【有声英语文学名著】美丽新世界（3a）

 Brave New World

by Aldous Huxley
Chapter Three
OUTSIDE, in the garden, it was playtime. Naked in the warm June sunshine, six or seven hundred little boys and girls were running with shrill 1 yells over the lawns, or playing ball games, or squatting 2 silently in twos and threes among the flowering shrubs 3. The roses were in bloom, two nightingales soliloquized in the boskage, a cuckoo was just going out of tune 4 among the lime trees. The air was drowsy 5 with the murmur 6 of bees and helicopters.
The Director and his students stood for a short time watching a game of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy. Twenty children were grouped in a circle round a chrome steel tower. A ball thrown up so as to land on the platform at the top of the tower rolled down into the interior, fell on a rapidly revolving 7 disk, was hurled 8 through one or other of the numerous apertures 9 pierced in the cylindrical 10 casing, and had to be caught.
"Strange," mused 11 the Director, as they turned away, "strange to think that even in Our Ford 12's day most games were played without more apparatus 13 than a ball or two and a few sticks and perhaps a bit of netting, imagine the folly 14 of allowing people to play elaborate games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption. It's madness. Nowadays the Controllers won't approve of any new game unless it can be shown that it requires at least as much apparatus as the most complicated of existing games." He interrupted himself.
"That's a charming little group," he said, pointing.
In a little grassy 15 bay between tall clumps 16 of Mediterranean 17 heather, two children, a little boy of about seven and a little girl who might have been a year older, were playing, very gravely and with all the fo-cussed attention of scientists intent on a labour of discovery, a rudimentary sexual game.
"Charming, charming!" the D.H.C. repeated sentimentally 18.
"Charming," the boys politely agreed. But their smile was rather patronizing. They had put aside similar childish amusements too recently to be able to watch them now without a touch of contempt. Charming? but it was just a pair of kids fooling about; that was all. Just kids.
"I always think," the Director was continuing in the same rather maudlin 19 tone, when he was interrupted by a loud boo-hooing.
From a neighbouring shrubbery emerged a nurse, leading by the hand a small boy, who howled as he went. An anxious-looking little girl trotted 20 at her heels.
"What's the matter?" asked the Director.
The nurse shrugged 21 her shoulders. "Nothing much," she answered. "It's just that this little boy seems rather reluctant to join in the ordinary erotic play. I'd noticed it once or twice before. And now again today. He started yelling just now ..."
"Honestly," put in the anxious-looking little girl, "I didn't mean to hurt him or anything. Honestly."
"Of course you didn't, dear," said the nurse reassuringly 22. "And so," she went on, turning back to the Director, "I'm taking him in to see the Assistant Superintendent 23 of Psychology 24. Just to see if anything's at all abnormal."
"Quite right," said the Director. "Take him in. You stay here, little girl," he added, as the nurse moved away with her still howling charge. "What's your name?"
"Polly Trotsky."
"And a very good name too," said the Director. "Run away now and see if you can find some other little boy to play with."
The child scampered 25 off into the bushes and was lost to sight.
"Exquisite 26 little creature!" said the Director, looking after her. Then, turning to his students, "What I'm going to tell you now," he said, "may sound incredible. But then, when you're not accustomed to history, most facts about the past do sound incredible."
He let out the amazing truth. For a very long period before the time of Our Ford, and even for some generations afterwards, erotic play between children had been regarded as abnormal (there was a roar of laughter); and not only abnormal, actually immoral 27 (no!): and had therefore been rigorously suppressed.
A look of astonished incredulity appeared on the faces of his listeners. Poor little kids not allowed to amuse themselves? They could not believe it.
"Even adolescents," the D.H.C. was saying, "even adolescents like yourselves ..."
"Not possible!"
"Barring a little surreptitious auto-erotism and homosexuality-abso-lutely nothing."
"Nothing?"
"In most cases, till they were over twenty years old."
