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the less riches.' Isn't that right? Mending's anti-social. But it's all different here. It's
like living with lunatics. Everything they do is mad." She looked round; saw John and
Bernard had left them and were walking up and down in the dust and garbage
outside the house; but, none the less confidentially lowering her voice, and leaning,
while Lenina stiffened and shrank, so close that the blown reek of embryo-poison
stirred the hair on her cheek. "For instance," she hoarsely whispered, "take the way
they have one another here. Mad, I tell you, absolutely mad. Everybody belongs to
every one else don't they? don't they?" she insisted, tugging at Lenina's sleeve.
Lenina nodded her averted head, let out the breath she had been holding and
managed to draw another one, relatively untainted. "Well, here," the other went on,
"nobody's supposed to belong to more than one person. And if you have people in
the ordinary way, the others think you're wicked and anti-social. They hate and
despise you. Once a lot of women came and made a scene because their men
came to see me. Well, why not? And then they rushed at me & No, it was too awful.
I can't tell you about it." Linda covered her face with her hands and shuddered.
"They're so hateful, the women here. Mad, mad and cruel. And of course they don't
know anything about Malthusian Drill, or bottles, or decanting, or anything of that
sort. So they're having children all the time like dogs. It's too revolting. And to
think that I & Oh, Ford, Ford, Ford! And yet John was a great comfort to me. I don't
know what I should have done without him. Even though he did get so upset
whenever a man & Quite as a tiny boy, even. Once (but that was when he was
bigger) he tried to kill poor Waihusiwa or was it Popé? just because I used to have
them sometimes. Because I never could make him understand that that was what
civilized people ought to do. Being mad's infectious I believe. Anyhow, John seems
to have caught it from the Indians. Because, of course, he was with them a lot. Even
though they always were so beastly to him and wouldn't let him do all the things the
other boys did. Which was a good thing in a way, because it made it easier for me
to condition him a little. Though you've no idea how difficult that is. There's so much
one doesn't know; it wasn't my business to know. I mean, when a child asks you
how a helicopter works or who made the world well, what are you to answer if you're
a Beta and have always worked in the Fertilizing Room? What are you to answer?"
Chapter Eight
OUTSIDE, in the dust and among the garbage (there were four dogs now), Bernard
and John were walking slowly up and down.
"So hard for me to realize," Bernard was saying, "to reconstruct. As though we were
living on different planets, in different centuries. A mother, and all this dirt, and
gods, and old age, and disease & " He shook his head. "It's almost inconceivable. I
shall never understand, unless you explain."
"Explain what?"
"This." He indicated the pueblo. "That." And it was the little house outside the
village. "Everything. All your life."
"But what is there to say?"
"From the beginning. As far back as you can remember."
"As far back as I can remember." John frowned. There was a long silence.
It was very hot. They had eaten a lot of tortillas and sweet corn. Linda said, "Come
and lie down, Baby." They lay down together in the big bed. "Sing," and Linda sang.
Sang "Streptocock-Gee to Banbury-T" and "Bye Baby Banting, soon you'll need
decanting." Her voice got fainter and fainter &
There was a loud noise, and he woke with a start. A man was saying something to
Linda, and Linda was laughing. She had pulled the blanket up to her chin, but the
man pulled it down again. His hair was like two black ropes, and round his arm was
a lovely silver bracelet with blue stones in it. He liked the bracelet; but all the same,
he was frightened; he hid his face against Linda's body. Linda put her hand on him
and he felt safer. In those other words he did not understand so well, she said to
the man, "Not with John here." The man looked at him, then again at Linda, and
said a few words in a soft voice. Linda said, "No." But the man bent over the bed
towards him and his face was huge, terrible; the black ropes of hair touched the
blanket. "No," Linda said again, and he felt her hand squeezing him more tightly.
"No, no!" But the man took hold of one of his arms, and it hurt. He screamed. The
man put up his other hand and lifted him up. Linda was still holding him, still
saying, "No, no." The man said something short and angry, and suddenly her hands
were gone. "Linda, Linda." He kicked and wriggled; but the man carried him across
to the door, opened it, put him down on the floor in the middle of the other room,
and went away, shutting the door behind hirn. He got up, he ran to the door.
Standing on tiptoe he could just reach the big wooden latch. He lifted it and pushed;
but the door wouldn't open. "Linda," he shouted. She didn't answer.
He remembered a huge room, rather dark; and there were big wooden things with
strings fastened to them, and lots of women standing round them making
blankets, Linda said. Linda told him to sit in the corner with the other children, while
she went and helped the women. He played with the little boys for a long time.
Suddenly people started talking very loud, and there were the women pushing Linda
away, and Linda was crying. She went to the door and he ran after her. He asked
her why they were angry. "Because I broke something," she said. And then she got
angry too. "How should I know how to do their beastly weaving?" she said. "Beastly
savages." He asked her what savages were. When they got back to their house,
Popé was waiting at the door, and he came in with them. He had a big gourd full of
stuff that looked like water; only it wasn't water, but something with a bad smell
that burnt your mouth and made you cough. Linda drank some and Popé drank
some, and then Linda laughed a lot and talked very loud; and then she and Popé
went into the other room. When Popé went away, he went into the room. Linda was
in bed and so fast asleep that he couldn't wake her.
Popé used to come often. He said the stuff in the gourd was called mescal; but
Linda said it ought to be called soma; only it made you feel ill afterwards. He hated
Popé. He hated them all all the men who came to see Linda. One afternoon, when
he had been playing with the other children it was cold, he remembered, and there
was snow on the mountains he came back to the house and heard angry voices in
the bedroom. They were women's voices, and they said words he didn't understand,
but he knew they were dreadful words. Then suddenly, crash! something was upset;
he heard people moving about quickly, and there was another crash and then a
noise like hitting a mule, only not so bony; then Linda screamed. "Oh, don't, don't, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]