Shikasta

When we were in New York we had a small apartment and we three children were in one room. One night I woke up and saw George standing by the window looking out. We were high up, twelve stories. It looked as if he was talking to someone. I thought he was playing, and wanted to join in. He made me be quiet.

In the morning I said at breakfast that George was at the window in the night. Mother was worried about it.

Later George said to me, Rachel, don't tell them, don't tell them.

When Mother or Father asked about it I said I was teasing.

But there were a lot of times I woke and George was awake. He was usually at the window. I did not pretend to be asleep. I knew he wouldn't be angry. I once asked him, Who are you talking to? He said he didn't know. A friend, he said. He seemed troubled. Not unhappy.

He was sometimes unhappy though. Not in the way Benjamin was. When Benjamin was in a bad mood all of us had to take notice and be upset too.

George used to get silent and go off into a corner. He pretended to be looking at a book. I could see he had been crying. Or wanted to. He knew I knew, just as he knew I knew about his being awake so much in the night. He just shook his head at me. That's all. Not like Benjamin. Benjamin used to quarrel and he hit me sometimes.

Once in Nigeria something happened. The boys had a room to themselves and I was alone. I hated this. I missed George so much. Sharing a room I was close to him and now I wasn't. He came into my room one night. I was asleep and woke up. He was sitting on the floor on some straw matting, leaning against my mosquito net. I put my head out of the net. There was moonlight outside and on the floor and I could see his face all shining because he had been crying. Not making a noise. He said to me, Rachel, this is a terrible place, it is a terrible place, it is a terrible... His voice was stuffed up and I could not understand at first. I tried to comfort him, saying Well, the family would move again, our parents had said we were going to Kenya. He did not say anything. Later I saw he was not talking about Nigeria. I can see that he came into my room because he was lonely, but I wasn't any help to him at all.

I see that he was very lonely then. I know Benjamin did not understand a lot of the things he said. And it is only now I understand some of them.

I have suddenly understood that Benjamin was so blustery and raucous often because he knew George was wanting him to understand but he couldn't.

I was eight when we went to Kenya.

George slept outside on the verandah of the house. The climate was different from Nigeria, healthy. He liked to be under the stars. I knew that he was awake often, and he did not want our parents to know how much. I sometimes crept out of the window of my room on to the verandah and sure enough he would be sitting on the verandah wall, staring out. This was outside Nairobi in some hills. Our house looked over a lot of country. It was beautiful. Sometimes we sat for a long time on the wall, and it was often moonlight or half-moonlight. Once an African came past very silent and he saw us and stopped to look. Then he said: Ho, ho, little ones, what are you doing there, you should be asleep. Then he went off laughing. George liked that. When I got sleepy George lifted me down from the wall. He pretended to stagger because I was heavy, but he didn't really think I was heavy. He staggered all over the verandah with me and we nearly killed ourselves not being able to laugh out loud. Then he helped me back through the window into my room. I loved those times with George, even though we never said much. Sometimes we sat there a long time and never said one word.

Once he did say something I remember. That afternoon our parents had had visitors. They were all people with important jobs in Kenya. There were black people, white people, brown people. I did not think of that sort of thing then because I was a child and I was used to everyone being different. Sometimes we have been the only white family in some places but I don't remember thinking much about it.

It was a party, a celebration of something. We children had helped serve drinks and food and stuff. Our parents always made us do jobs like that. Benjamin often did not like to do it. He used to say we had servants and why didn't they do it.

During the party George caught what I was thinking, and he smiled his special smile at me. This meant: Yes I know, and I agree. I had been thinking how silly they were, the grownups, not our parents, but the others, they were showing off the way grownups do.

Sitting in the moonlight that night on the wall, George said, There were thirty people there.

I already knew from his tone what he meant.

I was thinking, as I did so often then, that I knew exactly what he meant, but Benjamin usually didn't. But then he said something I hadn't expected. I remember that night because I cried a lot. For two reasons. One was that I did not always know what he was thinking, any more than Benjamin did. The other was that George was so lonely thinking that kind of thought.

George said, Passing teacups and glasses of booze and saying please and thank you...

Well, I was laughing at that, seeing what he saw.

But then he said, Thirty bladders full of piss, and thirty backsides full of shit, and thirty noses full of snot, and thousands of sweat glands pouring out grease...

I was upset, because he was speaking in a rough angry voice. And when I heard this voice, I was always ready to believe it was me he was angry with.

He went on and on, A room full of shit and pee and snot and sweat. And cancers and heart attacks and bronchitis and pneumonias. And three hundred pints of blood. And please and thank you and yes Mrs. Amaldi, and No Mr. Volback, and Please Mrs. Sherban, and Oh dear me Minister Mobote, and I am more important than you are, Chief Senior Register Doctor.

I could see he was angry. He was restless too, as he sometimes was, knotting himself together, and tying his legs around each other.

He was furious. He started crying.

He said: This is a terrible place, a terrible place.

I did not like it, and I went to bed, and I cried in bed.

Next day he was nice to me and he played with me a lot and I was not sure at all about liking that, because he was treating me like a baby.

I have not yet written down the facts of how we look. We are all different. It is because of the mix of the genes, our parents say.

George first. He is thin and tall. He has black eyes. His hair is black and straight. His skin is white but not like the white of white people from Europe. It is an ivory colour. In Egypt and here in Morocco there are plenty of people who look like him. It is our Indian grandparent coming out in his skin.

Now Benjamin. He takes after Simon. He is rather heavy. He gets fat easily. He has brown hair and blue-grey eyes. His hair curls. He is always sunburned, a reddish-brown.

Now me. I am more like George. I am not thin unfortunately. I have black hair. I have brown eyes, like Mother. My skin is olive even when I am not sunburned. In England no one notices me because I am not unusual. They think I am Spanish or Portuguese. Here no one notices me because I am not unusual. Everyone notices Benjamin.

What happened to us children that changed everything was when George spent the year on the farm in Wales. Olga and Simon said I was wrong to "pine" after George. And they made me do a lot of things in that year, two languages, French and Spanish, and taking guitar lessons. I wasn't pining. I was lonely. And when he came back I was still lonely. He was thirteen when he went to Wales, and fourteen when came back. He was grown up. I did not understand that, but I do now.

During the whole of that year, Benjamin was difficult. He did not work well at school. He moped a lot. When George came back though, he tried to win Benjamin over and after a time he did. But I can see now that George had grown up, but Benjamin hadn't. Benjamin has always done everything to get George's attention. I don't think our parents know how much. That isn't because they are too busy to notice. Well, sometimes they are too busy. They spend a lot of time thinking about us and how to bring us up well. But a sister sees things that parents don't see. I suppose they have forgotten. I think they remember the overall thing, but not the smallness of things happening every day.