Author: Aldous Huxley
Category: Literature
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After that the Savage was left for a time in peace. A few helicopters came and hovered inquisitively round the tower. He shot an arrow into the importunately nearest of them. It pierced the aluminium floor of the cabin; there was a shrill yell, and the machine went rocketing up into the air with all the acceleration that its super-charger could give it. The others, in future, kept their distance respectfully. Ignoring their tiresome humming (he likened himself in his imagination to one of the suitors of the Maiden of Mátsaki, unmoved and persistent among the winged vermin), the Savage dug at what was to be his garden. After a time the vermin evidently became bored and flew away; for hours at a stretch the sky above his head was empty and, but for the larks, silent.
The weather was breathlessly hot, there was thunder in the air. He had dug all the morning and was resting, stretched out along the floor. And suddenly the thought of Lenina was a real presence, naked and tangible, saying ‘Sweet!’ and ‘Put your arms round me!’ — in shoes and socks, perfumed. Impudent strumpet! But oh, oh, her arms round his neck, the lifting of her breasts, her mouth! Eternity was in our lips and eyes. Lenina . . . No, no, no, no! He sprang to his feet and, half naked as he was, ran out of the house. At the edge of the heath stood a clump of hoary juniper bushes. He flung himself against them, he embraced, not the smooth body of his desires, but an armful of green spikes. Sharp, with a thousand points, they pricked him. He tried to think of poor Linda, breathless and dumb, with her clutching hands and the unutterable terror in her eyes. Poor Linda whom he had sworn to remember. But it was still the presence of Lenina that haunted him. Lenina whom he had promised to forget. Even through the stab and sting of the juniper needles, his wincing flesh was aware of her, unescapably real. ‘Sweet, sweet . . . And if you wanted me too, why didn’t you . . .’
The whip was hanging on a nail by the door, ready to hand against the arrival of reporters. In a frenzy the Savage ran back to the house, seized it, whirled it. The knotted cords bit into his flesh.
‘Strumpet! Strumpet!’ he shouted at every blow as though it were Lenina (and how frantically, without knowing it, he wished it were!), white, warm, scented, infamous Lenina that he was flogging thus. ‘Strumpet!’ And then, in a voice of despair, ‘Oh, Linda, forgive me. Forgive me, God. I’m bad. I’m wicked. I’m . . . No, no, you strumpet, you strumpet!’
From his carefully constructed hide in the wood three hundred metres away, Darwin Bonaparte, the Feely Corporation’s most expert big-game photographer, had watched the whole proceedings. Patience and skill had been rewarded. He had spent three days sitting inside the bole of an artificial oak tree, three nights crawling on his belly through the heather, hiding microphones in gorse bushes, burying wires in the soft grey sand. Seventy-two hours of profound discomfort. But now the great moment had come — the greatest, Darwin Bonaparte had time to reflect, as he moved among his instruments, the greatest since his taking of the famous all-howling stereoscopic feely of the gorillas’ wedding. ‘Splendid,’ he said to himself, as the Savage started his astonishing performance. ‘Splendid!’ He kept his telescopic cameras carefully aimed — glued to their moving objective; clapped on a higher power to get a close-up of the frantic and distorted face (admirable!); switched over, for half a minute, to slow motion (an exquisitely comical effect, he promised himself); listened in, meanwhile, to the blows, the groans, the wild and raving words that were being recorded on the sound-track at the edge of his film, tried the effect of a little amplification (yes, that was decidedly better); was delighted to hear, in a momentary lull, the shrill singing of a lark; wished the Savage would turn round so that he could get a good close-up of the blood on his back — and almost instantly (what astonishing luck!) the accommodating fellow did turn round, and he was able to take a perfect close-up.
‘Well, that was grand!’ he said to himself when it was all over. ‘Really grand!’ He mopped his face. When they had put in the feely effects at the studio, it would be a wonderful film. Almost as good, thought Darwin Bonaparte, as the Sperm Whale’s Love-Life — and that, by Ford, was saying a good deal!
Twelve days later The Savage of Surrey had been released and could be seen, heard and felt in every first-class feely-palace in Western Europe.
