Ape and Essence

by Aldous Huxley

  He enters the shot, jumps into the grave beside her and, without a word, takes her in his arms. The kiss is passionate. Then she hides her face against his shoulder.

  "I thought I should never see you any more," she says in a breaking voice.

  "What did you take me for?"

  He kisses her again, then holds her at arm's length and looks into her face.

  "Why are you crying?" he asks.

  "I can't help it."

  "You're lovelier even than I remembered."

  She shakes her head, unable to speak.

  "Smile," he commands.

  "I can't."

  "Smile, smile. I want to see them again."

  "See what?"

  "Smile!"

  With an effort, but full of a passionate tenderness, Look smiles up at him.

  In her cheeks the dimples emerge from the long hibernation of her sorrow.

  "There they are," he cries in delight, "there they are!"

  Delicately, like a blind man reading Herrick in Braille, he passes a finger across her cheek. Loola smiles more effortlessly, the dimple deepens under his touch. He laughs with pleasure.

  At the same moment the whistled tune of "When I behold the Wondrous Horns" swells from a distant pianissimo through piano to mezzo forte.

  An expression of terror appears on Loola's face.

  "Quick, quick!" she whispers.

  With astonishing agility Dr. Poole scrabbles out of the grave.

  By the time the plump girl re-enters the shot he is leaning in a studiedly casual attitude against the monument to Public Sweetheart Number One. Below him, in the pit, Loola is digging like mad.

  "I forgot to tell you that we're knocking off for lunch in half an hour," Flossie begins.

  Then, catching sight of Dr. Poole, she utters an exclamation of surprise.

  "Good morning," says Dr. Poole politely.

  There is a silence. Flossie looks from Dr. Poole to Loola and from Loola back to Dr. Poole.

  "What are you doing here?" she asks suspiciously.

  "I'm on my way to St. Azazel's," he answers. "The Arch-Vicar sent a message that he wanted me to attend his three lectures to the Seminarists. Belial in History -- that's the subject of them."

  "You've chosen a very funny way to get to St. Azazel's."

  "I was looking for the Chief," Dr. Poole explains.

  "Well, he's not here," says the plump girl.

  There is another silence.

  "In that case," says Dr. Poole, "I'd better be trotting along. Mustn't keep either of you young ladies from your duties," he adds with an artificial and entirely unconvincing brightness. "Good-by. Good-by."

  He bows to the two girls, then, assuming an air of easy nonchalance, walks away.

  Flossie looks after him in silence, then turns severely to Loola.

  "Now listen, kid," she begins.

  Loola stops digging and looks up from the grave.

  "What is it, Flossie," she asks with an expression of uncomprehending innocence.

  "What is it?" the other echoes derisively. "Tell me, what's written on your apron?"

  Loola looks down at her apron, then back at Flossie. Her face reddens with embarrassment.

  "What's written on it?" the plump girl insists.

  "'No!'"

  "And what's written on those patches?"

  "'No!'" Loola repeats.

  "And on the other ones, when you turn around?"

  "'No!'"

  "No, no, no, no, no," says the plump girl emphat­ically. "And when the Law says no, it means no. You know that as well as I do, don't you."

  Loola nods her head without speaking.

  "Say you know it," the other insists. "Say it."

  "Yes, I know it," Loola brings out at last in a barely audible voice.

  "Good. Then don't pretend you haven't been warned. And if that foreign Hot ever comes prowl­ing around you again, just let me know. I'll see to him."

  We dissolve to the interior of St. Azazel's. Once the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe, St. Azazel's has undergone only the most superficial of altera­tions. In the chapels, the plaster figures of St. Joseph, the Magdalen, St. Anthony of Padua and St. Rose of Lima have merely been painted red and fitted with horns. On the high altar nothing has been changed except that the crucifix has been replaced by a pair of enormous horns carved out of cedar wood and hung with a wealth of rings and wrist watches, of bracelets, chains, earrings and necklaces, mined from the cemeteries or found in association with old bones and the mouldering remnants of jewel boxes.

