feature of the inhabitants of this planet, was that their broken minds allowed them to hold, and act on – even forcibly and violently – opinions and sets of mind that a short time later – years, a month, even a few minutes – they might utterly repudiate.
At the time when I located his dwelling, and positioned myself (of course well ensconced in Zone Six) where I could take in as much as was needed to make my decisions, and to influence him, if possible, he was in a period of intense emotional activity.
He had choices to make. Inwardly he knew this was another crisis for him. The political faction he represented had just been deprived of power. His faction had been in and out of a governing position several times since the Second World War (or as we put it, the Second Intensive Phase of the Twentieth Century War) and it was not this that was affecting him. Pressure was being put on him (indirectly by us) to return full-time to his legal firm and become active there, for he would be enabled to cultivate that kind of reputation which is most solidly based: among people who work in the same sphere as oneself. If he did this, it would still be time for him to take on a series of cases in ways which would be useful. The other work offered to him was in the Councils of the northerly bloc of countries. But it was a high position, he did not have the qualities to sustain it, and we knew that he would not be in exactly the right place to take up the defence of the white races at the moment when they were to be threatened with extermination. He would not have the necessary qualities. From our point of view, his acceptance of this post would be a bad mistake.
His present wife thought so, too. She had an inkling of what could happen. She did not like him as an impassioned sectarian. Neither had his first wife. Both women in fact had married him because of being attracted to his hidden unused powers or potential, which he then did not fulfil, and this was the real reason for their dissatisfaction with him – which fact they did not understand, and this caused in them all kinds of bitternesses and frustrations. This second marriage was likely to break up. Because of all this he was in mental breakdown. His home was a seethe of emotions and conflict. [See History of Shikasta, VOL. 3012, Mental Instability During the Century of Destruction. SECTION 5. PUBLIC FIGURES.] He had broken down before, and had prolonged treatment. In fact, most of the politicians of that time needed psychiatric support, because of the nature of their preoccupations: an unreality at the very heart of their everyday decision-making, thinking, functioning.
I watched him for some days. He was in a large room at the top of his house, a place set aside for his work, and where his family did not enter. Because he was alone, the ghastly charm of his public self was not in use. He was pacing up and down, his hair dishevelled (the exact disposition of head hair was of importance in that epoch), his eyes reddened and unable to maintain a focus. He had been drinking steadily for weeks. As he paced he groaned and muttered, he would bend over and straighten himself, as if to ease inner pain; he sat and clasped himself with both arms, hands gripping his shoulders, or he flung himself down on a day-bed and slept for a few moments, starting up to resume his restless pacing. He had decided to take the position with the northern bloc. He knew this was a mistake, and yet did not know. His rational self, the one he relied on – and indeed he possessed a fine, clear reasoning mind – could see nothing but opportunities for his ambition … which was never described to him in terms other than ‘progress’, ‘justice’, and so forth. He imagined this northern bloc becoming ever more powerful, successful, satisfying to all concerned. And yet the general collapse of the world order was apparent to everybody by then. That problems were not to be solved by the ways of thinking then accepted by partisan politics was also evident: certain minorities, and some of them influential ones, were putting forth alternative ways of thought, and these could not but appeal to John, or Taufiq … and yet he was committed to patterns of partisan thinking, and must be for as long as he was a politician. And he did not want his marriage to break up. Nor did he want to disappoint these two children as he had the children of his first marriage – he feared his progeny, as the people then tended to do. But of that later.
But if he stayed as a member of his local parliament, he would feel even more unused and frustrated than he had been – this was not even an alternative for him.
And then, jumping up from his disordered bed in his disordered room, or flinging himself down, or rocking, or’ pacing, he visualized the other possibility, that he should return seriously to his law firm and watch for opportunities to use himself in ways in which he could easily envisage … extraordinary how attractive this prospect was … and yet there was nothing there to feed this ambition of his … he would be stepping out of the limelight, the national limelight, let alone the glamour of the wider fields open to him. And yet … and yet … he could not help being drawn to what had been planned for him, and by him before this entrance to Shikasta.
Here I intervened.
It was the middle of the night. It was quiet, in this pleasant and sheltered street. The din of the machines they all lived with was stilled.
Not a sound in the house. There was a single source of light in the corner of this room.
His eyes kept returning to it … he was in a half-tranced state, from fatigue and from alcohol.
‘Taufiq,’ I said. ‘Taufiq … remember! Try and remember!’
This was to his mind, of course. He did not move, but he tensed, and came to himself, and sat listening. His eyes were alert. In those strong black eyes, thoughtful now, and all there, I recognized my friend, my brother.
‘Taufiq,’ I said. ‘What you are thinking now is right. Hold on to it. Act on it. It isn’t too late. You took a very wrong bad turn when you went into politics. That wasn’t for you! Don’t make things worse.’
Still he didn’t move. He was listening, with every atom of himself. He turned his head cautiously, and I knew he was wondering if he would see somebody, or something, in the shadows of his room. He was half remembering me. But he saw nothing as he turned his head this way and that, searching into the corners and dark places. He was not afraid.
But he was shocked. The intervention of my words into his swirling half-demented condition was too much for him. He suddenly got up, flung himself down and was instantly asleep.
He dreamed. I fed in the material that would shape his dream …
He and I were together in the projection room of the Planetary Demonstration Building on Canopus.
We were running scenes from Shikasta, recent scenes, of the new swarming millions upon millions upon millions – poor short-lived savages now, with the precious substance-of-we-feeling so limited and being shared among so many, the tiniest allowance for each individual, their little drop of true feeling … we were both overwhelmed with pity for the fate of the Shikastans, who could not help themselves, while they fought and hated and stole and half starved. Both of us had known Shikasta at such different times, he much more often and more recently than I. We were there together in the projection room because he had been asked to make this journey, and to take up this task.
There was no question of his refusing: we did not refuse such requests. Or some of us did not! [See History of Canopus, VOL. 1,752,357, Disagreement re: Policy for Shikasta, Formerly Rohanda. SUMMARY CHAPTER.] But it was as if he had been asked to allow himself to be made lunatic, mad, deranged, and then put into a den of murdering savages. He agreed at once. Just as I agreed, shortly afterwards, when it was evident that he had failed.
He was lying utterly still on his bed. This dream caused him to stir and almost come to the surface again. But he sank back, exhausted.
He dreamed of a high bare landscape, full of coloured mountains, a brilliant unkind sky, everything beautiful and compelling, but when you looked close it was all desert. Cities had died here, been blasted to poisoned