"Twenty years old?" echoed the students in a chorus of loud disbelief.
"Twenty," the Director repeated. "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 29 voice broke startlingly into the dialogue.
They looked around. On the fringe of the little group stood a stranger-a man of middle height, black-haired, with a hooked nose, full red lips, eyes very piercing and dark. "Terrible," he repeated.
The D.H.C. had at that moment sat down on one of the steel and rubber benches conveniently scattered 30 through the gardens; but at the sight of the stranger, he sprang to his feet and darted 31 forward, his hand outstretched, smiling with all his teeth, effusive 32.
"Controller! What an unexpected pleasure! Boys, what are you thinking of? This is the Controller; this is his fordship, Mustapha Mond."
In the four thousand rooms of the Centre the four thousand electric clocks simultaneously 33 struck four. Discarnate voices called from the trumpet 34 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 36 turned their backs on Bernard Marx from the Psychology Bureau: averted 37 themselves from that unsavoury reputation.
The faint hum and rattle 38 of machinery 39 still stirred the crimson 40 air in the Embryo 41 Store. Shifts might come and go, one lupus-coloured face give place to another; majestically 42 and for ever the conveyors crept forward with their load of future men and women.
Lenina Crowne walked briskly towards the door.
His fordship Mustapha Mond! The eyes of the saluting 43 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 sat down on the bench with the D.H.C, 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.
Two shrimp-brown children emerged from a neighbouring shrubbery, stared at them for a moment with large, astonished eyes, then returned to their amusements among the leaves.
"You all remember," said the Controller, in his strong deep voice, "you all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired saying of Our Ford's: History is bunk 44. History," he repeated slowly, "is bunk."
He waved his hand; and it was as though, with an invisible feather wisk, 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 were Jupiter and Gotama and Jesus? Whisk-and those specks 45 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 46; whisk, Symphony; whisk ...
"Going to the Feelies this evening, Henry?" enquired 47 the Assistant Pre-destinator. "I hear the new one at the Alhambra is first-rate. There's a love scene on a bearskin rug; they say it's marvellous. 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 48. There were those strange rumours 49 of old forbidden books hidden in a safe in the Controller's study. Bibles, poetry-Ford knew what.
Mustapha Mond intercepted 50 his anxious glance and the corners of his red lips twitched 51 ironically.
"It's all right, Director," he said in a tone of faint derision, "I won't corrupt 52 them."
The D.H.C. was overwhelmed with confusion.
Those who feel themselves despised do well to look despising. 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, and his voice sent a strange thrill quivering along their diaphragms. "Try to realize what it was like to have a viviparous mother."
That smutty word again. But none of them dreamed, this time, of smiling.
"Try to imagine what 'living with one's family' meant."
They tried; but obviously without the smallest success.
"And do you know what a 'home' was?"
They shook their heads.
From her dim crimson cellar Lenina Crowne shot up seventeen stories, turned to the right as she stepped out of the lift, walked down a long corridor and, opening the door marked GIRLS' DRESSING-ROOM, plunged 53 into a deafening 54 chaos 55 of arms and bosoms 56 and underclothing. Torrents 57 of hot water were splashing into or gurgling out of a hundred baths. Rumbling 58 and hissing 59, eighty vibro-vacuum massage 60 machines were simultaneously kneading and sucking the firm and sunburnt flesh of eighty superb female specimens 61. Every one was talking at the top of her voice. A Synthetic 62 Music machine was warbling out a super-cornet solo.
"Hullo, Fanny," said Lenina to the young woman who had the pegs 63 and locker 64 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 65 on the jacket, downwards with a double-handed gesture 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 66 over-inhabited by a man, by a periodically teeming 67 woman, by a rabble 68 of boys and girls of all ages. No air, no space; an understerilized prison; darkness, disease, and smells.
(The Controller's evocation 69 was so vivid that one of the boys, more sensitive than the rest, turned pale at the mere 70 description and was on the point of being sick.)