  In the body of the church some fifty Toggenberg-robed seminarists -- with Dr. Poole, incongruously bearded and in tweeds, in the middle of the front row -- are sitting with bowed heads while, from the pulpit, the Arch-Vicar pronounces the final words of his lecture.

  "For as in the Order of Things all might, if they had so desired, have lived, so also in Belial all have been, or inevitably shall be, made to die. Amen."

  There is a long silence. Then the Master of Novices rises. With a great rustling of fur, the seminarists follow suit and start to walk, two by two, and with the most perfect decorum, toward the west door.

  Dr. Poole is about to follow them, when he hears a high childish voice calling his name.

  Turning, he sees the Arch-Vicar beckoning from the steps of the pulpit.

  "Well, what did you think of the lecture?" squeaks the great man, as Dr. Poole approaches.

  "Very fine."

  "Without flattery?"

  "Really and truly."

  The Arch-Vicar smiles with pleasure.

  "I'm glad to hear it," he says.

  "I specially liked what you said about religion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries -- the retreat from Jeremiah to the Book of Judges, from the per­sonal and therefore the universal to the national and therefore the internecine."

  The Arch-Vicar nods.

  "Yes, it was a pretty close shave," he says. "If they'd stuck to the personal and the universal, they'd have been in harmony with the Order of Things, and the Lord of Flies would have been done for. But fortunately Belial had plenty of allies -- the nations, the churches, the political parties. He used their prejudices. He exploited their ideologies. By the time they'd developed the atomic bomb, he had people back in the state of mind they were in before 900 b.c."

  "And then," says Dr. Poole, "I liked what you said about the contacts between East and West -- how He persuaded each side to take only the worst the other had to offer. So the East takes Western nationalism, Western armaments, Western movies and Western Marxism; the West takes Eastern despotism, Eastern superstitions and Eastern indifference to individual life. In a word, He saw to it that mankind should make the worst of both worlds."

  "Just think if they'd made the best!" squeaks the Arch-Vicar. "Eastern mysticism making sure that Western science should be properly used; the Eastern art of living refining Western energy; Western individ­ualism tempering Eastern totalitarianism." He shakes his head in pious horror. "Why, it would have been the kingdom of heaven. Happily the grace of Belial was stronger than the Other One's grace."

  He chuckles shrilly; then laying a hand on Dr. Poole's shoulder, he starts to walk with him toward the vestry.

  "You know, Poole," he says, "I've got to be very fond of you." Dr. Poole mumbles his embarrassed ac­knowledgements.

  "You're intelligent, you're well educated, you know all kinds of things that we've never learned. You could be very useful to me and, on my side, I could be very useful to you -- that is," he adds, "if you were to become one of us."

  "One of you?" Dr. Poole repeats doubtfully.

  "Yes, one of us."

  Comprehension dawns on an expressive close-up of Dr. Poole's face. He utters a dismayed "Oh!"

  "I won't disguise from you," says the Arch-Vicar, "that the surgery involved is not entirely painless, nor wholly without danger. But the advantages to be gained by entering the
priesthood would be so great as to outweigh any trifling risk or discomfort. Nor must we forget. . ."

  "But, Your Eminence. . ." Dr. Poole protests. The Arch-Vicar holds up a plump, damp hand.

  "One moment, please," he says severely. His expression is so forbidding that Dr. Poole has­tens to apologise.

  "I beg your pardon."

  "Granted, my dear Poole, granted."

  Once again the Arch-Vicar is all amiability and condescension.

  "Well, as I was saying," he goes on, "we must not forget that, if you were to undergo what I may call a physiological conversion, you would be delivered from all the temptations to which, as an unmutated male, you will most certainly be exposed."

  "Quite, quite," Dr. Poole agrees. "But I can assure you. . ."

  "Where temptations are concerned," says the Arch-Vicar sententiously, "nobody can assure anyone of anything."

  Dr. Poole remembers his recent interview with Loola in the cemetery, and feels himself blushing.

