After the scene in the Fertilizing Room, all uppercaste Londonย was wild to see this delicious creature who had fallen on his knees before the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioningโor rather the ex-Director, for the poor man had resigned immediately afterwards and never set foot inside the Centre againโ had flopped down and called him (the joke was almost too good to be true!) โmy father.โ Linda, on the contrary, cut no ice; nobody had the smallest desire to see Linda. To say one was a motherโthat was past a joke: it was an obscenity. Moreover, she wasnโt a real savage, had been hatched out of a bottle and conditioned like any one else: so couldnโt have really quaint ideas. Finallyโand this was by far the strongest reason for peopleโs not wanting to see poor Lindaโthere was her appearance. Fat; having lost her youth; with bad teeth, and a blotched complexion, and that figure (Ford!)โyou simply couldnโt look at her without feeling sick, yes, positively sick. So the best people were quite determinedย notย to see Linda. And Linda, for her part, had no desire to see them. The return to civilization was for her the return toย soma,ย was the possibility of lying in bed and taking holiday after holiday, without ever having to come back to a headache or a fit of vomiting, without ever being made to feel as you always felt afterย peyotl,ย as though youโd done something so shamefully anti-social that you could never hold up your head again.ย Somaย played none of these unpleasant tricks. The holiday it gave was perfect and, if the morning after was disagreeable, it was so, not intrinsically, but only by comparison with the joys of the holiday. The remedy was to make the holiday continuous. Greedily she clamoured for ever larger, ever more frequent doses. Dr. Shaw at first demurred; then let her have what she wanted. She took as much as twenty grammes a day.
โWhich will finish her off in a month or two,โ the doctor confided to Bernard. โOne day the respiratory centre will be paralyzed. No more breathing. Finished. And a good thing too. If we could rejuvenate, of course it
would be different. But we canโt.โ
Surprisingly, as every one thought (for onย soma-holiday Linda was most conveniently out of the way), John raised objections.
โBut arenโt you shortening her life by giving her so much?โ
โIn one sense, yes,โ Dr. Shaw admitted. โBut in another weโre actually lengthening it.โ The young man stared, uncomprehending. โSomaย may make you lose a few years in time,โ the doctor went on. โBut think of the enormous, immeasurable durations it can give you out of time. Everyย soma-holiday is a bit of what our ancestors used to call eternity.โ
John began to understand. โEternity was in our lips and eyes,โ he murmured.
โEh?โ
โNothing.โ
โOf course,โ Dr. Shaw went on, โyou canโt allow people to go popping off into eternity if theyโve got any serious work to do. But as she hasnโt got any serious work . . .โ
โAll the same,โ John persisted, โI donโt believe itโs right.โ
The doctor shrugged his shoulders. โWell, of course, if you prefer to have her screaming mad all the time . . .โ
In the end John was forced to give in. Linda got herย soma.ย Thenceforward she remained in her little room on the thirty-seventh floor of Bernardโs apartment house, in bed, with the radio and television always on, and the patchouli tap just dripping, and theย somaย tablets within reach of her handโ there she remained; and yet wasnโt there at all, was all the time away, infinitely far away, on holiday; on holiday in some other world, where the music of the radio was a labyrinth of sonorous colours, a sliding, palpitating labyrinth, that led (by what beautifully inevitable windings) to a bright centre of absolute conviction; where the dancing images of the television box were the performers in some indescribably delicious all-singing feely; where the dripping patchouli was more than scentโwas the sun, was a million s*xophones, was Popรฉ making love, only much more so, incomparably more, and without end.
โNo, we canโt rejuvenate. But Iโm very glad,โ Dr. Shaw had concluded, โto have had this opportunity to see an example of senility in a human being. Thank you so much for calling me in.โ He shook Bernard warmly by the hand.
It was John, then, they were all after. And as it was only through Bernard,
his accredited guardian, that John could be seen, Bernard now found himself, for the first time in his life, treated not merely normally, but as a person of outstanding importance. There was no more talk of the alcohol in his blood- surrogate, no gibes at his personal appearance. Henry Foster went out of his way to be friendly; Benito Hoover made him a present of six packets of s*x- hormone chewing-gum; the Assistant Predestinator came out and cadged almost abjectly for an invitation to one of Bernardโs evening parties. As for the women, Bernard had only to hint at the possibility of an invitation, and he could have whichever of them he liked.
โBernardโs asked me to meet the Savage next Wednesday,โ Fanny announced triumphantly.
