Facial Justice (20 page)

Chapter Twenty-seven

AND what were the Inspectors doing all this time? Nothing, it seemed; they were seen going about as usual, but astonishingly they did not interfere. At first the gangs of rowdies melted away at their approach, but when they found that they were not being pulverized, or arrested, or even followed, they took heart and soon started again in another place. There were, of course, law-abiding citizens of the New State who regretted these demonstrations, which were making their lives both difficult and dangerous. The more timid spirits did not like to go down a street even by daylight where birthmark baiting was in progress, and wasted time and shoe leather by making long detours to reach their work. Of such was Joab, who had a natural aversion to danger. Usually he chivvied Jael, reproaching her with her habits of lateness, and often started out in the mornings before she did. But now, however late she was, he waited for her, and during the walk stayed close by her side, sometimes even taking her arm, which he had never done before. Jael herself could hardly believe in her success, but as each day brought new proof of it, new proof that the surface of the regime, at any rate, was cracking, she could not doubt and her exultation mounted. She lived in her idea of the Dictator's downfall: no other life was real to her. She had rid herself of Dr. Wainewright: the blackmailing letters with which she accompanied her articles, and which, naturally, were never answered, except by his acceptance of them, were the only form of communication she had with anyone--for with her brother her relations, never easy, no longer meant anything to her. For Judith she did feel a twinge of remorse. She remembered the old days when friendship was the main interest of her life and Judith her chief friend. Was it not Judith who had advised her against having her face changed, and so altered the whole course of her existence?--for had she done it voluntarily, as she meant to, she would never have had the grievance which came from having had it forced on her by a trick. And then she would never have met Michael, or if she had, he would never have noticed her, let alone taken a fancy to her: she would have been just another Beta, and she knew how he felt about Betas. He would have made her pay the nominal fine for not knowing the right epithet for Alpha--what was it today? she idly wondered--and never seen her again. It was generous of Judith--a sign of true affection--that despite the fact that she herself was plain and welcomed Betafication both in principle and practice, she hadn't wanted it for Jael; she wanted Jael to keep her flawed, fragile prettiness. Afterward Jael had drifted away from her, as she had from all her former friends; she had lost her craving for friendship, she did not even remember what it was like to be attached to another human being by those ties. She lived a dedicated life, with but one aim, and that aim excluded friendship; even the Beta women with their common faces, and almost common consciousness, knew more of it than she did. Yet a tear for Judith welled up and flowed down her unfeeling cheek; she felt almost like a murderess, and wondered if she would ever be one. Meanwhile, daily life in the New State was coming to a standstill. The process was not regular; on some days the outbreaks were more serious than on others; days would pass without a fatality, and then on some one day several people would be killed. Sometimes the excitement of bloodshed resulted in sexual orgies; the women who hung about the outskirts of the struggles would throw themselves wildly into the fight, relying on their immunity from birthmark risks to receive a warm and tender welcome from the combatants. Nor were they deceived in this, though sometimes the welcome was rougher than they expected. The newspapers, which had begun by making capital out of these disorders, were puzzled, the happenings were too fantastic and surprising for the cartoonists to satirize them; their lampoons lagged far behind the reality. So they looked for other subjects which might have the appeal of novelty; but there was no other subject, violence and destruction held the field and would admit no rival. Even the expedient of making individual cartoons of the most popular heroes and heroines of the affrays began to pall; the public were more interested in their feats than in their faces. There came a moment when the craze seemed to have reached its peak. Inconvenience is a powerful enemy that even violence has to reckon with, and the disturbances, thrilling as they were, were also highly inconvenient to many. In certain quarters there was a shaking of heads and a shrugging of shoulders; would these demonstrations, the most picturesque and exciting the New State had ever known, end in boredom? Or in a laugh that turned against itself? In this almost imperceptible lull people began to ask themselves: "What has happened to the Dictator? Why doesn't he make some comment on all this? It isn't going to be easy for him, of course; how will he explain this breakdown in his theories? His policy, he has always told us, was to make violence impossible: hence the daily dose of bromide, the dancing, the sackcloth, everything. He has been made to look a fool, of course; all his theories have been proved wrong; we have given up taking bromide, or wearing sackcloth, we only