Facial Justice (8 page)

Chapter Thirteen

JAEL started up; half in fear and half in welcome, her eyes brightened. The Visitor held her thin hand out for Jael to take and then sat down. The silence within the hut was almost unbelievable; with a beating heart Jael waited for the Visitor to break it. Meanwhile, she stared almost rudely at her. How pretty she must have been once, long ago. A Failed Alpha, certainly, perhaps even a true Alpha. She wore her own face, as women could do without criticism after they were sixty, unless they wanted a replacement; she did not look as old as that, except for the redness round the eyelids of her bright but sunken eyes. They gave her the look of a kind little bird. Her soft fluffy brown hair was the youngest-looking part about her. Over her shoulders she wore an old black velvet cape, the top half covered with a brown fur which might have been sable-substitute. But the light was behind her and Jael could not see her very well. "My dear," she began, "the Sister tells me you have made an excellent recovery." Her voice was soft and very distinct; she must have studied elocution, Jael thought. "Being ill is never a very cheerful experience, but I hope you have been happy here." "Oh yes," said Jael. "Everybody has been most kind to me." "I am friends, I hope, with everyone," said the Visitor, "and for that very reason you can be quite frank with me. I don't make criticisms, I sometimes make suggestions. Even if those in authority took my suggestions seriously no one would suffer. There would be no victimization. This is not a Police State; we work on the Voluntary Principle, as you know. I don't know what the Sister may have told you, but you can confide in me. That is, if you wish to. Sometimes I ask the patients questions, sometimes they ask me. Sometimes we exchange remarks; sometimes we have nothing to say at all. I leave them to decide." She looked at Jael interrogatively, but Jael didn't speak. "Perhaps you would rather not talk?" said the Visitor. "Sometimes one doesn't want to talk, especially to strangers, but if there is anything I can help you about--" Questions were thronging Jael's mind, question marks hooking on to each other, an endless chain. More than anything else she wanted to know, to know where she stood. But she couldn't ask without giving something away. "Will my job be kept open for me?" she said. "Let's see, you were your brother's secretary, weren't you? Of course, my dear, why not?" "I thought that after the Ely episode--" "You might not be wanted? But statisticians are always in demand. The Dictator--" "Darling Dictator," said Jael fervently. The Visitor rose. "Darling Dictator," she repeated gravely, and went through the ritual, while Jael bowed. Seating herself again, she said: "The Dictator, it is thought, relies upon statistics. Your job will be quite safe." How does she know? thought Jael. But she felt the cloud of apprehension lift a little. Longing to lighten it still more, she asked, "There won't be any change in my--?" she hes-itated for the word. "In your circumstances?" Jael nodded. "None, my dear, unless you choose to change them. You might find--" "Yes?" said Jael. "Well, that you wanted to." "Supposing I did," Jael said, "supposing it was made possible for me--" "On whom would it depend?" the Visitor asked. Mentally Jael drew back. "Oh, on so many things. Even if they kept my job open for me--" "You might be handicapped in other ways?" "Yes," said Jael, and for a moment had the feeling that the Visitor could read her thoughts. "I might have to wear... to wear..." "Permanent Sackcloth?" "Yes, or some other sign of disgrace. That's what they say." "Don't pay any attention to them. They know no more than you do, and the Dictator is merciful." "The Dictator is merciful," repeated Jael. "But"--she drew a long breath--"it isn't possible, is it, that _nothing__ will happen to us? That we shall go on as we were before?" "I'm afraid you may," the Visitor said, and smiled for the first time. "I'm very much afraid you may." Jael smiled, too, in inexpressible relief. But it sounded too good to be true. "Shan't we even be fined?" she asked. "Some of you may have to pay a little but not more than you can afford, nothing ruinous.... You needn't worry about that, I'm sure." "They say no man will want to marry us, if we're deep in debt, because he would have to pay it off." "My dear, what nonsense." "And then no holidays, no games, no cinemas, no amusements--no fun, except just the Litany. If he went out, he would have to go on his own." "He?" asked the Visitor. "A husband, I meant," Jael said. "You harp on husbands. Had you thought--?" Jael saw that the Visitor wore no wedding ring. But surely all women, married or not, understood about husbands. "Something happened to me," she said, "that made me think--it wasn't an ordinary experience. I may have quite misunderstood it. It wasn't anything to do with daily life--it didn't happen here, really." "Where did it