Ben, in the World. Doris Lessing

a knot of struggling half-naked boys.

      Alex and Teresa, followed by their friends, were running towards the scene, which had silenced that part of the beach. Teresa was shouting, in Portuguese, to the policeman, ‘Stop, make them stop, he’s with us!’

      Who was? Ben was hardly to be seen; bellows and roars came from under the heap of assailants.

      The policeman began hitting a head, arms, a leg, whatever emerged, and grabbed some youth upwards by the hair. There was a shout that the police were there, and at once the heap of youths detached themselves and darted away, some of them bloody, one with an arm that looked broken. Ben was crouching, his arms protecting his head. His clothes had been torn almost off him. His shirt was in the hand of an escaping youth, and his sullied shoes had disappeared.

      Teresa began on a sharp but pleading argument with the policeman. ‘He’s with us – he’s with him… ’ indicating Alex. ‘We’re making a film. It’s for television.’ This inspired plea made the policeman retreat, to stand a few paces off. He was staring at Ben, those hairy shoulders, that bushy face where the white teeth grinned painfully.

      Teresa put her arm around Ben, whose great chest was heaving, and who was letting out grunts which Teresa knew would probably become whimpers which must – she knew – provoke a reaction in this policeman whose face would cease to be scandalised, worried, and become cruel.

      ‘Come on, Ben,’ she said, walking him away. Alex was on Ben’s other side, but Ben did not look at him, only at Teresa, his poor face, where blood was trickling, a plea for her to save him.

      The policeman stood staring, but let them go off, the three in front, Alex, Ben and Teresa, the rest behind.

      In the flat people were still sitting around the table, hardly aware that Ben had gone and the others after him. They had never seen Ben in anything but clean clothes, smart clothes, and now they were shocked at what they saw.

      Teresa took Ben to the bathroom and – as the old woman had done – took off what remained of his clothes, without embarrassment, talking gently to him. ‘It’s all right, you’re safe now, don’t be frightened, poor Ben, stand in the shower, that’s right.’ And Teresa washed off the sand and dirt, stopped the blood from a scratch on his forehead, and put his torn trousers into the washing machine. She fetched clean clothes, dressed him, and he let her do all this, passive in her hands, turning around when she asked, lifting an arm or a foot.

      He was shocked, breathing badly, pale, and his eyes had in them a dark, lost look.

      She sat with him on his bed, rocking him, ‘It’s all right, Ben. I’m your friend. It’s all right, you’ll see.’

      That night which because of Alex leaving the next day she should have spent with him in his bed, Teresa was with Ben, who was lying dressed on his bed, not sleeping. She was holding his hand and talking softly to him. She was worried by his passivity, his indifference. This young woman who had seen everything in her short life of extremes of all kinds, knew very well that this Ben, the unknown, was in a crisis, was undergoing some kind of inner change.

      In the morning the two men went off to the airport, and Teresa was left in the flat with Ben, and enough money to feed them both. Ben’s own money was still mostly unspent.

      And now Ben came out of his room, and did what he had not before: he sat down at the big table, instead of in a chair at the side of the room, out of the way. He sat there looking around the empty room and watched Teresa tidying and cleaning and obediently ate what she cooked for them both.

      He had indeed changed. There had been something about that scene at the sea’s edge, the deliberate deception of the youths, and then the attack, and how he was helpless under it in spite of his great strength – there were so many of them, and they were using on him holds and pressures that had immobilised him – his rage had disappeared, leaving him sorrowful because of his knowledge of his physical helplessness during those few moments – perhaps three minutes, even less. Always, until then, he had kept with him a knowledge of that strength of his, and that he did have some resort; a last defence, and he was not entirely at the mercy of others. But he had been helpless, and there had been cruelty, viciousness, the intention to hurt him.

      He said to Teresa, ‘When am I going home?’

      Teresa knew that he had been in London, and that probably was what he meant, but she said cautiously only that she was sure Alex would take him home.

      ‘I want to go home,’ said Ben, ‘I want to go home now.’

      When Teresa had finished tidying and cooking she brought Ben fruit juice and sat beside him, with her glass of juice. He hoped that she would put her arm around his shoulders so that her soft black hair would fall on him, and she did. ‘Poor Ben,’ she said. ‘Poor Ben. I am sad for you.’

      ‘I want to go home.’

      Teresa wanted to go home too, and, like Ben, hardly knew where the place was she could rightfully call home.

      This was her story. She had been born in a poor village in the north-east of Brazil where now drought was killing animals and filling the fields with dust. She remembered dryness and hunger and watching their neighbours leave for the south, for Rio, Sao Paulo. Then her father said they must leave, they would all die if they stayed: father, mother, and four children, the eldest Teresa. For part of the way they were on a bus, but then it was a question of a bus or eating. They walked for days, eating bread and stolen maize from fields which were getting greener as they went south. Then they were in a crowded favela outside Rio, where houses were built one above another up a hillside, and where the higher you were the better, because of how sewage washed downhill when it rained. With their last money they made a shelter of plastic sheets on sticks, and below them were shacks like theirs and better houses, between paths that were becoming the sharp gashes of erosion. There was no money left. The father, together with the other poor men, tried to get work, fought for any work at all, and sometimes did get work for a day or two. They were hungry, they were desperate. Then something began which Teresa did not at first understand, though she did know the girls from the favelas earned money with their bodies. Her father said nothing, her mother said nothing, but she could read their faces, which said that she could feed this family of six people. Teresa spoke to the girls who were already feeding their families. They hung around the barracks where soldiers came out at evenings, or went to cafes where the petty criminals were. Most of these girls took it for granted they were low, they were rubbish, and that they could hope for nothing better. To get higher meant money for a good dress and shoes, and the moment there was money in their hands it went to their families. Teresa was a clever girl, clear-sighted, and she had no intention of remaining a soldiers’ whore. At the start she went with another girl, to see how things went, and easily attracted a soldier who took her standing against a wall, and gave her enough reais