Chapter 13 Chapter Twelve
Bernard had to yell at the closed door, but the Savage would not open it.
"But everyone is there waiting for you."
"Let them wait." A muffled reply came from inside the room.
"But you know very well, John." (How difficult it is to shout and persuade!) "I sent them to see you."
"You should ask my opinion first, and ask me if I would like to see them."
"But you always came, John."
"That's why I never want to come again."
"Just cheer me up," Bernard said hoarsely, "won't you please cheer me up?"
"I don't want to."
"Really don't want to?"
"I really don't want to."
Desperate. "Then what shall I do?" Bernard wailed.
"Then you go quickly!" the voice in the room roared, very annoyed.
"But the Canterbury Community Chief Singer is coming tonight." Burner was on the verge of tears.
"Ah, ah, Taqua." Savage could only express exactly how he felt about the community's lead singer in Zuni. "Harney!" he added, and then, "Pine, Erso, Zener." (What a sharp mocking tone!)
Then he spit on the ground - Pope would do the same.
Finally Bernard, discouraged, slipped back to his house to inform the impatient audience that the Savage would not be coming that night.The guests were outraged by the news.The men were pissed off, because they had been duped and given too much credit to this insignificant, heretical, notorious man.People with higher social status are more indignant.
"Follow me like that," the chief singer kept saying, "follow me!"
The ladies were even more angry, thinking that they had been told a lie—that a vicious little guy had been washed—that his bottle had been mistakenly filled with alcohol, and that he had only grown a gamma-minus head.That is an insult to them.Their voices grew louder.The headmistress at Eton was particularly vicious.
Only Lenina said nothing.Pale-faced, she sat in a corner, her blue eyes clouded by a rare melancholy, cut off from those around her by a mood different from those around her.She had come to the party with a strange and urgent excitement. "In a few minutes," she said to herself when she first entered the room, "I'll see him. I'll tell him that I love him (she made up her mind to come)--more than any man I know. Everyone is deep. At that time, he might say..."
What would he say?Blood welled up her cheeks.
"Why was he so weird after the sensual movie that night? So weird. And I'm absolutely sure he likes me quite a bit. I'm sure..."
It was at this time that Bernard announced the news: the Savage would not be coming to the party.
Lenina suddenly had a feeling that usually only occurs when she is subjected to strong empathy—a terrible feeling of emptiness, a breathless feeling of dread, nausea.Her heart seemed to stop beating.
"Maybe it's because he doesn't like me," she said to herself.The possibility immediately became a certainty.John refused to come because he didn't like her...
"It's really stupid," said the headmistress of Eton College to the superintendent of cremation and phosphorous recycling. "In my opinion, in fact..."
"Indeed," came Fanny Crown's voice, "the alcohol thing is absolutely true. One of my acquaintances knew someone who worked in the embryo bank. She told my friend, and my friend told me. .”
"It's outrageous, it's outrageous," said Henry Foster sympathetically to the community's chief singer, "and it may interest you that our former director was then planning to send him down to Iceland."
Bernard's cheerful, self-assured balloon was stretched too taut, and what everyone said had poked holes in it and let it leak.Pale, frustrated, agitated, flustered, he paced among the guests, muttering incoherently, apologetically, and assuring them that the Savage would be there next time.He begged them to sit down and eat a carotene sandwich, a vitamin A biscuit, or a glass of substitute champagne.They still ate, but ignored him; while drinking their drinks, they spoke rudely to each other, or talked about him with each other, their voices were loud and rude, and they just pretended that he was not there.
"Now, my friends," said the Canterbury community chief singer with the beautiful, resonant voice that led the Forte's Day performance, "now, my friends, I think maybe the time has come..." He stood up , put down the cup, brushed off a lot of crumbs from his purple viscose vest, and walked towards the door.
Bernard rushed forward, trying to keep him.
"Do you really have to go, Monsieur Singer? . . . It's still early, I hope you can..."
Yes, this move was beyond his expectations.Lenina had secretly told Bernard that if he invited the chief singer, he would accept the invitation. "He's really cute, you know." She also showed Bernard a little gold T-shaped zip closure that the head singer had given her as a souvenir of their weekend together in Lambeth.To announce his victory, Burner used to write the following on every invitation: Meet the Canterbury Chief Singer and Mr. Savage.But this Mr. Savage chose to shut himself up tonight, and shouted "Harney," and even "Song, Erso, Zener!"Luckily Bernard didn't know Zuni.What should have been the culmination of Bernard's career turned out to be a moment of humiliation.
"I wished very much..." he repeated stammeringly, looking up at the great man with flustered and begging eyes.
"My young friend," said the community lead singer in a solemn, stern, loud voice.People were silent. "Let me give you a piece of advice," he said, wagging a finger at Bernard, "it's not too late." His voice deepened, "You have to change your past, change your past .” He drew a T on his head and turned around. "Lenina, my dear," he called in another tone, "come with me."
Lenina obeyed, and followed him out of the house, but without smiling, not flattered (not at all flattered).The other guests followed after a respectful amount of time.The last guest slammed the door, leaving Bernard alone.
