Author: Aldous Huxley
Category: Literature
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All at once she blushes.
‘If you don’t believe me,’ says Dr. Poole with wine-begotten gallantry, ‘I’m ready to prove it.’
She looks at him for a moment, then shakes her head and, in a kind of terror, turns away. Nervously she smooths her apron.
‘And meanwhile,’ he continues, emboldened by her new-found shyness, ‘you haven’t told me just what it is that suddenly happens.’
Loola glances about her to make sure that nobody is within earshot, then speaks at last almost in a whisper.
‘Suddenly He starts to take possession of everybody. For weeks He makes them think about those things — and it’s against the Law, it’s wicked. The men get so mad, they start hitting you and calling you a vessel, the way the priests do.’
‘A vessel?’
She nods.
‘Vessel of the Unholy Spirit.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘And then comes Belial Day,’ she goes on after a little pause. ‘And then ... well, you know what that means. And afterwards, if you have a baby, the chances are that He’ll punish you for what He has made you do.’ She shudders, then makes the sign of the horns. ‘I know we have to accept what He wills,’ she adds. ‘But oh, I do so hope that, if ever I have any babies, they’ll be all right.’
‘But of course they’ll be all right,’ cried Dr. Poole. ‘After all, there isn’t anything wrong about you.’
Delighted by his own audacity, he looks down at her.
Close shot from his viewpoint. NO NO NO, NO NO NO ...
Mournfully, Loola shakes her head.
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ she says. ‘I’ve got an extra pair of nipples.’
‘Oh,’ says Dr. Poole, in a tone which makes us realize that the thought of his Mother has momentarily obliterated the effects of the red wine.
‘Not that there’s anything really bad about that,’ Loola hastily adds. ‘Even the best people have them. It’s perfectly legal. They allow you up to three pairs. And seven toes and fingers. Anything over that gets liquidated at the Purification. My friend Polly — she had a baby this season. Her first one. And it’s got four pairs, and no thumbs. There isn’t any chance for it. In fact, it’s been condemned already. She’s had her head shaved.’
‘Had her head shaved?’
‘They do it to all the girls whose babies are liquidated.’
‘But why?’
Loola shrugs her shoulders.
‘Just to remind them that He’s the Enemy.’
NARRATOR
‘To put it,’ as Schroedinger has said, ‘drastically, though perhaps a little naïvely, the injuriousness of a marriage between first cousins might very well be increased by the fact that their grandmother had served for a long period as an X-ray nurse. It is not a point that need worry any individual personally. But any possibility of gradually infecting the human race with unwanted latent mutations ought to be a matter of concern to the community.’ It ought to be; but, needless to say, it isn’t. Oakridge is working three shifts a day; an atomic power plant is going up on the coast of Cumberland; and on the other side of the fence, goodness only knows what Kapitza is up to on the top of Mount Ararat, what surprises that wonderful Russian Soul, about which Dostoevsky used to write so lyrically, has in store for Russian bodies and the carcases of Capitalists and Social Democrats.
Once again sand bars the road. They enter another winding pathway between the dunes and are suddenly alone, as though in the middle of the Sahara.
Trucking shot from Dr. Poole’s viewpoint. NO NO, NO NO ... Loola halts and turns back towards him. NO NO NO. The Camera moves up to her face and all at once he notices that its expression is tragical.
NARRATOR
The Seventh Commandment, the Facts of Life. But there is also another Fact, to which one cannot react by a mere departmentalized negation or a no less fragmentary display of lust — the Fact of Personality.
‘I don’t want them to cut my hair,’ she says in a breaking voice.
‘But they won’t.’
‘They will.’
‘They can’t, they mustn’t.’ Then, amazed by his own daring, he adds, ‘It’s much too beautiful.’
Still tragic, Loola shakes her head.
‘I feel it,’ she says, ‘in my bones. I just know it’ll have more than seven fingers. They’ll kill it, they’ll cut my hair off, they’ll whip me — and He makes us do these things.’
‘What things?’
She looks at him for a moment without speaking; then, with an expression almost of terror, drops her eyes.
‘It’s because He wants us to be miserable.’