happen?" asked the Visitor. "I don't quite know--in the air, I think. It may have been a dream, but I had such an assurance of something--well, not of this world." "Doesn't this world content you?" asked the Visitor. "Isn't ordinary life good enough for you?" "It was, it was," said Jael. "But since I had this taste of something else--only a taste, perhaps it wasn't real--I don't feel I can go back--" "You broke a rule," the Visitor said gently. "I know, I looked up, I made others look up, too. Surely I was right. Wouldn't you have?" "I am only an old woman," said the Visitor, "whose self-appointed business it is to try to find out how people feel. The Dictator--" "Darling Dictator," Jael said. This time the Visitor didn't rise: she bowed, as Jael did. "The Dictator, as far as my poor intelligence can understand him, doesn't think that we should sever ourselves, even in thought, from quite a humdrum wav of life. What the imagination imposes on it is false and risky to oneself and others. I am not in his confidence--how could I be?--but that has been his policy, to reduce accidents. A war is the greatest of all accidents, and how does it come about?--through the imagination. Only through the imagination can one kill a man." "But can one love him except through the imagination?" "Indeed, one can. One loves what's there, not what the imagination pretends is there. Look at these flowers! You all have them; the Ministry of Health sees to that. No one goes without. They're not the real thing, of course; the real thing perished with the war, and these you sometimes see are just museum pieces, doomed to extinction, so they say; the earth won't nourish them. These plastic flowers are much more satisfactory because they don't depend on anything outside themselves. Now this flower of yours--" Without looking at her cineraria, Jael said: "But don't we all rely on things outside ourselves, and people, for what makes life worth living, indeed for life itself?" The visitor didn't answer for a moment. She turned her faded eyes upward, and one blue-veined hand moved restlessly on her knee. "We did," she said, "I did, when I was your age. But now I think the Dictator--no, my dear, you needn't trouble to make the obeisances--I'll excuse you--he means us to draw our nourishment from a common source--a kind of spiritual reservoir to which all of us unconsciously contribute as bees used to contribute honey to the hive. You don't remember that! There are no bees now, because there are no flowers, but every educated person knows about them. The bee didn't eat its own honey, or honey brought it by a friend; it just ate honey. That's what's meant, I think, by replacing intellect by instinct. Now this flower of yours--" Jael tried to look as if she hadn't heard the Visitor's last words. "But I don't want to give up my intelligence--such as it is," she said. "I would much rather act on my own, even if I made mistakes, than from some mass suggestion that was stronger than me. I like to have my own thoughts, just as I like to have my own face, simply because they're mine. I shouldn't want to like or dislike something because other people did." "And yet you do that very thing," the Visitor said. "You believe you are thinking for yourself, but you share the ideas and prejudices of people like-minded with yourself--we all do. And those ideas and prejudices may well be wrong. And even if they're not, diversity of ideas is dangerous. At worst it leads to murder or to war. Better have one idea, to which we all unconsciously subscribe, and leave intelligence and the power of choice to the Inspectors, who are trained not to abuse them. Dancing is a kind of harmony, isn't it? You do what the others do, to make the figure complete, but you do it in your own way. You express yourself, as a means to a larger expression, outside, yourself. Uniformity isn't bad, as some people still think, because if the quality is good, it satisfies. People are never happy who want change. Now the design of these flowers is a good design, that is why all hospitals have them. They are cinerarias, as you know. A committee decided that of the few flowers left they are the loveliest, so they are standardized for hospital use. Think if you all had different flowers, your own special flower! What opportunities for Envy--no, my dear, you needn't move--there'd be. Everyone thinking her own flower the best, or green with Bad Egg, as they call it! The whole ward would soon be in an uproar, and no one would get well. Whereas, by this plan, each of you gets from the flower its special quality--all that the word flower implies--the same reaction, the same pleasure, and nobody is hurt or discontented. Now that flower of yours--" "Yes," said Jael, feeling as though the cineraria was recording the face and setting her on fire. "Why cineraria--" "You say 'my cineraria,'" said the Visitor kindly, "but it isn't really yours, is it? It really belongs to the Health Service. When you leave next week, it will