His fordship Mustapha Mond!The eyes of the saluting 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 DHC,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.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 were Jupiter and Gotama and 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 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 DHC looked at him nervously.There were those strange rumours of old forbidden books hidden in a safe in the Controller's study.Bibles,poetry-Ford knew what.
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 DHC 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 into a deafening chaos of arms and bosoms and underclothing.Torrents of hot water were splashing into or gurgling out of a hundred baths.Rumbling and hissing,eighty vibro-vacuum massage machines were simultaneously kneading and sucking the firm and sunburnt flesh of eighty superb female specimens.Everyone was talking at the top of her voice.A Synthetic Music machine was warbling out a super-cornet solo.
"Hullo,Fanny,"said Lenina to the young woman who had the pegs and 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 planet had only ten thousand names between them,the coincidence was not particularly surprising.
Lenina pulled at her zippers-downwards 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 over-inhabited by a man,by a periodically teeming woman,by a rabble of boys and girls of all ages.No air,no space;an understerilized prison;darkness,disease,and smells.
(The Controller's evocation was so vivid that one of the boys,more sensitive than the rest,turned pale at the mere deion and was on the point of being sick.)
Lenina got out of the bath,towelled 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 and eau-de-Cologne were laid on in little taps over the washbasin.She turned on the third from the left,dabbled 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 physically.Psychically,it was a rabbit hole,a midden,hot with the frictions of tightly packed life,reeking with emotion.What suffocating intimacies,what dangerous,insane obscene relationships between the members of the family group!Maniacally,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 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."
"Who are you going out with tonight?"Lenina asked,returning from the vibro-vac like a pearl illuminated from within,pinkly glowing.
"Nobody."
Lenina raised her eyebrows in astonishment.
"I've been feeling rather out of sorts lately,"Fanny explained."Dr Wells advised me to have a Pregnancy Substitute."
