Ben, in the World. Doris Lessing

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      He walked along a street – rather, his feet were taking him up this street, past theatres and eating places – and he was on the side he usually avoided, crossing over before he came to a certain forbidden pavement. This time he did not cross over. He stood outside the theatre which frightened him when it was noisy and full of people, and stood on an empty pavement looking across at a little street where there was a doorway. This was a forbidden place. It was morning, and the cars that worked from the cubbyhole in the wall that called itself Super Universal Cabs were not there yet. They came in from early afternoon onwards. The man who organised these cabs, standing outside his cubbyhole, saying, ‘Take them to Camberwell… Swiss Cottage… Notting Hill… ’ was not there. This man was what Ben feared. It was he who had said, ‘Fuck off and don’t come back.’ His name was Johnston and he was Rita’s friend.

      Some weeks ago, before Mrs Biggs had found him in the supermarket, he had been walking up this pavement, as usual alert for trouble, when he saw a woman in that doorway – that one, next to Super Universal Cabs. She had smiled at him. He followed the smile, went up narrow stairs behind her, and found himself in a room that he knew was poor and ugly, because he was contrasting it with what he remembered of his home, when he still had one, with his mother. The woman, though she was really a girl, for her make-up and big bruised-looking eyes made her look older, stood facing him, her hand on her belt, ready to take it off. She said, ‘How long?’

      Ben had no idea what she meant, but stood with his teeth bared – this was his scared grin, not the friendly one – and did not reply.

      ‘Ten pounds for a blow job, forty for the whole hog.’

      ‘I don’t have any money,’ said Ben.

      She came over, and put her hands down into his pockets, one on either side, more out of exasperation because of the preposterousness of this customer, than expectation, and at this Ben’s sexual nature, which he kept down, like all his other impermissible hungers, leaped up, and he gripped her by her shoulders, turned her around and, holding her fast, bent her so that she had to put her hands on the bed for support. He tugged up her skirt with one hand, pulled down her knickers, and took her from behind, short, sharp and violent. He had his teeth in her neck, and as he came he let out a grunting bark, like nothing she had ever heard before. He let her go, and she straightened up, flinging her pale hair off her face and stood looking at his face, then down at his thighs, the hairy thighs. She was not exactly unfamiliar with such hairiness – she had jested with Johnston that some of the men that came to her were like chimpanzees – but it was as if she were trying to find out from those strong furry legs just why this customer was so different. That query, that inspection, not hostile, had something in it that made him again grasp her, bend her over and begin again. He was starved for sex, had been hungry for it a long time, and just as if he had not so recently finished his first bout, his teeth went into her neck and she heard the triumphant grunting bark.

      ‘Just a minute,’ she said. ‘Just wait a minute.’

      She pushed him so that he sat on the bed, and she sat on a chair opposite him. She needed time. This experience – a rape, that was what it amounted to – ought to be making her feel angry, and full of the contempt that she usually felt for her customers, but she had been thrilled by that double rape, the great powerful hands gripping her shoulders, the teeth in her neck, and, above all, the grunt like a roar. She was sitting feeling where his teeth had bitten, but could not find an abrasion. She took out a tiny mirror from her bag, and craned her neck to see – no, the skin was not broken, but it was bruised, and there would be questions from Johnston.

      What Ben wanted was to lie on that narrow bed, beside her, and go to sleep. He was thinking hard. When he was the leader of the gang of boys, the bad boys that everyone was afraid of, there had been girls, and one liked him. She had tried to change him saying, ‘But Ben, let’s try it this way, turn round, it’s not nice what you do, it’s like animals.’ And he had indeed tried, but could not do what she wanted, for when he was face to face with her the raging angry need to possess and dominate was silent. It came to this – that if they were to do it, then it had to be his way, and soon she resented and even hated him for it. After some attempts she would СКАЧАТЬ