โIโm so glad,โ said Lenina. โAnd now you must admit that you were wrong about Bernard. Donโt you think heโs really rather sweet?โ
Fanny nodded. โAnd I must say,โ she said, โI was quite agreeably surprised.โ
The Chief Bottler, the Director of Predestination, three Deputy Assistant Fertilizer-Generals, the Professor of Feelies in the College of Emotional Engineering, the Dean of the Westminster Community Singery, the Supervisor of Bokanovskificationโthe list of Bernardโs notabilities was interminable.
โAnd I had six girls last week,โ he confided to Helmholtz Watson. โOne on Monday, two on Tuesday, two more on Friday, and one on Saturday. And if Iโd had the time or the inclination, there were at least a dozen more who were only too anxious . . .โ
Helmholtz listened to his boastings in a silence so gloomily disapproving that Bernard was offended.
โYouโre envious,โ he said.
Helmholtz shook his head. โIโm rather sad, thatโs all,โ he answered. Bernard went off in a huff. Never, he told himself, never would he speak to
Helmholtz again.
The days passed. Success went fizzily to Bernardโs head, and in the process completely reconciled him (as any good intoxicant should do) to a world which, up till then, he had found very unsatisfactory. In so far as it recognized him as important, the order of things was good. But, reconciled by his success, he yet refused to forego the privilege of criticizing this order. For the act of criticizing heightened his sense of importance, made him feel larger. Moreover, he did genuinely believe that there were things to criticize. (At the
same time, he genuinely liked being a success and having all the girls he wanted.) Before those who now, for the sake of the Savage, paid their court to him, Bernard would parade a carping unorthodoxy. He was politely listened to. But behind his back people shook their heads. โThat young man will come to a bad end,โ they said, prophesying the more confidently in that they themselves would in due course personally see to it that the end was bad. โHe wonโt find another Savage to help him out a second time,โ they said. Meanwhile, however, there was the first Savage; they were polite. And because they were polite, Bernard felt positively giganticโgigantic and at the same time light with elation, lighter than air.
โLighter than air,โ said Bernard, pointing upwards.
Like a pearl in the sky, high, high above them, the Weather Departmentโs captive balloon shone rosily in the sunshine.
โ. . . the said Savage,โ so ran Bernardโs instructions, โto be shown civilized life in all its aspects โ
He was being shown a birdโs-eye view of it at present, a birdโs-eye view from the platform of the Charing-T Tower. The Station Master and the Resident Meteorologist were acting as guides. But it was Bernard who did most of the talking. Intoxicated, he was behaving as though, at the very least, he were a visiting World Controller. Lighter than air.
The Bombay Green Rocket dropped out of the sky. The passengers alighted. Eight identical Dravidian twins in khaki looked out of the eight portholes of the cabinโthe stewards.
โTwelve hundred and fifty kilometres an hour,โ said the Station Master impressively. โWhat do you think of that, Mr. Savage?โ
John thought it very nice. โStill,โ he said, โAriel could put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes.โ
โThe Savage,โ wrote Bernard in his report to Mustapha Mond, โshows surprisingly little astonishment at, or awe of, civilized inventions. This is partly due, no doubt, to the fact that he has heard them talked about by the woman Linda, his mโ.โ
(Mustapha Mond frowned. โDoes the fool think Iโm too squeamish to see the word written out at full length?โ)
โPartly on his interest being focussed on what he calls โthe soul,โ which he persists in regarding as an entity independent of the physical environment, whereas, as I tried to point out to him โ
The Controller skipped the next sentences and was just about to turn the page in search of something more interestingly concrete, when his eye was caught by a series of quite extraordinary phrases. โ. . . though I must admit,โ he read, โthat I agree with the Savage in finding civilized infantility too easy or, as he put it, not expensive enough; and I would like to take this opportunity of drawing your fordshipโs attention to . . .โ
Mustapha Mondโs anger gave place almost at once to mirth. The idea of this creature solemnly lecturing himโhimโabout the social order was really too grotesque. The man must have gone mad. โI ought to give him a lesson,โ he said to himself; then threw back his head and laughed aloud. For the moment, at any rate, the lesson would not be given.
It was a small factory of lighting-sets for helicopters, a branch of the Electrical Equipment Corporation. They were met on the roof itself (for that circular letter of recommendation from the Controller was magical in its effects) by the Chief Technician and the Human Element Manager. They walked downstairs into the factory.