dance when we think we will; we have done everything he told us not to, and yet here we still are, flourishing and enjoying ourselves: but it would be fun to know what he has to say about it. I suppose he is too frightened to say anything. But he ought to say something, or what is a Dictator for? Where is that voice we used to hear, in and out of season? Why this silence? How long has it been going on for? A week, a fortnight, a month? It's all very well, but a Dictator has his duties, just like other people. He ought to give us a lead. All these years he has been making us dependent on him, and then when we want his advice--no, not his advice, we've had too much of that, but his opinion--he doesn't say a word! If he would just tell us what he thought about this birthmark baiting, or beating, so that we could do the opposite--or even do what he told us--it wouldn't be the first time! It isn't fair that he leaves us to ourselves! We've been very good subjects; not many people would have put up with what we've put up with! He ought not to neglect his business so! If he was one of us, he'd have been fined for it, or made to wear P. S.! It isn't fair! He's always down on privilege, yet no one is so privileged as he is!" and much more in this strain. Jael seized upon this moment of uncertainty to write a third article. She pointed out that the bungalows on the new Housing Estate were larger than the old ones: this discrepancy, she explained, was most unfair; the lucky dwellers in the new bungalows were already giving themselves airs, whereas their underhoused neighbors were stinking of Bad Egg. The only remedy was to pull down all the older houses, and replace them with houses of the new type. While the work of demolition was in progress, the evicted householders could be accommodated in the bungalows of the New Estate; and if the squatters or their hosts felt that they had a grievance, well it was just too bad. Share and share alike applied to houses as to other things. As before, nothing much happened for a day or two. Then a group of men assembled outside the last house in a row, looking at it with a purposeful and measuring eye. They did no more; but the next day they came again with crowbars, pickaxes, and sledge hammers, and after piling these in a workmanlike manner against the low wall that divided the little square garden from the pavement, one of them strode up to the door and rang the bell. "Maybrick 92," he said to the woman who opened it, "we've come to knock your house down." "Knock my house down?" "We're doing it for your sake, of course. We're the slum-clearance squad. Didn't you realize you were living in a slum?" "Slum my foot!" said the woman angrily; as with all Betas her age was difficult to guess. "This house is as good as the next one, or as any of the houses in the row, and I'll thank you to keep your dirty feet off my doorstep." "You're right," the man said, "it is as good as the other houses in the row, but they're not good enough, and you ought to be ashamed of living in it. Anyhow, they've all got to come down." "Who says so?" "We do, and so would the Dictator, Betafied be his name, if he hadn't been struck dumb." "But what's wrong with this house?" asked the woman, astonished and bewildered. "It's all right in its way," the man said, "but it doesn't compare with the houses in the New Estate. You ought to be ashamed to live here." "But I'm not, I'm proud to live here." "You may think you are, but underneath you're reeking of Bad Egg. We got a whiff just now." "Bad Egg," shouted the woman, "my husband will give you Bad Egg when he catches you!" "There are a good many of us," said the man, indicating his companions, who moved forward and stared at the woman with expressionless faces. "You'd better be reasonable. We've got you fixed up with Landru 91 and Bluebeard 92 in the first Section of the New Estate. You're lucky; there are only eight others besides you." Just then an Inspector, in all his panoply of plume and brass and silver, came striding by, and glanced incuriously at the couple on the doorstep and the knot of workmen standing on the pavement in attitudes of repressed activity. "Here! Here! Inspector! Please help me!" the woman cried. "They're trying to pull my house down." The Inspector raised his eyebrows and his epaulettes as if to say, "This is none of my business." Then he withdrew his gaze and passed by on the other side. "You see, Maybrick 92?" the man said. "You won't get any change out of the Inspectors. Beta resign yourself; the State knows what's best for you." The woman looked past her tormentor, wondering if some passer-by would help her. Not far away another group, and a more familiar one, was forming. The challenged man had evidently refused to strip; he was digging his elbows into his sides, and thrusting his head forward. A snarl that chilled the woman's blood went up from the onlookers. "On to him! Set about him! Worry him!"