Doris Lessing - The Sirian Experiments

Every breeding female has this quality, often briefly enough. But in certain conditions this sexual attraction can be concentrated and maintained by an effort of individual will, if the social circumstances permit. Of myself I can that I am pale and blonde; but of her I can say only that she gleamed and shimmered. Her hair was of fine gold, elaborately dressed, with a mass of little waves and curls, and very fine plaits, like twisted gold wires, on either side of her broad, smiling face. Her eyes were grey blue and widely set under shining blonde brows. Her long white hands were displayed, unadorned, in her lap. White feet were in jewelled sandals.

On her bare arms were heavy gold bracelets made of repeated and interlocked V’s, which very slightly compressed her flesh, in a calculated manner. Now these bracelets were of the exact pattern prescribed for previous practices set by Canopus, those that had been superceded by the “suggestions” sent to me before I began this visit. I looked quickly around again and saw that nearly everyone there, male and female, wore bracelets, earrings, anklets, or an association of colours that were almost accurate, for in each place I observed them, a pattern on a hem, or a design on a skirt, they had, as it were, slipped out of true—and now I understood why Nasar could not easily meet my eyes. Though he was in fact now rather sullenly gazing across at me, not so much defiantly as in reckless sombreness.

I understood a good deal as I stood there, smiling calmly. For one what it was they wanted of me now: the three Puttiorans all wore the earrings of the current prescription—they and I wore them, not one of the others, and not Nasar. Who, of course, if he were being ruled what had been prescribed, would not be wearing them at this occasion. Just as I should not, had I not been commanded and brought here in the way I had.

I saw that the eyes of every individual there glittered at the armbands, the headband, the earrings I wore, and as I wondered why the Puttioran who had fetched me had not simply taken them, realised that of course he must be afraid, or that is exactly what he would have done.

Still no one had moved, or made a sign of greeting. I took then a great chance, which made me quite cold, and inwardly confused for a moment: I stepped forward, with “Canopus greets you!” and glanced at Nasar to see how he took this, as I gestured to a girl servant to bring forward a chair that stood by the wall. This was a chair similar to the one used by the beauty, who was, I had decided, hostess there: I seated myself on her level, a short distance from her and from Nasar, and clapped my hands without looking to see if this was being obeyed—a custom taken from another recent visit of mine—and when a goblet was presented to me of some crystalline material, was careful not to let a drop of it touch my lips, while I pretended to sip.

“I understood that you were from Sirius?” remarked the fair one, clapping her hands as I had done, and accepting a fresh goblet—this was done to put me at my ease. To encourage me to drink?

This the most dangerous moment of my meeting with these decadents. I could not afford to hesitate, and I smiled, merely, and with a rather amused little glance at Nasar, as to a fellow conspirator in a harmless joke: “If it has amused Nasar to say that I am, then why not?” And I laughed. And did not look at him, but smoothed my skirt.

He had now to challenge me. I knew that if he did, it would probably mean the loss of my life, let alone the ornaments they all coveted so much. I sat at ease, pretending to sip the intoxicant—pretty rough stuff, too, nothing tempting in it—and examining the scene quite frankly and with apparent enjoyment.

I cannot begin to convey how it dismayed and disgusted me.

The signs of a degenerate class are the same everywhere and always: I will not waste time in details. But I have seen them too often, and in too many places, and their perennial reappearance can only weary and dismay. The smiling ease, the cynical good nature that is so easily overturned when challenged and becomes a snarling threat; the carelessness that is the mark of easy success; the softness of the flesh; the dependence on ease; the assumption of superiority over inevitable slaves or serfs or servants who, of course—everywhere and always—are their real and often evident masters… here it was again, again, again .

I had wondered often enough if on Canopus, or in her Empire, this rule applied, but as I was actually thinking that Nasar’s presence here, subjugated and used, was an answer, he lifted his bronze eyes direct at mine and shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, fair Canopean.”

And he turned away, with an air so defeated, so angry, that I did not know what to do. But I knew, at least, that I had survived a very dangerous moment. It would have been piquant, to say the least, to end my life here, on this degraded planet, with these demoralised creatures.

“Am I not to know the name of my hostess?” I asked.

“Your host is Nasar,” she said, in that voice I absolutely expected: it was lazy, rich, suggestive: her voice, just like her appearance, could make you think of one thing, one thing only, and even if you had never experienced it. For I had not! I had read of it all, certainly—I had made a study of pathology. But it had so happened that my career in the Service had begun very young, and that while our Empire has suffered periods when I might very well have been at risk myself, I was always occupied, well away from the Mother Planet.

But sitting there in that gilded, amiable, pleasure-loving scene, which had over it a sort of silky dew if it were drenched in ethereal honey, looking at the smiling glistening woman, it was not necessary to have experienced it! I understood it all, and only too well—because I was being affected I sat there, trying to preserve a correct, if not an official, air. For one thing, I ought not to be wearing these artefacts, which were too powerful, even if they had been put out of exact use by the fact that they were not in alignment with the other dispositions of the practice that had been disturbed by the interruption by the Puttioran.

For another, it is of course not the ease that to turn your back on an area of life is the same as to abolish it! Often enough, and even with Ambien I, I had understood very well what a seductive realm lay there, just for the effort of saying: Yes! Of course I had known—been aware of—watched for—guarded—that door, or entrance, which watchfulness is in itself way of signifying a disposition to enter into something. This was what I was seeing. And what I was understanding. Oh yes, the woman was magic! And as I thought that word, I understood that she was a daughter of old Adalantaland; I remembered this full smiling ease of the flesh, the glisten—but there and in that time it had very different function . The wonderful females of that island had been in a correct alignment—or almost; of course I remembered how they had begun to slide away: yet one could sense their oneness with their surroundings. But this descendant of theirs had all the magnificence of the physical, but in addition a witchery that had slipped out of its place, had become sufficient to itself. As I looked at Nasar, tense and miserable there in his low seat, and then at her, I did not have to be told anything: I felt it. And I began to be afraid: it very a very easy door to open, just one little step, one little decision—and suddenly I found myself thinking of Klorathy as I had never done yet: I was amazed and appalled: it seemed as if there, beckoning me, was a smiling playful amorousness, which was certainly not what I was in search of—in wait for—when thinking of companionship with Klorathy… with Canopus. And this lighthearted amorousness was in itself an antechamber where I could very quickly indeed descend to something very different. What I saw there, in front of me now—nothing lighthearted about that! Nasar was gazing sombrely at the woman’s indolent lolling arm, and on his face was a look of such pain that… but she was saying again: “It is Nasar who is your host.”