โEach process,โ explained the Human Element Manager, โis carried out, so far as possible, by a single Bokanovsky Group.โ
And, in effect, eighty-three almost noseless black brachycephalic Deltas were cold-pressing. The fifty-six four-spindle chucking and turning machines were being manipulated by fifty-six aquiline and ginger Gammas. One hundred and seven heat-conditioned Epsilon Senegalese were working in the foundry. Thirty-three Delta females, long-headed, sandy, with narrow pelvises, and all within 20 millimetres of 1 metre 69 centimetres tall, were cutting screws. In the assembling room, the dynamos were being put together by two sets of Gamma-Plus dwarfs. The two low work-tables faced one another; between them crawled the conveyor with its load of separate parts; forty-seven blonde heads were confronted by forty-seven brown ones. Forty- seven snubs by forty-seven hooks; forty-seven receding by forty-seven prognathous chins. The completed mechanisms were inspected by eighteen identical curly auburn girls in Gamma green, packed in crates by thirty-four short-legged, left-handed male Delta-Minuses, and loaded into the waiting trucks and lorries by sixty-three blue-eyed, flaxen and freckled Epsilon Semi- Morons.
โO brave new world . . .โ By some malice of his memory the Savage found himself repeating Mirandaโs words. โO brave new world that has such people
in it.โ
โAnd I assure you,โ the Human Element Manager concluded, as they left the factory, โwe hardly ever have any trouble with our workers. We always find . . .โ
But the Savage had suddenly broken away from his companions and was violently retching, behind a clump of laurels, as though the solid earth had been a helicopter in an air pocket.
โThe Savage,โ wrote Bernard, โrefuses to takeย soma,ย and seems much distressed because the woman Linda, his mโโ, remains permanently on holiday. It is worthy of note that, in spite of his mโโโs senility and the extreme repulsiveness of her appearance, the Savage frequently goes to see her and appears to be much attracted to herโan interesting example of the way in which early conditioning can be made to modify and even run counter to natural impulses (in this case, the impulse to recoil from an unpleasant object).โ
At Eton they alighted on the roof of Upper School. On the opposite side of School Yard, the fifty-two stories of Luptonโs Tower gleamed white in the sunshine. College on their left and, on their right, the School Community Singery reared their venerable piles of ferro-concrete and vita-glass. In the centre of the quadrangle stood the quaint old chrome-steel statue of Our Ford.
Dr. Gaffney, the Provost, and Miss Keate, the Head Mistress, received them as they stepped out of the plane.
โDo you have many twins here?โ the Savage asked rather apprehensively, as they set out on their tour of inspection.
โOh, no,โ the Provost answered. โEton is reserved exclusively for upper- caste boys and girls. One egg, one adult. It makes education more difficult of course. But as theyโll be called upon to take responsibilities and deal with unexpected emergencies, it canโt be helped.โ He sighed.
Bernard, meanwhile, had taken a strong fancy to Miss Keate. โIf youโre free any Monday, Wednesday, or Friday evening,โ he was saying. Jerking his thumb towards the Savage, โHeโs curious, you know,โ Bernard added. โQuaint.โ
Miss Keate smiled (and her smile was really charming, he thought); said Thank you; would be delighted to come to one of his parties. The Provost opened a door.
Five minutes in that Alpha Double Plus classroom left John a trifle bewildered.
โWhatย isย elementary relativity?โ he whispered to Bernard. Bernard tried to explain, then thought better of it and suggested that they should go to some other classroom.
From behind a door in the corridor leading to the Beta-Minus geography room, a ringing soprano voice called, โOne, two, three, four,โ and then, with a weary impatience, โAs you were.โ
โMalthusian Drill,โ explained the Head Mistress. โMost of our girls are freemartins, of course. Iโm a freemartin myself.โ She smiled at Bernard. โBut we have about eight hundred unsterilized ones who need constant drilling.โ
In the Beta-Minus geography room John learnt that โa savage reservation is a place which, owing to unfavourable climatic or geological conditions, or poverty of natural resources, has not been worth the expense of civilizing.โ A click; the room was darkened; and suddenly, on the screen above the Masterโs head, there were theย Penitentesย of Acoma prostrating themselves before Our Lady, and wailing as John had heard them wail, confessing their sins before Jesus on the Cross, before the eagle image of Pookong. The young Etonians fairly shouted with laughter. Still wailing, theย Penitentesย rose to their feet, stripped off their upper garments and, with knotted whips, began to beat themselves, blow after blow. Redoubled, the laughter drowned even the amplified record of their groans.