--so the cries rang out; and after a moment's hesitation the demolition squad joined in the fray. But when the victim, an undersized fellow, who had had his clothes torn off him and was shivering in the March wind, revealed the fact (together with other facts) that he was innocent of a heart imprinted on his person, and when the challenger had done the same, the demolition men strode back to their pickaxes, wearing a businesslike air. At a sign from their leader up went their ladders, and soon the men were scaling them. Striding the flat roof they looked like giants, or devils, they were so black against the ever-gray sky. Certainly they looked like devils to the woman whose home the house was. When the first splintered slates came sliding to the ground, raising a cloud of dust (the dust that seemed to come from nowhere), she covered her face with her hands; but the workmen raised a cheer. In the afternoon a pitched battle broke out, between the demolition squad and their supporters and the dwellers in that row of bungalows and theirs; it raged till nightfall, many bodies lay spread-eagled where they fell. The demolition party was outnumbered, but they had the better weapons and the issue was still in doubt when all at once, amid the shouts and groans filling the air as liquid fills a glass, they heard the threefold summons. "Every valley... every valley"--then silence so profound it seemed no sound could ever break it. "Patients and Delinquents," said the Voice, "I have been watching with much interest and some concern the latest developments that have been happening here. I did not comment on them, because I wanted to see how you would fare when I should be no longer with you. Patients and Delinquents, I am not immortal, nor (except for your sakes) do I wish to be. And now I am going to let you into a secret. This Voice which you have heard from time to time, and which I shall still, for a few minutes more, call my voice, is not my voice at all. My voice is very different. If I said that none of you have ever heard it, that would not be true, but none of you, of this I feel sure, has ever connected it with me. I never meant that you should hear my voice, for I did not think that you would listen to it. The voice I am now speaking with is an Alpha voice, the best voice in the State: the voice with which I shall be speaking to you presently is a Beta voice, and you may have to listen hard to hear it. But I hope that you will listen for I have a special message for you, and one that must come from my own mouth, not through a mouthpiece. I am afraid you will be disappointed with my voice, for it is not the kind of voice you will expect to hear. It is not a commanding voice, or a mesmeric voice, it is the kind of voice for daily conversation--perhaps not even for that. I shall not try to raise it, I shall speak in ordinary tones to ordinary people, if I may call you such. For we have been living in a play, of which I have been the producer and stage manager--yes, and perhaps the author. You have been I will not say my puppets, but my troupe of actors: you have learned your parts from me and played them under my direction. Perhaps you may have thought that it was not a play, that it was real life, but you were mistaken: real life is what you have been living just lately, searching for birthmarks and destroying houses. Who am I to say my play was preferable? I should not dream of saying it, but this I do say, the curtain has come down and the play is over. "Patients and Delinquents, I must not keep you longer. You have urgent business on your hands: there are still houses to pull down, there is still a birthmark to discover. For many years (how well I realize it) I have stood between you and your desires: a solitary figure, made up of prohibitions and commandments; a Voice, not even a Voice, perhaps, just an abstraction. I existed in your thought of me, what a strange existence! A resentful thought, a contemptuous thought, a frightened thought, a frustrating thought, perhaps--dare I claim it?--an indulgent thought. So many thoughts which I, in thinking about myself, have had to take into account! We all live in the thoughts of other people; but not as I have, I have had no private life, except in the daily bulletins of pros and cons (the cons were in the majority) that my ministers brought to me. Yet I do exist, oh yes, I still exist; tired and old as I am, worn out in your service (but who will believe me when I say this?). I still have an identity of my own, independent of you and what you think of me. In my play I tried to rob you of your
identities: for who is not happier without one? But you wanted them back, you wanted them back, and now you have them. "The play is over, at least I think it is: there just remains this curtain call, and my last message to you. In the old days, when a play was popular, there used to be shouts of 'Author! Author!' But that was on the first night, not the last, and in answer to the audience's applause. You have applauded me from time to time: even quite lately you applauded me, when I showed you the result of betting on yourselves. But during these past weeks the play has been growing stale: you all feel you ought to have a hand in it, and who shall blame you? You all would like to be the authors, so this author must stand down, but not before he has spoken to you in his proper voice and given you his last message." Suddenly the air was empty of sound, as if the gathering darkness had somehow quenched it. Then the Voice was heard again, the same voice: "Patients and Delinquents, pray silence for the Dictator!" and the strains of "Every Valley" once more soared into the air. Afterward a few people swore they heard a sound, but they must have been mistaken, for no one else did. No one else heard anything, least of all a voice, and after they had listened for what seemed a timeless period, they dispersed.