Doris Lessing - The Sirian Experiments

I waited until I could speak moderately, and said: “Why do you not simply go back home and tell them what you are saying to me.”

“Because I done so already.”

“So you have been on leave?”

“Yes. But it was a long time ago—just after what these poor wretches call ‘the Punishment.’ But Sirius, to spend time there —and then to return here—do you know what that means? How one feels? How utterly intolerable…” and he struck off and away again, and began his despairing pacing.

“In short,” he said, “it is not worthwhile to go home if one has to come back. And in my case I have to come back. That is what they say. This is my place. This hellhole. Shikasta the disgraced and the shameful one. This.”

“Rohanda is very beautiful,” I said, with a sigh for my long stay on the Southern Continent, before the failure of the Lock. “No planet in our system is anything near as beautiful or as rich…” I was looking at the golden light in the grey sky to the southeast where the storm had now quite gone away. The brown cone nearest to this one showed the most elegant pattern of black markings all the way up, each touched with white: the snow underlined each window opening, and the symmetry and balance of the patterns gave me the deepest satisfaction; and that is what Rohanda —I was simply not prepared to use their niggardly little word for it—so plentifully did offer. A rich food for the senses—always and generously.

“Yes, it is beautiful,” he said in a stifled voice, and he stood upright, eyes closed, his hand at his throat, and his eyes closed tight, quivering. He was thinking of Elylé.

“I understand,” I said quietly. His eyes flew open: he gazed at me, sombre, but himself, and he strode across and bent over me, looking into my eyes. “Desiccated bureaucrat though I am, I understand very well. I wish I did not.” And I could not prevent myself shuddering.

“Thank you,” he said and went off again.

“I would like to know about this city—before it was spoiled.”

He laughed, and with such bitterness. “And the other cities—before they were spoiled—because they are spoiled, always.”

“Always?”

“Yes.”

“So then you have to make allowances for that?”

“Yes,” he said with a sigh, the driven black one gone again, and he simple and there with me. “Yes. We make allowances. We know that if we build a city, or make a jewel, or a song, or a thought, then it will at once start to slide away, fall away—just as I have done, Sirius—and then—pfft!—that’s it, it’s over. This city, you say: the city of the twenty-one tall cones? And what of the city just there—can you see?"—and he pointed to where the storm had gone. I could just see a blur on the white horizon.

“That is the city of the gardens. That was the city of the gardens…”

“And what is it now?”

“It is a city of gardens,” he said, grim and savage, black and vibrating. “A gardened city. Elylé adores it. She has her place there, fountains and delights… Elylé, Elylé,” he moaned suddenly, rocking, his hands up over his face.

“Nasar,” I said sharply and he sighed and came to himself.

“You are going to have to give me your earrings,” said he, coming up to me, taking me by the shoulders and peering into my face. The grip of those large hands bore heavily and he felt me brace myself and he loosened them. “There’s nothing to you,” he said, incredulously. “A dry bone of a woman, with your judicious little face and your…”

“No, I am not Elylé,” I said steadily. “Do you want me to be sorry for that?”

“No,” he said simply, coming to himself.

“Nasar, is it that you want the earrings because you can stay here instead of going back home—and you have been ordered back home and don’t want to go?”

“Exactly so.”

“But wouldn’t they—come after you and punish you?”

“No,” he said, with his short laugh, that I now knew to associate with his inner comparisons between Canopus and what I made of Canopus as a Sirian. “No. What need of punishments? What punishments could conceivably be worse than this…” and he shut his eyes, and flung back his head with something like a howl—yes, it was like the howl of a desperate animal. “Ohhh,” he groaned, or howled, “to be this, to have become part of it, to be Shikasta, to be Shammat…”

“You are not Shammat,” I said, sharp and cold. And afraid.

“What do you suppose Shammat is, lady?” And he again marched and strode, and stopped, on his desperate course.

I been given—I felt—another piece of my puzzle.

“Shammat is not merely an external tyranny?”

“Surely that is evident?”

“I see.”

He enquired, really surprised. “How is it you have to ask?”

“I ask… and I ask… and I ask… there are questions I seem to ask over and over again. Yet I do not ever get an answer.”

“But wasn’t that an answer?”

I felt weighted with a half-knowledge, something too much, too painful, too dark—a long dark wail that was inward. And I could see the same on Nasar’s face.

“This is a terrible place,” he said in a bleak voice, as if suddenly seeing something for the first time—he who had lived this for so long! Yet he was contemplating it again, anew. “A terrible place.”

“Will you tell me why? ” I said. “Please will you try and say. What is Shammat? That is what I want to know.” And I added, “If I knew that, then could I understand Canopus?”

At this he laughed—a real laugh. “What is Shammat? Shammat is this—if you build a city—perfectly and exactly, so every that feeling and thought in it is of Canopus—then slowly, the chords start to sound false—at first just slightly, then more and more—until soon the Canopus-nature has gone, it has slipped, it has fallen… like me… and if you start again, and collect together, let us say, ten people and teach them Canopus—if you can, if you can —then that is all you can do because Shammat rises up and strikes back and for the ten of Canopus nature there will be ten times ten of Shammat. The ten you cherish, if they stand, if they stand, if they do not fall away like me… and if you say Love, then Love is the word, it is Love, yes, but then…” and he was muttering now, in a crazy, restless, wild desperation and misery, “but then it is Love still but cracked, the sound false, then falser, and it is not love but wanting, oh Elylé, Elylé, Elylé the beautiful one, beautiful one…”

“Nasar!” I stopped him and he sighed and came to himself.

“Yes,” he said, “Love the golden word does not sing her song for long here, before her voice cracks… Love slowly turns down, down the spiral and then there is Hate. Each perfection becomes its opposite, that is Shammat. You ask what is Shammat—it is that if you say Love, then before long, it is Hate, and if you build for harmony, then soon it is quarrelling, and if you say Peace, then before long it is War—that is Shammat, that is Shammat, Sirius.”

“And yet Canopus persists here. Canopus keeps this planet. Canopus does not jettison it. Rohanda is under your protection.”

“That is our policy.”

“And do you not agree with it?”

“No, I do not agree with it—but then, I am now Shammat, or at least for a good part of the time, so what does it matter what I agree with or not?”

“Tell me, you have been ordered back and you do not want to go.”

“Yes.”

“Because you cannot face what you feel when you have to come back again?”

“Yes.”

“And if I gave you the earrings and the other things…”