The effect of Darwin Bonaparte’s film was immediate and enormous. On the afternoon which followed the evening of its release, John’s rustic solitude was suddenly broken by the arrival overhead of a great swarm of helicopters.
He was digging in his garden — digging, too, in his own mind, laboriously turning up the substance of his thought. Death — and he drove in his spade once, and again, and yet again. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. A convincing thunder rumbled through the words. He lifted another spadeful of earth. Why had Linda died? Why had she been allowed to become gradually less than human and at last . . . He shuddered. A good kissing carrion. He planted his foot on his spade and stamped it fiercely into the tough ground. As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport. Thunder again; words that proclaimed themselves true — truer somehow than truth itself. And yet that same Gloucester had called them ever-gentle gods. Besides, thy best of rest is sleep, and that thou oft provok’st; yet grossly fear’st thy death which is no more. No more than sleep. Sleep. Perchance to dream. His spade struck against a stone; he stooped to pick it up. For in that sleep of death, what dreams? . . .
A humming overhead had become a roar; and suddenly he was in shadow, there was something between the sun and him. He looked up, startled, from his digging, from his thoughts; looked up in a dazzled bewilderment, his mind still wandering in that other world of truer-than-truth, still focussed on the immensities of death and deity; looked up and saw, close above him, the swarm of hovering machines. Like locusts they came, hung poised, descended all around him on the heather. And from out of the bellies of these giant grasshoppers stepped men in white viscose-flannels, women (for the weather was hot) in acetate-shantung pyjamas or velveteen shorts and sleeveless, half-unzippered singlets — one couple from each. In a few minutes there were dozens of them, standing in a wide circle round the lighthouse, staring, laughing, clicking their cameras, throwing (as to an ape) pea-nuts, packets of sex-hormone chewing-gum, pan-glandular petits beurres. And every moment — for across the Hog’s Back the stream of traffic now flowed unceasingly — their numbers increased. As in a nightmare, the dozens became scores, the scores hundreds.
The Savage had retreated towards cover, and now, in the posture of an animal at bay, stood with his back to the wall of the lighthouse, staring from face to face in speechless horror, like a man out of his senses.
From this stupor he was aroused to a more immediate sense of reality by the impact on his cheek of a well-aimed packet of chewing-gum. A shock of startling pain — and he was broad awake, awake and fiercely angry.
‘Go away!’ he shouted.
The ape had spoken; there was a burst of laughter and hand-clapping. ‘Good old Savage! Hurrah, hurrah!’ And through the babel he heard cries of: ‘Whip, whip, the whip!’
Acting on the word’s suggestion, he seized the bunch of knotted cords from its nail behind the door and shook it at his tormentors.
There was a yell of ironical applause.
Menacingly he advanced towards them. A woman cried out in fear. The line wavered at its most immediately threatened point, then stiffened again, stood firm. The consciousness of being in overwhelming force had given these sightseers a courage which the Savage had not expected of them. Taken aback, he halted and looked round.
‘Why don’t you leave me alone?’ There was an almost plaintive note in his anger.
‘Have a few magnesium-salted almonds!’ said the man who, if the Savage were to advance, would be the first to be attacked. He held out a packet. ‘They’re really very good, you know,’ he added, with a rather nervous smile of propitiation. ‘And the magnesium salts will help to keep you young.’
The Savage ignored his offer. ‘What do you want
with me?’ he asked, turning from one grinning face to another. ‘What do you want with me?’
‘The whip,’ answered a hundred voices confusedly. ‘Do the whipping stunt. Let’s see the whipping stunt.’
Then, in unison and on a slow, heavy rhythm, ‘We — want — the whip,’ shouted a group at the end of the line. ‘We — want — the whip.’
Others at once took up the cry, and the phrase was repeated, parrot-fashion, again and again, with an ever-growing volume of sound, until, by the seventh or eighth reiteration, no other word was being spoken. ‘We — want — the whip.’
