Author: Aldous Huxley
Category: Literature
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The President made another sign of the T and sat down. The service had begun. The dedicated soma tablets were placed in the centre of the dinner table. The loving cup of strawberry ice-cream soma was passed from hand to hand and, with the formula, ‘I drink to my annihilation,’ twelve times quaffed. Then to the accompaniment of the synthetic orchestra the First Solidarity Hymn was sung.
Ford, we are twelve; oh, make us one,
Like drops within the Social River;
Oh, make us now together run
As swiftly as thy shining Flivver.
Twelve yearning stanzas. And then the loving cup was passed a second time. ‘I drink to the Greater Being’ was now the formula. All drank. Tirelessly the music played. The drums beat. The crying and clashing of the harmonies were an obsession in the melted bowels. The Second Solidarity Hymn was sung.
Come, Greater Being, Social Friend,
Annihilating Twelve-in-One!
We long to die, for when we end,
Our larger life has but begun.
Again twelve stanzas. By this time the soma had begun to work. Eyes shone, cheeks were flushed, the inner light of universal benevolence broke out on every face in happy, friendly smiles. Even Bernard felt himself a little melted. When Morgana Rothschild turned and beamed at him, he did his best to beam back. But the eyebrow, that black two-in-one — alas, it was still there; he couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t, however hard he tried. The melting hadn’t gone far enough. Perhaps if he had been sitting between Fifi and Joanna . . . For the third time the loving cup went round. ‘I drink to the imminence of His Coming,’ said Morgana Rothschild, whose turn it happened to be to initiate the circular rite. Her tone was loud, exultant. She drank and passed the cup to Bernard. ‘I drink to the imminence of His Coming,’ he repeated, with a sincere attempt to feel that the coming was imminent; but the eyebrow continued to haunt him, and the Coming, so far as he was concerned, was horribly remote. He drank and handed the cup to Clara Deterding. ‘It’ll be a failure again,’ he said to himself. ‘I know it will.’ But he went on doing his best to beam.
The loving cup had made its circuit. Lifting his hand, the President gave a signal; the chorus broke out into the third Solidarity Hymn.
Feel how the Greater Being comes!
Rejoice and, in rejoicings, die!
Melt in the music of the drums!
For I am you and you are I.
As verse succeeded verse the voices thrilled with an ever intenser excitement. The sense of the Coming’s imminence was like an electric tension in the air. The President switched off the music and, with the final note of the final stanza, there was absolute silence — the silence of stretched expectancy, quivering and creeping with a galvanic life. The President reached out his hand; and suddenly a Voice, a deep strong Voice, more musical than any merely human voice, richer, warmer, more vibrant with love and yearning and compassion, a wonderful, mysterious, supernatural Voice spoke from above their heads. Very slowly, ‘Oh, Ford, Ford, Ford,’ it said diminishingly and on a descending scale. A sensation of warmth radiated thrillingly out from the solar plexus to every extremity of the bodies of those who listened; tears came into their eyes; their hearts, their bowels seemed to move within them, as though with an independent life. ‘Ford!’ they were melting, ‘Ford!’ dissolved, dissolved. Then, in another tone, suddenly, startlingly. ‘Listen!’ trumpeted the Voice. ‘Listen!’ They listened. After a pause, sunk to a whisper, but a whisper, somehow, more penetrating than the loudest cry. ‘The feet of the Greater Being,’ it went on, and repeated the words: ‘The feet of the Greater Being.’ The whisper almost expired. ‘The feet of the Greater Being are on the stairs.’ And once more there was silence; and the expectancy, momentarily relaxed, was stretched again, tauter, tauter, almost to the tearing point. The feet of the Greater Being — oh, they heard them, they heard them, coming softly down the stairs, coming nearer and nearer down the invisible stairs. The feet of the Greater Being. And suddenly the tearing point was reached. Her eyes staring, her lips parted, Morgana Rothschild sprang to her feet.
‘I hear him,’ she cried. ‘I hear him.’
‘He’s coming,’ shouted Sarojini Engels.
‘Yes, he’s coming, I hear him.’ Fifi Bradlaugh and Tom Kawaguchi rose simultaneously to their feet.
‘Oh, oh, oh!’ Joanna inarticulately testified.
