Facial Justice (16 page)

for Cambridge alone could not contain all the casualties. Hundreds are known to have perished; thousands may have. "Patients and Delinquents! The situation is now under control, and you may walk abroad without fear of bodily injury or of sights of horror that might haunt you for the rest of your lives. So go--those of you who remain--in peace. "But what is to happen now, after the disastrous results of my experiment? Punish you I cannot; it was I who put the posters up, to test your reactions under the influence of free will. I expected an earthly paradise, all assemblage of private paradises make one elysium which should include and transcend them all. It was to be the answer to my prayer, the justification of my faith in you. Instead, what have I found? A battlefield. "Patients and Delinquents, it is all my fault, and I have done all I can to make amends. The dead are buried, the casualties are being cared for. It is not my first mistake, but it is my first big mistake. "But was it a mistake? That is a thing, my dear fellow citizens, that I still cannot quite believe. For are you not all good at heart, as good at least as I am? Did I not promise myself that when the time came for me to abdicate, that I could safely leave you to your own devices? Was I not sure that after so many years in leading-strings, so many years of seeing how life could be lived, tolerably if not excitingly, without the stimulus of bloodshed or any of the major crimes, you would be conditioned to this new gentle life, so that you could not hurt each other, even if you wanted to? That you would have a sense of what was due from one to another, that mutual forbearance, even mutual love, would have become a habit? "I cannot think I was mistaken, and so, Patients and Delinquents, to show my trust in you I am going to repeat the experiment. This evening the placards, 'Bet on yourself,' which so inflamed you today, will appear again in the streets, and in far greater numbers than before. Then it will be for you to choose, and for me, too, to choose. If there is a repetition of last night's incident, then you must make what you can of it, for I shall not be there to help or hinder you. If, as I hope, there is no repetition, but instead a new vista of joy and happiness, if 'Bet on yourself means what it should mean, a new confidence in your power to help each other through the force of a good example, then I shall be there to share it with you; but if it means a recurrence of the dreadful scenes of last night, then, Patients and Delinquents, I shall wash my hands of you. I have never been present, but then I shall be absent, I shall disappear; and with me will disappear the organization I have built up for you--the safeguards, the interests, the stimulants and sedatives that have made up my rule of peace. My rule of peace! How you once longed for it! Once it satisfied all your aspirations and stilled all your fears. Now it seems you desire something quite different, something in which I can have no part. There is a place ready for me, for us, I should say, where we shall have no one to look after but ourselves; there is also a place ready for you, which some of you will remember, for you once dwelt in it. "Patients and Delinquents"--here the speaker's voice quavered--"it is for you to choose." The strains of "Every Valley," those mounting phrases which belied the meaning of the words, sounded through the room, but they fell on unheeding ears. Joab was in tears; the messenger's face had gone lifeless; and Jael's behind her veil, told nothing of what she felt. Joab was the first to recover. "Please take down this," he said. The Dictator was not quite as good as his word; the posters did indeed reappear, but interspersed with them were some which said not "Bet on Yourself" but "Beta Yourself." The public, who never tired of Beta jokes, thought this wonderfully funny. They were hysterical with relief at the Dictator's clemency, it assured them of his forgiveness and was the one thing needed to reinstate them in their own esteem. The Dictator's triumph was complete. Never had he been so popular. At the next meeting of the conspirators it was resolved, with only one dissentient voice, that the League for liquidating him should be disbanded. Jael made an impassioned plea for its continuance. "How could you be taken in," she stormed, "by all that claptrap? That sob stuff, and those hypocritical endearments? And the repetitions and the contra-critical endearments? And the repetitions and the contradictions! Whatever else he's doing he's losing his grip! And yet he can still fool you, still make you think he's acting for your good! He's even persuaded you that he put up the posters, whereas you all know I put them up. I put them up, I put them up, I tell you!" But they didn't believe her and her solitary voice was shouted down. In their delirious enthusiasm for the Dictator they wound up the proceedings with a ballet in his honor that was a parody of the Assassins' Dance. Jael tried to run away but she was caught and dragged back and made to take a part She was roughly handled by her late confederates, especially by the women; they pushed her about and hustled her and held her up, sometimes literally, to derision. And when she would not cry "Long live the Dictator!" the whole pack fell on her and pommeled her. When she recovered from her ritual death she was alone, alone on the dry mud of the hollow; and alone she slowly and painfully limped her way back.