They were all crying together; and, intoxicated by the noise, the unanimity, the sense of rhythmical atonement, they might, it seemed, have gone on for hours — almost indefinitely. But at about the twenty-fifth repetition the proceedings were startlingly interrupted. Yet another helicopter had arrived from across the Hog’s Back, hung poised above the crowd, then dropped within a few yards of where the Savage was standing, in the open space between the line of sightseers and the lighthouse. The roar of the air screws momentarily drowned the shouting; then, as the machine touched the ground and the engines were turned off: ‘We — want — the whip; we — want — the whip,’ broke out again in the same loud, insistent monotone.
The door of the helicopter opened, and out stepped, first a fair and ruddy-faced young man, then, in green velveteen shorts, white shirt, and jockey cap, a young woman.
At the sight of the young woman, the Savage started, recoiled, turned pale.
The young woman stood, smiling at him — an uncertain, imploring, almost abject smile. The seconds passed. Her lips moved, she was saying something; but the sound of her voice was covered by the loud reiterated refrain of the sightseers.
‘We — want — the whip! We — want — the whip!’
The young woman pressed both hands to her left side, and on that peach-bright, doll-beautiful face of hers appeared a strangely incongruous expression of yearning distress. Her blue eyes seemed to grow larger, brighter; and suddenly two tears rolled down her cheeks. Inaudibly, she spoke again; then, with a quick, impassioned gesture stretched out her arms towards the Savage, stepped forward.
‘We — want — the whip! We — want . . .’
And all of a sudden they had what they wanted.
‘Strumpet!’ The Savage had rushed at her like a madman. ‘Fitchew!’ Like a madman, he was slashing at her with his whip of small cords.
Terrified, she had turned to flee, had tripped and fallen in the heather. ‘Henry, Henry!’ she shouted. But her ruddy-faced companion had bolted out of harm’s way behind the helicopter.
With a whoop of delighted excitement the line broke; there was a convergent stampede towards that magnetic centre of attraction. Pain was a fascinating horror.
‘Fry, lechery, fry!’ Frenzied, the Savage slashed again.
Hungrily they gathered round, pushing and scrambling like swine about the trough.
‘Oh, the flesh!’ The Savage ground his teeth. This time it was on his shoulders that the whip descended. ‘Kill it, kill it!’
Drawn by the fascination of the horror of pain and, from within, impelled by that habit of cooperation, that desire for unanimity and atonement, which their conditioning had so ineradicably implanted in them, they began to mime the frenzy of his gestures, striking at one another as the Savage struck at his own rebellious flesh, or at that plump incarnation of turpitude writhing in the heather at his feet.
‘Kill it, kill it, kill it . . .’ the Savage went on shouting.
Then suddenly somebody started singing ‘Orgy-porgy,’ and in a moment they had all caught up the refrain and, singing, had begun to dance. Orgy-porgy, round and round and round, beating one another in six-eight time. Orgy-porgy . . .
It was after midnight when the last of the helicopters took its flight. Stupefied by soma, and exhausted by a long-drawn frenzy of sensuality, the Savage lay sleeping in the heather. The sun was already high when he awoke. He lay for a moment, blinking in owlish incomprehension at the light; then suddenly remembered — everything.
‘Oh, my God, my God!’ He covered his eyes with his hand.
That evening the swarm of helicopters that came buzzing across the Hog’s Back was a dark cloud ten kilometres long. The description of last night’s orgy of atonement had been in all the papers.
‘Savage!’ called the first arrivals, as they alighted from their machine. ‘Mr. Savage!’
There was no answer.
The door of the lighthouse was ajar. They pushed it open and walked into a shuttered twilight. Through an archway on the further side of the room they could see the bottom of the staircase that led up to the higher floors. Just under the crown of the arch dangled a pair of feet.
‘Mr. Savage!’
Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-southwest, south, south-east, east . . .
Eyeless in Gaza
First published by Chatto & Windus in 1936, Eyeless in Gaza is one of Huxley’s longest and most complex novels, which attempts to address fundamental questions about politics, sexuality and religion. The events in the novel are told episodically, not chronologically and the author frequently switches between one time period and another, forcing the reader to mentally re-arrange the timeline. Huxley employs this unconventional narrative method and structure in order to highlight and emphasise his innovative ideas.