โBut why do they laugh?โ asked the Savage in a pained bewilderment. โWhy?โ The Provost turned towards him a still broadly grinning face.
โWhy?ย But because itโs so extraordinarily funny.โ
In the cinematographic twilight, Bernard risked a gesture which, in the past, even total darkness would hardly have emboldened him to make. Strong in his new importance, he put his arm around the Head Mistressโs waist. It yielded, willowily. He was just about to snatch a kiss or two and perhaps a gentle pinch, when the shutters clicked open again.
โPerhaps we had better go on,โ said Miss Keate, and moved towards the door.
โAnd this,โ said the Provost a moment later, โis Hypnopรฆdic Control Room.โ
Hundreds of synthetic music boxes, one for each dormitory, stood ranged in shelves round three sides of the room; pigeon-holed on the fourth were the paper soundtrack rolls on which the various hypnopรฆdic lessons were printed.
โYou slip the roll in here,โ explained Bernard, interrupting Dr. Gaffney, โpress down this switch . . .โ
โNo, that one,โ corrected the Provost, annoyed.
โThat one, then. The roll unwinds. The selenium cells transform the light impulses into sound waves, and . . .โ
โAnd there you are,โ Dr. Gaffney concluded.
โDo they read Shakespeare?โ asked the Savage as they walked, on their way to the Bio-chemical Laboratories, past the School Library.
โCertainly not,โ said the Head Mistress, blushing.
โOur library,โ said Dr. Gaffney, โcontains only books of reference. If our young people need distraction, they can get it at the feelies. We donโt encourage them to indulge in any solitary amusements.โ
Five bus-loads of boys and girls, singing or in a silent embracement, rolled past them over the vitrified highway.
โJust returned,โ explained Dr. Gaffney, while Bernard, whispering, made an appointment with the Head Mistress for that very evening, โfrom the Slough Crematorium. Death conditioning begins at eighteen months. Every tot spends two mornings a week in a Hospital for the Dying. All the best toys are kept there, and they get chocolate cream on death days. They learn to take dying as a matter of course.โ
โLike any other physiological process,โ put in the Head Mistress professionally.
Eight oโclock at the Savoy. It was all arranged.
On their way back to London they stopped at the Television Corporationโs factory at Brentford.
โDo you mind waiting here a moment while I go and telephone?โ asked Bernard.
The Savage waited and watched. The Main Day-Shift was just going off duty. Crowds of lower-caste workers were queued up in front of the monorail stationโseven or eight hundred Gamma, Delta and Epsilon men and women, with not more than a dozen faces and statures between them. To each of them, with his or her ticket, the booking clerk pushed over a little cardboard pillbox. The long caterpillar of men and women moved slowly forward.
โWhatโs in thoseโ (rememberingย The Merchant of Venice) โthose caskets?โ the Savage enquired when Bernard had rejoined him.
โThe dayโsย somaย ration,โ Bernard answered rather indistinctly; for he was
masticating a piece of Benito Hooverโs chewing-gum. โThey get it after their workโs over. Four half-gramme tablets. Six on Saturdays.โ
He took Johnโs arm affectionately and they walked back towards the helicopter.
Lenina came singing into the Changing Room.
โYou seem very pleased with yourself,โ said Fanny.
โIย amย pleased,โ she answered. Zip! โBernard rang up half an hour ago.โ Zip, zip! She stepped out of her shorts. โHe has an unexpected engagement.โ Zip! โAsked me if Iโd take the Savage to the feelies this evening. I must fly.โ She hurried away towards the bathroom.
โSheโs a lucky girl,โ Fanny said to herself as she watched Lenina go.
There was no envy in the comment; good-natured Fanny was merely stating a fact. Leninaย wasย lucky; lucky in having shared with Bernard a generous portion of the Savageโs immense celebrity, lucky in reflecting from her insignificant person the momentโs supremely fashionable glory. Had not the Secretary of the Young Womenโs Fordian Association asked her to give a lecture about her experiences? Had she not been invited to the Annual Dinner of the Aphroditeum Club? Had she not already appeared in the Feelytone Newsโvisibly, audibly and tactually appeared to countless millions all over the planet?