stay behind to be a pleasure to the next patient who occupies your bed and you won't mind leaving it, you'll be glad, whereas if it was yours--" "But it is mine," Jael cried. "Yours, my dear child? How can it be? We none of us have flowers of our own--they are far too precious." "But it is mine," Jael repeated. "I know it is, for someone gave it to me." "Someone gave it to you?" echoed the Visitor. "But that's impossible--you must be dreaming. Shock and concussion. Will you let me see it?" Torn between terror and triumph, Jael cried, "Please look." The Visitor rose and stood over the flower. She bent her head down till the petals cast a bluish shadow on her face. Then she fingered the leaves, and touched the mold in which the flower grew. It left a brown stain on her finger. A look of bewilderment crossed her face. She looked round for her chair and dropped into it. "You're right," she said. "It is a real flower. I thought it might be, when I first saw it, but couldn't believe my eyes--Do you know what made me think it might be real?" "No," said Jael. "It is beginning to fade--The other flowers don't fade, they cannot." "Are you angry with me?" asked Jael. "My dear, why should I be? It is a--a miracle, and you are not to blame." "Will they let me take it away with me?" "Oh yes." "And keep it at home?" "Yes, why do you doubt it?" Like a hypochondriac seeking reassurance from a doctor, Jael wanted her immunity confirmed. "I thought I might be punished. I thought that when I got away from here they would--would make an example of me." "They?" "The authorities." The Visitor shook her head. "The Dictator is not vindictive," she said. "Will everything be as it was before?" "Yes, I believe so." "Shall I be fined?" "Oh no." "Shall I be allowed to come and go as I please?" "Of course." "Shall I--shall I have to wear Permanent Sackcloth?" "I don't think so." Jael searched her mind for further fears to allay. The Visitor had quite won her confidence; sweet, gentle old thing. But she couldn't in a moment lose the terrors of several weeks; she couldn't quite believe she would get off scot-free. The Visitor was rising to her feet, pulling her cape about her; the ordeal was over. "I should like to kiss you," she said, bending down, "but for me, it's against the regulations. I might catch something--not from you, my dear--you're harmless, or at least, I think you are." "Then I'm not to be punished?" "No." "Why not?" "My dear child," said the Visitor, "you _have__ been punished." At this an extraordinary sense of peace descended on Jael; she felt she had been absolved from all her sins. For of course she had been punished; she had been a victim of the accident; she had suffered a great deal of pain; she had been operated on; she had been detained in hospital for three, or was it four, weeks. A sufficient expiation!--and now she could start again with a clean sheet, or perhaps with one or two minor disabilities, the loss of a few civic privileges, which she could laugh at, just as everyone else did. "The Dictator is not vindictive." Darling Dictator, of course he wasn't. People made fun of him, and grumbled at him, and sometimes, as Jael had, they dreaded him. But he was all right, really: by and large, as he himself had often told them, they were lucky to have him. He wasn't out to make trouble; he hadn't made trouble for her.... Jael's spirits soared, and so intent was she on relishing her sensations that she forgot to say good-by to the Visitor; forgot her existence for the moment, until she realized that the sights and sounds of the ward were all about her, and saw the hut, with the Visitor walking beside it, being trundled to a bed on the opposite side. Then she sat up and tried to say something but the Visitor didn't hear. No doubt she was busy thinking up questions for the next interview. Had she really kissed her? Jael wasn't sure. She hadn't been kissed a great many times in her short life, and only once in a way that counted; her mind and her flesh would remember it forever, that embrace among the stars. But even an ordinary kiss, even the peck that Joab sometimes gave her, even the routine kisses that her women friends gave her, at meetings and partings, left an imprint on her psycho-physical memory--one didn't, for a brief instant, feel the same afterward as before. Virtue had gone out of her, and come in; however seemingly insignificant the contact, it left a momentary sense of heightened being. Her being was heightened now, but from the pardon, not. she felt sure, from the touch of the Visitor's lips. Poor old lady, she would have so much kissing to do if she kissed everyone, no wonder she said it was against the regulations, had adopted the stage technique of kissing not the face but the adjacent air. Still it was a kind gesture. Blissfully relaxed, unaware of time, Jael watched the hut with its attendant ministers pursuing its zigzag course. Did everyone to whom the Visitor had talked feel as happy as she did? The answer