Covering her face with her hands, she starts to sob uncontrollably.
NARRATOR
The wine within and, without, the musky reminder
Of those so near, warm, ripe, orby and all but
Edible Facts of Life.... And now her tears, her tears ...
Dr. Poole takes the girl in his arms and, while she sobs against his shoulder, strokes her hair with all the tenderness of the normal male he has momentarily become.
‘Don’t cry,’ he whispers, ‘don’t cry. It’ll be all right. I’ll always be there. I won’t let them do anything to you.’
She permits herself gradually to be comforted. The sobbing becomes less violent and finally ceases altogether. She looks up, and the smile she gives him through her tears is so unequivocally amorous that anyone but Dr. Poole would have accepted the invitation forthwith. The seconds pass and, while he is still hesitating, her expression changes, she drops her eyelids over an avowal that she suddenly feels to have been too frank, and turns away.
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmurs, and starts to rub away her tears with the knuckles of a hand that is as grubby as a child’s.
Dr. Poole takes out his handkerchief and tenderly wipes her eyes.
‘You’re so sweet,’ she says. ‘Not a bit like the men here.’
She smiles up at him again. Like a pair of enchanting little wild animals emerging from concealment, out come the dimples.
So impulsively that he has no time to feel surprise at what he is doing, Dr. Poole takes her face between his hands and kisses her on the mouth.
Loola resists for a moment, then abandons herself in a surrender so complete as to be more active than his assault.
On the sound track ‘Give me detumescence’ modulates into Liebestod from Tristan.
Suddenly Loola stiffens into a shuddering rigidity. Pushing him away, she stares up wildly into his face; then turns and glances over her shoulder with an expression of guilty terror.
‘Loola!’
He tries to draw her close again, but she breaks away from him and starts to run along the narrow path.
NO NO, NO NO, NO NO ...
We dissolve to the corner of Fifth Street and Pershing Square. As of old, the Square is the hub and centre of the city’s cultural life. From a shallow well in front of the Philharmonic Auditorium two women are drawing water in a goatskin, which they empty into earthenware jars for other women to carry away. From a bar slung between two rusty lamp-posts hangs the carcass of a newly slaughtered ox. Standing in a cloud of flies, a man with a knife is cleaning out the entrails.
‘That looks good,’ says the Chief genially.
The butcher grins and, with bloody fingers, makes the sign of the horns.
A few yards away stand the communal ovens. The Chief orders a halt, and graciously accepts a piece of the newly baked bread. While he is eating, ten or twelve small boys enter the shot, staggering under inordinate loads of fuel from the near-by Public Library. They tumble their burdens on to the ground and, stimulated by the blows and curses of their elders, hurry back for more. One of the bakers opens a furnace door and starts to shovel the books into the flames.
All the scholar in Dr. Poole, all the bibliophile, is outraged by the spectacle.
‘But this is frightful!’ he protests.
The Chief only laughs.
‘In goes The
Phenomenology of Spirit, out comes the corn bread. And damned good bread it is.’
He takes another bite.
Meanwhile Dr. Poole has bent down and, from the very brink of destruction, has snatched to safety a charming little duodecimo Shelley.
‘Thank G—’ he begins, but fortunately remembers where he is and manages to check himself in time.
He slips the volume into his pocket and, turning to the Chief, ‘But what about culture?’ he asks. ‘What about the social inheritance of humanity’s painfully acquired wisdom? What about the best that has been thought and ...’
‘They can’t read,’ the Chief answers with his mouth full. ‘No, that’s not quite true. We teach all of them to read that.’
He points. Medium shot from his viewpoint of Loola — Loola with dimples and all the rest, but also with the large red NO on her apron, the two smaller NO’s on her shirt front.
‘That’s all the book learning they need. And now,’ he commands his bearers, ‘move on.’
Trucking shot of the litter as it is carried through the doorless entrance of what was once the Biltmore Coffee Shop. Here, in the malodorous twilight, twenty or thirty women, some middle-aged, some young, some mere girls, are busily weaving on primitive looms of the kind used by the Indians of Central America.