Lenina got out of the bath, toweled herself dry, took hold of a long flexible tube plugged into the wall, presented the nozzle to her breast, as though she meant to commit suicide, pressed down the trigger. A blast of warmed air dusted her with the finest talcum powder. Eight different scents 28 and eau-de-Cologne were laid on in little taps over the wash-basin. She turned on the third from the left, dabbed 71 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 72 as physically 73. Psychically, it was a rabbit hole, a midden, hot with the frictions 74 of tightly packed life, reeking 75 with emotion. What suffocating 76 intimacies 77, what dangerous, insane, obscene relationships between the members of the family group! Maniacally 79, the mother brooded over her children (her children) ... brooded over them like a cat over its kittens; but a cat that could talk, a cat that could say, "My baby, my baby," over and over again. "My baby, and oh, oh, at my breast, the little hands, the hunger, and that unspeakable agonizing 80 pleasure! 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 81."
"Who are you going out with to-night?" Lenina asked, returning from the vibro-vac like a pearl illuminated 82 from within, pinkly glowing.
"Nobody."
Lenina raised her eyebrows 83 in astonishment 84.
"I've been feeling rather out of sorts lately," Fanny explained. "Dr. Wells advised me to have a Pregnancy 85 Substitute."
"But, my dear, you're only nineteen. The first Pregnancy Substitute isn't compulsory 86 till twenty-one."
"I know, dear. But some people are better if they begin earlier. Dr. Wells told me that brunettes with wide pelvises, like me, ought to have their first Pregnancy Substitute at seventeen. So I'm really two years late, not two years early." She opened the door of her locker and pointed 35 to the row of boxes and labelled phials on the upper shelf.
"SYRUP 87 OF CORPUS LUTEUM," Lenina read the names aloud. "OVARIN, GUARANTEED FRESH: NOT TO BE USED AFTER AUGUST 1ST, A.F. 632. MAMMARY GLAND 88 EXTRACT: TO BE TAKEN THREE TIMES DAILY, BEFORE MEALS, WITH A LITTLE WATER. PLACENTIN: 5cc TO BE INJECTED INTRAVENALLY EVERY THIRD DAY ... Ugh!" Lenina shuddered 89. "How I loathe 90 intravenals, don't you?"
"Yes. But when they do one good ..." Fanny was a particularly sensible girl.
Our Ford-or Our Freud, as, for some inscrutable reason, he chose to call himself whenever he spoke 91 of psychological matters-Our Freud had been the first to reveal the appalling 92 dangers of family life. The world was full of fathers-was therefore full of misery 93; full of moth-ers-therefore of every kind of perversion 94 from sadism to chastity; full of brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts-full of madness and suicide.
"And yet, among the savages 95 of Samoa, in certain islands off the coast of New Guinea ..."
The tropical sunshine lay like warm honey on the naked bodies of children tumbling promiscuously 97 among the hibiscus blossoms. Home was in any one of twenty palm-thatched houses. In the Trobriands conception was the work of ancestral ghosts; nobody had ever heard of a father.
"Extremes," said the Controller, "meet. For the good reason that they were made to meet."
"Dr. Wells says that a three months' Pregnancy Substitute now will make all the difference to my health for the next three or four years."
"Well, I hope he's right," said Lenina. "But, Fanny, do you really mean to say that for the next three months you're not supposed to ..."
"Oh no, dear. Only for a week or two, that's all. I shall spend the evening at the Club playing Musical Bridge. I suppose you're going out?"
Lenina nodded.
"Who with?"
"Henry Foster."
"Again?" Fanny's kind, rather moon-like face took on an incongruous expression of pained and disapproving 98 astonishment. "Do you mean to tell me you're still going out with Henry Foster?"
Mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. But there were also husbands, wives, lovers. There were also monogamy and romance.
"Though you probably don't know what those are," said Mustapha Mond.
They shook their heads.