Chapter Twenty-one

"A CONCERT," Dr. Wainewright said. "That would be very nice," said Jael. "When?" "On Saturday. Two pianists are playing, Brutus 91 and Cassius 92. It will be interesting to compare their styles." "I used to play the piano once," Jael said, who now found it easier than she had to talk to Dr. Wainewright. "Did you really? Why did you give it up?" Dr. Wainewright spoke as if playing the piano was an unheard-of accomplishment. "Because I was getting too good at it." "Why was that a reason for giving it up?" "Because the others didn't like it." "Oh, I see. Bad Egg, I suppose." "Yes, they made me stick to easy pieces." "What a shame." "You ought not to say that," said Jael. "Why not?" "Because none of us ought to be able to play anything more difficult than "The Merry Peasant.' " "Oh well. We have to make exceptions sometimes." "I thought that was just what we mustn't make," said Jael. "Oh, I don't know. Simply because you don't like the Dictator's rules, 97, you interpret them too rigidly. He never said we weren't to fall in love." "No, I suppose he had to stop somewhere." "And love implies a preference. Couldn't you feel one for me, Jael, even the smallest one?" Seeing him darkly through her veil, Jael got a confused impression of his squarish face, dark hair, and pronounced features--the Roman nose was specially strong. She saw how another woman might have loved him, but the thought was bitter to her, for it brought back all that she had lost, her personal life, which, though it had been a dream, might also have been a reality but for Dr. Wainewright and his cruel fingers carving up her face, depriving her of the one love she could have responded to. Dr. Wainewright had made her in his own image, that was why he loved her. If he hadn't committed this outrage, someone else would have, she had to admit that, and it was her punishment, as the Visitor had told her--that nice old woman, whom she still thought of with gratitude. It wasn't her fault that she had to hate him. But did she hate him? Might not the understanding that sometimes goes with hate bring with it a warmer feeling? "Couldn't you have the smallest preference for me?" he repeated, moved to hopefulness by her long silence. "You know what I feel," she said. "But it's your mind saying that," he said. "Your hand doesn't hate me, at least it didn't last time." He bent forward and took it, unresistingly, in his. "But," she said after a moment, "you were going to tell me something." "Tell you something? What do you want to know?" "Something about him." "Who?" "The Dictator." Dr. Wainewright hesitated. "I told you he existed." "How do you know that?" "Because of the Sign." "What is the Sign?" asked Jael. Without taking away her hand from his, she pushed her veil back. She didn't want to look at the world, or to be looked at by it, but sometimes she had to look, and be looked at. Plainly now she saw the face of her destroyer, and he as plainly saw the face he had created, the face of his beloved. He didn't answer her question. "If I were to kiss you--" he began. "But you have kissed me." "Yes, but you haven't kissed me." "Why should I?" Jael said. "You haven't told me--" "Is telling the price of a kiss?" Jael looked at him again. Yes, other women could have loved him, probably had loved him, for the questing male urgency that, in asking for surrender, confessed its need of love. Jael shrank from it, as a prostitute might shrink from the too ardent glance of her first customer; but her senses had never fallen asleep again after their brief awakening in the sky. Perhaps she could bring herself to desire him just a little: then it would be easier. She had no doubt of his desire for her: but to what lengths of telling her what she wanted to know would it take him? "You were going to tell me how you knew the Dictator existed," she reminded him. "Can't you guess?" "How can I? Why should you know more than any other man, or woman for that matter? You aren't even an Inspector!" "How do you know I'm not?" he teased her. "Not all Inspectors look like old-time guardsmen. Some wear plain clothes and are quite inconspicuous." "I didn't know that." "Well, now I've told you