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[Chapters] [Sociology] |
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Chapter Twelve
BERNARD had to shout through the locked door; the Savage would not open.
"But everybody's there, waiting for you."
"Let them wait," came back the muffled voice through the door.
"But you know quite well, John" (how difficult it is to sound
persuasive at the top of one's voice!) "I asked them on purpose to
meet you."
"You ought to have asked me first whether I wanted to meet them."
"But you always came before, John."
"That's precisely why I don't want to come again."
"Just to please me," Bernard bellowingly wheedled. "Won't
you come to please me?"
"No."
"Do you seriously mean it?"
"Yes."
Despairingly, "But what shall I do?" Bernard wailed.
"Go to hell!" bawled the exasperated voice from within.
"But the Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury is there to-night."
Bernard was almost in tears.
"Ai yaa tákwa!" It was only in Zuņi that the
Savage could adequately express what he felt about the Arch-Community-Songster.
"Háni!" he added as an after-thought; and then
(with what derisive ferocity!): "Sons éso tse-ná."
And he spat on the ground, as Popé might have done.
In the end Bernard had to slink back, diminished, to his rooms and inform
the impatient assembly that the Savage would not be appearing that evening.
The news was received with indignation. The men were furious at having
been tricked into behaving politely to this insignificant fellow with
the unsavoury reputation and the heretical opinions. The higher their
position in the hierarchy, the deeper their resentment.
"To play such a joke on me," the Arch-Songster kept repeating,
"on me!"
As for the women, they indignantly felt that they had been had on false
pretences--had by a wretched little man who had had alcohol poured into
his bottle by mistake--by a creature with a Gamma-Minus physique. It was
an outrage, and they said so, more and more loudly. The Head Mistress
of Eton was particularly scathing.
Lenina alone said nothing. Pale, her blue eyes clouded with an unwonted
melancholy, she sat in a corner, cut off from those who surrounded her
by an emotion which they did not share. She had come to the party filled
with a strange feeling of anxious exultation. "In a few minutes,"
she had said to herself, as she entered the room, "I shall be seeing
him, talking to him, telling him" (for she had come with her mind
made up) "that I like him--more than anybody I've ever known. And
then perhaps he'll say . . ."
What would he say? The blood had rushed to her cheeks.
"Why was he so strange the other night, after the feelies? So queer.
And yet I'm absolutely sure he really does rather like me. I'm sure .
. ."
It was at this moment that Bernard had made his announcement; the Savage
wasn't coming to the party.
Lenina suddenly felt all the sensations normally experienced at the
beginning of a Violent Passion Surrogate treatment--a sense of dreadful
emptiness, a breathless apprehension, a nausea. Her heart seemed to stop
beating.
"Perhaps it's because he doesn't like me," she said to herself.
And at once this possibility became an established certainty: John had
refused to come because he didn't like her. He didn't like her. . . .
"It really is a bit too thick," the Head Mistress of Eton
was saying to the Director of Crematoria and Phosphorus Reclamation. "When
I think that I actually . . ."
"Yes," came the voice of Fanny Crowne, "it's absolutely
true about the alcohol. Some one I know knew some one who was working
in the Embryo Store at the time. She said to my friend, and my friend
said to me . . ."
"Too bad, too bad," said Henry Foster, sympathizing with the
Arch-Community-Songster. "It may interest you to know that our ex-Director
was on the point of transferring him to Iceland."
Pierced by every word that was spoken, the tight balloon of Bernard's
happy self-confidence was leaking from a thousand wounds. Pale, distraught,
abject and agitated, he moved among his guests, stammering incoherent
apologies, assuring them that next time the Savage would certainly be
there, begging them to sit down and take a carotene sandwich, a slice
of Vitamin A pate, a glass
of champagne-surrogate. They duly ate, but ignored him; drank and were
either rude to his face or talked to one another about him, loudly and
offensively, as though he had not been there.
"And now, my friends," said the Arch-Community-Songster of
Canterbury, in that beautiful ringing voice with which he led the proceedings
at Ford's Day Celebrations, "Now, my friends, I think perhaps the
time has come . . ." He rose, put down his glass, brushed from his
purple viscose waistcoat the crumbs of a considerable collation, and walked
towards the door.