The title of the novel was inspired by a phrase in the John Milton closest drama, Samson Agonistes. The drama was released in 1671, alongside Milton’s poem, Paradise Regain’d; it relates the story of Samson after he has been captured by the Philistines, having had his hair cut off and his eyes gouged out. Huxley also reportedly drew upon the life of his biographer and neighbour, Sybille Bedford, who claimed that the character of Mary Amberley was in part based on her morphine-addicted mother. The novel centres on an upper-class sociologist, Anthony Beavis, as he desperately searches for meaning and a path to follow in life.
The first edition
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE. August 30th 1933
CHAPTER TWO. April 4th 1934
CHAPTER THREE. August 30th 1933
CHAPTER FOUR. November 6th 1902
CHAPTER FIVE. December 8th 1926
CHAPTER SIX. November 6th 1902
CHAPTER SEVEN. April 8th 1934
CHAPTER EIGHT. August 30th 1933
CHAPTER NINE. April 2nd 1903
CHAPTER TEN. June 16th 1912
CHAPTER ELEVEN. December 8th 1926
CHAPTER TWELVE. August 30th 1933
CHAPTER THIRTEEN. May 20th 1934
CHAPTER FOURTEEN. December 8th 1926
CHAPTER FIFTEEN. June 1903–January 1904
CHAPTER SIXTEEN. June 17th 1912
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. May 26th 1934
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. December 8th 1926
CHAPTER NINETEEN. July 7th 1912
CHAPTER TWENTY. December 8th 1926
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE. August 31st 1933
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO. December 8th 1926
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE. June 1st 1934
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR. June 23rd and July 5th 1927
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE. May 20th 1931
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX. September 5th 1933
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN. May 27th 1914
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT. June 25th 1934
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE. May 24th 1931
CHAPTER THIRTY. July 2nd 1914
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE. September 6th 1933
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO. July 29th 1934
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE. July 18th 1914
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR. March 3rd 1928
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE. August 4th 1934
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX. July 19th 1914
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN. Autumn 1933
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT.
August 10th 1934
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE. March 25th 1928
CHAPTER FORTY. September 11th 1934
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE. December 1933
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO. September 15th 1934
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE. July 20th and 21st 1914
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR. September 21st 1934
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE. April 14th 1928
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX. October 30th 1934
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN. January 10th and 11th 1934
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT. July 23rd 1914
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE. January 12th and 14th 1934
CHAPTER FIFTY. Christmas Day 1934
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE. February 7th 1934
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO. July 24th 1914
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE. February 23rd 1934
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR. February 23rd 1935
The famous 17th century poet, John Milton
CHAPTER ONE. August 30th 1933
THE SNAPSHOTS HAD become almost as dim as memories. This young woman who had stood in a garden at the turn of the century was like a ghost at cockcrow. His mother, Anthony Beavis recognized. A year or two, perhaps only a month or two, before she died. But fashion, as he peered at the brown phantom, fashion is a topiary art. Those swan-like loins! That long slanting cascade of bosom — without any apparent relation to the naked body beneath! And all that hair, like an ornamental deformity on the skull! Oddly hideous and repellent it seemed in 1933. And yet, if he shut his eyes (as he could not resist doing), he could see his mother languidly beautiful on her chaise-longue; or, agile, playing tennis; or swooping like a bird across the ice of a far-off winter.
It was the same with these snapshots of Mary Amberley, taken ten years later. The skirt was as long as ever, and within her narrower bell of drapery woman still glided footless, as though on castors. The breasts, it was true, had been pushed up a bit, the redundant posterior pulled in. But the general shape of the clothed body was still strangely improbable. A crab shelled in whalebone. And this huge plumed hat of 1911 was simply a French funeral of the first class. How could any man in his senses have been attracted by so profoundly anti-aphrodisiac an appearance? And yet, in spite of the snapshots, he could remember her as the very embodiment of desirability. At the sight of that feathered crab on wheels his heart had beaten faster, his breathing had become oppressed.