DORIS LESSING
From
Ben, in the World
"How
OLD ARE
you?"
"Eighteen. "
This reply did not come at once because Ben was afraid of what he
knew was going to happen now, which was that the young man behind
the glass protecting him from the public set down his pen on the form
he was filling in, and then, with a look on his face that Ben knew only
too well, inspected his client. He was allowing himself amusement that
was impatient, but it was not quite derision. He was seeing a short,
stout, or at least heavily built man-he was wearing a jacket too big for
him- who must be at least forty. And that face!
It
was a broad face,
with strongly delineated features, a mouth stretched in a grin-what did
he think was so bloody funny?-a broad nose with flaring nostrils, eyes
that were greenish, with sandy lashes, under bristly sandy brows. He
had a short neat pointed beard that didn't fit with the face. His hair was
yellow and seemed-like his grin-to shock and annoy, long, and falling
forward in a slope, and in stiff locks on either side, as if trying to cari–
cature a fashionable cut. To cap it all, he was using a posh voice; was
he taking the mickey? The clerk was going in for this minute inspection
because he was discommoded by Ben to the point of feeling angry. He
sounded peevish when he said, "You can't be eighteen. Come on, what's
your real age?"
Ben was silent. He was on the alert, every little bit of him, knowing
there was danger. He wished he had not come to this place, which could
close its walls around him. He was listening to the noises from outside,
for reassurance from his normality. Some pigeons were conversing in a
plane tree on the pavement, and he was with them, thinking how they
sat gripping twigs with pink claws that he could feel tightening around
his own finger; they were contented, with the sun on their backs. Inside
here, were sounds that he could not understand until he had isolated
Editor's Note:
From
the book
Ben, in the World
by Doris Lessing, to be
published in August by HarperCollins Publishers Inc. Copyright
©
2000
by
Doris Lessing.
