BRAVE NEW WORLD
by Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
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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 ta!" It was only in Zuhat the Savage could
adequately express what he felt about the Arch-Community-Songster.
"Hᮩ!" he added as an after-thought; and then (with what derisive
ferocity!): "Sons 鳯 tse-nᮢ And he spat on the ground, as Pop頭ight
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 p, 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 "Hᮩ!" and even (it was lucky that
Bernard didn't understand Zu "Sons 鳯 tse-nᡢ 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."
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