‘He’s coming!’ yelled Jim Bokanovsky.
The President leaned forward and, with a touch, released a delirium of cymbals and blown brass, a fever of tom-tomming.
‘Oh, he’s coming!’ screamed Clara Deterding. ‘Aie!’ and it was as though she were having her throat cut.
Feeling that it was time for him to do something, Bernard also jumped up and shouted: ‘I hear him; he’s coming.’ But it wasn’t true. He heard nothing and, for him, nobody was coming. Nobody — in spite of the music, in spite of the mounting excitement. But he waved his arms, he shouted with the best of them; and when the others began to jig and stamp and shuffle, he also jigged and shuffled.
Round they went, a circular procession of dancers, each with hands on the hips of the dancer preceding, round and round, shouting in unison, stamping to the rhythm of the music with their feet, beating it, beating it out with hands on the buttocks in front; twelve pairs of hands beating as one; as one, twelve buttocks slabbily resounding. Twelve as one, twelve as one. ‘I hear him, I hear him coming.’ The music quickened; faster beat the feet, faster, faster fell the rhythmic hands. And all at once a great synthetic bass boomed out the words which announced the approaching atonement and final consummation of solidarity, the coming of the Twelve-in-One, the incarnation of the Greater Being. ‘Orgy-porgy,’ it sang, while the tom-toms continued to beat their feverish tattoo:
Orgy-porgy, Ford and fun,
Kiss the girls and make them One.
Boys at one with girls at peace;
Orgy-porgy gives release.
‘Orgy-porgy,’ the dancers caught up the liturgical refrain, ‘Orgy-porgy, Ford and fun, kiss the girls . . .’ And as they sang, the lights began slowly to fade — to fade and at the same time to grow warmer, richer, redder, until at last they were dancing in the crimson twilight of an Embryo Store. ‘Orgy-Porgy . . .’ In their blood-coloured and fœtal darkness the dancers continued for a while to circulate, to beat and beat out the indefatigable rhythm. ‘Orgy-porgy . . .’ Then the circle wavered, broke, fell in partial disintegration on the ring of couches which surrounded — circle enclosing circle — the table and its planetary chairs. ‘Orgy-porgy . . .’ Tenderly the deep Voice crooned and cooed; in the red twilight it was as though some enormous negro dove were hovering benevolently over the now prone or supine dancers.
They were standing on the roof; Big Henry had just sung eleven. The night was calm and warm.
‘Wasn’t it wonderful?’ said Fifi Bradlaugh. ‘Wasn’t it simply wonderful?’ She looked at Bernard with an expression of rapture, but of rapture in which there was no trace of agitation or excitement — for to be excited is still to be unsatisfied. Hers was the calm ecstasy of achieved consummation, the peace, not of mere vacant satiety and nothingness, but of balanced life, of energies at rest and in equilibrium. A rich and living peace. For the Solidarity Service had given as well as taken, drawn off only to replenish. She was full, she was made perfect, she was still more than merely herself. ‘Didn’t you think it was wonderful?’ she insisted, looking into Bernard’s face with those supernaturally shining eyes.
‘Yes, I thought it was wonderful,’ he lied and looked away; the sight of her transfigured face was at once an accusation and an ironical reminder of his own separateness. He was as miserably isolated now as he had been when the service began — more isolated by reason of his unreplenished emptiness, his dead satiety. Separate and unatoned, while the others were being fused into the Greater Being; alone even in Morgana’s embrace — much more alone, indeed, more hopelessly himself than he had ever been in his life before. He had emerged from that c
rimson twilight into the common electric glare with a self-consciousness intensified to the pitch of agony. He was utterly miserable, and perhaps (her shining eyes accused him), perhaps it was his own fault. ‘Quite wonderful,’ he repeated; but the only thing he could think of was Morgana’s eyebrow.
