Ben, in the World. Doris Lessing

said he had a family but his father hated him and he did not mention Paul, or his mother. What Alex Beyle got out of all this was only that Ben came to him without strings. He could use him without people coming for explanations or to demand – well, what? He wasn’t going to exploit Ben! He would pay him. He would look after him. Again Ben got specially made shirts and two jackets, a warm one and a thin one and some high-necked T-shirts, in silk, to hide that hairy throat and neck.

      Ben knew that this friend, who was going to look after him, wanted to make a film with him in it: he really was a film actor. He did not like films, they filled his eyes with light, and made him sick. Alex took him to a cinema, a film carefully chosen, as for a child, a good strong story, excitement, danger. But Ben sat with his eyes closed, opening them in quick desperate attempts to see, but he could not see, the clashing invading light was too much for him.

      Alex took Ben to an oculist to get glasses: he was sure the dark glasses were wrongly prescribed. Ben preferred the dusk of evening to light, never sat in the sun, and his eyes were often squeezed up, or squinting. This oculist too seemed nervous. When he emerged from the testing room to speak to Alex, for he had failed to communicate with Ben, he said that these were unusual eyes. They did not adapt well to changes of light. The oculist’s ideas about Ben were nearest to the girl at Reception who said he was a failed laboratory experiment, but he wasn’t going to say so, and get himself into trouble. He said the dark glasses Ben had were probably as good as any others might be, but suggested glasses tinted less dramatically than the very dark ones. Ben’s eyes were watering badly; he was grinning – with embarrassment, the oculist thought, but by now Alex knew what that staring grin meant.

      When Alex heard that Ben’s hotel was paid for, for another week, and heard about the money in the safe, he was relieved. Every little helped. He had to get money for development from somewhere. He spent hours on the telephone to Los Angeles, New York, other places where films were bred, and finally persuaded the producer who financed his last film to give him enough. He did not have one story: he had several. When he described Ben there was enough of bafflement, of wonder, of excitement in his voice to extract that development money.

      And now Alex had to find his story. The trouble was nothing that appeared in his mind as film matched in seductive strangeness that vision of the band of creatures in the cave mouth, looking across chasms of time – millions of years? – into the face of Alex, their – he supposed – descendant. If he was. Did their genes linger in his body somewhere? Did Ben and he share genes? Sometimes he thought that of course, yes, but there were moments when he understood how alien Ben was to him. Alex was saying quietly to himself that Ben was not human, even if most of the time he behaved like one. And he was not animal. He was a throwback of some kind. If the company of ancient men were only a kind of animal how was it that Ben could live the life of human beings – well, for most of the time?

      What made Alex uneasy was that when the film was made, when all that was over, there would be Ben, and he needed looking after. For the time being it was all right. Ben spent his days with Alex and part of his evenings. Alex had friends along the coast, and in the little towns up in the hills and he did try to take Ben on visits, but it was difficult and strained and he did not try again. And what did Ben do, on the evenings when he was abandoned by Alex? He went into the town carefully, as if hunting or stalking, to look for a female. He did find one, but again was called bête and cochon, but he knew only that he was being rejected.

      And now Alex had an idea. He would go back to South America to make his film. This time, Brazil. He knew people there, had even made a little film, had directed a play. He would set his story not in Northern Europe, with its association of dwarfs and gnomes and trolls, and brownies, and – more delicately, fairies and elves – he would jettison all that cargo, and go south, into forests where…But he had not worked it out, no tale lingered in his mind. He would go to Rio, and take Ben out into those forests where butterflies the size of thrushes flew about and where the history was as ancient and savage as in Europe – and then he would let what visions come into his mind that would.

      He described South America to Ben, described Brazil, and Rio. As always he did not know what Ben understood. He got into the habit of watching for that grin that said so much. Ben asked if they were going on an aeroplane, and said he had been on a plane, a little one. He described looking down on London. He had seen where the old woman lived and the street where Johnston worked – where he had worked but he had gone away. He did not mention the plane from London to the South of France because he could not be persuaded he had been on it. Was Brazil far away, he asked? Far away from where? Alex wanted to know, but did not ask. He was feeling guilty about what he was doing. Well, he promised himself, he would see that Ben came back, either to here, or to London, where his friends would care for him.

      And so Ben took what remained of the packet of money, and the two of them flew off to Rio de Janeiro.

      But that was not as easy as that sounds. First, they had to take a plane to Frankfurt, for a connection to Rio. Ben stood in a line of people, Alex just in front of him, with his passport in one hand, his holdall in the other. Outside the Mediterranean sun dazzled off panes, cars, leaves, clouds. But Ben had his eyes half shut, even though he wore dark glasses, and he was grinning. Perhaps I am going home? he thought, as he stood at the check-in desk with Alex beside him saying that Ben wanted a window seat. When they got on to the plane this time he knew it was one, and in the window seat, with Alex beside him, he was able to match what he saw with what he had looked down on from the tiny plane in London. Then cloud enveloped the plane and he was looking down on a white that shone and hurt. He shut his eyes, leaned back and Alex said, ‘It’s only an hour, Ben.’ Meaning, to Frankfurt, but there it all happened again, the crowds, the escalators, the strong lights, walking along corridors and then waiting at the gate, his boarding card in his hand. He shuffled along beside Alex, grinning.

      Alex watched this despondent fellow and felt doubt, real apprehension. He would have clapped him mightily on the shoulder – ‘It’s OK, Ben, you’ll see’ – but yesterday, giving him a friendly clout, as he would have done a male friend, in America, he saw those green eyes convulse, boil and rage, and those fists… Alex did not know how near he had come then to being crushed in those great arms, with those teeth in his neck. He did know it was a dangerous moment, though.

      Ben’s rage had blanked out his vision with red, and his fists had filled with murder – he had only just subdued this dangerousness, only just held himself in. He must not ever let that rage loose, he knew it, but when Alex hit him like that… the unhappiness that had been deepening in him since he knew that the old woman had gone, and Johnston and Rita too, had rage as its partner. He scarcely knew whether he wanted to bellow and howl with pain, or to go berserk and kill.

      There were long winding descending corridors and then the door to the interior of the plane: Ben found it hard to believe this was a plane: it was so big. He could hardly see how big. And he understood that he was not going home, but somewhere in that mind of his that was always wrestling with itself to remain in control, to understand, he was telling himself that he had been promised he would go home, and that he had been betrayed and that Alex was part of this betrayal. Brazil. What was Brazil? Why did he have to go there? Why should he be in a film?

      This time he did not look out of the window, because he knew he would see only white cloud and a painful dazzle. Eleven hours flying – what would Ben do for that long cramped time? They were flying economy: Alex could not afford to waste money.

      Around came the drinks. Alex told Ben he must drink some water, and Ben drank. Should Ben be given sleeping pills? But perhaps his metabolism was not amenable to drugs: like a cat given human painkillers or sleeping pills, he might be harmed, or even die. But the problem was solved, for Ben went to sleep again, clutching tight to his seatbelt, which he hated. The violent tensions in his body were too much, he could not bear them, and when he woke during the trip to stare and look around him he soon fell back into sleep.

      In Rio it was morning and the light had a brazen violence that woke Ben. He was clutching his genitals and trying to struggle up. Alex got him to the lavatory in time. He was thinking, this is like looking