Doris Lessing - The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire

Alone he does it. It is he who possesses the flair, the spark, the drive, the energy, it is he who can set in motion these people or cadres. He – who? Who am I? he may mutter in some moment of panic, seeing puppets twitch and dangle everywhere he looks. But how is it possible …? All these skilled, intelligent, experienced people? Doing his bidding?

He feels as if he were himself twitching over an empty space. Moments of panic recur, are evaded, avoided, fled from … He works harder, faster, runs from place to place, sleeps hardly at all, eats only as part of this process of convincing and manipulating people: ‘No, only a sandwich please, I don’t …’ ‘Perhaps a glass of water, I don’t …’ But meanwhile things are happening. They indubitably are. Not exactly on the scale envisaged at the ‘sweeping the stars’ stage of the game. But certainly not, either, as he imagined in those first timid (cowardly?) moments. No, when he first felt those divine wings of rightness and conviction begin to lift, he thought, ‘Oh, perhaps I may be able to make them see just a little bit of what …’ No, he is very far from that. Into real, actual existence – paid-up memberships, funds, brochures, letterheads, meetings – have come organizations. They function. Oddly enough, his name is never there. Why not? Simply because the magnitude of his presence, his demand, his command, cannot be contained in anything so paltry as a letterhead, a list of sponsors. Though perhaps his name might appear in the smallest of type somewhere as an assistant secretary or something of the sort. And besides, there is always something a little fishy about these operations. His contempt for the people he operates, his always growing amazement as he promises and persuades, leads him into statements about sums of money that never existed, statements that so-and-so said something which will turn out to be untrue; behind this real, actual, to-be-felt-and-touched thing, the organization, the meetings, the sponsors, the aims, is a whole mirage of lies.

Lies, lies, lies. Flattery and sycophancy and lies.

At some point or other, and sometimes not till years later, the victims will suddenly find themselves muttering, Yes, that fellow – what’s his name? – the fact is, he was crazy, wasn’t he?

In the meantime, our hero has probably had a spell of actual madness, of the kind that necessitates doctors, or has gone to live in another planet.

It is as if his part in that flurry and favour of activity never was. His name is not mentioned, or hardly ever, and this is not only because by now the people he made dance are ashamed and wish they could obliterate their part in it all. It is also because there is something that doesn’t fit. Just as it wasn’t easy to put that dazzling name on a letterhead, or as the signature to a pamphlet full of facts and figures (written stuff of this kind has on the whole to be more accurate than what is said), simply because that burning presence was out of phase with all the other, more humdrum, individuals, so if one is looking back, it is hard to accommodate him into sober and thoughtful memory. This and that event certainly did happen – perhaps even now a society or party still exists, moribund, all the life fled from it – but do you mean to say that it was brought into being by that psychopath?

So it comes about that history does not record the names of these heroes. One may search in vain in records of events one has experienced on a day-to-day basis, knowing exactly what went on, and nowhere appear the names of the wonder-workers without whom these events would never have taken place.

Incent, like the others of his sort, will not appear in the history books. Meanwhile, everyone is talking about him.

‘Yes, he was here last week. He had us up all night listening to him. He’s sincere, isn’t he?’

‘Oh, yes, you could say that, he’s sincere, all right.’

‘It was the most moving occasion I can remember,’ someone else may say thoughtfully. ‘Yes …

When I returned to my lodgings, in the early morning, I found that Incent had already gone out. He had kept the woman of the house up listening to him nearly all night, so that she had a flattened and drained look.

‘He is a very feeling young one,’ she said, or murmured, out of semi-sleep. ‘Yes. Not like those Sirians. You and he come from the same place, he said. Is that so?’

And that is what I have to contend with.

When he returned at midday he was so intoxicated with himself he did not know me. He had visited Krolgul and Calder, and paid a flying visit to a near town which ‘is ready for the truth,’ and when he came striding into the little room at the top of the house where I sat waiting for him, it was with a clenched-fist salute and fixed, glazed eyes.

‘With me, against me,’ he chanted, and went striding about the room, unable to check the momentum which had been carrying him for days.

‘Incent,’ I said, ‘do sit down.’

‘Wi’ me, ‘gainst me!’

‘Incent, this is Klorathy.’

“me, ‘nst me.’

‘Klorathy!’

‘Oh, Klorathy, greetings, servus, all power to the … Klorathy , I didn’t recognize you there, oh, wonderful, I have to tell you …’And he passed out on my bed, smiling.

I then went out. I had arranged with Calder and his friends that our ‘confrontation’ should take place in one of the miners’ clubs or meeting places; but on the insinuation of Krolgul, Incent had, not consulting Calder but simply informing him, booked one of the trial rooms of the legislature for the occasion. This is where, usually, the natives are tried and sentenced by Volyens for various minor acts of insubordination. He had distributed all kinds of pamphlets and leaflets everywhere around the town announcing ‘A Challenge to Tyranny.’

I myself went to Calder, and found him with a group of men in his house. He was angry, and formidable.

I said to him that in my view the ‘confrontation’ should be cancelled, and that we – he, I, Incent and Krolgul, and perhaps ten or so of the miners’ representatives – should meet informally in his house or in a café.

But since I had seen him, he had been immersed in Rhetoric. Furious that ‘the powers that be’ had ‘tricked’ him by substituting for one of their clubs a venue associated by them with the Volyen hegemony, furious with himself for being swayed by Incent, whom, when he was out of his company, Calder distrusted, angry because of Krolgul, who had sent him a message saying he had nothing to do with Incent’s recent manoeuvrings, he now saw me as an accomplice of Incent.

‘You and he come from the same place,’ he said to me, as I sat there faced with a dozen or so steady, cold, angry pairs of Volyenadnan eyes.

‘Yes, we do. But that doesn’t mean to say I support what he does.’

‘You are telling us that you and he come from that place, very far away it is too, and you don’t see eye to eye with him on what he is doing here?’

‘Calder,’ I said, ‘I want you to believe me, I have had nothing to do with these new arrangements. I think they are a mistake.’

But it was no good: he, they all, had been subjected to burning sincerity from Incent for some hours.

‘We’ll meet you in that Volyen place. Yes. We’ll meet you there, and let truth prevail,’ shouted Calder, bringing a great fist down on the table in an obvious ritual for putting an end to discussion.

And so that is what is about to happen.

Krolgul is keeping modestly out of sight. Incent is still asleep, but tossing and starting up, smiling and emitting fragmented oratory, and falling back, smiling, to dream of the ‘confrontation’ – which I am afraid is hardly likely to go well.