The Sirian Experiments

by Doris Lessing

We descended the long twining stairs, he coming close behind me, and I could feel the pressure of his itching want, want, want, all over me, his eyes like the touch of hands.

  In the street we stood in a white storm, with dull lamps half obliterated at the entrances to streets and lanes. There were only the two of us. I was being chilled to stiffness as I stood, and the whine of the northern wind struck a painful fear into my bones: winter was fear, in this planet, and fear was the memory of sudden tempests of snow and ice that could wipe out a continent in a breath, of screaming winds that could tear water-masses and vast sea beasts into the air and whirl them around like dust. A square shape appeared in the white, an opening showed itself, and I got in, urged by my jailer, and found myself in a box furnished with cushions and a little oil lamp. I did not know at once how it was being conveyed, but soon thought it was by runner, for it was not the first time I had been carried in this way – the sign of a slave state, of a proud and ruthless governing class, wherever it is to be found.

  The Puttioran smelled bad: it was a cold greasy smell. I of course checked this thought, knowing that mine was not likely to be pleasant to him: smell has always been the hardest obstacle to overcome in the good relations between species: in that nothing has changed! As I wrote the words beginning the account of my entry into the city of tall dun-coloured cones – which, alas, I could see nothing of from inside the jogging box – I was called to a delegation from one of quite the most pleasant of our Colonized Planets, and with the best will in the world, I had to leave the audience chambers on an excuse, for the smell that emanated from the otherwise quite ordinary and normal individuals, equipped as usual with ‘two legs, two arms, a head, a nose, eyes and mouth’, as we say (but in this case it was a tail as well), was so appalling that I could not stand it.

  The distance was not great. We stepped down on to thick snow outside a building that streamed light through pillars and from windows. We were outside one of the villas of the western suburbs, and this was a festivity of some kind, for I could hear music, of a kind I was ready to suppose an entertainment, though to my ears it was a high wail not unlike the whine of the gale. The box we had been brought in seemed to lift itself, and jerked away into the white: I could just see projecting handles, and dimly, four ill-clad beasts, who I hoped were being kept warm by the thick head hair that fell to the shoulders, which they freed from deposits of snow by continually shaking their heads. They vanished with the box into the snowfall.

  I ascended wide steps beside the Puttioran, to a deep verandah that had many ornamented pillars, and braziers standing here and there. I was familiar with the affectation of governing classes anywhere for modes of their past, and knew that braziers were not the sum of their current technology for keeping themselves warm: the rooms at the top of the tower were heated by air that flowed in from ducts. Few individuals were on the verandahs because of the cold, but I saw they were in full festive dress by the fact that they were half naked.

  I did not know whether it was on account of Sirius or of Canopus that I should strive for a good impression, but removed the poor black cloth in which I was muffled, and draped it over my right forearm in a way that I had seen in a certain history of custom from our early Dark Age: this manner of arranging an outer garment had signified rank.

  I was being aided as I advanced through the graceful springing pillars by another historical comparison: a planet recently visited by me had preserved as a record of former times an area of villas similar to these, also set among vegetation – though of course I could see nothing of the gardens that I knew enclosed these suburbs.

  The verandah was separated from the very wide and large inner room, or rooms, by curtains of thick many-coloured materials. I stood quite still in the entrance, in order that I might be observed. What I was observing was not unexpected: there were about twenty individuals there, all scantily clad, and with the unmistakable air of a ruling or privileged class taking its ease. They sat about on cushions, or on light chairs. Low tables were heaped with every kind of food and fruit. Around the walls stood about a dozen servers, almost naked young females and males, holding jugs and ewers of intoxicant. The lights were not braziers, but some kind of gas burning in transparent globules from pillars and walls. The stone floors had handsome rugs.

  Their immobility was not because they were surprised at my arrival but because they had expected it and did not want to show – yet – whatever emotions or needs had led to my being summoned. For I could see that this was the case. There was no surprise shown by the Puttioran at my side. There were two others of this most unattractive species present, seated among the others, but not lolling or sprawled about – I was at once able to see that they were tolerated here, no more.

