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.

“But 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.”

“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!” came the exasperated voice from within.

“But the Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury is there tonight.” Bernard was almost in tears.

“Ai yaa takwa!” It was only in Zuni that the Savage could adequately express what he felt about the Arch-Community-Songster. “Hani!” he added as an after-thought; and then “Sons eso tse-na.” And he spat on the ground, as Pope might have done.

In the end Bernard had to go back to his rooms and inform the impatient assembly that the Savage would not be appearing that evening. The news was received poorly. The men were furious at having been tricked into behaving politely to this insignificant fellow with the unsavoury reputation.

“To play such a joke on me,” the Arch-Songster kept repeating, “on me!”

As for the women, they 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.

Lenina alone said nothing. Pale, her blue eyes clouded with melancholy, she sat in a corner. She had come to the party hoping to see the Savage. “In a few minutes,” she had said to herself, as she entered the room, “I shall be seeing him, talking to him, telling him that I like him-more than anybody I’ve ever known. And then perhaps he’ll say…”

It was at this moment that Bernard had made his announcement; the Savage wasn’t coming to the party.

Lenina suddenly felt a sense of dreadful emptiness and nausea. Her heart seemed to stop beating.

“Perhaps it’s because he doesn’t like me,” she said to herself. And at once she became sure of it. John refused to see her because he didn’t like her.

People at the party were gossiping about Bernard and the alcohol rumors. Pierced by every word that was spoken, Bernard’s happy self-confidence was gone. Pale, distraught and agitated, he moved among his guests, stammering incoherent apologies, assuring them that next time the Savage would certainly be there. They 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, “I think perhaps the time has come…” He rose, put down his glass, 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…”

“My young friend,” said the Arch-Community-Songster. “Let me give you a word of advice.” He wagged his finger at Bernard. “Before it’s too late. 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, Lenina walked after him, out of the room. The other guests followed. Bernard was all alone.

Utterly deflated, he dropped into a chair and, covering his face with his hands, began to weep. A few minutes later, he 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. Lenina 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, 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. 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.

With closed eyes, his face shining with rapture, John was softly declaiming:

 

“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. The Arch-Community-Songster caught hold of it, and pulled, pulled. “I think,” said Lenina suddenly, breaking a long silence, “I’d better take a couple of grammes of soma.”

Next morning, when he took a taxi to his work at the Conditioning Centre, the intoxication of success from soma had evaporated; Bernard was his old self; and 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. “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 it inwardly, and at last even aloud. But in spite of the fact that his friend’s support and sympathy were now his only comfort, Bernard continued to nourish, along with his quite genuine affection, a secret grievance against the Savage. Nourishing a grievance against the Arch-Community-Songster was useless. And the Savage was accessible.

Bernard’s other victim-friend was Helmholtz. When 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. Bernard felt touched and humiliated at the same time.

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. Couldn’t resist it.” He laughed. “I was curious to see what their reactions would be. What an outcry there was! The Principal had me up and threatened to hand me the immediate sack. I’m a marked man.”

“But what were your rhymes about?” 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 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. Something seems to be coming to me.” In spite of all his troubles, he seemed, to Bernard, happy.

Helmholtz and the Savage liked each other at once. Bernard even felt jealous. Watching them, listening to their talk, he found himself sometimes 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.

At his third meeting with the Savage, Helmholtz read 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 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. Every line had him feel new emotions. 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 them with a loud, unpleasant laugh. “It’s just a Solidarity Service hymn.” This was his revenge on his 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 extremely effective. In the end, Helmholtz threatened to kick him out of the room. And yet, strangely enough, the next interruption, the most disgraceful of all, came from Helmholtz himself.

The Savage was reading Romeo and Juliet aloud. 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 story made him smile. Getting into such a state about having a girl-it seemed ridiculous. But 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. When 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…”

 

Helmholtz broke out in an explosion of laughter.

The mother and father (grotesque obscenity) forcing the daughter to have someone she didn’t want! And the idiotic girl not saying that she was having someone else whom she preferred! It was comical. He laughed and laughed till the tears streamed down his face-the Savage looked at him over the top of his book and then, as the laughter still continued, closed it, 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 later, once he recovered his breath enough to apologize, and tried to make the Savage listen to his explanations, “I know that one needs ridiculous, mad situations like that; one can’t write really well about anything else. 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 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.”