  "Isn't that rather a sweeping statement?" he says without too much conviction.

  The Arch-Vicar shakes his head.

  "In these matters," he says, "one can never be too sweeping. And let me remind you of what happens to those who succumb to such temptations. The bulls' pizzles and the burying squad are always in readiness. And that is why, in your own interests, for your future happiness and peace of mind, I advise you -- nay, I beg and implore you -- to join our Order."

  There is a silence. Dr. Poole swallows hard.

  "I should like to be able to think it over," he says at last.

  "Of course, of course," the Arch-Vicar agrees. "Take your time. Take a week."

  "A week? I don't think I could decide in a week."

  "Take two weeks," says the Arch-Vicar, and when Dr. Poole still shakes his head, "Take four," he adds, "take six, if you like. I'm in no hurry. I'm only concerned about you." He pats Dr. Poole on the shoulder. "Yes, my dear fellow, about you."

  Dissolve to Dr. Poole at work in his experimental garden, planting out tomato seedlings. Nearly six weeks have passed. His brown beard is considerably more luxuriant, his tweed coat and flannel trousers considerably dirtier, than when we saw him last. He wears a gray homespun shirt and moccasins of local manufacture.

  When the last of his seedlings is in the ground, he straightens himself up, stretches, rubs his aching back, then walks slowly to the end of the garden and stands there motionless, looking out at the view.

  In a long shot, we see, as it were through his eyes, a wide prospect of deserted factories and crumbling houses, backed in the distance by a range of mountains that recedes, fold after fold, toward the east. The shadows are gulfs of indigo, and in the richly golden lights the far-off details stand out distinct and small and perfect, like the images of things in a convex mirror. In the foreground, delicately chased and stippled by the almost horizontal light, even the baldest patches of parched earth reveal an unsuspected sumptuousness of texture.

  NARRATOR

  There are times, and this is one of them, when the world seems purposefully beautiful, when it is as though some mind in things had suddenly chosen to make manifest, for all who choose to see, the super­natural reality that underlies all appearances.

  Dr. Poole's lips move and we catch the low mur­mur of his words.

  " 'For love and beauty and delight

  There is no death nor change; their might

  Exceeds our organs, which endure

  No light, being themselves obscure.'"

  He turns and walks back toward the entrance to the garden. Before opening the gate, he looks cau­tiously around him. There is no sign of an unfriendly observer. Reassured, he slips out and almost imme­diately turns into a winding path between sand dunes. Once again his lips move.

  " 'I am the Earth,

  Thy mother; she within whose stony veins

  To the last fibre of the loftiest tree,

  Whose thin leaves trembled in the frozen air,

  Joy ran, as blood within a living frame,

  When thou didst from her bosom, like a cloud

  Of glory, arise, a spirit of keen joy.'"

  From the footpath Dr. Poole emerges into a street flanked by small houses, each with its garage and each surrounded by the barren space that was once a plot of grass and flowers.

  " 'A spirit of keen joy,' " he repeats and then sighs and shakes his head.

  NARRATOR

  Joy? But joy was murdered long ago. All that sur­vives is the laughter of demons about the whipping posts, the howling of the possessed as they couple in the darkness. Joy is only for those whose life accords with the given Order of the world. For you there, the clever ones who think you can improve upon that Order, for you, the angry ones, the rebellious, the disobedient, joy is fast becoming a stranger. Those who are doomed to reap the consequences of your fantastic tricks will never so much as suspect its existence. Love, Joy and Peace -- these are the fruits of the spirit that is your essence and the essence of the world. But the fruits of the ape-mind, the fruits of the monkey's presumption and revolt are hate and unceasing restlessness and a chronic misery tempered only by frenzies more horrible than itself.

  Dr. Poole, meanwhile, continues on his way.

  " "The world is full of woodmen,'" he says to him­self,

  " "The world is full of woodmen, who expel

  Love's gentle dryads from the trees of life

  And vex the nightingales in every dell.'"

  NARRATOR

  Woodmen with axes, dryad-killers with knives, nightingale-vexers with scalpels and surgical scissors.