His balloon was punctured, completely deflated, and he sank down on the chair, covered his face with his hands, and began to cry.After a few minutes he figured it out and swallowed four soma tablets.
Upstairs the Savage reads his Romeo and Juliet.
Lenina and the prima donna got off the plane and onto the roof of Lambeth Palace. "Hurry up, young friend—I mean you, Lenina," the chief singer called impatiently from the elevator door.Lenina looked at the moon, paused for a moment, then lowered her eyelids, and hurried across the roof to him.
Mustapha Mond had just finished reading a document entitled "A New Theory of Biology."He sat for a while, frowning thoughtfully, and then picked up his pen and wrote on the title page: "The author's idea of mathematically processing the object is novel and original, but it is unreasonable, and has potential implications for the current social order. Subversion is quite dangerous and will not be published." He underlined those words. "The author must be monitored and transferred to the Naval Biological Station if necessary." Unfortunately, he thought as he signed it, a masterpiece.But once the explanation from the goal is accepted, the result is difficult to predict.This kind of thinking can easily destroy the conditions already set by the unsettled members of the upper caste-let them lose faith in happiness, which embodies the highest "good", and turn to believe that happiness has purposes beyond present human society. , so as to believe that the purpose of life is not to maintain welfare, but to deepen consciousness and expand knowledge.That may well be true, the President thought, but it must not be allowed in the present circumstances.He picked up the pen again, drew a second line under "unpublished," thicker and darker than the first, and sighed. "How interesting it would be," he thought, "if one didn't have to think about happiness!"
With his eyes closed and his face beaming with joy, John read softly into the void:
The gold T-frame gleamed on Lenina's chest, and the community chief singer grabbed it and gave it a few playful tugs. "I think," said Lenina, breaking a long silence, "that I'd better take two grams of soma."
At this moment, Bernard was fast asleep, smiling, smiling, smiling at the private paradise of his dreams.But what can't be changed is that the minute hand of the electric clock beside his bed makes an almost inaudible "click" every thirty seconds, jumping one step forward.Tap, tap, tap, tap...and so it was morning.Bernard was back in the anguish of time and space.When he boarded a taxi to work at the Conditioning Center, he was at his worst.The thrill of success had dissipated, he was sober again, and so I was.Compared with the temporarily inflated balloon of the previous weeks, his old self seemed heavier than ever in the surrounding atmosphere.
The Savage showed unexpected sympathy for the discouraged Bernard.
"You look more like you were at Malpais," said the Savage, when Bernard told him his misery. "Do you remember our first conversation? Outside that little house. You It’s the same now as it was then.”
"I'm unhappy again, and that's why."
"If I were, I'd rather be unhappy than be happy with this lie you're here for."
"But I like it," said Bernard bitterly, "and it's all your fault. You turned them all against me by refusing to go to the party!" He knew he was being unfair, and that was why he was absurd.He also admitted in his heart that what the Savage said at the moment was true: friends who can turn against each other for such trivial reasons are of no value.But in spite of this he knew and admitted, in spite of the fact that the support and sympathy of his friends were now his only consolation, he still harbored in his heart a stubborn and secret resentment against the savage (along with that resentment There are also sincere feelings for him), if you want to take a small revenge on him, give him some pain.Resentment against the chief singer is useless, nor is it possible to get revenge on the director of bottle changing or the assistant director of fate setting.But in Berner's view, the savage has a huge advantage over those few people as an object of revenge, because he can take revenge.One of the chief functions of a friend is that the punishment we would like to inflict but cannot inflict on an enemy can be inflicted on a friend in a milder and more symbolic form.
Another friend Bernard could hurt was Helmholtz.When he was upset Bernard went back to befriending Helmholtz (when he was in the mood he didn't think the friendship was worth maintaining).Helmholtz offered him friendship without reproach, without reproach, as if forgetting that there had been a quarrel.Bernard was very moved, but at the same time felt that kind of tolerance was an insult to him.The more unusual this tolerance was, the more he was ashamed, for it was all Helmholtz's character and had nothing to do with Soma.That was the Helmholtz of everyday life who gave without hesitation and generosity, not the Helmholtz of holidays caused by half a gram of soma.Bernard was grateful as usual (it was a great relief to have a friend back around him), and he was also disgruntled as usual (it would have been a pleasure to get revenge on Helmholtz's generosity).
When the two met for the first time after their estrangement, Berner poured out his pain and accepted comfort.It was days before he was surprised and ashamed to realize that he was not the only one in trouble.There were also conflicts between Helmholtz and the leadership.
"It was a couple of jingles," Helmholtz explained. "I was teaching advanced emotional engineering to third graders. Twelve lectures. Seventh of them was on jingles. Exactly:' The role of the use of jingles in moral propaganda and advertising.' I always substantiate my reports with many technical examples. This time I thought I should take as an example a new jingle I wrote. Of course, that is pure madness, But I couldn't help it." He laughed. "I was curious to see how the students would react. And," he said more seriously, "I wanted to do a little publicity. I wanted to dominate them and make them feel How I felt writing that jingle. Ford!" He laughed again. "What an uproar! The headmaster called me in and threatened to fire me. I'm a problem."