something. Can I claim a kiss?" "No, because you still haven't told me how you know the Dictator exists." "I told you about the Sign." "Yes, but not what it is. Is it something you can see?" "This is not a guessing game," said Dr. Wainewright, "and I've told you too much already." "But anyone could recognize him by it? If they knew what it was and where to look." Jael moved her chair away from him and changed the subject. "At least you can tell me," she said, "why the Dictator is so down on women." "But is he down on them?" "He's always trying to standardize us, and make us sex machines instead of human beings." Dr. Wainewright gave her a sly smile. "Perhaps he thinks that's what you really want to be." "It isn't true!" cried Jael. "We want it less than men do. And anyhow he doesn't go the right way about it. If he knew anything about sex--" "How do you know he doesn't?" "Isn't it obvious? He makes us as unattractive as he can--" "That's what _you__ think," the Doctor interrupted. "I made your face according to a Beta pattern approved by him, with some slight variations of my own, and I find it very attractive, I can tell you, and so do a good many more." "But they can't see my face." "They could, before you pulled the blind down on it." "Who, for instance?" Dr. Wainewright reeled off a list of names. "Oh," cried Jael, "it makes me hate my face all the more, because they like it." "What nonsense!" Dr. Wainewright said. "How can you hate your face if other people like it? It's a psychological impossibility. You see your face through other people's eyes--every woman does." "I hate my face," said Jael. "And I never look at it if I can help it." "Then you must hate yourself," said Dr. Wainewright. "You hate yourself and therefore you hate other people, including me, I'm afraid. That's what I'm trying to cure you of." Opening his black bag he took out a pad and began to scribble on it. "What are you prescribing for me now?" she asked. "A love philter." "Why do you think I need it?" "I'm not going to leave any stone unturned." "I wish you would prescribe it for the Dictator!" Dr. Wainewright smiled. "No, he's too old for loving in that sense. Besides, he's full of love, that's why he keeps so well." "Keeps so well? You talk as if he was a food tablet in a refrigerator. And love? How does he show it?" "In heaps of ways. He goes about... well, helping people." "Disguised, of course." "You wouldn't recognize him," said the Doctor. "Except by the Sign." "Not even then. You'd still think it was someone else." "Why?" "You'd be looking for somebody to hate, not somebody to love." "Do you suppose I can't recognize people when I hate?" demanded Jael. "It's love that's blind. If he was a woman, of course, it wouldn't be so easy." "Why not?" "Because she might have been Betafied. She'd have to be, if she lived up to her principles. Quite often my best friends don't recognize me." "The Dictator would." "I don't count him as a friend, but does he know me?" "I shouldn't be surprised. You've made yourself conspicuous, you know, on various occasions." "How can a Beta be conspicuous?" "Oh, in more ways than one, or I shouldn't be here." "How do you know so much about the Dictator?" Jael asked. "Ah!" She turned away with an indifferent shrug. The gesture was not lost on Dr. Wainewright. "You're rather dense, my dear. How do I know so much about you?" "Because you're my doctor." "Well, then." When she still didn't see his drift, he said: "If you give me a kiss, I'll tell you." "If you tell me, I'll give you a kiss," said Jael. For a moment it was a stalemate; then he saw he had won. He embraced her greedily and did not loose his hold until his molten mouth had poured itself round every curve of hers. But how cold the kiss was to her Beta lips, and how distasteful to her unresponding heart. Breathless, he said, "If that's done you half the good it has done me, we shan't either of us need a doctor for a long time." Outraged, Jael answered: "What a hygienic view of love! Doctors need doctors, I suppose, but I don't, nor, worse luck, does the Dictator." "That's where you're wrong," he said. "He does need a doctor." "How do you know?" she cried. "Because I am his doctor."

