Author: Aldous Huxley
Category: Literature
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Surprisingly, as every one thought (for on soma-holiday Linda was most conveniently out of the way), John raised objections.
‘But aren’t you shortening her life by giving her so much?’
‘In one sense, yes,’ Dr. Shaw admitted. ‘But in another we’re actually lengthening it.’ The young man stared, uncomprehending. ‘Soma may make you lose a few years in time,’ the doctor went on. ‘But think of the enormous, immeasurable durations it can give you out of time. Every soma-holiday is a bit of what our ancestors used to call eternity.’
John began to understand. ‘Eternity was in our lips and eyes,’ he murmured.
‘Eh?’
‘Nothing,’
‘Of course,’ Dr. Shaw went on, ‘you can’t allow people to go popping off into eternity if they’ve got any serious work to do. But as she hasn’t got any serious work . . .’
‘All the same,’ John persisted, ‘I don’t believe it’s right.’
The doctor shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, of course, if you prefer to have her screaming mad all the time . . .’
In the end John was forced to give in. Linda got her soma. Thenceforward she remained in her little room on the thirty-seventh floor of Bernard’s apartment house, in bed, with the radio and television always on, and the patchouli tap just dripping, and the soma tablets within reach of her hand — there she remained; and yet wasn’t there at all, was all the time away, infinitely far away, on holiday; on holiday in some other world, where the music of the radio was a labyrinth of sonorous colours, a sliding, palpitating labyrinth, that led (by what beautifully inevitable windings) to a bright centre of absolute conviction; where the dancing images of the television box were the performers in some indescribably delicious all-singing feely; where the dripping patchouli was more than scent — was the sun, was a million sexophones, was Popé making love, only much more so, incomparably more, and without end.
‘No, we can’t rejuvenate. But I’m very glad,’ Dr. Shaw had concluded, ‘to have had this opportunity to see an example of senility in a human being. Thank you so much for calling me in.’ He shook Bernard warmly by the hand.
It was John, then, they were all after. And as it was only through Bernard, his accredited guardian, that John could be seen, Bernard now found himself, for the first time in his life, treated not merely normally, but as a person of outstanding importance. There was no more talk of the alcohol in his blood-surrogate, no gibes at his personal appearance. Henry Foster went out of his way to be friendly; Benito Hoover made him a present of six packets of sex-hormone chewing-gum; the Assistant Predestinator came and cadged almost abjectly for an invitation to one of Bernard’s evening parties. As for the women, Bernard had only to hint at the possibility of an invitation, and he could have whichever of them he liked.
‘Bernard’s asked me to meet the Savage next Wednesday,’ Fanny announced triumphantly.
‘I’m so glad,’ said Lenina. ‘And now you must admit that you were wrong about Bernard. Don’t you think he’s really rather sweet?’
Fanny nodded. ‘And I must say,’ she said, ‘I was quite agreeably surprised.’
The Chief Bottler, the Director of Predestination, three Deputy Assistant Fertilizer-Generals, the Professor of Feelies in the College of Emotional Engineering, the Dean of the Westminster Community Singery, the Supervisor of Bokanovskification — the list of Bernard’s notabilities was interminable.
‘And I had six girls last week,’ he confided to Helmholtz Watson. ‘One on Monday, two on Tuesday, two more on Friday, and one on Saturday. And if I’d had the time or the inclination, there were at least a dozen more who were only too anxious . . .’
Helmholtz listened to his boastings in a silence so gloomily disapproving that Bernard was offended.
‘You’re envious,’ he said.
Helmholtz shook his head. ‘I’m rather sad, that’s all,’ he answered.
Bernard went off in a huff. Never, he told himself, never would he speak to Helmholtz again.
