Shikasta (37 page)

She
said to
me,
What do you think about it?

That surprised me, I must confess. She said it in a low voice, not frightened, not like that, but as if truly not knowing what to say, and as if she truly thought I might be able to say something she hadn't thought of.

I said, Well, Olga, it seems to me as if there is something very funny about it.

She said, Yes.
Yes.

We sat there quite a long time. It wasn't as if this was a good time to have an important talk. I mean, because of the children. The baby from the room across the court would have fallen into the pool if I hadn't got hold of it, for instance.

I said, It is only now I have had a
sudden
feeling that there was something all the time.

Yes, it started very early. George was seven. Yes, with the woman in New York. Miriam.

She was a Jewish woman? Yes.

It hasn't ever mattered what they were. No.

Then I said to her, in the same tone of voice she had used to me, low, and in my case it was because I was a bit afraid, really, George is special in some way?

Yes, that must be it.

What does Simon think?

He saw it first. I was quite frightened about it all at one point, Rachel. But he told me not to be. He told me to think about it. So I did. I have never thought about anything so hard in my life. I believe that since then that is what I have been thinking about. Yes, I can say that, Rachel.

That was all for then. I took the baby back to its mother. There is one thing about living like this. No one could say we aren't integrated with Moroccan life at its roots.

I have been sitting here thinking. This room is my bedroom. It is more like a cubbyhole. But I like it. It is very cool. It is all mud. It has an earthy smell. A damp smell, because I sprinkle water in the morning before the sun gets hot. And I throw down water outside the door morning and evening, to keep the dust down, and the smell is gorgeous.

When I look out of the door, there is blue sky. That's all. Blue sky. Hot.

There are two things on my mind at this moment.

One is this. Benjamin. One of the reasons Benjamin is so difficult and
awful
and sulks so much, and tries to quarrel with George is, he is jealous because George goes with Hasan so much. But Hasan has more than once asked him to go out to a café or something but Benjamin never will. That is because he thinks he is being put off with a café or a walk in the evening. I know this because unfortunately I have only to watch myself to know. I
think of George having all kinds of really deep experiences with Hasan, I don't know what, and cafés aren't much. But I've asked George at nights when we lie out on the roof and he says: We talk, that's all.

Now when I look back at all the places and people, and I've asked him, he has always said, We talk, that's all. Or, He tells me things.

Benjamin has refused the
special contacts
from the very first. From when he was seven in New York and he didn't like Miriam. That is the truth. He has always refused it. You can think about it and think about it. I am thinking about it, and there is something so
awful
there I don't know what to do with myself, because of course I am thinking. What have I refused? I have always been offered everything too, but I always had some good reason not to. Like loving Mrs Jones and wanting to be in the kitchen cooking with her and feeding the chickens.

Benjamin. It has always been the same. What he has wanted, right from the beginning, has been something
more
than what he was offered. He wanted to be asked by himself with Miriam or Hasan or whoever. I bet he wouldn't have said Miriam was boring if Miriam had asked him out by himself. And when we had tutors and George went off with one of them, Benjamin never went. He said, once, Stupid black man. The funny thing is, this isn't what he
really
thinks. I mean, he doesn't think that blacks are stupid or anything like that. He says this kind of thing as part of his
style.
And that is frightening when you think of it. I mean, anybody can put on an act, but then you are stuck with it. Like that mime with the mask on his face he couldn't get off. There is something frightening about all this. Benjamin truly doesn't like living here. He makes jokes about ‘the native quarter'. Yet he adores sleeping on the roof and he makes friends with all the local kids, and he is sweet with the little kids. But he means it too. He would like a nice boring modern flat in a nice boring modern building with nice boring people. What I think is, now I
am
thinking, is that Benjamin says this sort of thing simply because he isn't treated as special. But George hasn't been treated as special. George has always gone along with what was there. He has seen it, but Benjamin hasn't.

Yet it was never anything much. So you would think at the time.

You could even say that nothing at all has ever happened. Well, what did? George has made trips, and gone camping, been taken to tea or a museum or something by someone or another. Or a tutor has said, Let us go to the park. Or a mosque or something. Or just sitting and talking under a tree on the edge of a street. Once I saw George with Ibrahim sitting on the earth under a tree. He was about nine. Or ten. In Nigeria that was. They were talking. Just talking. I looked at them and I wished I was there too. But I believe I must have said no when I was invited. I can't remember it, but I believe so.

What
these people are, that is the point. After they have been coming for a while to the house, then I say to myself, Here it is again.

What is it, then?

That is the point.

Well, that is the second thing on my mind,
what
these people are.

I liked Hasan from the start, but I thought he was old. I suppose he isn't. Mother says he is about forty-five. That is about Simon's age.

Hasan talks to George a great deal. Hasan spends more time with George than any of the other ‘special contacts' have done.

George is with Hasan nearly every day. He went away with Hasan to the Sacred City for a week too. Now I am
thinking
about it. That was only last month. When George came back, I noticed our parents didn't ask him what had happened there. They both treat George as if he is grown up. He is sixteen. Are they afraid of him?
That is the wrong word.
There is a right word, but I don't know what it is.

What I mean is this. The more you think about all this, the more amazing it is. But not in a dazzling way, as you say, How amazing. I mean, your mind keeps going deeper and deeper in.

Every day there is more to think about. (This is being written a bit at a time every day.) And I think a lot in between, and I go and ask Mother questions. When George comes in, I try to talk to him, but that doesn't happen very often. He isn't unkind. He
doesn't tease, the way he used to, before he was grown up.

