style="font-size:15px;"> “To touch the fence is instant death,” pronounced the Warden solemnly. “There is no escape from a Savage Reservation.”
“Perhaps,” said Bernard, “we ought to think of going.” The little black needle on the tap was nibbling through time, eating into his money.
“No escape,” repeated the Warden, waving him back into his chair; and as the permit was not yet countersigned, Bernard had no choice but to obey. “Those who are born in the Reservation are destined to die there.”
“Perhaps,” Bernard tried again, “we ought…”
Leaning forward, the Warden tapped the table with his forefinger. “You ask me how many people live in the Reservation. And I reply”-triumphantly-“I reply that we do not know. We can only guess.”
“You don’t say so.”
“My dear young lady, I do say so.”
Bernard was pale and trembling with impatience. But the booming continued.
“… about sixty thousand Indians and half-breeds… absolute savages… our inspectors occasionally visit… otherwise, no communication whatever with the civilized world… still preserve their repulsive habits and customs… marriage, if you know what that is, my dear young lady; families… no conditioning… monstrous superstitions… Christianity and totemism and ancestor worship… extinct languages, such as Zuni and Spanish and Athapascan… pumas, porcupines and other ferocious animals… infectious diseases… priests… venomous lizards…”
They got away at last. Bernard dashed to the telephone. Quick, quick; but it took him nearly three minutes to get on to Helmholtz Watson. At last, thank Ford, he was through and, yes, it was Helmholtz, who promised to go round at once and turn off the tap, yes, at once, but took this opportunity to tell him what the D.H.C. had said, in public, yesterday evening…
“What? He’s looking out for someone to take my place?” Bernard’s voice was agonized. “So it’s actually decided? Did he mention Iceland?”
He hung up the receiver and turned back to Lenina. His face was pale.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“The matter?” He dropped heavily into a chair. “I’m going to be sent to Iceland.”
Often in the past he had wondered what it would be like to be subjected to some great trial, some pain, some persecution. As recently as a week ago, in the Director’s office, he had imagined himself stoically accepting suffering without a word. Now he realized that it was because he had not taken the threats quite seriously, he had not believed that, when it came to the point, the D.H.C. would ever do anything. Now there wasn’t a trace of that imagined stoicism, that theoretical courage.
He raged against himself[26]-what a fool! – against the Director-how unfair not to give him that other chance, that other chance which, he now had no doubt at all, he had always intended to take. And Iceland, Iceland…
Lenina shook her head.
In the end she persuaded him to swallow four tablets of soma. Five minutes later he felt better. A message from the porter announced that a Reservation Guard had come round with a plane and was waiting on the roof of the hotel. They went up at once.
The programme was: a bird’s-eye view of ten or a dozen of the principal pueblos, then a landing for lunch in the valley of Malpais. The rest-house was comfortable there, and up at the pueblo the savages would probably be celebrating their summer festival. It would be the best place to spend the night.
They took their seats in the plane and set off. Ten minutes later they were crossing the frontier that separated civilization from savagery. Uphill and down, across the deserts of salt or sand, through forests, into the violet depth of canyons, over mesas, the fence marched on and on. At its foot, here and there, a mosaic of white bones, a still unrotted carcass marked the place where an animal had come too close to the destroying wires.
“They never learn,” said the green-uniformed pilot. “And they never will learn,” he added and laughed.
Bernard also laughed; after two grammes of soma the joke seemed, for some reason, good. Laughed and then, almost immediately, dropped off to sleep[27]. When he woke, he found their machine standing on the ground, Lenina carrying the suitcases into a small square house, and the Gamma-green pilot talking incomprehensibly with a young Indian.
“Malpais,” explained the pilot, as Bernard stepped out. “This is the rest-house. And there’s a dance this afternoon at the pueblo. He’ll take you there.” He pointed to the young savage. “Funny, I expect.” He grinned. “Everything they do is funny.” And with that he climbed into the plane and started up the engines. “Back tomorrow. And remember,” he added reassuringly to Lenina, “they’re perfectly tame; savages won’t do you any harm. They’ve got enough experience of gas bombs to know that they mustn’t play any tricks.”
Chapter Seven
The mesa was like a ship in a strait of dust. The channel ran between precipitous banks, and slanting from one wall to the other across the valley ran a streak of green-the river and its fields. In the centre of the strait, and seemingly a part of it, stood the pueblo of Malpais. Block above block, each story smaller than the one below, the tall houses rose like stepped pyramids into the blue sky. At their feet lay a straggle of low buildings, a criss-cross of walls. A few columns of smoke mounted perpendicularly into the windless air and were lost.
“Queer,” said Lenina. “Very queer.” It was her ordinary word of condemnation. “I don’t like it. And I don’t like that man.” She pointed to the Indian guide. Her feeling was evidently reciprocated; the very back of the man, as he walked along before them, was hostile.
They walked on.
Suddenly it was as though the whole air had come alive and was pulsing. Up there, in Malpais, the drums were being beaten. Their feet fell in with the rhythm of that mysterious heart; they quickened their pace. Their path led them to the foot of the precipice. The sides of the great mesa ship towered over them.
“I wish we could have brought the plane,” said Lenina. “I hate walking. And you feel so small when you’re on the ground at the bottom of a hill.”
They walked along for some way in the shadow of the mesa, and reached a ladder. They climbed. It was a very steep path that zigzagged from side to side of the gully. Sometimes the pulsing of the drums was all but inaudible, at others they seemed to be beating only just round the corner.
They emerged at last from the ravine into the full sunlight. The top of the mesa was a flat deck of stone.
“Like the Charing-T Tower,” was Lenina’s comment. A sound of footsteps made them turn round. Naked from throat to navel, their dark brown bodies painted with white lines, two Indians came running along the path. Their black hair was braided with fox fur and red flannel. Cloaks of turkey feathers fluttered from their shoulders; huge feather diadems exploded gaudily round their heads. With every step they took came the clink and rattle of their silver bracelets, their heavy necklaces of bone and turquoise beads. They came on without a word, running quietly. One of them was holding a feather brush; the other carried, in either hand, what looked at a distance like three or four pieces of thick rope. One of the ropes writhed, and suddenly Lenina saw that they were snakes.
raged against himself – злился на себя
dropped off to sleep – провалился в сон
