Shikasta

In the extreme western island of the Northwest fringes (mentioned already in the case of Individual Eight), which, as has been said, suffered every kind of conquest, settlement, and invasion, and this over many centuries and by many different peoples, a period of poverty intensified to starvation devastated the economy, forced millions into emigration, and intensified deprivation of every sort. A certain youth found himself without work or resources. Except for one. He had been bred in a slum, but grandparents still on the land had kept milk and potatoes supplied to the family, and he had grown tall, broad, and strong. And stupid. He did not have the wits to emigrate and make a new life for himself. Because of his physique he was recruited into the army of the latest conquerors of the island, given a showy uniform, regular meals, and the prospects of travel. This army, like all those of the Northwest fringes, was much stratified and officered by the class-proud and arrogant, and he was at the bottom of it, with no hope of ever being treated any better than the ruling caste's domestic animals. For twenty years he was sent from one area of Shikasta to another, all parts of a (very short-lived) empire which was soon to crumble but was then at its zenith. The function of this victim was to police a multitude of victims. From the extreme east of the central landmass to the north of Southern Continent I, the poor wretch was set to lord it over peoples belonging to civilisations and cultures older, more complex, more tolerant, and usually more humane, than his own. He was permanently half-drunk: he had drunk too much from childhood, to forget the brutalities of his existence. He had a reddened, usually perspiring face, and a wooden look that expressed his determination never to think for himself: vestigial attempts in this direction had been at once punished, all his life. Sometimes an officer would write to his family on his dictation, and these letters would always include the words: "Here you have only to stick your foot out and the blacks clean your boots for you."

In every country he found himself - and he never knew more about them than their names before he got there - he took every occasion to seat himself in a chair in a public place, with first one foot thrust out, then another, a fatuous, proud, and condescending smile on his face, while some man made shadowy by poverty crouched before him, cleaning his black boots.

He would swagger around the policed areas of cities with a comrade, two gigantic men sometimes almost twice the size of the local people, in scarlet uniforms, braid and medals everywhere, and in one country after another this red face and fatuous smile, the shouted orders and abuse, the contempt and dislike written on the face of the barbarian, became a symbol of everything that was brutal, ignorant, tyra

As for him, the climates of these territories where he had eaten and drunk too much for twenty years finally gave him a stroke when he was still in his middle years. He was sent home to an island where the poverty was worse than when he had left, and which was simmering with revolt and civil war. He decided to settle in the land of his own land's conquerors, and worked as a porter in a meat market. He married a countrywoman, who had been a children's nurse - eighteen hours a day, six and a half days a week, for her food, a roof, and a pittance. She had never had any prospect of escape but marriage and she was relieved to marry this strong soldier who stood nearly two feet taller than she, swaggering in scarlet, and soon to be pensioned off.

This tiny pension was to her security, a haven; and in fact it did ward off the extremes of poverty, which were exacerbated by his drinking.

There were four children alive from seven born.

The wife and the children would sit in their wretched rooms in the evenings, waiting for him to crash and stumble up the stairs, hoping tor the best that could happen, which was that this man would not shout and rage and threaten to hit them, and then weep and sit sobbing himself off to a maudlin sleep; but would be in a good mood, and

would sit at the head of the table, master of his household, great legs stretched out, his swollen and scarlet face complacent as he told them: "In them countries I had only to stretch out my foot and those blacks came fighting to clean my boots." And, "We 'ad only to show our faces and them black buggers ran for it."

He died in a paupers' hospital. He sat propped on pillows, his medals pi

ILLUSTRATIONS: The Shikastan Situation

This particular incident took place in the southern part of Southern Continent I, but it was repeated in a thousand ways during the time the Northwest fringes used an advanced technology to conquer other parts of Shikasta so as to rob them of materials, labour, land. This particular geographical area was well favoured, being high, well watered and wooded, with a healthy dry climate. The soil was fertile. It supported a wide variety of animals. And it was lightly populated by a tribe with a particularly agreeable nature, being peace-loving, good-humoured, laughter-loving, natural storytellers, and skilled in the crafts. All the inhabitants of Southern Continent I were embedded in music: singing, dancing, the making and the use of i

These people had heard tales from the south about the white people, who conquered and made slaves, who stole land: there had been explorers and travellers of various kinds, some of them "religious." The wise men and women, seers and warners, had said that this part too would be visited by white people, and that they would have to fight for their existence. But the temperament of these tribes did not make for anxiety and foreboding.

One day appeared a long column of white people, on horses or in carts. The watching black people were amazed, because of the bizarre appearance of these invaders. Also because of the horses. Someone laughed. Soon they could not stop themselves laughing. Everything struck them as comical. First, their colour, so pallid, and unhealthy. Then their clothes: they themselves wore very little, since the blessed climate made this possible. But the intruders were loaded with bunches and protuberances and excrescences of every sort, and they had extraordinary objects on their heads. Then, their stiff solemnity, their awkwardness. They could not move. Never before had the watchers had to think of their own accomplishments, but now they looked at each other and themselves and saw how well they stood, walked, sat, and how they danced. The changing pulses of the landscape they were part of fed their own flow of movement, but these newcomers they were examining with such incredulous laughter were unable to stretch out an arm or take a step, were as clumsy as if they had been cursed. And then, their impedimenta: What sort of people were these who could not travel without enough baggage to load down so many wagons, drawn by so many oxen? Why did they need it? What did they do with it all?