Chapter Twenty-two

JAEL stared at Dr. Wainewright as if he had been another man, a complete stranger. Then incredulity came to her rescue and she gasped: "But you can't be!" "Why not? Dictators have to have doctors, just like other people." "Yes, I suppose so." Jael's mind was whirling; a score of questions crowded to her lips. "But where do you attend him?" "I never said I had attended him." "But have you?" "Yes, once." "Where was it?" "Where he happened to be. He isn't always in the same place. But we are sensitized to his whereabouts." "What was the matter with him?" "Nothing much. I just gave him a checkup." "But you're a plastic surgeon. What could you do for him?" "We don't only arrange faces." "Are you a sign painter, by any chance?" Dr. Wainewright laughed uneasily. "The Dictator is never ill," he said. "Then why does he need a doctor?" "In case he should be ill." "Did you get your knife into him?" "Oh, just a scratch." "It doesn't sound very likely to me. Are you telling me the truth?" "Of course I am." "You told me a lie before--you told me somebody you knew had seen him." "Well, aren't I somebody I know?" "You're a tricky customer, whatever else you are." "All doctors have to edit the truth," said Dr. Wainewright. "It's part of our profession. Should doctors tell? You must have heard of that." I'll worm it out of him somehow, Jael thought. His longing for me will unloose his tongue, but I must go warily. "Has he other doctors besides you?" she asked. "Yes, I believe so." "But you haven't been called in for a consultation?" He shook his head. "I wish I could be fond of you," she said. "You could be if you tried," said Dr. Wainewright. "I may not be an Alpha type to look at, but I'm sound and healthy. If we had children--" "They might take after you," said Jael. "Or you." "Which me?" asked Jael. "The one I love." Love! Love! The word gave out a sullen sound, like a false coin that spins itself to silence on the table. "But how could I hand on my imposed characteristics?" "It has been known. The image in the mind may reproduce itself on the face." "The Dictator forbid," said Jael, but she spoke halfheartedly. Suddenly a panic fear came over her that he might get his way before she got hers; she might give in to him before he gave up his secret. It was a race between them. Who would win? The odds seemed balanced evenly. If she couldn't wheedle his secret out of him, could she wheedle something else--a better weapon than the regulation pocket knife with its two-inch blade? That would be an asset, even if she only used it against him. At this and every subsequent encounter she must give ground a little, as he would. But giving ground really meant coming closer, until... until... At the idea of the last forfeit her mind shied away. No, she was the clever one; she would never pay it! But she might have to; for her mission's sake she might have to take the risk that he, out of the gratitude which men were said to feel on such occasions, might give her the vital piece of knowledge which his unsatisfied senses, however much they were being tantalized, would withhold? She couldn't tell. She didn't know what he was really like. She only knew him as a man in love; she didn't know him as a man. As a man he might be shrewd, suspicious, realistic, set on his pound of flesh. She must keep him in love, and the best way of doing that was not by loving him, even if she had been able to; men fled from a loving woman. No, she must vary her demeanor, so that it never quite chimed in with his, or was quite discordant with it. He must find her different each time. Hitherto she had been too openly contemptuous of him, rude in fact, and it had seemed to work: he had always come back for more. Perhaps in his present mood of overpowering physical desire it was the best policy. But it would not always be. He would tire of it, and look for a woman less tart, if more like a tart, than she was. How distasteful it all was. At times, and this was one, she was visited by a sense of unbearable, irreparable loss, remembering what it had felt like to be herself, before this trouble with her face began; like Eve in the garden, she had roamed from flower to flower from fruit to fruit, until she tasted the forbidden one. But how could she have avoided it, without surrendering her personality? She had had to make the choice, and still would not have made it differently. The Fall! She hadn't fallen yet, but spiritually she had; spiritually she couldn't have fallen lower, and all in an attempt to reach the heights. Height, oh height. But, of course, when this was over, when whatever had to