Helmholtz listened with a growing excitement.At"sole Arabian tree"he started;at"thou shrieking harbinger"he smiled with sudden pleasure;at"every fowl of tyrant wing"the blood rushed up into his cheeks;but at"defunctive music"he turned pale and trembled with an unprecedented emotion.The Savage read on:
"Property was thus appall'd,
That the self was not the same;
Single nature's double name
Neither two nor one was call'd.
Reason in itself confounded
Saw division grow together……"
"Orgy-porgy!"said Bernard,interrupting the reading with a loud,unpleasant laugh."It's just a Solidarity Service hymn."He was revenging himself on his two friends for liking one another more than they liked him.
In the course of their next two or three meetings he frequently repeated this little act of vengeance.It was simple and,since both Helmholtz and the Savage were dreadfully pained by the shattering and defilement of a favourite poetic crystal,extremely effective.In the end,Helmholtz threatened to kick him out of the room if he dared to interrupt again.And yet,strangely enough,the next interruption,the most disgraceful of all,came from Helmholtz himself.
The Savage was reading Romeo and Juliet aloud-reading(for all the time he was seeing himself as Romeo and Lenina as Juliet)with an intense and quivering passion.Helmholtz had listened to the scene of the lovers'first meeting with a puzzled interest.The scene in the orchard had delighted him with its poetry;but the sentiments expressed had made him smile.Getting into such a state about having a girl-it seemed rather ridiculous.But,taken detail by verbal detail,what a superb piece of emotional engineering!"That old fellow,"he said,"he makes our best propaganda technicians look absolutely silly."The Savage smiled triumphantly and resumed his reading.All went tolerably well until,in the last scene of the third act,Capulet and Lady Capulet began to bully Juliet to marry Paris.Helmholtz had been restless throughout the entire scene;but when,pathetically mimed by the Savage,Juliet cried out:
"Is there no pity sitting in the clouds,
That sees into the bottom of my grief?
O,sweet my mother,cast me not away!
Delay this marriage for a month,a week;
Or,if you do not,make the bridal bed
In that dim monument where Tybalt lies……"
when Juliet said this,Helmholtz broke out in an explosion of uncontrollable guffawing.
The mother and father(grotesque obscenity)forcing the daughter to have someone she didn't want!And the idiotic girl not saying that she was having someone else whom(for the moment,at any rate)she preferred!In its smutty absurdity the situation was irresistibly comical.He had managed,with a heroic effort,to hold down the mounting pressure of his hilarity;but"sweet mother"(in Savage's tremulous tone of anguish)and the reference to Tybalt lying dead,but evidently uncremated and wasting his phosphorus on a dim monument,were too much for him.He laughed and laughed till the tears streamed down his face-quenchlessly laughed while,pale with a sense of outrage,the Savage looked at him over the top of his book and then,as the laughter still continued,closed it indignantly,got up and,with the gesture of one who removes his pearl from before swine,locked it away in its drawer.
"And yet,"said Helmholtz when,having recovered breath enough to apologize,he had mollified the Savage into listening to his explanations,"I know quite well that one needs ridiculous,mad situations like that;one can't write really well about anything else.Why was that old fellow such a marvellous propaganda technician?Because he had so many insane,excruciating things to get excited about.You've got to be hurt and upset;otherwise you can't think of the really good,penetrating,X-rayish phrases.But fathers and mothers!"He shook his head."You can't expect me to keep a straight face about fathers and mothers.And who's going to get excited about a boy having a girl or not having her?"(The Savage winced;but Helmholtz,who was staring pensively at the floor,saw nothing.)"No,"he concluded,with a sigh,"it won't do.We need some other kind of madness and violence.But what?What?Where can one find it?"He was silent;then,shaking his head,"I don't know,"he said at last,"I don't know."