Hardly less flattering had been the attentions paid her by conspicuous individuals. The Resident World Controllerโs Second Secretary had asked her to dinner and breakfast. She had spent one week-end with the Ford Chief- Justice, and another with the Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury. The President of the Internal and External Secretions Corporation was perpetually on the phone, and she had been to Deauville with the Deputy-Governor of the Bank of Europe.
โItโs wonderful, of course. And yet in a way,โ she had confessed to Fanny, โI feel as though I were getting something on false pretences. Because, of course, the first thing they all want to know is what itโs like to make love to a Savage. And I have to say I donโt know.โ She shook her head. โMost of the men donโt believe me, of course. But itโs true. I wish it werenโt,โ she added sadly and sighed. โHeโs terribly good-looking; donโt you think so?โ
โBut doesnโt he like you?โ asked Fanny.
โSometimes I think he does and sometimes I think he doesnโt. He always does his best to avoid me; goes out of the room when I come in; wonโt touch
me; wonโt even look at me. But sometimes if I turn round suddenly, I catch him staring; and thenโwell, you know how men look when they like you.โ
Yes, Fanny knew.
โI canโt make it out,โ said Lenina.
She couldnโt make it out; and not only was bewildered; was also rather upset.
โBecause, you see, Fanny,ย Iย like him.โ
Liked him more and more. Well, now thereโd be a real chance, she thought, as she scented herself after her bath. Dab, dab, dabโa real chance. Her high spirits overflowed in song.
โHug me till you drug me, honey; Kiss me till Iโm in a coma:
Hug me, honey, snuggly bunny; Loveโs as good as soma.โ
The secret organ was playing a delightfully refreshing Herbal Capriccioโ rippling arpeggios of thyme and lavender, of rosemary, basil, myrtle, tarragon; a series of daring modulations through the spice keys into ambergris; and a slow return through sandalwood, camphor, cedar and new-mown hay (with occasional subtle touches of discordโa whiff of kidney pudding, the faintest suspicion of pigโs dung) back to the simple aromatics with which the piece began. The final blast of thyme died away; there was a round of applause; the lights went up. In the synthetic music machine the soundtrack roll began to unwind. It was a trio for hyper-violin, super-cello and oboe-surrogate that now filled the air with its agreeable languor. Thirty or forty barsโand then, against this instrumental background, a much more than human voice began to warble; now throaty, now from the head, now hollow as a flute, now charged with yearning harmonics, it effortlessly passed from Gaspardโs Forsterโs low record on the very frontiers of musical tone to a trilled bat-note high above the highest C to which (in 1770, at the ducal opera of Parma, and to the astonishment of Mozart) Lucrezia Ajugari, alone of all the singers in history, once piercingly gave utterance.
Sunk in their pneumatic stalls, Lenina and the Savage sniffed and listened.
It was now the turn also for eyes and skin.
The house lights went down; fiery letters stood out solid and as though self- supported in the darkness. THREEย WEEKS IN Aย HELICOPTER. ANย ALL-SUPER–
Singing, Synthetic-Talking, Coloured, Stereoscopic. Feely. With Synchronized Scent-Organ Accompaniment.
โTake hold of those metal knobs on the arms of your chair,โ whispered Lenina. โOtherwise you wonโt get any of the feely effects.โ
The Savage did as he was told.
Those fiery letters, meanwhile, had disappeared; there were ten seconds of complete darkness; then suddenly, dazzling and incomparably more solid- looking than they would have seemed in actual flesh and blood, far more real than reality, there stood the stereoscopic images, locked in one anotherโs arms, of a gigantic negro and a golden-haired young brachycephalic Beta-Plus female.
The Savage started. That sensation on his lips! He lifted a hand to his mouth; the titillation ceased; let his hand fall back on the metal knob; it began again. The scent organ, meanwhile, breathed pure musk. Expiringly, a sound- track superdove cooed โOo-oohโ; and vibrating only thirty-two times a second, a deeper than African bass made answer: โAa-aah.โ โOoh-ah! Ooh- ah!โ the stereoscopic lips came together again, and once more the facial erogenous zones of the six thousand spectators in the Alhambra tingled with almost intolerable galvanic pleasure. โOoh . . .โ
The plot of the film was extremely simple. A few minutes after the first Oohs and Aahs (a duet having been sung and a little love made on that famous bearskin, every hair of whichโthe Assistant Predestinator was perfectly rightโcould be separately and distinctly felt), the negro had a helicopter accident, fell on his head. Thump! what a twinge through the forehead! A chorus ofย owโsย andย aieโsย went up from the audience.