happen would have happened, then she would go back to being what she had been. The episode--whatever it was, however it ended--would have left no mark on her at all.... She wouldn't be anything horrid, certainly not a murderess--though a political assassination wasn't really a murder--she would just be the old Jael, good old Jael, who liked so many people and whom so many people liked, not taking ideas seriously, least of all political ideas, not even taking herself seriously, for what, after all, did it matter what she looked like? Then she would have no preoccupation with her conscience, no conviction that this was right and that was wrong and she must give up everything to prove it. No, she would be the old Jael, at whose appearance faces brightened (for even a Beta face could brighten a little), and who was once wooed by an angel--in the clouds, in the sky, no matter where--and it had changed her life, but not embittered it, only enriched it with a lovely memory. She looked up from her reverie and there was Dr. Wainewright's roughhewn face, to remind her of reality and her mission. "I thought you had gone to sleep," he said. She started, still unable to focus him with her inner vision. "I didn't like to disturb you," he went on, "in case you were thinking kind thoughts of me." "Of course I was," she lied. "Then may I hope?" "Yes, indeed yes." "May I hope now--this minute?" "Isn't once enough?" "I can't have enough." "I'm not in the mood," said Jael. "I don't feel like it." But there was something she wanted from him, wanted as passionately as he wanted her. She must be in the mood, she must feel like it. "When did you last use your carving knife?" she asked. "My carving knife?" "The knife you cut our faces up with." "I don't remember.... A few days ago." "I was thinking of my Beta doom," said Jael. "Your Beta doom, you said." "Yes, and I call my veil my Beta hood. Silly, isn't it? But the Dictator likes us to be childish. If I had a memento--" "What sort of memento?" "The instrument--the knife--the scalpel or whatever you call the thing, that you did it with." "What do you want it for?" "Just a keepsake. Was it the one you scratched the Dictator with?" "It may have been." "It's become a sort of fetish to me. If I had it--" "Well?" "It would reconcile me to all sorts of things. Myself, yourself, even the Dictator's self." "It's very sharp, you know," said Dr. Wainewright. "Yes, but if I thought of your hand guiding it over the skin, my skin, the Dictator's skin--" Dr. Wainewright took her in his arms but she pushed him away. "No, give it to me first." Again the trial of strength between their wills; again the stalemate; but this time she won. He rose, opened the bag, and brought out a long, thin, flat container, which he handed her. "I don't like giving it you," he said, "but as long as you keep it sterilized, and don't hurt yourself or anyone else--" She drew the knife out of its case and ran her thumb along the blade. "For the Dictator's sake don't do that!" Ignoring him, she said: "So I came out of this?" "Well, in a way." How easy it would be to stick it in him! Putting the scalpel back in its sheath, she thought, "Shall I disappoint him now? No, better not," and true to her promise she held her arms out. Their embrace was long and close and mounting in intensity when Jael heard footsteps in the street and the door handle turning. "That's Joab," she said. "You must be going." "Oh, must I?" he grumbled like a child, and sighing deeply disengaged himself. Standing before her, bag in hand, he looked like a proper doctor. "Well, thanks a lot, and don't forget about the concert. And you'll come home with me afterward, won't you?" "All right." "Is that a promise?" "Yes, I think so.... Joab, here is Dr. Wainewright, who has come to give me some medicine." Joab shook hands with the doctor. "Nasty medicine?" he asked hopefully. "I don't think so, but tastes differ," the Doctor said. "Oh no they don't," said Jael. "We all have the same tastes." He smiled indulgently. "Well, mind you take it, 97, mind you take it." Joab walked with him to the door. "How do you think she's getting on?" he asked. "I can't see much wrong with her myself." "Her personality still needs adjusting," Dr. Wainewright said. "I'm afraid I shall have to continue the... er... treatment a little longer. She's still lacking in the sense of co-operation; until she gets that back, she'll always have these headaches." "Headaches? She's never mentioned them." "Not to you, perhaps. Sometimes women don't tell their nearest relations about these things." They parted and Joab went back into the house.