Chapter VI
§ 1
ODD, ODD, ODD, was Lenina’s verdict on Bernard Marx. So odd, indeed, that in the course of the succeeding weeks she had wondered more than once whether she shouldn’t change her mind about the New Mexico holiday, and go instead to the North Pole with Benito Hoover. The trouble was that she knew the North Pole, had been there with George Edzel only last summer, and what was more, found it pretty grim. Nothing to do, and the hotel too hopelessly old-fashioned — no television laid on in the bedrooms, no scent organ, only the most putrid synthetic music, and not more than twenty-five Escalator-Squash Courts for over two hundred guests. No, decidedly she couldn’t face the North Pole again. Added to which, she had only been to America once before. And even then, how inadequately! A cheap week-end in New York — had it been with Jean-Jacques Habibullah or Bokanovsky Jones? She couldn’t remember. Anyhow, it was of absolutely no importance. The prospect of flying West again, and for a whole week, was very inviting. Moreover, for at least three days of that week they would be in the Savage Reservation. Not more than half a dozen people in the whole Centre had ever been inside a Savage Reservation. As an Alpha-Plus psychologist, Bernard was one of the few men she knew entitled to a permit. For Lenina, the opportunity was unique. And yet, so unique also was Bernard’s oddness, that she had hesitated to take it, had actually thought of risking the Pole again with funny old Benito. At least Benito was normal. Whereas Bernard . . .
‘Alcohol in his blood-surrogate,’ was Fanny’s explanation of every eccentricity. But Henry, with whom, one evening when they were in bed together, Lenina had rather anxiously discussed her new lover, Henry had compared poor Bernard to a rhinoceros.
‘You can’t teach a rhinoceros tricks,’ he had explained in his brief and vigorous style. ‘Some men are almost rhinoceroses; they don’t respond properly to conditioning. Poor devils! Bernard’s one of them. Luckily for him, he’s pretty good at his job. Otherwise the Director would never have kept him. ‘However,’ he added consolingly, ‘I think he’s pretty harmless.’
Pretty harmless, perhaps; but also pretty disquieting. That mania, to start with, for doing things in private. Which meant, in practice, not doing anything at all. For what was there that one could do in private. (Apart, of course, from going to bed: but one couldn’t do that all the time.) Yes, what was there? Precious little. The first afternoon they went out together was particularly fine. Lenina had suggested a swim at the Torquay Country Club followed by dinner at the Oxford Union. But Bernard thought there would be too much of a crowd. Then what about a round of Electro-magnetic Golf at St. Andrews? But again, no: Bernard considered that Electro-magnetic Golf was a waste of time.
‘Then what’s time for?’ asked Lenina in some astonishment.
Apparently, for going walks in the Lake District; for that was what he now proposed. Land on the top of Skiddaw and walk for a couple of hours in the heather. ‘Alone with you, Lenina.’
‘But, Bernard, we shall be alone all night.’
Bernard blushed and looked away. ‘I meant, alone for talking,’ he mumbled.
‘Talking? But what about?’ Walking and talking — that seemed a very odd way of spending an afternoon.
In the end she persuaded him, much against his will, to fly over to Amsterdam to see the Semi-Demi-Finals of the Women’s Heavyweight Wrestling Championship.
‘In a crowd,’ he grumbled. ‘As usual.’ He remained obstinately gloomy the whole afternoon; wouldn’t talk to Lenina’s friends (of whom they met dozens in the ice-cream soma bar between the wrestling bouts); and in spite of his misery absolutely refused to take the half-gramme raspberry sundae which she pressed upon him. ‘I’d rather be myself,’ he said. ‘Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.’
‘A gramme in time saves nine,’ said Lenina, producing a bright treasure of sleep-taught wisdom.
Bernard pushed away the proffered glass impatiently.
‘Now don’t lose your temper,’ she said. ‘Remember, one cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments.’
‘Oh, for Ford’s sake, be quiet!’ he shouted.
Lenina shrugged her shoulders. ‘A gramme is always better than a damn,’ she concluded with dignity, and drank the sundae herself.
On their way back across the Channel, Bernard insisted on stopping his propeller and hovering on his helicopter screws within a hundred feet of the waves. The weather had taken a change for the worse; a south-westerly wind had sprung up, the sky was cloudy.
‘Look,’ he commanded.
‘But it’s horrible,’ said Lenina, shrinking back from the window. She was appalled by the rushing emptiness of the night, by the black foam-flecked water heaving beneath them, by the pale face of the moon, so haggard and distracted among the hastening clouds. ‘Let’s turn on the radio. Quick!’ She reached for the dialling knob on the dash-board and turned it at random.
