Shikasta

His present wife thought so, too. She had an inkling of what could happen. She did not like him as an impassioned sectarian. Neither had his first wife. Both women in fact had married him because of being attracted to his hidden unused powers or potential, which he then did not fulfil, and this was the real reason for their dissatisfaction with him - which fact they did not understand, and this caused in them all kinds of bitternesses and frustrations. This second marriage was likely to break up. Because of all this he was in mental breakdown. His home was a seethe of emotions and conflict. [SEE History of Shikasta, VOL. 3012, Mental Instability During the Century of Destruction. SECTION 5- PUBLIC FIGURES.] He had broken down before, and had prolonged treatment. In fact, most of the politicians of that time needed psychiatric support, because of the nature of their preoccupations: an unreality at the very heart of their every-day decision-making, thinking, functioning.

I watched him for some days. He was in a large room at the top of his house, a place set aside for his work, and where his family did not enter. Because he was alone, the ghastly charm of his public self was not in use. He was pacing up and down, his hair dishevelled (the exact disposition of head hair was of importance in that epoch), his eyes reddened and unable to maintain a focus. He had been drinking steadily for weeks. As he paced he groaned and muttered, he would bend over and straighten himself, as if to ease i

But if he stayed as a member of his local parliament, he would feel even more unused and frustrated than he had been - this was not even an alternative for him.

And then, jumping up from his disordered bed in his disordered room, or flinging himself down, or rocking, or pacing, he visualised the other possibility, that he should return seriously to his law firm and watch for opportunities to use himself in ways which he could easily envisage... extraordinary how attractive this prospect was... and yet there was nothing there to feed this ambition of his... he would be stepping out of the limelight, the national limelight, let alone the glamour of the wider fields open to him. And yet... and yet... he could not help being drawn to what had been pla

Here I intervened.

It was the middle of the night. It was quiet, in this pleasant and sheltered street. The din of the machines they all lived with was stilled.

Not a sound in the house. There was a single source of light in the corner of this room.

His eyes kept returning to it... he was in a half-tranced state, from fatigue, and from alcohol.

"Taufiq," I said. "Taufiq... remember! Try and remember!"

This was to his mind, of course. He did not move, but he tensed, and came to himself, and sat listening. His eyes were alert. In those strong black eyes, thoughtful now, and all there, I recognised my friend, my brother.

"Taufiq," I said. "What you are thinking now is right. Hold on to it. Act on it. It isn't too late. You took a very wrong bad turn when you went into politics. That wasn't for you! Don't make things worse."

Still he didn't move. He was listening, with every atom of himself. He turned his head cautiously, and I knew he was wondering if he would see somebody, or something, in the shadows of his room. He was half remembering me. But he saw nothing as he turned his head this way and that, searching into the corners and dark places. He was not afraid.

But he was shocked. The intervention of my words into his swirling half-demented condition was too much for him. He suddenly got up, flung himself down and was instantly asleep.

He dreamed. I fed in the material that would shape his dream...

He and I were together in the projection room of the Planetary Demonstration Building on Canopus.

We were ru

He was lying utterly still on his bed. This dream caused him to stir and almost come to the surface again. But he sank back, exhausted.

He dreamed of a high bare landscape, full of coloured mountains, a brilliant unkind sky, everything beautiful and compelling, but when you looked close it was all desert. Cities had died here, been blasted to poisoned sand. Famine and death and disease were denuding these deadly plains. The beauty had a sombre deathlike under-face: yet was soaked with the emotion of longing, wanting, false need, and these were coming in from Zone Six, and causing this nightmare, which made him start up, muttering and groaning, and rush for water. He drank glass after glass, and dashed water on to his face, and then resumed his pacing. As the sky outside lightened, and the night sank down he paced, and paced. He was sober now, but really very ill.

A decision would have to be made. And soon, or he would die with the stress of it.

All that day he stayed in that room high up in his house. His wife came to him with food, and he thanked her, but in a careless, uncaring way that caused her then and there to decide she would divorce him. He left the food untouched. His eyes had lost life; were staring; were violent. He flung himself down to sleep, and then jumped up again. He was afraid. He feared to encounter me, his friend, who was his other self, his brother.

He was being terrified to the point of lunacy by Canopus, who was his home and his deepest self.

When he did at last fall asleep, because he could not keep himself awake, I made him dream of us, a band of his fellows, his real companions. He smiled as he slept. He wept, tears soaking his face, as he walked and talked in his dream with us, with himself.