  Dr. Poole shudders and, like a man who feels him­self dogged by some malevolent presence, quickens his pace. Suddenly he halts and once more looks about him.

  NARRATOR

  In a city of two and a half million skeletons the presence of a few thousands of the living is hardly perceptible. Nothing stirs. The silence is total and, in the midst of all these cosy little bourgeois ruins, seems conscious and in some sort conspiratorial.

  His pulses quickened by hope and the fear of dis­appointment, Dr. Poole turns off the road and hurries along the drive that leads to the garage of Number 1993. Sagging on their rusted hinges, the double doors stand ajar. He slips between them into a musty twilight. Through a hole in the west wall of the garage a thin pencil of late afternoon sunshine reveals the left front wheel of a Super de Luxe Four-Door Chevrolet Sedan and, on the ground beside it, two skulls, one an adult's, the other evidently a child's. Dr. Poole opens the only one of the four doors which is not jammed and peers into the darkness within.

  "Loola!"

  He climbs into the car, sits down beside her on the disintegrated upholstery of the back seat, and takes her hand in both of his.

  "Darling!"

  She looks at him without speaking. In her eyes there is an expression almost of terror.

  "So you were able to get away after all?"

  "But Flossie still suspects something."

  "Damn Flossie!" says Dr. Poole in a tone that is intended to be carefree and reassuring.

  "She kept asking questions," Loola goes on. "I told her I was going out to forage for needles and cutlery."

  "But all you've found is me."

  He smiles at her tenderly and raises her hand to his lips; but Loola shakes her head.

  "Alfie -- please!"

  Her tone is a supplication. He lowers her hand with­out kissing it.

  "And yet you do love me, don't you?"

  She looks at him with eyes that are wide with a frightened bewilderment, then turns away.

  "I don't know, Alfie, I don't know."

  "Well, I know," says Dr. Poole decidedly. "I know I love you. I know I want to be with you. Always. Till death do us part," he adds with all the fervour of an introverted sexualist suddenly converted to ob­jectivity and monogamy.

  Loola shakes her head again. "All I know is that I oughtn't to be here."r />
  "But that's nonsense!"

  "No, it isn't. I oughtn't to be here now. I oughtn't to have come those other times. It's against the Law. It's against everything that people think. It's against Him," she adds after a moment's pause. An expres­sion of agonised distress appears on her face. "But then why did He make me so that I could feel this way about you? Why did He make me like those -- like those --" She cannot bring herself to utter the abhorred word. "I used to know one of them," she goes on in a low voice. "He was sweet -- almost as sweet as you are. And then they killed him."

  "What's the good of thinking about other people?" says Dr. Poole. "Let's think about ourselves. Let's think how happy we could be, how happy we actually were two months ago. Do you remember? The moon­light. . . And how dark it was in the shadows! And in the soul a wild odour is felt beyond the sense. . . !"

  "But we weren't doing wrong then."

  "We're not doing wrong now."

  "No, no, it's quite different now."

  "It isn't different," he insists. "I don't feel any dif­ferent from what I did then. And neither do you."

  "I do," she protests -- too loudly to carry conviction.

  "No, you don't."

  "I do."

  "You don't. You've just said it. You're not like these other people -- thank God!"

  "Alfie!"

  She makes a propitiatory sign of the horns.

  "They've been turned into animals," he goes on. "You haven't. You're still a human being -- a normal human being with normal human feelings."

  "I'm not."

  "Yes, you are."

  "It isn't true," she wails. "It isn't true."

  She covers her face with her hands and starts to cry.

  "He'll kill me," she sobs.

  "Who'll kill you?"

  Loola raises her head and looks apprehensively over her shoulder, through the rear window of the car.

  "He will. He knows everything we do, everything we even think or feel."

  "Maybe He does," says Dr. Poole, whose Liberal-Protestant views about the Devil have been consid­erably modified during the past few weeks. "But if we feel and think and do the right thing, He can't hurt us."