‘. . . skies are blue inside of you,’ sang sixteen tremoloing falsettos, ‘the weather’s always . . .’
Then a hiccough and silence. Bernard had switched off the current.
‘I want to look at the sea in peace,’ he said. ‘One can’t even look with that beastly noise going on.’
‘But it’s lovely. And I don’t want to look.’
‘But I do,’ he insisted. ‘It makes me feel as though . . .’ he hesitated, searching for words with which to express himself, ‘as though I were more me, if you see what I mean. More on my own, not so completely a part of something else. Not just a cell in the social body. Doesn’t it make you feel like that, Lenina?’
But Lenina was crying. ‘It’s horrible, it’s horrible,’ she kept repeating. ‘And how can you talk like that about not wanting to be a part of the social body? After all, every one works for every one else. We can’t do without any one. Even Epsilons . . .’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Bernard derisively. ‘ ”Even Epsilons are useful”! So am I. And I damned well wish I weren’t!’
Lenina was shocked by his blasphemy. ‘Bernard!’ she protested in a voice of amazed distress. ‘How can you?’
In a different key, ‘How can I?’ he repeated meditatively. ‘No, the real problem is: How is it that I can’t, or rather — because, after all, I know quite well why I can’t — what would it be like if I could, if I were free — not enslaved by my conditioning.’
‘But, Bernard, you’re saying the most awful things.’
‘Don’t you wish you were free, Lenina?’
‘I don’t know what you mean. I am free. Free to have the most wonderful time. Everybody’s happy nowadays.’
He laughed, ‘Yes, “Everybody’s happy nowadays.” We begin giving the children that at five. But wouldn’t you like to be free to be happy in some other way, Lenina? In your own way, for example; not in everybody else’s way.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she repeated. Then, turning to him, ‘Oh, do let’s go back, Bernard,’ she besought; ‘I do so hate it here.’
‘Don’t you like being with me?’
‘But of course, Bernard! It’s this horrible place.’
‘I thought we’d be more . . . more together here — with nothing but the sea and moon. More together than in that crowd, or even in my rooms. Don’t you understand that?’
‘I don’t understand anything,’ she said with decision, determined to preserve her incomprehension intact. ‘Nothing. Least of all,’ she continued in another tone, ‘why you don’t take soma when you have these dreadful ideas of yours. You’d forget all about them. And instead of feeling miserable, you’d be jolly. So jolly,’ she repeated and smiled, for all the puzzled anxiety in her eyes, with what was meant to be an inviting and voluptuous cajolery.
He l
ooked at her in silence, his face unresponsive and very grave — looked at her intently. After a few seconds Lenina’s eyes flinched away; she uttered a nervous little laugh, tried to think of something to say and couldn’t. The silence prolonged itself.
When Bernard spoke at last, it was in a small tired voice. ‘All right then,’ he said, ‘we’ll go back.’ And stepping hard on the accelerator, he sent the machine rocketing up into the sky. At four thousand he started his propeller. They flew in silence for a minute or two. Then, suddenly, Bernard began to laugh. Rather oddly, Lenina thought; but still, it was laughter.
‘Feeling better?’ she ventured to ask.
For answer, he lifted one hand from the controls and, slipping his arm round her, began to fondle her breasts.
‘Thank Ford,’ she said to herself, ‘he’s all right again.’
Half an hour later they were back in his rooms. Bernard swallowed four tablets of soma at a gulp, turned on the radio and television and began to undress.
‘Well,’ Lenina enquired, with significant archness when they met next afternoon on the roof, ‘did you think it was fun yesterday?’
Bernard nodded. They climbed into the plane. A little jolt, and they were off.
‘Every one says I’m awfully pneumatic,’ said Lenina reflectively, patting her own legs.
‘Awfully.’ But there was an expression of pain in Bernard’s eyes. ‘Like meat,’ he was thinking.
She looked up with a certain anxiety. ‘But you don’t think I’m too plump, do you?’
He shook his head. Like so much meat.
‘You think I’m all right.’ Another nod. ‘In every way?’
‘Perfect,’ he said aloud. And inwardly, ‘She thinks of herself that way. She doesn’t mind being meat.’