Family, monogamy, romance. Everywhere exclusiveness, a narrow channelling of impulse and energy.
"But every one belongs to every one else," he concluded, citing the hypnopaedic proverb.
The students nodded, emphatically agreeing with a statement which upwards 99 of sixty-two thousand repetitions in the dark had made them accept, not merely as true, but as axiomatic 100, self-evident, utterly 101 indisputable.
"But after all," Lenina was protesting, "it's only about four months now since I've been having Henry."
"Only four months! I like that. And what's more," Fanny went on, pointing an accusing finger, "there's been nobody else except Henry all that time. Has there?"
Lenina blushed scarlet 102; but her eyes, the tone of her voice remained defiant 103. "No, there hasn't been any one else," she answered almost truculently 104. "And I jolly well don't see why there should have been."
"Oh, she jolly well doesn't see why there should have been," Fanny repeated, as though to an invisible listener behind Lenina's left shoulder. Then, with a sudden change of tone, "But seriously," she said, "I really do think you ought to be careful. It's such horribly bad form to go on and on like this with one man. At forty, or thirty-five, it wouldn't be so bad. But at your age, Lenina! No, it really won't do. And you know how strongly the D.H.C. objects to anything intense or long-drawn. Four months of Henry Foster, without having another man-why, he'd be furious if he knew ..."
"Think of water under pressure in a pipe." They thought of it. "I pierce it once," said the Controller. "What a jet!"
He pierced it twenty times. There were twenty piddling little fountains.
"My baby. My baby ...!"
"Mother!" The madness is infectious.
"My love, my one and only, precious, precious ..."
Mother, monogamy, romance. High spurts 105 the fountain; fierce and foamy 106 the wild jet. The urge has but a single outlet 107. My love, my baby. No wonder these poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable 108. Their world didn't allow them to take things easily, didn't allow them to be sane 78, virtuous 109, happy. What with mothers and lovers, what with the prohibitions 110 they were not conditioned to obey, what with the temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating 111 pain, what with the uncertainties 112 and the pover-ty-they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly (and strongly, what was more, in solitude 113, in hopelessly individual isolation), how could they be stable?
"Of course there's no need to give him up. Have somebody else from time to time, that's all. He has other girls, doesn't he?"
Lenina admitted it.
"Of course he does. Trust Henry Foster to be the perfect gentle-man-always correct. And then there's the Director to think of. You know what a stickler 114..."
Nodding, "He patted me on the behind this afternoon," said Lenina.
"There, you see!" Fanny was triumphant 115. "That shows what he stands for. The strictest conventionality."
"Stability," said the Controller, "stability. No civilization without social stability. No social stability without individual stability." His voice was a trumpet. Listening they felt larger, warmer.
The machine turns, turns and must keep on turning-for ever. It is death if it stands still. A thousand millions scrabbled the crust of the earth. The wheels began to turn. In a hundred and fifty years there were two thousand millions. Stop all the wheels. In a hundred and fifty weeks there are once more only a thousand millions; a thousand thousand thousand men and women have starved to death.
Wheels must turn steadily 116, but cannot turn untended. There must be men to tend them, men as steady as the wheels upon their axles, sane men, obedient men, stable in contentment.
Crying: My baby, my mother, my only, only love groaning 117: My sin, my terrible God; screaming with pain, muttering with fever, bemoaning 118 old age and poverty-how can they tend the wheels? And if they cannot tend the wheels ... The corpses 119 of a thousand thousand thousand men and women would be hard to bury or burn.
"And after all," Fanny's tone was coaxing 120, "it's not as though there were anything painful or disagreeable about having one or two men besides Henry. And seeing that you ought to be a little more promiscuous 96 ..."
"Stability," insisted the Controller, "stability. The primal 121 and the ultimate need. Stability. Hence all this."
With a wave of his hand he indicated the gardens, the huge building of the Conditioning Centre, the naked children furtive 122 in the undergrowth or running across the lawns.