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 Zuñi 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
pâté, 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 Zuñi)
"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 …"
The golden T lay shining on Lenina's bosom. Sportively, the
Arch-Community-Songster caught hold of it, sportively he pulled, pulled. "I
think," said Lenina suddenly, breaking a long silence, "I'd better take a
couple of grammes of soma."
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 resentful
(it would be pleasure to take some revenge on Helmholtz for his generosity).
At their first meeting 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,
Absence 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?
Well, I gave them that as an example, and they reported me to the
Principal."
"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 odious
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 …"
Helmholtz listened with a growing excitement. At "sole Arabian tree" he
started; at "thou shrieking harbinger" he smiled with sudden pleasure; at
"every fowl of tyrant wing" the blood rushed up into his cheeks; but at
"defunctive music" he turned pale and trembled with an unprecedented emotion.
The Savage read on:
"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 …"
"Orgy-porgy!" said Bernard, interrupting the reading with a loud,
unpleasant laugh. "It's just a Solidarity Service hymn." He was revenging
himself on his two friends for liking one another more than they liked him.
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 …"
when Juliet said this, Helmholtz broke out in an explosion of
uncontrollable guffawing.
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."
