They don’t change when they grow up either. I decided that years ago. I’m not certain rather we change, but it does seem that from the start there is always an us and a them. The gentle and the vicious – with the vicious always disguised as promisingly congenial children and the gentle as antisocial. (Then there are those caught in between. And nothing seems to explain that.) The lords of the flies are popular at school and don’t bring blood home to be seen by parents, who occasionally even join in the game. “So and so. Is he the geek?” asks a parent to such a child.
The Peter’s grow up and pretend to change, selective memory – even believe that they have changed – self deception, and anyone would think it silly to suppose that they hadn’t. The parent’s – the Great Parent, Great Tit, Society – never saw anything to change. Always, “Such a strong, lovely child. So promising. He’ll fit in wonderfully.” And he does. And he still kills the little brother if he can get away with it. His whole life is like Peter Keatings – persons as means rather than ends. He steps on whoever is necessary. And when it all comes crashing down – this world built by incompetents so progressively narcissistic that they won’t be able to run what they’ve built, he’ll eat us. The barely useful distinctions between friend and foe, family and stranger, will be levelled and he’ll kill anyone he neads to for their bag of wonder bread, for enough wonder bread to feel secure. But it will never be enough. He will be a barbarian and think himself the meaning of society – the point of civilization. He will be more vicious than death and think himself the embodiment of love. And if previous events are a guide – those who are not eaten, or who eat him will beleive it and he will be a monument to their next world.
I, meanwhile, am a siamese mind – a war between two brothers – Ender and Peter, Roark and Keating, Able and Cain.
I wish I’d had a sister like Valentine. I don’t see how she could have survived in my home, but then I suspect that a Valentine is much stronger than I. Still, I wouldn’t have liked her to be put through it.
May 1997