Bernard darted forward to intercept him.
"Must you really, Arch-Songster? . . . It's very early still. I'd
hoped you would . . ."
Yes, what hadn't he hoped, when Lenina confidentially told him that
the Arch-Community-Songster would accept an invitation if it were sent.
"He's really rather sweet, you know." And she had shown Bernard
the little golden zipper-fastening in the form of a T which the Arch-Songster
had given her as a memento of the week-end she had spent at Lambeth. To
meet the Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury and Mr. Savage. Bernard
had proclaimed his triumph on every invitation card. But the Savage had
chosen this evening of all evenings to lock himself up in his room, to
shout "Háni!"
and even (it was lucky that Bernard didn't understand Zuņi) "Sons
éso tse-ná!"
What should have been the crowning moment of Bernard's whole career had
turned out to be the moment of his greatest humiliation.
"I'd so much hoped . . ." he stammeringly repeated, looking
up at the great dignitary with pleading and distracted eyes.
"My young friend," said the Arch-Community-Songster in a tone
of loud and solemn severity; there was a general silence. "Let me
give you a word of advice." He wagged his finger at Bernard. "Before
it's too late. A word of good advice." (His voice became sepulchral.)
"Mend your ways, my young friend, mend your ways." He made the
sign of the T over him and turned away. "Lenina, my dear," he
called in another tone. "Come with me."
Obediently, but unsmiling and (wholly insensible of the honour done
to her) without elation, Lenina walked after him, out of the room. The
other guests followed at a respectful interval. The last of them slammed
the door. Bernard was all alone.
Punctured, utterly deflated, he dropped into a chair and, covering his
face with his hands, began to weep. A few minutes later, however, he thought
better of it and took four tablets of soma.
Upstairs in his room the Savage was reading Romeo
and Juliet.
Lenina and the Arch-Community-Songster stepped out on to the roof of
Lambeth Palace. "Hurry up, my young friend--I mean, Lenina,"
called the Arch-Songster impatiently from the lift gates. Lenina, who
had lingered for a moment to look at the moon, dropped her eyes and came
hurrying across the roof to rejoin him.
"A New Theory of Biology" was the title of the paper which
Mustapha Mond had just finished reading. He sat for some time, meditatively
frowning, then picked up his pen and wrote across the title-page: "The
author's mathematical treatment of the conception of purpose is novel
and highly ingenious, but heretical and, so far as the present social
order is concerned, dangerous and potentially subversive. Not
to be published." He underlined the words. "The author
will be kept under
supervision. His transference to the Marine Biological Station of
St. Helena may become necessary." A pity, he thought, as he signed
his name. It was a masterly piece of work. But once you began admitting
explanations in terms of purpose--well, you didn't know what the result
might be. It was the sort of idea that might easily decondition the more
unsettled minds among the higher castes--make them lose their faith in
happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the
goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere,
that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some
intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge.
Which was, the Controller reflected, quite possibly true. But not, in
the present circumstance, admissible. He picked up his pen again, and
under the words "Not to be published" drew a second line, thicker
and blacker than the first; then sighed, "What fun it would be,"
he thought, "if one didn't have to think about happiness!"
With closed eyes, his face shining with rapture, John was softly declaiming
to vacancy:
"Oh! she doth teach the torches to burn bright.
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night,
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear . . ."
Bernard, by this time, was fast asleep and smiling at the private paradise
of his dreams. Smiling, smiling. But inexorably, every thirty seconds,
the minute hand of the electric clock above his bed jumped forward with
an almost imperceptible click. Click, click, click, click . . . And it
was morning. Bernard was back among the miseries of space and time. It
was in the lowest spirits that he taxied across to his work at the Conditioning
Centre. The intoxication of success had evaporated; he was soberly his
old self; and by contrast with the temporary balloon of these last weeks,
the old self seemed unprecedentedly heavier than the surrounding atmosphere.
To this deflated Bernard the Savage showed himself unexpectedly sympathetic.
"You're more like what you were at Malpais," he said, when
Bernard had told him his plaintive story. "Do you remember when we
first talked together? Outside the little house. You're like what you
were then."
