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

‘I saw Hadder today,’ he lets fall confidentially and, as it were, by the way, ‘and he said to me he would talk to Sev, and when I dropped in on Bolli yesterday she said she knew how to lay her hands on …’ Some large, almost incredible sum seems to materialize; both the inspired youth and the hypnotized victim contemplate it, in silence. ‘Ye-e-es …’ murmurs the victim at last, ‘I see, yes …’ And on both faces there appears fleetingly a small self-conscious smile that acknowledges absurdity.
    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