I wish we could go back to before George was grown up. I don't want to grow up. I want to stay a little girl. I am writing this because I am supposed to be telling the truth. So that is the truth. Sometimes (recently) I have watched Simon and Olga at their lives, and it is so hard for them always, I can see that, not only the working so hard, I have only just understood that they have
heavy
lives. That is the right word. For once. And I see George at this time, and I know he is finding it hard.

I would say that he is thinking furiously. This is what I think is the main thing going on. He sometimes has a look on him that I feel on myself when I sit here thinking and thinking. As if things are crowding in too fast and you are afraid you can't catch them all. You
know
you are not catching them all.

He sits by himself a lot. Sometimes he is in the courtyard and all the children of this house and a lot of the houses nearby are there too. He plays with them and tells them stories but he is thinking. He is so restless! He gets up and moves off as soon as he has sat down sometimes, as if a pin has been stuck into him. As soon as the sun goes, he is up on the roof. He forgets about eating. Sometimes I take him a plate of something. He often gives it to the kids. It goes without saying that they are all hungry most of the time. He sits with his back to a little bit of roof, with one leg out and his arms on his other knee, which is raised, and he is looking out over the roofs and into the sky. And he is thinking. Sometimes at night I wake up and I see him sitting up awake, looking at the sky. And our parents wake too, but just go to sleep again. And now I wonder if they knew all the time that he often didn't sleep at night when he was four or five, let alone seven when Miriam came first. Have they known all that? I have tried to get near the subject with Mother, but she doesn't like to talk about that, I can see. I think she did know all the time but only understood what she thought about it later, like me. But that in itself is difficult.
Heavy.
Because if what we think now is different from what we thought then, we can take it for granted that what we think in a year will be different again. Or even a
month
the way my thoughts are changing at the moment. Your thoughts are the last thing you can rely on.

Yet for all that, something else is there to rely on. Behind the thoughts.

Although this very strange thing whatever it is, is going on now, our family life is quite ordinary and normal: even Benjamin is normal, I suppose. There are other families with sultry children. Father says Benjamin is ‘very sultry' when he gets exasperated with him.

Benjamin is really awful actually. But I know that what is making him like this is that he doesn't understand where he has gone wrong. He must know he has said ‘no' to what George is doing now. He must think about it. Benjamin may be ‘sultry' but he isn't stupid. He is being driven quite crazy by George. He thinks of nothing else.

When George came back from the week in the Sacred City he would not ask one question, but he hung about George all the time like a thunderstorm. George is always kind with Benjamin. Well most of the time. As he is with me. But I know that often he is too preoccupied with thinking to know we are there. And he probably wishes we weren't hanging about too. I am always on the lookout for a word or a look from George. Let alone a smile. When he was still a child he had a marvellous smile. It was a warm friendly smile. But he is less likely to smile these days. He moves about all hunched up. It looks as if he had an invisible weight on his shoulders, and he is trying to stop himself from throwing it off. Sometimes he looks quite tormented.

And then suddenly, usually when the family is together at table or on the roof, he gets very funny and lively and plays all kinds of games and is very affectionate with us. I watch Mother and Father and they are relieved. They love it when he is like this and Benjamin gets like a little boy, and shouts and laughs too much, but that is from relief. I am afraid I am just the same.

I hope I am not such a weight on Simon and Olga as Benjamin 
is.

I have just shut my eyes and looked at the expression on their faces when they look at Benjamin. It is patient and humorous. When they look at George their faces are sweet, and joyful. That is the exact word. I love looking at their faces when George is being funny and sweet. It is exactly as if they had been given a
wonderful present. Well I don't think they feel that Benjamin and I are wonderful presents. Not to judge by their faces.

I see that this piece about Facts is all about George. I didn't know that was going to happen when I started.

It was Hasan who said I should write this journal.

I hadn't actually forgotten it was Hasan, but that fact was at the back of my mind. I wouldn't be surprised if I wasn't capable of forgetting it altogether.

It is extremely funny what we remember and what we choose not to.

What happened was this.

It was just after sunset. The moon was coming up. There were hardly any stars yet. It was lovely. It is wonderful after the hot day is over. The dust is so strong and sweet, because the water has been sprinkled on it. And the cries and the talk from the town around us are mysterious. And the Call to Prayer, too, I love it. I shall hate leaving here. I hope we won't have to, not for a long time. But I suppose it won't last. And the smells of the spices in the cooking. I get quite drunk on it all every evening at sunset time.

George had gone up on the roof by himself. I couldn't help myself, I went up there too. He smiled when I got up on the roof, but then went on sitting as if I weren't there at all. I was miserable because he didn't take any notice of me. Shortly after that Hasan came up. George didn't seem surprised to see him. Hasan sat in another angle of the roof. He did not say anything for a time. The heat was coming out of the mud of the roof into my back and into my feet. I can't remember how the conversation started. Now that I am looking back, and linking this with other times I was with George and Hasan I realize that I often did not take any notice of the beginnings of conversations. George and Hasan were talking, mostly Hasan, with George listening very intently. George sometimes nodded or gave a quiet smile as he does when something pleases him. I understood that evening.
I understood that I was understanding. I
could have understood before, that when George is with Hasan and Hasan is talking, George is hearing things in what Hasan is saying that are quite beyond me.
That I can't hear at all. I
could see from George's
face that in quite ordinary things that were said was much much more. I just couldn't grasp it. It was going too fast for me. It was above my head. The conversation was apparently about not very much. I was thinking in an
agonized
sort of way, that they weren't talking about anything important or special. Yet George's face kept lighting up as he understood the things that were there.