The days passed. Success went fizzily to Bernard’s head, and in the process completely reconciled him (as any good intoxicant should do) to a world which, up till then, he had found very unsatisfactory. In so far as it recognized him as important, the order of things was good. But, reconciled by his success, he yet refused to forgo the privilege of criticizing this order. For the act of criticizing heightened his sense of importance, made him feel larger. Moreover, he did genuinely believe that there were things to criticize. (At the same time, he genuinely liked being a success and having all the girls he wanted.) Before those who now, for the sake of the Savage, paid their court to him, Bernard would parade a carping unorthodoxy. He was politely listened to. But behind his back people shook their heads. ‘That young man will come to a bad end,’ they said, prophesying the more confidently in that they themselves would in due course personally see to it that the end was bad. ‘He won’t find another Savage to help him out a second time,’ they said. Meanwhile, however, there was the first Savage; they were polite. And because they were polite, Bernard felt positively gigantic — gigantic and at the same time light with elation, lighter than air.
‘Lighter than air,’ said Bernard, pointing upwards.
Like a pearl in the sky, high, high above them, the Weather Department’s captive balloon shone rosily in the sunshine.
‘. . . the said Savage,’ so ran Bernard’s instructions, ‘to be shown civilized life in all its aspects. . . .’
He was being shown a bird’s-eye view of it at present, a bird’s-eye view from the platform of the Charing-T Tower. The Station Master and the Resident Meteorologist were acting as guides. But it was Bernard who did most of the talking. Intoxicated, he was behaving as though, at the very least, he were a visiting World Controller. Lighter than air.
The Bombay Green Rocket dropped out of the sky. The passengers alighted. Eight identical Dravidian twins in khaki looked out of the eight portholes of the cabin — the stewards.
‘Twelve hundred and fifty kilometres an hour,’ said the Station Master impressively. ‘What do you think of that, Mr. Savage?’
John thought it very nice. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘Ariel could put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes.’
‘The Savage,’ wrote Bernard in his report to Mustapha Mond, ‘shows surprisingly little astonishment at, or awe of, civilized inventions. This is partly due, no doubt, to the fact that he has heard them talked about by the woman Linda, his m —— .’
(Mustapha Mond frowned. ‘Does the fool think I’m too squeamish to see the word written out at full length?’)
‘Partly on his interest being focussed on what he calls “the soul,” which he persists as regarding as an entity independent of the physical environment; whereas, as I tried to point out to him . . .’
The Controller skipped the next sentences and was just about to turn the page in search of something more interestingly concrete, when his eye was caught by a series of quite extraordinary phrases. ‘. . . though I must admit,’ he read, ‘that I agree with the Savage in finding civilized infantility too easy or, as he puts it, not expensive enough; and I would like to take this opportunity of drawing your fordship’s attention to . . .’
Mustapha Mond’s anger gave place almost at once to mirth. The idea of this creature solemnly lecturing him — him — about the social order was really too grotesque. The man must have gone mad. ‘I ought to give him a lesson,’ he said to himself; then threw back his head and laughed aloud. For the moment, at any rate, the lesson would not be given.
It was a small factory of lighting-sets for helicopters, a branch of the Electrical Equipment Corporation. They were met on the roof itself (for that circular letter of recommendation from the Controller was magical in its effects) by the Chief Technician and the Human Element Manager. They walked downstairs into the factory.
‘Each process,’ explained the Human Element Manager, ’is carried out, so far as possible, by a single Bokanovsky Group.’
/> And, in effect, eighty-three almost noseless black brachycephalic Deltas were cold-pressing. The fifty-six four-spindle chucking and turning machines were being manipulated by fifty-six aquiline and ginger Gammas. One hundred and seven heat-conditioned Epsilon Senegalese were working in the foundry. Thirty-three Delta females, long-headed, sandy, with narrow pelvises, and all within 20 millimetres of 1 metre 69 centimetres tall, were cutting screws. In the assembling room, the dynamos were being put together by two sets of Gamma-Plus dwarfs. The two low work-tables faced one another; between them crawled the conveyor with its load of separate parts; forty-seven blond heads were confronted by forty-seven brown ones. Forty-seven snubs by forty-seven hooks; forty-seven receding by forty-seven prognathous chins. The completed mechanisms were inspected by eighteen identical curly auburn girls in Gamma green, packed in crates by thirty-four short-legged, left-handed male Delta-Minuses, and loaded into the waiting trucks and lorries by sixty-three blue-eyed, flaxen and freckled Epsilon Semi-Morons.
