The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire

The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire by Doris Lessing Read Free Book Online Page A

Book: The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire by Doris Lessing Read Free Book Online
Authors: Doris Lessing
he may possess some view of himself as a fallible individual), can be taken seriously by those older than he, more experienced – persons sometimes of worth, who may be representatives of masses of people. Yet he, this torch of righteous conviction, armed with no more than his own qualities, is able to come close to them, persuades, convinces, has them in his power. He asks for trust – that first of all – for money, for the use of their influence. In no time he has nests of people in every place doing his bidding, embroiled with one another, willing to listen. To listen, that’s the thing. One may observe him, this burning-eyed, coiled spring of a youth, leaning forward at a café table, in the corner of a house, anywhere, fixing his prey with his eyes in a conviction of shared purpose, of conspiracy, of – always – being united in some small purpose against enormous odds. Yet almost at once this small purpose has burgeoned so remarkably. Finding it so easy to talk in terms of limited ends, the creation of a local institution perhaps, a meeting place, amodest petition, suddenly he – no less than others – is surprised to find that what is being talked about is citywide, then planetary, even interplanetary movements. ‘We shall sweep the stars for our support!’ Incent cried from a platform in one town, and when someone called out from the body of the hall, ‘Hold on, lad, let’s start with something more modest,’ the laughter was no more than friendly. Of course! If you have been able to rise so far and so fast from such a humble base – in this case, on this planet, that the people generally are very worn down, tired, drained, and they wish for better – then why not ‘sweep the stars’ and ‘transform everything’?
    â€˜Is not the present moment dynamic?’ cried Incent from platform after platform, his whole person radiating dynamism, so that the poor tired people listening to him felt dynamic too; though not for long, for it is odd how they feel even more tired, more drained, when he has moved on to the next place that he has decided to stir into action.
    â€˜The new forms of life will become dynamically dramatic,’ he has shouted, though only a moment before he was dealing with a question from the floor about raising wages by means of a petition to Volyen (through Greasy-guts Grice).
    Well, such a person does not, as we know, ‘sweep the stars,’ but he does set in motion a great many people who even while under his spell feel uneasy. And yet feel uneasy that they do. How dull they have become! How enfeebled by life! How far they are from the flaming days of their youth, which they see before them again in the shape of this noble, inspirational youth, who seems, when he leans forward to hold their eyes with his own, to gather their whole life and pose it before them in the shape of a question.
    â€˜What have you become?’ those dramatic, those languishing, those shameless eyes demand. For, of course, this young hero, without even knowing it, will use all the means he has to unlock the various forms of resistance he faces,including sex, maternal and paternal love: Oh, if only my son were like this, this very flame of promise and action, if only I had chosen such a one as a husband.
    But uneasy they are. It might be for a good cause, but how they are being manipulated! And how is it possible that not only one’s unworthy (of course) self is being played on by this man – this youth, not much more than a child, really – but also one’s respected and revered colleagues?
    This operator has understood from the first, and by instinct (it is nearly all instinct, this, not calculation: our hero is working on a wavelength of pure guess-and-feel, he has never sat down to say, ‘How can I get this poor sucker under my thumb?’), that of course one must use one ‘name’ to impress another.

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