adolescents,” the D.H.C. was saying, “even adolescents like yourselves…”
“Not possible! Nothing?”
“In most cases, till they were over twenty years old.”
“Twenty years old?” echoed the students in disbelief.
“I told you that you’d find it incredible.”
“But what happened?” they asked. “What were the results?”
“The results were terrible.” A deep resonant voice broke startlingly into the dialogue.
They looked around. On the side stood a stranger—a man of middle height, black-haired, with a hooked nose, full red lips, eyes very piercing and dark.
The D.H.C. darted forward, his hand outstretched, smiling with all his teeth.
“Controller! What an unexpected pleasure! Boys, what are you thinking of? This is the Controller; this is his fordship, Mustapha Mond.”
The clock struck four. Voices called from the trumpet mouths.
“Main Day-shift off duty. Second Day-shift take over. Main Day-shift off…”
In the lift, on their way up to the changing rooms, Henry Foster and the Assistant Director of Predestination rather pointedly [16]turned their backs on Bernard Marx from the Psychology Bureau.
Despite the change between shifts, machinery was still humming in the Embryo Store. The conveyors crept forward with their load of future men and women no matter what.
Lenina Crowne walked briskly towards the door.
His fordship Mustapha Mond! The eyes of the students almost popped out of their heads. Mustapha Mond! The Resident Controller for Western Europe! One of the Ten World Controllers. One of the Ten … and he was going to stay, to stay, yes, and actually talk to them … straight from the horse’s mouth. Straight from the mouth of Ford himself.
“You all remember,” said the Controller, in his strong deep voice, “you all remember, I suppose, that beautiful saying of Our Ford’s: History is bunk. History,” he repeated slowly, “is bunk.”
He waved his hand; and it was as though, with an invisible feather whisk, he had brushed away a little dust, and the dust was Harappa, was Ur of the Chaldees; some spider-webs, and they were Thebes and Babylon and Cnossos and Mycenae. Whisk. Whisk—and where was Odysseus, where was Job, where was Jesus? Whisk—and those specks of antique dirt called Athens and Rome, Jerusalem and the Middle Kingdom—all were gone. Whisk—the place where Italy had been was empty. Whisk, the cathedrals; whisk, whisk, King Lear and the Thoughts of Pascal. Whisk, Passion; whisk, Requiem; whisk, Symphony; whisk…
“Going to the Feelies this evening, Henry?” enquired the Assistant Predestinator. “I hear the new one at the Alhambra is great. There’s a love scene on a bearskin rug. Every hair of the bear reproduced. The most amazing tactual effects.”
“That’s why you’re taught no history,” the Controller was saying. “But now the time has come…”
The D.H.C. looked at him nervously.
Mustapha Mond intercepted his anxious glance and the corners of his red lips twitched ironically.
“It’s all right, Director,” he said in a tone of faint derision, “I won’t corrupt them.”
The D.H.C. was overwhelmed with confusion.
Those who feel themselves despised do well to look despising[17]. The smile on Bernard Marx’s face was contemptuous. Every hair on the bear indeed!
“I shall make a point of going,” said Henry Foster.
Mustapha Mond leaned forward, shook a finger at them. “Just try to realize it,” he said. “Try to realize what it was like to have a viviparous mother.”
That smutty word again. But none of them smiled this time.
“Try to imagine what ‘living with one’s family’ meant.”
They tried; obviously without success.
“And do you know what a ‘home’ was?”
They shook their heads.
Lenina Crowne opened the door marked GIRLS’ DRESSING-ROOM and walked into a deafening chaos of arms and bosoms and underclothing.
“Hullo, Fanny,” said she to the young woman who had the locker next to hers.
Fanny worked in the Bottling Room, and her surname was also Crowne. But as the two thousand million inhabitants of the plant had only ten thousand names between them, the coincidence was not particularly surprising.
Lenina pulled at her zippers—downwards on the jacket, downwards at the two that held trousers, downwards again to loosen her undergarment. Still wearing her shoes and stockings, she walked off towards the bathrooms.
Home, home—a few small rooms, stiflingly over-inhabited by people. No air, no space; a prison; darkness, disease, and smells.
(The Controller’s description was so vivid that one of the boys, more sensitive than the rest, turned pale at the mere description and was on the point of being sick.)
Lenina got out of the bath and toweled herself dry. Eight different scents and eau-de-cologne were laid on in little taps over the wash-basin. She turned on the third from the left, dabbed herself with chypre and, carrying her shoes and stockings in her hand, went out to see if one of the vibro-vacuum machines were free.
And home was as squalid psychically as possible. Psychically, it was a rabbit hole, hot with the frictions of tightly packed life, reeking with emotion. Maniacally, the mother brooded over her children (her children)… like a cat over its kittens; “My baby, my baby,” over and over again. “My baby, and oh, oh, at my breast, the little hands, the hunger! Till at last my baby sleeps, my baby sleeps with a bubble of white milk at the corner of his mouth. My little baby sleeps…”
“Yes,” said Mustapha Mond, nodding his head, “you may well shudder[18].”
“Who are you going out with tonight?” Lenina asked, returning from the vibro-vac.
“Nobody.”
Lenina raised her eyebrows in astonishment.
“I’ve been feeling rather out of sorts [19]lately,” Fanny explained. “Dr. Wells advised me to have a Pregnancy Substitute.”
“But you’re only nineteen. The first Pregnancy Substitute isn’t compulsory till twenty-one.”
“I know, dear. But some people are better if they begin earlier.” She opened the door of her locker and pointed to the row of boxes and labelled phials on the upper shelf.
“SYRUP OF CORPUS LUTEUM,”
rather pointedly – специально, показательно
Those who feel themselves despised do well to look despising. – Презирающих тебя сам встречай презрением.
you may well shudder – меня тоже передергивает
feeling rather out of sorts – не очень хорошо себя чувствую