‘None of these vessels had a baby this season,’ the Chief explains to Dr. Poole. He frowns and shakes his head. ‘When they’re not producing monsters, they’re sterile. What we’re going to do for man power, Belial only knows ...’
They advance further into the Coffee Shop, pass a group of three- and four-year-old children under the supervision of an aged vessel with a cleft palate and fourteen fingers, and come to a halt under an archway giving access to a second dining-room only slightly smaller than the first.
Over the shot we hear the sound of a chorus of youthful voices reciting in unison the opening phrases of the Shorter Catechism.
‘Question: What is the chief end of Man? Answer: The chief end of Man is to propitiate Belial, deprecate His enmity and avoid destruction for as long as possible.’
Cut to a close shot of Dr. Poole’s face, on which we see an expression of amazement mingled with a growing horror. Then a long long shot from his viewpoint. In five rows of twelve, sixty boys and girls between the ages of thirteen and fifteen stand rigidly at attention, gabbling as fast as they can in a shrill harsh monotone. Facing them, on a dais, sits a small, fat man wearing a long robe of black-and-white goatskins and a fur cap with a stiff leather edging, to which are attached two medium-sized horns. Beardless and sallow, his face shines with a profuse perspiration, which he is forever wiping away with the hairy sleeve of his cassock.
Cut back to the Chief, as he leans down and touches Dr. Poole on the shoulder.
‘That,’ he whispers, ’is our leading Satanic Science Practitioner. I tell you, he’s an absolute whizz at Malicious Animal Magnetism.’
Over the shot we hear the mindless gabble of the children.
‘Question: To what fate is Man predestined? Answer: Belial has, out of His mere good pleasure, from all eternity elected all now living to everlasting perdition.’
‘Why does he wear horns?’ asks Dr. Poole.
‘He’s an Archimandrite,’ the Chief explains. ‘Due for his third horn any time now.’
Cut to a medium shot of the dais.
‘Excellent,’ the Satanic Science Practitioner is saying in a high piping voice, like the voice of an extraordinarily priggish and self-satisfied small boy. ‘Excellent!’ He wipes his forehead. ‘And now tell me why you deserve everlasting perdition.’
There is a moment’s silence. Then, in a chorus that starts a little raggedly, but soon swells to a loud unanimity, the children answer.
‘Belial has perverted and corrupted us in all the parts of our being. Therefore, we are, merely on account of that corruption, deservedly condemned by Belial.’
Their teacher nods approvingly.
‘Such,’ he squeaks unctuously, ’is the inscrutable justice of the Lord of Flies.’
‘Amen,’ respond the children.
All make the sign of the horns.
‘And what about your duty towards your neighbour?’
‘My duty towards my neighbour,’ comes the choral answer, ’is to do my best to prevent him from doing unto me what I should like to do unto him; to subject myself to all my governors; to keep my body in absolute chastity, except during the two weeks following Belial Day; and to do my duty in that state of life to which it hath pleased Belial to condemn me.’
‘What is the Church?’
‘The Church is the body of which Belial is the head and all possessed people are the members.’
‘Very good,’ says the Practitioner, wiping his face yet once more. ‘And now I need a young vessel.’
He runs his eyes over the ranks of his pupils, then points a finger.
‘You there. Third from the left in the second row ... The vessel with the yellow hair. Come here.’
Cut back to the group around the litter.
The bearers are grinning with happy anticipation and, looking intensely red and moist and fleshy among the black curls of the moustache and beard, even the Chief’s full lips are curved into a smile. But there is no smile on Loola’s face. Pale, her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide and staring, she is watching the proceedings with the horror of one who has been through this kind of ordeal herself. Dr. Poole glances at her, then back at the victim, whom we now see, from his viewpoint, slowly advancing towards the dais.
‘Up here,’ squeaks the almost babyish voice in a tone of conqueror’s authority. ‘Stand by me. Now face the class.’
The child does as she is told.
Medium close shot of a tall slender girl of fifteen with the face of a Nordic madonna. NO, proclaims the apron attached to the waist-band of her ragged pedal-pushers; NO and NO, the patches over her budding breasts.
The Practitioner points at her accusingly.