  ‘Klorathy’ – was there: Nasar, in this dim pearly light was so like Klorathy that for a moment I could not believe it was not he. But then he turned his head, and I knew at once his lateness in doing this was not because he had only just understood I had arrived but because he was ashamed. He had a studied and casual air, as he sat on a low square seat with his back to a pillar. He at least was not half naked.

  In every scene there is a focus … a centre … and Nasar was not that centre here. Nor were the Puttiorans. At an arm’s distance from Nasar, on a wide seat, which was not as low as the others, so that she looked down on her guests, sat a woman who dominated everything. She was exceedingly beautiful. She was more than that. I am certainly not talking of the aesthetic here, but of a sexual fascination, which was immediately and instantly evident, and which I had seen nothing to compare with for many years.

  Every breeding female has this quality, often briefly enough. But in certain conditions this sexual attraction can be concentrated and maintained by an effort of individual will, if the social circumstances permit. Of myself I can say that I am pale and blonde; but of her I can say only that she gleamed and shimmered. Her hair was of fine gold, elaborately dressed, with a mass of little waves and curls, and very fine plaits, like twisted gold wires, on either side of her broad, pearly, smiling face. Her eyes were grey blue and widely set under shining blonde brows. Her long white hands were displayed, unadorned, in her lap. White feet were in jewelled sandals.

  On her bare arms were heavy gold bracelets made of repeated and interlocked V’s, which very slightly compressed her flesh, in a calculated manner. Now these bracelets were of the exact pattern prescribed for previous practices set by Canopus, those that had been superseded by the ‘suggestions’ sent to me before I began this visit. I looked quickly around again and saw that nearly everyone there, male and female, wore bracelets, earrings, anklets, or an association of colours that were almost accurate, for in each place I observed them, a pattern on a hem, or a design on a skirt, they had, as it were, slipped out of true – and now I understood why Nasar could not easily meet my eyes. Though he was in fact now rather sullenly gazing across at me, not so much defiantly as in reckless sombreness.

  I understood a good deal as I stood there, smiling calmly. For one thing, what it was they wanted of me now: the three Puttiorans all wore the earrings of the current prescription – they and I wore them, not one of the others, and not Nasar. Who, of course, if he were being ruled by what had been prescribed, would not be wearing them at this occasion. Just as I should not, had I not been commanded and brought here in the way I had.

  I saw that the eyes of every individual there glittered at the armbands, the headband, the earrings I wore, and as I wondered why the Puttioran who had fetched me had not simply taken them, realized that of course he must be afraid, or that is exactly what he would have done.

  Still no one had moved, or made a sign of greeting. I took then a great chance, which made me quite cold, and inwardly confused for a moment: I stepped forward, with ‘Canopus greets you!’ and glanced at Nasar to see how he took this, as I gestured to a girl servant to bring forward a chair that stood by the wall. This was a chair similar to the one used by the beauty, who was, I had decided, hostess the
re: I seated myself on her level, at a short distance from her and from Nasar, and clapped my hands without looking to see if this was being obeyed – a custom taken from another recent visit of mine – and when a goblet was presented to me of some crystalline material, was careful not to let a drop of it touch my lips, while I pretended to sip.

  ‘I understood that you were from Sirius?’ remarked the fair one, clapping her hands as I had done, and accepting a fresh goblet – this was to put me at my ease? To encourage me to drink?

  This was the most dangerous moment of my meeting with these decadents. I could not afford to hestitate, and I smiled, merely, and with a rather amused little glance at Nasar, as to a fellow conspirator in a harmless joke: ‘If it has amused Nasar to say that I am, then why not?’ And I laughed. And did not look at him, but smoothed my skirt.

  He had now to challenge me. I knew that if he did, it would probably mean the loss of my life, let alone the ornaments they all coveted so much. I sat at ease, pretending to sip the intoxicant – pretty rough stuff, too, nothing tempting in it – and examining the scene quite frankly and with apparent enjoyment.