"Because I'm unhappy again; that's why."
"Well, I'd rather be unhappy than have the sort of false, lying
happiness you were having here."
"I like that," said Bernard bitterly. "When it's you
who were the cause of it all. Refusing to come to my party and so turning
them all against me!" He knew that what he was saying was absurd
in its injustice; he admitted inwardly, and at last even aloud, the truth
of all that the Savage now said about the worthlessness of friends who
could be turned upon so slight a provocation into persecuting enemies.
But in spite of this knowledge and these admissions, in spite of the fact
that his friend's support and sympathy were now his only comfort, Bernard
continued perversely to nourish, along with his quite genuine affection,
a secret grievance against the Savage, to mediate a campaign of small
revenges to be wreaked upon him. Nourishing a grievance against the Arch-Community-Songster
was useless; there was no possibility of being revenged on the Chief Bottler
or the Assistant Predestinator. As a victim, the Savage possessed, for
Bernard, this enormous superiority over the others: that he was accessible.
One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and
symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to
inflict upon our enemies.
Bernard's other victim-friend was Helmholtz. When, discomfited, he came
and asked once more for the friendship which, in his prosperity, he had
not thought it worth his while to preserve. Helmholtz gave it; and gave
it without a reproach, without a comment, as though he had forgotten that
there had ever been a quarrel. Touched, Bernard felt himself at the same
time humiliated by this magnanimity--a magnanimity the more extraordinary
and therefore the more humiliating in that it owed nothing to soma
and everything to Helmholtz's character. It was the Helmholtz of daily
life who forgot and forgave, not the Helmholtz of a half-gramme holiday.
Bernard was duly grateful (it was an enormous comfort to have his friend
again) and also duly reseritful (it would be pleasure to take some revenge
on Helmholtz for his generosity).
At their first meeing after the estrangement, Bernard poured out the
tale of his miseries and accepted consolation. It was not till some days
later that he learned, to his surprise and with a twinge of shame, that
he was not the only one who had been in trouble. Helmholtz had also come
into conflict
with Authority.
"It was over some rhymes," he explained. "I was giving
my usual course of Advanced Emotional Engineering for Third Year Students.
Twelve lectures, of which the seventh is about rhymes. 'On the Use of
Rhymes in Moral Propaganda and Advertisement,' to be precise. I always
illustrate my lecture with a lot of technical examples. This time I thought
I'd give them one I'd just written myself. Pure madness, of course; but
I couldn't resist it." He laughed. "I was curious to see what
their reactions would be. Besides," he added more gravely, "I
wanted to do a bit of propaganda; I was trying to engineer them into feeling
as I'd felt when I wrote the rhymes. Ford!" He laughed again. "What
an outcry there was! The Principal had me up and threatened to hand me
the immediate sack. l'm a marked man."
"But what were your rhymes?" Bernard asked.
"They were about being alone."
Bernard's eyebrows went up.
"I'll recite them to you, if you like." And Helmholtz began:
"Yesterday's committee,
Sticks, but a broken drum,
Midnight in the City,
Flutes in a vacuum,
Shut lips, sleeping faces,
Every stopped machine,
The dumb and littered places
Where crowds have been: . . .
All silences rejoice,
Weep (loudly or low),
Speak--but with the voice
Of whom, I do not know.
Absence, say, of Susan's,
Absenee of Egeria's
Arms and respective bosoms,
Lips and, ah, posteriors,
Slowly form a presence;
Whose? and, I ask, of what
So absurd an essence,
That something, which is not,
Nevertheless should populate
Empty night more solidly
Than that with which we copulate,
Why should it seem so squalidly?”
"I'm not surprised," said Bernard. "It's flatly against
all their sleep-teaching. Remember, they've had at least a quarter of
a million warnings against solitude."
"I know. But I thought I'd like to see what the effect would be."
"Well, you've seen now."
Helmholtz only laughed. "I feel," he said, after a silence,
as though I were just beginning to have something to write about. As though
I were beginning to be able to use that power I feel I've got inside me--that
extra, latent power. Something seems to be coming to me." In spite
of all his troubles, he seemed, Bernard thought, profoundly happy.
