[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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, shrtnking 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 of 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 looked 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 around 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."
Lenina smiled triumphantly. But her satisfaction was premature.
"All the same," he went on, after a little pause, "I still rather wish it had all ended
differently."
"Differently?" Were there other endings?
"I didn't want it to end with our going to bed," he specified.
Lenina was astonished.
"Not at once, not the first day."
"But then what & ?"
He began to talk a lot of incomprehensible and dangerous nonsense. Lenina did
her best to stop the ears of her mind; but every now and then a phrase would insist
on becoming audible. "& to try the effect of arresting my impulses," she heard him
say. The words seemed to touch a spring in her mind.
"Never put off till to-morrow the fun you can have to-day," she said gravely.
"Two hundred repetitions, twice a week from fourteen to sixteen and a half," was all
his comment. The mad bad talk rambled on. "I want to know what passion is," she
heard him saying. "I want to feel something strongly."
"When the individual feels, the community reels," Lenina pronounced.
"Well, why shouldn't it reel a bit?"
"Bernard!"
But Bernard remained unabashed.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]