‘O brave new world . . .’ By some malice of his memory the Savage found himself repeating Miranda’s words. ‘O brave new world that has such people in it.’
‘And I assure you,’ the Human Element Manager concluded, as they left the factory, ‘we hardly ever have any trouble with our workers. We always find . . .’
But the Savage had suddenly broken away from his companions and was violently retching, behind a clump of laurels, as though the solid earth had been a helicopter in an air pocket.
‘The Savage,’ wrote Bernard, ‘refuses to take soma, and seems much distressed because the woman Linda, his m —— , remains permanently on holiday. It is worthy of note that, in spite of his m — — ‘s senility and the extreme repulsiveness of her appearance, the Savage frequently goes to see her and appears to be much attached to her — an interesting example of the way in which early conditioning can be made to modify and even run counter to natural impulses (in this case, the impulse to recoil from an unpleasant object).’
At Eton they alighted on the roof of Upper School. On the opposite side of School Yard, the fifty-two stories of Lupton’s Tower gleamed white in the sunshine. College on their left and, on their right, the School Community Singery reared their venerable piles of ferro-concrete and vita-glass. In the centre of the quadrangle stood the quaint old chrome-steel statue of Our Ford.
Dr. Gaffney, the Provost, and Miss Keate, the Head Mistress, received them as they stepped out of the plane.
‘Do you have many twins here?’ the Savage asked rather apprehensively, as they set out on their tour of inspection.
‘Oh no,’ the Provost answered. ‘Eton is reserved exclusively for upper-caste boys and girls. One egg, one adult. It makes education more difficult, of course. But as they’ll be called upon to take responsibilities and deal with unexpected emergencies, it can’t be helped.’ He sighed.
Bernard, meanwhile, had taken a strong fancy to Miss Keate. ‘If you’re free any Monday, Wednesday, or Friday evening,’ he was saying. Jerking his thumb towards the Savage, ‘He’s curious, you know,’ Bernard added. ‘Quaint.’
Miss Keate smiled (and her smile was really charming, he thought); said Thank you; would be delighted to come to one of his parties. The Provost opened a door.
Five minutes in that Alpha-Double-Plus classroom left John a trifle bewildered.
‘What is elementary relativity?’ he whispered to Bernard. Bernard tried to explain, then thought better of it and suggested that they should go to some other classroom.
From behind a door in the corridor leading to the Beta-Minus geography room, a ringing soprano voice called, ‘One, two, three, four,’ and then, with a weary impatience, ‘As you were.’
‘Malthusian Drill,’ explained the Head Mistress. ‘Most of our girls are freemartins, of course. I’m a freemartin myself.’ She smiled at Bernard. ‘But we have about eight hundred unsterilized ones who need constant drilling.’
In the Beta-Minus geography room John learnt that ‘a savage reservation is a place which, owing to unfavourable climatic or geological conditions, or poverty of natural resources, has not been worth the expense of civilizing.’ A click; the room was darkened; and suddenly, on the screen above the Master’s head, there were the Penitentes of Acoma prostrating themselves before Our Lady, and wailing as John had heard them wail, confessing their sins before Jesus on the cross, before the eagle image of Pookong. The young Etonians fairly shouted with laughter. Still wailing, the Penitentes rose to their feet, stripped off their upper garments and, with knotted whips, began to beat themselves, blow after blow. Redoubled, the laughter drowned even the amplified record of their groans.
‘But why do they laugh?’ asked the Savage in a pained bewilderment.
‘Why?’ The Provost turned towards him a still broadly grinning face. ‘Why? But because it’s so extraordinarily funny.’
In the cinematographic twilight, Bernard risked a gesture which, in the past, even total darkness would hardly have emboldened him to make. Strong in his new importance, he put his arm round the Head Mistress’s waist. It yielded, willowily. He was just about to snatch a kiss or two and perhaps a gentle pinch, when the shutters clicked open again.
‘Perhaps we had better go on,’ said Miss Keate, and moved towards the door.
‘And this,’ said the Provost a moment later, ’is the Hypnopædic Control Room.’
Hundreds of synthetic music boxes, one for each dormitory, stood ranged in shelves round three sides of the room; pigeon-holed on the fourth were the paper sound-track rolls on which the various hypnopædic lessons were printed.