‘Look at it,’ he says, wrinkling up his face into a grimace of disgust. ‘Did you ever see anything so revolting?’
He turns to the class.
‘Boys,’ he squeaks. ‘Any of you who feels any Malicious Animal Magnetism coming out of this vessel, hold up your hand.’
Cut to a long shot of the class. Without exception, all the boys are holding up their hands. Their faces wear that expression of lustful and malevolent amusement with which the orthodox have always looked on while their spiritual pastors torment the hereditary scapegoats or still more severely punish the heretics who threaten the interests of the Establishment.
Cut back to the Practitioner. He sighs hypocritically and shakes his head.
‘I feared as much,’ he says. Then he turns to the girl beside him on the dais. ‘Now tell me,’ he says, ‘what is the Nature of Woman?’
‘The Nature of Woman?’ the child repeats unsteadily.
‘Yes, the Nature of Woman. Hurry up!’
She glances at him with an expression of terror in her blue eyes, then turns away. Her face becomes deathly pale. Her lips tremble; she swallows hard.
‘Woman,’ she begins, ‘woman ...’
Her voice breaks, her eyes overflow with tears; in a desperate effort to control her feelings she clenches her fists and bites her lip.
‘Go on!’ the Practitioner shrilly shouts. And picking up a willow switch from the floor, he gives the child a sharp cut across the calves of her bare legs. ‘Go on!’
‘Woman,’ the girl begins once more, ’is the vessel of the Unholy Spirit, the source of all deformity, the ... the ... Ow!’
She winces under another blow.
The Practitioner laughs and the whole class follows suit.
‘The enemy ...’ he prompts.
‘Oh, yes — the enemy of the race, punished by Belial and calling down punishment on all those who succumb to Belial in her.’
There is a long silence.
‘Well,’ says the Practitioner at last, ‘th
at’s what you are. That’s what all vessels are. And now go, go!’ he squeals, and with sudden fury he strikes at her again and again.
Crying with pain, the child jumps down from the dais and runs back to her place in the ranks.
Cut back to the Chief. His brow is wrinkled in a frown of displeasure.
‘All this progressive education!’ he says to Dr. Poole. ‘No proper discipline. I don’t know what we’re coming to. Why, when I was a boy, our old Practitioner used to tie them over a bench and go to work with a birch-rod. “That’ll teach you to be a vessel,” he’d say, and then swish, swish, swish! Belial, how they howled! That’s what I call education. Well, I’ve had enough of this,’ he adds. ‘Quick march!’
As the litter moves out of the shot, the Camera holds on Loola, who remains, staring in an agony of fellow-feeling at the tear-wet face and heaving shoulders of the little victim in the second row. A hand touches her arm. She starts, turns apprehensively and is relieved to find herself looking into the kindly face of Dr. Poole.
‘I entirely agree with you,’ he whispers. ‘It’s wrong, it’s unjust.’
Only after she has thrown a quick look over her shoulder does Loola venture to give him a little smile of gratitude.
‘Now we must go,’ she says.
They hurry after the others. Following the litter, they retrace their steps through the Coffee Shop, then turn to the right and enter the Cocktail Bar. At one end of the room an enormous pile of human bones reaches almost to the ceiling. Squatting on the floor, in a thick white dust, a score of craftsmen are engaged in fashioning drinking-cups out of skulls, knitting-needles from ulnas, flutes and recorders from the longer shank-bones, ladles, shoe-horns and dominoes from pelvises, and spigots out of femurs.
A halt is called, and, while one of the workmen plays ‘Give me detumescence’ on a shin-bone flute, another presents the Chief with a superb necklace of graded vertebrae ranging in size from a baby’s cervicals to the lumbars of a heavyweight boxer.
NARRATOR
‘And he set me down in the midst of the valley that was full of bones; and lo, they were very dry.’ The dry bones of some of those who died, by thousands, by millions, in the course of those three bright summer days that, for you there, are still in the future. ‘And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live?’ The answer, I replied, is in the negative. For though Baruch might save us (perhaps) from taking our places in such an ossuary as this, he can do nothing to avert that other, slower, nastier death....