Helmholtz and the Savage took to one another at once. So cordially indeed
that Bernard felt a sharp pang of jealousy. In all these weeks he had
never come to so close an intimacy with the Savage as Helmholtz immediately
achieved. Watching them, listening to their talk, he found himself sometimes
resentfully wishing that he had never brought them together. He was ashamed
of his jealousy and alternately made efforts of will and took soma
to keep himself from feeling it. But the efforts were not very successful;
and between the soma-holidays there were, of necessity, intervals.
The odius sentiment kept on returning.
At his third meeting with the Savage, Helmholtz recited his rhymes on
Solitude.
"What do you think of them?" he asked when he had done.
The Savage shook his head. "Listen to this," was his answer;
and unlocking the drawer in which he kept his mouse-eaten book, he opened
and read:
"Let the bird of loudest lay
On the sole Arabian tree,
Herald sad and trumpet be . . ."
"Property was thus appall'd,
That the self was not the same;
Single nature's double name
Neither two nor one was call'd
Reason in itself confounded
Saw division grow together . . ."
In the course of their next two or three meetings he frequently repeated
this little act of vengeance. It was simple and, since both Helmholtz
and the Savage were dreadfully pained by the shattering and defilement
of a favourite poetic crystal, extremely effective. In the end, Helmholtz
threatened to kick him out of the room if he dared to interrupt again.
And yet, strangely enough, the next interruption, the most disgraceful
of all, came from Helmholtz himself.
The Savage was reading Romeo and Juliet aloud--reading (for
all the time he was seeing himself as Romeo and Lenina as Juliet) with
an intense and quivering passion. Helmholtz had listened to the scene
of the lovers' first meeting with a puzzled interest. The scene in the
orchard had delighted him with its poetry; but the sentiments expressed
had made him smile. Getting into such a state about having a girl--it
seemed rather ridiculous. But, taken detail by verbal detail, what a superb
piece of emotional engineering! "That old fellow," he said,
"he makes our best propaganda technicians look absolutely silly."
The Savage smiled triumphantly and resumed his reading. All went tolerably
well until, in the last scene of the third act, Capulet and Lady Capulet
began to bully Juliet to marry Paris. Helmholtz had been restless throughout
the entire scene; but when, pathetically mimed by the Savage, Juliet cried
out:
"Is there no pity sitting in the clouds,
That sees into the bottom of my grief?
O sweet my mother, cast me not away:
Delay this marriage for a month, a week;
Or, if you do not, make the bridal bed
In that dim monument where Tybalt lies . . ."
The mother and father (grotesque obscenity) forcing the daughter to
have some one she didn't want! And the idiotic girl not saying that she
was having some one else whom (for the moment, at any rate) she preferred!
In its smutty absurdity the situation was irresistibly comical. He had
managed, with a heroic effort, to hold down the mounting pressure of his
hilarity; but "sweet mother" (in the Savage's tremulous tone
of anguish) and the reference to Tybalt lying dead, but evidently uncremated
and wasting his phosphorus on a dim monument, were too much for him. He
laughed and laughed till the tears streamed down his face--quenchlessly
laughed while, pale with a sense of outrage, the Savage looked at him
over the top of his book and then, as the laughter still continued, closed
it indignantly, got up and, with the gesture of one who removes his pearl
from before swine, locked it away in its drawer.
"And yet," said Helmholtz when, having recovered breath enough
to apologize, he had mollified the Savage into listening to his explanations,
"I know quite well that one needs ridiculous, mad situations like
that; one can't write really well about anything else. Why was that old
fellow such a marvellous propaganda technician? Because he had so many
insane, excruciating things to get excited about. You've got to be hurt
and upset; otherwise you can't think of the really good, penetrating,
X-rayish phrases. But fathers and mothers!" He shook his head. "You
can't expect me to keep a straight face about fathers and mothers. And
who's going to get excited about a boy having a girl or not having her?"
(The Savage winced; but Helmholtz, who was staring pensively at the floor,
saw nothing.) "No." he concluded, with a sigh, "it won't
do. We need some other kind of madness and violence. But what? What? Where
can one find it?" He was silent; then, shaking his head, "I
don't know," he said at last, "I don't know."
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