‘You slip the roll in here,’ explained Bernard, interrupting Dr. Gaffney, ‘press down this switch . . .’
‘No, that one,’ corrected the Provost, annoyed.
‘That one, then. The roll unwinds. The selenium cells transform the light impulses into sound waves, and . . .’
‘And there you are,’ Dr. Gaffney concluded.
‘Do they read Shakespeare?’ asked the Savage as they walked, on their way to the Bio-chemical Laboratories, past the School Library.
‘Certainly not,’ said the Head Mistress, blushing.
‘Our library,’ said Dr. Gaffney, ‘contains only books of reference. If our young people need distraction, they can get it at the feelies. We don’t encourage them to indulge in any solitary amusements.’
Five bus-loads of boys and girls, singing or in a silent embracement, rolled past them over the vitrified highway.
‘Just returned,’ explained Dr. Gaffney, while Bernard, whispering, made an appointment with the Head Mistress for that very evening, ‘from the Slough Crematorium. Death conditioning begins at eighteen months. Every tot spends two mornings a week in a Hospital for the Dying. All the best toys are kept there, and they get chocolate cream on death days. They learn to take dying as a matter of course.’
‘Like any other physiological process,’ put in the Head Mistress professionally.
Eight o’clock at the Savoy. It was all arranged.
On their way back to London they stopped at the Television Corporation’s factory at Brentford.
‘Do you mind waiting here a moment while I go and telephone?’ asked Bernard.
The Savage waited and watched. The Main Day-Shift was just going off duty. Crowds of lower-caste workers were queued-up in front of the monorail station — seven or eight hundred Gamma, Delta and Epsilon men and women, with not more than a dozen faces and statures between them. To each of them, with his or her ticket, the booking clerk pushed over a little cardboard pillbox. The long caterpillar of men and women moved slowly forward.
‘What’s in those’ (remembering The Merchant of Venice), ‘those caskets?’ the Savage enquired when Bernard had rejoined him.
‘The day’s soma ration,’ Bernard answered, rather indistinctly; for he was masticating a piece of Benito Hoover’s chewing-gum. ‘They get it after their work’s over. Four half-gramme tablets. Six on Saturdays.’
H
e took John’s arm affectionately and they walked back towards the helicopter.
Lenina came singing into the Changing Room.
‘You seem very pleased with yourself,’ said Fanny.
‘I am pleased,’ she answered. Zip! ‘Bernard rang up half an hour ago.’ Zip, zip! She stepped out of her shorts. ‘He has an unexpected engagement.’ Zip! ‘Asked me if I’d take the Savage to the feelies this evening. I must fly.’ She hurried away towards the bathroom.
‘She’s a lucky girl,’ Fanny said to herself as she watched Lenina go.
There was no envy in the comment; good-natured Fanny was merely stating a fact. Lenina was lucky; lucky in having shared with Bernard a generous portion of the Savage’s immense celebrity, lucky in reflecting from her insignificant person the moment’s supremely fashionable glory. Had not the Secretary of the Young Women’s Fordian Association asked her to give a lecture about her experiences? Had she not been invited to the Annual Dinner of the Aphroditæum Club? Had she not already appeared in the Feelytone News — visibly, audibly and tactually appeared to countless millions all over the planet?
Hardly less flattering had been the attentions paid her by conspicuous individuals. The Resident World Controller’s Second Secretary had asked her to dinner and breakfast. She had spent one week-end with the Ford Chief-Justice, and another with the Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury. The President of the Internal and External Secretions Corporation was perpetually on the phone, and she had been to Deauville with the Deputy-Governor of the Bank of Europe.
‘It’s wonderful, of course. And yet in a way,’ she had confessed to Fanny, ‘I feel as though I were getting something on false pretences. Because, of course, the first thing they all want to know is what it’s like to make love to a Savage. And I have to say I don’t know.’ She shook her head. ‘Most of the men don’t believe me, of course. But it’s true. I wish it weren’t,’ she added sadly and sighed. ‘He’s terribly good-looking; don’t you think so?’