The concussion knocked all the negroโs conditioning into a cocked hat. He developed for the Beta blonde an exclusive and maniacal passion. She protested. He persisted. There were struggles, pursuits, an assault on a rival, finally a sensational kidnapping. The Beta blonde was ravished away into the sky and kept there, hovering, for three weeks in a wildly anti-socialย tรชta-ร -tรชteย with the black madman. Finally, after a whole series of adventures and much aerial acrobacy three handsome young Alphas succeeded in rescuing her. The negro was packed off to an Adult Re-conditioning Centre and the film ended happily and decorously, with the Beta blonde becoming the mistress of all her three rescuers. They interrupted themselves for a moment to sing a synthetic quartet, with full super-orchestral accompaniment and gardenias on the scent organ. Then the bearskin made a final appearance and, amid a blare of
s*xophones, the last stereoscopic kiss faded into darkness, the last electric titillation died on the lips like a dying moth that quivers, quivers, ever more feebly, ever more faintly, and at last is quite, quite still.
But for Lenina the moth did not completely die. Even after the lights had gone up, while they were shuffling slowly along with the crowd towards the lifts, its ghost still fluttered against her lips, still traced fine shuddering roads of anxiety and pleasure across her skin. Her cheeks were flushed. She caught hold of the Savageโs arm and pressed it, limp, against her side. He looked down at her for a moment, pale, pained, desiring, and ashamed of his desire. He was not worthy, not . . . Their eyes for a moment met. What treasures hers promised! A queenโs ransom of temperament. Hastily he looked away, disengaged his imprisoned arm. He was obscurely terrified lest she should cease to be something he could feel himself unworthy of.
โI donโt think you ought to see things like that,โ he said, making haste to transfer from Lenina herself to the surrounding circumstances the blame for any past or possible future lapse from perfection.
โThings like what, John?โ โLike this horrible film.โ
โHorrible?โ Lenina was genuinely astonished. โBut I thought it was lovely.โ
โIt was base,โ he said indignantly, โit was ignoble.โ
She shook her head. โI donโt know what you mean.โ Why was he so queer?
Why did he go out of his way to spoil things?
In the taxicopter he hardly even looked at her. Bound by strong vows that had never been pronounced, obedient to laws that had long since ceased to run, he sat averted and in silence. Sometimes, as though a finger had plucked at some taut, almost breaking string, his whole body would shake with a sudden nervous start.
The taxicopter landed on the roof of Leninaโs apartment house. โAt last,โ she thought exultantly as she stepped out of the cab. At lastโeven though heย hadย been so queer just now. Standing under a lamp, she peered into her hand mirror. At last. Yes, her noseย wasย a bit shiny. She shook the loose powder from her puff. While he was paying off the taxiโthere would just be time. She rubbed at the shininess, thinking: โHeโs terribly good-looking. No need for him to be shy like Bernard. And yet . . . Any other man would have done it long ago. Well, now at last.โ That fragment of a face in the little round mirror suddenly smiled at her.
โGood-night,โ said a strangled voice behind her. Lenina wheeled round. He was standing in the doorway of the cab, his eyes fixed, staring; had evidently been staring all this time while she was powdering her nose, waitingโbut what for? or hesitating, trying to make up his mind, and all the time thinking, thinkingโshe could not imagine what extraordinary thoughts. โGood-night, Lenina,โ he repeated, and made a strange grimacing attempt to smile.
โBut, John . . . I thought you were . . . I mean, arenโt you? . . .โ
He shut the door and bent forward to say something to the driver. The cab shot up into the air.
Looking down through the window in the floor, the Savage could see Leninaโs upturned face, pale in the bluish light of the lamps. The mouth was open, she was calling. Her foreshortened figure rushed away from him; the diminishing square of the roof seemed to be falling through the darkness.
Five minutes later he was back in his room. From its hiding-place he took out his mouse-nibbled volume, turned with religious care its stained and crumbled pages, and began to readย Othello.ย Othello, he remembered, was like the hero ofย Three Weeks in a Helicopterโa black man.
Drying her eyes, Lenina walked across the roof to the lift. On her way down to the twenty-seventh floor she pulled out herย somaย bottle. One gramme, she decided, would not be enough; hers had been more than a one- gramme affliction. But if she took two grammes, she ran the risk of not waking up in time to-morrow morning. She compromised and, into her cupped left palm, shook out three half-gramme tablets.