  I cannot begin to convey how it dismayed and disgusted me.

  The signs of a degenerate class are the same everywhere and always: I will not waste time in details. But I have seen them too often, and in too many places, and their perennial reappearance can only weary and dismay. The smiling ease, the cynical good nature that is so easily overturned when challenged and becomes a snarling threat; the carelessness that is the invariable mark of easy success; the softness of the flesh; the dependence on ease; the assumption of superiority over inevitable slaves or serfs or servants who, of course – everywhere and always – are their real and often evident masters … here it was again, again, again.

  I had wondered often enough if on Canopus, or in her Empire, this rule applied, but as I was actually thinking that Nasar’s presence here, subjugated and used, was an answer, he lifted his bronze eyes direct at mine and shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, fair Canopean.’

  And he turned away, with an air so defeated, so angry, that I did not know what to do. But knew, at least, that I had survived a very dangerous moment. It would have been piquant, to say the least, to end my life here, on this degraded planet, with these demoralized creatures.

  ‘Am I not to know the name of my hostess?’ I asked.

  ‘Your host is Nasar,’ she said, in a voice that I absolutely expected: it was lazy, rich, suggestive: her voice, just like her appearance, could make you think of one thing, one thing only, and even if you had never experienced it. For I had not! I had read of it all, certainly! – I had made a study of pathology. But it had so happened that my career in the Service had begun very young, and that while our Empire has suffered periods when I might very well have actually been at risk myself, I was always occupied well away from the Mother Planet.

  But sitting there in that gilded, amiable, pleasure-loving scene, which had over it a sort of silky dew as if it were drenched in ethereal honey, looking at the smiling glistening woman, it was not necessary to have experienced it! I understood it all, and only too well – because I was being affected as I sat there, trying to preserve a correct, if not an official, air. For one thing, I ought not to be wearing these artefacts, which were too powerful, even if they had been put out of exact use by the fact they were not in alignment with the other dispositions of the practice that had been disturbed by the interruption by the Puttioran. For another, it is of course not the case that to turn your back on an area of life is the same as to abolish it! Often enough, and even with Ambien I, I had understood very well what a seductive realm lay there, available, just for the effort of saying: Yes ! Of course I had known – been aware of – watched for – guarded – that door, or entrance, which watchfulness is in itself a way of signifying a disposition to enter into something. This was what I was seeing. And what I was understanding. Oh yes, the woman was magic! And as I thought that word, I understood that she was a daughter of old Adalantaland; I remembered this full smiling ease of the flesh, the glisten – but there and in that time it had a very different function. The wonderful females of that island had been in a correct alignment – or almost; of course I remembered how they had begun to slide away: yet one could sense their oneness with their surroundings. But this descendant of theirs had all the magnificence of the physical, but in addition a witchery that had slipped out of its place, had become sufficient to itself. As I looked at Nasar, tense and miserable there in his low seat, and then at her, I did not have to be told anything: I felt it. And I began to be afraid: it was a very easy door to open, just one little step, one little decision – and suddenly I found myself thinking of Klorathy as I had never done yet: I was amazed and appalled: it seemed as if there, beckoning me, was a smiling playful amorousness, which was certainly not what I was in search for – in wait for – when thinking of companionship with Klorathy … with Canopus. And this lighthearted amorousness was in itself an antechamber where I could very quickly indeed descend to something very different. What I saw there, in front of me now – nothing lighthearted about that! Nasar was gazing sombrely at the woman’s indolent lolling arm, and on his face was a look of such pain that … but she was saying again: ‘It is Nasar who is your host.’

  ‘I think not,’ I said smiling, as pleasantly as I could … and I heard rather than saw the Puttiorans mutter to each other – or rather vibrate together, a twanging sound added to the whining repetition of the music that was working on my nerves as much as the general atmosphere.

  ‘Her name is Elylé,’ said Nasar abruptly. ‘This is her house. And we are all her guests – aren’t we? – your guests or your captives?’ and he laughed, flinging back his head and pouring down the fiery intoxicant.