"What's that jingle you're talking about?" Bernard asked.
"It was about loneliness."
Bernard raised his eyebrows.
"I'll recite it to you if you'd like to hear it." Helmholtz began:
"Well, I gave this to the students as an example, and they sued the principal."
"I'm not surprised," says Berner, "that it's all against their sleep teaching. Remember, they've issued hundreds of thousands of warnings against loneliness."
"I know that, but I think it depends on the effect."
"No, you can see it now."
Helmholtz just smiled. "I feel," he said after a moment's silence, "that I'm just beginning to have something to write about, as if I'm just beginning to use that power that I feel I have inside me—that extra potential. There seems to be something Something's coming my way." It seemed to Bernard that Helmholtz, in spite of all his troubles, seemed genuinely happy.
Helmholtz hit it off with the Savage, and Bernard felt a strong jealousy in his heart.He spent many weeks with the savage, without forming with him the deep friendship that Helmholtz soon formed with him.He watched them talk, listened to them talk, and found himself sometimes resentfully wishing he'd never made them friends.He was ashamed of his jealousy, and now by force of will, now by soma, he dissuaded himself from it.But all the efforts were ineffective, and there was always a break in the soma holiday, and the bad emotions kept coming back to my heart.
During Helmholtz's third meeting with the Savage, Helmholtz recited his jingle about loneliness.
"What do you think of the poem?" he asked after reciting it.
The Savage shook his head. "Listen to this," he replied.He opened the drawer containing the book that had been bitten by mice, opened it and read:
Helmholtz listened with increasing agitation.He was taken aback when he heard "the only tall treetop in Arabia".He suddenly laughed happily when he heard "you, the pioneer, screaming shrill".Blood welled up his cheeks as he heard "every fierce-winged bird of prey."But when he heard the "sacrifice music", his face turned pale and he trembled with an unprecedented emotion.The Savage continued:
"Joyful!" Bernard interrupted the recitation with an unpleasant laugh. "Isn't that a Prayer of Unity?" Feelings outweighed feelings for him.
In the next two or three meetings, he repeated this small act of revenge many times.The action is simple, but very effective, for destroying or besmirching a crystalline poem they love can inflict intense pain on Helmholtz and the Savage.At last Helmholtz threatened to throw him out of the house if he interrupted him like that again.Oddly enough, however, the next interruption, the most humiliating one, came from Helmholtz himself.
The Savage was reading "Romeo and Juliet" aloud--with a thrilling and quivering passion, for he always thought of himself as Romeo and Lenina as Juliet.Helmholtz had come to the scene of the first meeting of the lovers with indefinable interest.The Orchard had delighted him with its poetry, but the emotion it expressed made him want to laugh.It seemed funny to him to have such a fight with a girl.But after he was infected by the words bit by bit, he felt that the passion it expressed was wonderful. "That old fellow," he said, "could make fools of our best propagandists." The Savage smiled triumphantly, and resumed his reading.Everything goes fairly well until the final scene of Act Three - when Capulet and Lady Capulet start forcing Juliet to marry Paris.Helmholtz had been restless listening to the scene, but at this moment Juliet exclaimed in the sentimental tones imitated by the Savage:
Hearing this passage, Helmholtz suddenly couldn't help it, and burst into a haha strange laugh.
Mother!dad!What an absurd obscenity, telling a daughter to want someone she doesn't want!And that daughter is so idiotic that she doesn't know that she already has a sweetheart (at least at that time)!This kind of obscenity and absurdity is impossible not to find it funny.He had tried to suppress the smile that rose from the bottom of his heart, but it was "Dear Mother" again (the Savage said it in that sad trembling tone), and it was Tybalt dead and lying There, apparently without cremation, wasted his phosphorous for a gloomy mausoleum.All this made it difficult for him to control himself.He laughed, laughed again, until tears flowed from his eyes.He could not help laughing, and the Savage paled with insult, and stared at him over the top of the page.Then, as he was still laughing, he closed the book angrily, stood up, and locked the book in a drawer like a man who takes pearls from a swine.
"However," he let the savage listen to his explanation and calm down when Helmholtz was able to apologize, "I know very well that people need such absurd and crazy plots, because it is not written like this." Can't write really good stuff. How did the old guy become such a great publicity expert? Because he has so many stupid, infuriating stories, and exciting. He has to make you feel bad, make you Get angry, otherwise you won't be able to experience those really beautiful, deep, X-ray-like words. But those 'dad', 'mum'!" He shook his head, "in those 'dad', 'mum' You can't make me stern in front of you. Who can get excited about a male doll with or without a female doll?" (The Savage flinched; but Helmholtz stared at the floor thoughtfully, seeing nothing.)" No." He sighed, ending the conversation, "Not exciting. We need other kinds of madness and violence. But, what? What kind? Where to find it?" He stopped , shook his head and said, "I don't know," and finally said, "I don't know."
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