with advantaged people.

I said to him, Like Naseem and Shireen, for instance. Advantaged? Yes. They were brought up to be decent. They were good people. But most people now are not brought up to be decent, but the opposite and it is
not
their fault.

It took me some time to hear what he had said. I said to 
George, Are they dead then? George said, Naseem died a month ago, of an infection. He got chilled. I said, You mean, he died of not having enough to eat. That's right, he said. And Shireen died in the hospital in childbirth.

So what has happened to the children?

He said that two of them have died of dysentery, and the baby Shireen died of is being looked after by Fatima. The other three have been taken into a Children's Camp.

By then I was crying, though I had decided not to cry.

George said, Rachel, if you can't face all this, then you'll have to come back and do it all over again.
Think about it.

I have been trying to think about it.

I wish I was dead with Naseem and Shireen.

I have to write down that George is not beautiful the way he was only two years ago. He is actually ugly sometimes with being tired.

I have seen that Simon will not live long. He is like Olga, a long way from us. George sits with them, every minute he can. I go in too, then I leave because I want to cry, and they are certainly not crying, but very serene.

George has said that he wants me to help Benjamin with his work in the Children's Camps. I couldn't believe it. He said, Yes, Rachel, that is what you have to do. I said, Oh no, no, no. He said, Oh yes, yes.

Benjamin came in, great sunburned
oaf,
and I couldn't. George wasn't there. I knew quite well George had made sure I was alone with Benjamin. Benjamin kept saying, Where is George, where is Mother, where is Father. Simon had gone off to work at the hospital, and Olga was lying down. I saw that Benjamin was feeling left out. At last I made myself ask him if I could come and help him at the Children's Camps. His face, well! I was glad I had asked. I see that when Benjamin comes in here he needs very much to be liked. Now I am going to actually have to face doing it, I don't think I can. George isn't here, he has gone
on a trip to a Youth Army in Egypt.

I went with Benjamin to his Camps. He uses a light army truck. He stopped at the Peace Café to offer lifts. We took seventeen people, all for the Camps. Benjamin's Camps are fifteen miles out. Benjamin says this is far enough out to prevent them coming in to tear the place to pieces in the evenings. He said that about the little kids, and it was exactly the same as old people and ordinary people saying about the Youth ‘tearing everything to pieces'. The place of the Camps isn't very pretty. It is flat and dusty with some low hills around. Suddenly we came to a barbed-wire fence. It is electrified. Benjamin said there has to be a fence. To stop people getting in as much as to stop the kids getting out. Quote unquote. There are five thousand boys in the one Benjamin lives in. There are breeze-block sheds, fifty boys to a shed, five sheds to a group, twenty of these groups. There is a standpipe for each group of five sheds, and a block of showers and lavatories. There are central offices and buildings. The Camp is built like a wheel, with the sheds as spokes, two groups of sheds on each spoke.

There are half a dozen palm trees. A few hibiscus and plumbago bushes. The place swarms with children, but always in squads and files. Not at random. They are called by loudspeaker at 5:30 each morning. The sheds are hot and stuffy so they are pleased to get out. They do physical exercises, with a proper physical instructor. There is a palm-thatch roof over a cement floor that has mats spread on it, where they sit for meals in sessions of five hundred each. Each sitting has twenty minutes to eat. They have porridge and yoghurt for breakfast. This eating place is almost continuously in use. After breakfast they do lessons and games. The lessons are done in classes of a hundred, most of the time. There isn't a proper place for lessons, so they go on everywhere, and in the eating shed too when it is not being used to eat in. The teaching is shouted at the children, sometimes through loudspeakers, and the children chant after the teachers. When anything up to fifty different classes are going on at the same time all over the camp it is weird, the capitals of the world being chanted here, then heroes of history chanted a hundred yards away, principles of hygiene on the other side, duty and respect to
the elders next door, then addition or the multiplication table with the aid of a blackboard the size of a house, all this going on at once, and then from right across the Camp the sounds of a class chanting the Koran, or doing some dance. Well, the one thing these kids won't suffer from is compartmentalization of their minds. They have an early lunch. Vegetables and beans. They lie down. Then they are crowded into the eating shed practically sitting on top of each other and they have history and current affairs. Indoctrination. Then they have lessons on the Koran and Mahomed and Islam. The Christians and Jews being fewer are done in the sleeping sheds. Then it starts to get a bit cooler thank heavens, and there are more games and supper. Then Prayers, and a sort of sermon, which is very emotional and uplifting. Then off they march to bed. They are never alone. Never, never. Not for one second, ever at any time. They do nothing by themselves. They are like people in big cities, always careful of their limbs and where they put themselves in case they bump or tread on each other. They are very polite and disciplined. They have bright staring watchful eyes. Then suddenly, you'll see a group of them that have broken out of a line or a squad, go wild, crazy, tearing about, flailing their arms and screaming and pummelling each other. The young men who look after them rush in and break it up. These young men are volunteers from the Youth Camp five miles off.

I said to Benjamin that the psychology of these children must be completely different in every way from those in ordinary families, and when they grow up they will be completely different. Benjamin said, Yes, very true, would I prefer them to be dead?

I wonder what Naseem's and Shireen's three children are like now in the Camp. These children are all orphans from one of the crises.

Benjamin slops about the Camp, smiling and full of good will, and available to everyone. The kids like him. The supervisors like him. He likes them. I can see that I underrated Benjamin. If people did not always contrast him with George, he would be admired. He is very efficient. He keeps everything working properly. Nothing would work if someone didn't coordinate
things, not with so many children and not enough facilities. Benjamin is trying to get several more sheds like the eating shed, for teaching in. He doesn't seem hopeful. He says his main concern day and night is that there shouldn't be an epidemic.

Benjamin gave one of the uplift talks. The sermon, in fact. He did not tell me he was going to do it, because I know he was embarrassed. The moment I saw him there standing up ready to start, what I was thinking was, Don't you dare try to be like George! But he was absolutely different, rather like the pep-talks at assembly in school. All for one and one for all, we are brothers, we must help each other, and God will help us. God and Allah, I would say 70 percent Allah, 30 percent God, being fair to everyone. But he did it well. What else can he do? What else could be done?