  ‘Her very willing captives,’ said a dark smiling lisping youth, who had about him every sign of the spoiled rich. He rose from heaps of cushions and sat by Elylé’s chair, and, grasping her hand with a rough painful movement, began planting kisses up and down the forearm. She hardly moved, did not look at him – but at Nasar, who had gone pale.

  ‘Nasar,’ said she, in her soft beguiling voice, ‘is not as willing a captive as you,’ and she looked at Nasar, with a laugh, challenging him – willing him. I saw there a truly dreadful struggle in him. He was being drawn forward by her seductiveness, her frank and open invitation, and at the same time he was fighting in himself to resist her. Everyone in the room watched the struggle. And what happened at last was that he gave a great gasp, leaned forward from his seat, lifted her white arm, and having gazed at it with a shudder that shook every part of him, kissed the hand, but negligently, and even clumsily – so did the conflict in him manifest itself. He sank back in his seat, staring in front of him, then took another great gulp from his goblet.

  He said harshly: ‘This desiccated bureaucrat of a Sirian is shocked by us.’

  There was an indrawn breath and from the Puttiorans a louder thrumming. I could not laugh this off.

  I said, ‘It is very clear that Nasar is not himself.’

  This was certainly obvious to everyone and saved me.

  The youth cringing at Elylé’s knees, his mouth on her forearm, now lifted his face to lisp: ‘We all want to know what that material is your dress is made of – fair Sirian!’ He felt his daring, for he glanced up at the woman to see how she would take it – she frowned and withdrew her arm.

  ‘My dress is made of Canopean crepe,’ I said.

  ‘That is certainly true,’ confirmed Nasar: he was breathing harshly, and his eyes seemed fixed on the beautiful woman and the youth who, snubbed, was literally grovelling on the floor, his curly head on her nearly bare feet. And I could see it was all he could do to stop himself doing the same.

  ‘Can I feel it?’ asked a girl sitting near me. She wore a blue glittering skirt, but her breasts were bare, except for a pattern of jewels over the nipples, Her black hair hung down to her waist, she was dark skinned, dark eyed, v
ery slight. There were no two individuals alike in this room: the genetic mix was very wide.

  She got up, and bent to finger my dress. It was cut full, but was sleeveless – not so dissimilar from their style as to be a comment on it, but the fabric was one I had not previously been familiar with myself, rather like a fluent and supple metal. Glistening white, impossible to crease, it flowed through the fingers as you attempted to fold or settle it, and if it had not been so ample I would have been embarrassed, because where it did touch the flesh, it showed its contours – in my case, as Nasar had said, certainly ‘desiccated’; and it was a measure of how the atmosphere of this rich perverse villa and its emotive music affected me that I was full of wild regret that this was so, and that I was not like Elylé, whose very presence fascinated and drew and stung.

  As this girl fingered my skirt, in a moment half a dozen others had crowded forward, handling first the stuff of the gown, and then their hands straying over my armlets and touching my head where the circlet gleamed. ‘What’s this material?’ they were murmuring, and asking each other, as if I were not there! As if I were some kind of a dummy on which these things were displayed … And then I felt the weight of the circlet lift from my hair and I was just in time to put my hand up to stop the thief slipping it off. I was being pressed down in my seat by the weight of thieving hands and fingers.

  Past a cluster of heads bent all around me I could see Elylé sitting in her chair, longing to come forward and handle me with the rest, but her pride forbade it. Nasar had turned his head sharply, and was staring too at the scene, and I could see that he was alarmed for me. And I certainly was in great danger.

  I stood up, and dislodged the greedy ones, so that they fell, and lay about on the floor laughing foolishly, drunk and helpless.

  ‘Perhaps you could take off your bracelets and your headband,’ said Elylé, ‘and let us see them. I for one would love to see them closely.’ As she said this the tones of that indolent voice struck into me, so that I felt them in my senses as a pang, a song.