Shikasta

The helpers are mostly Tunisians and of course some Chinese. They all enjoy looking after the children. There are long waiting lists in the Youth Camps to work in the Children's Camps. The day was the same as the day in the boys' Camp. In the afternoon I was in the thatched shelter where they had lunch, and some bands of little girls crept out from where they were supposed to be resting in their sheds and stood around watching me. I was a new face. I wasn't in uniform. I wore a short red dress over some pale blue trousers. The dress had short sleeves. I was quite proper. But I was very strange to them. Exotic. Not because of my looks. In fact I look like them. I said hello and was friendly, but they were serious and silent. They kept staring and crowding in, and in. I had such a sense of them crowding in on me, not smiling, thousands and thousands and thousands of them. What will they be when they grow up? But they seem grown-up already with their hard little faces and hard careful eyes. I sat down on the mat and hoped they would come and sit by me. They pressed in around me, looking down at me. I said to them, Please sit down, come and talk to me. First one slowly sat, and then they all did, all at once. And they sat very close and stared and said nothing. Then Benjamin came striding along, and they all ran away at once, without even a glance back.

Benjamin said, Come into the administration hut. That was because we were creating a disturbing sensation being together in the all-girls Camp. So I did. It was just an administration hut, like one anywhere.

He said, Well will you do it? I said, But what am I to do?

Be here, he said, quite fierce and urgent, and I saw how he saw what he was doing. You must be here, and always be available for everyone at any time and see that things are co-ordinated.

I said I would think about it.

After supper he gave another sermon, practically word for word the same as last night's. Everyone adored it. Love and good will all around. I suppose I could learn to give a sermon, there's obviously nothing in it since everyone does it all the time, political speech or sermon, what's the difference.

It was nearly night when we left. The girls were all in lots of fifty, with two girls my age one in front and one behind for each batch, marching around and around the Camp for exercise, keeping in step, singing away. The moon was coming up.

I said I'd think about it and I am.

Today I had decided I would not take on the girls' Camp. No sooner had I decided than George came back. He brought two children, a boy and a girl. One for one Camp and one for the other, I suppose? Kassim and Leila. Parents died of cholera. They are here in this flat. Very quiet. Behaving well. They go off into George's room when he is out and shut the door. I suppose they cry.

I was in the living room by myself. George came in and sat down. All the doors open. Anyone can come in any time and that is the point. But we were alone for a change. I said, All right, I've seen the Camps.

He waited.

I did not say anything, so he said, Have you told Benjamin? I said Yes, and he said at once, very concerned, but putting up with it, Then he must be upset.

Yes, he was, I said. He sat there waiting, and so I said, I have been thinking about how we were brought up. He said, Good! - And I've had a thought you will approve of... He was already smiling, very affectionate. I said, How many people in the world have been brought up as we have been?

He nodded.

All the time, more and more Camps, enormous schools, everyone herded about, slogans, loudspeakers, institutions.

He nodded.

I went on talking like this. Then I said, But all the time, a few brands plucked from the burning. Well I don't think I am up to it.

He sat back, he sighed, he recrossed his legs - he made a lot of quick light movements, as he does when he is impatient, and wishes that he had the right to be.

Then he said, Rachel, if you start crying, I am going to get up and go out. He had never spoken like that before.

But I wasn't going to give in. I felt as if I were definitely in the right.

Then he said, These two children, I want you to look after them.

Oh, I said, you mean, not Benjamin, not the Camps?

No. They come from a family like ours. Kassim is ten, and Leila is nine. It would be better if they did not go into the Camps. If it can be managed.

I was sitting there thinking of what it would involve. Of our parents, and how they had brought us up. How can I do anything like that? But I said, All right I'll try.

Good, he said, and got up to go.

I said, If I had agreed to work in the Camp, then I couldn't have looked after Kassim and Leila. Who would you have asked?

He hesitated, and said: Suza

This really, but literally took my breath away. I just sat there.

Suza

Today George came into my room, and he said he is going off on a trip again. Everywhere, through all the armies in Europe and then down to India, and to China. It is going to take him a year or more.

I could not take this in. It seemed to me he had only just got back, and we hadn't even talked properly yet.

George said, Rachel, this will be my last trip.

A first I thought he was telling me he would be killed, then I saw that wasn't it. What he was saying was, it would not be possible after that to make his sort of journey.

He told me that a lot of people will be coming here, and he would leave me with instructions of what to say.

Not Simon and Olga? I asked and he said, No.

Of course I knew what he meant.

Then, just as I was thinking that now Benjamin is sensible and nice he can help with everything, George said, Benjamin will be coming with me. This was more than I could stand, all at once. George sat, quite relaxed and easy, watching me, concerned, but waiting for me to be strong. I didn't feel able.

George said: Rachel, you've got to.

I didn't have any breath in me to say anything. George said, I won't be leaving for a month, and went out.

Then I went off to lie down.

Today it was a

But when George heard it on the radio he was very serious. I said to him, But you knew it was going to happen, obviously? He said Yes, but not so soon. He sent a message to Benjamin by someone leaving from the Peace Cafe (because the telephone wasn't working again) to come as soon as possible. He spends a lot of time with Benjamin now. Every afternoon. He goes out to the Camps, and he is with the children, and then he goes with Benjamin to have supper in the cafe. Benjamin has had an invitation from the Chinese to go to Europe. He is flattered. He is ashamed of being flattered.

Every morning early before breakfast, I bring Kassim and Leila to my room and I teach them geography and Spanish. And the history of recent politics and religions. This is what George says they should learn. When I get back from teaching at college in the afternoon I teach Kassim and Leila Portuguese and geohistory. Otherwise they are with George all the time. Olga and Simon have hardly noticed the children. It is too much for them. Olga has gone back to work at the hospital. She is fighting a battle with bureaucracy. Well, what's new! Simon is taking a week's holiday because he had a minor heart attack. George told him he must. They talk a lot, or sit quietly together. The other day Olga said, I feel as if I have finished what I had to do.