Island - Aldous Huxley [0]
Island
To
Laura
In framing an ideal we may assume what
we wish, but should avoid impossibilities.
ARISTOTLE
Contents
Epigraph
1
“ATTENTION,” A VOICE BEGAN TO CALL, AND IT WAS AS…
2
SUDDENLY THE BIRD CEASED TO BE ARTICULATE AND STARTED TO…
3
“WELL, I’M GLAD IT’S ALL SO AMUSING,” A DEEP VOICE…
4
TOM KRISHNA AND MARY SAROJINI HAD GONE TO TAKE THEIR siesta with…
5
THE SUN WAS JUST RISING AS DR. ROBERT ENTERED HIS WIFE’S…
6
“GOLLY!” THE LITTLE NURSE EXPLODED, WHEN THE DOOR WAS safely…
7
HE COULD NEVER GO TO SLEEP DURING THE DAY; BUT…
8
“GOOD EVENING, MY DEAR. GOOD EVENING, MR. FARNABY.”
9
“‘PATRIOTISM IS NOT ENOUGH.’ BUT NEITHER IS ANYTHING ELSE. Science…
10
CAUTIOUSLY MANEUVERING HIS IMMOBILIZED LEG, WILL CLIMBED out of the…
11
WILL FARNABY HAD MADE HIS OWN BREAKFAST AND, WHEN DR. Robert returned…
12
“HERE WE ARE,” SAID VIJAYA, WHEN THEY HAD REACHED THE…
13
WASHED AND BRUSHED, THE TWINS WERE ALREADY IN THEIR HIGH…
14
SHE STARTED THE MOTOR AND THEY DROVE OFF—DOWN TO THE…
15
ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR…THE CLOCK IN THE KITCHEN STRUCK twelve.
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1
“ATTENTION,” A VOICE BEGAN TO CALL, AND IT WAS AS THOUGH an oboe had suddenly become articulate. “Attention,” it repeated in the same high, nasal monotone. “Attention.”
Lying there like a corpse in the dead leaves, his hair matted, his face grotesquely smudged and bruised, his clothes in rags and muddy, Will Farnaby awoke with a start. Molly had called him. Time to get up. Time to get dressed. Mustn’t be late at the office.
“Thank you, darling,” he said and sat up. A sharp pain stabbed at his right knee and there were other kinds of pain in his back, his arms, his forehead.
“Attention,” the voice insisted without the slightest change of tone. Leaning on one elbow, Will looked about him and saw with bewilderment, not the gray wallpaper and yellow curtains of his London bedroom, but a glade among trees and the long shadows and slanting lights of early morning in a forest.
“Attention”?
Why did she say, “Attention”?
“Attention. Attention,” the voice insisted—how strangely, how senselessly!
“Molly?” he questioned. “Molly?”
The name seemed to open a window inside his head. Suddenly, with that horribly familiar sense of guilt at the pit of the stomach, he smelt formaldehyde, he saw the small brisk nurse hurrying ahead of him along the green corridor, heard the dry creaking of her starched clothes. “Number fifty-five,” she was saying, and then halted, opened a white door. He entered and there, on a high white bed, was Molly. Molly with bandages covering half her face and the mouth hanging cavernously open. “Molly,” he had called, “Molly…” His voice had broken, and he was crying, was imploring now, “My darling!” There was no answer. Through the gaping mouth the quick shallow breaths came noisily, again, again. “My darling, my darling…” And then suddenly the hand he was holding came to life for a moment. Then was still again.
“It’s me,” he said, “it’s Will.”
Once more the fingers stirred. Slowly, with what was evidently an enormous effort, they closed themselves over his own, pressed them for a moment and then relaxed again into lifelessness.
“Attention,” called the inhuman voice. “Attention.”
It had been an accident, he hastened to assure himself. The road was wet, the car had skidded across the white line. It was one of those things that happen all the time. The papers are full of them; he had reported them by the dozen. “Mother and three children killed in head-on crash…” But that was beside the point. The point was that, when she asked him if it was really the end, he had said yes; the point was that less than an hour after she had walked out from that last shameful interview into the rain, Molly was in the ambulance, dying.
He hadn’t looked at her as she turned to go, hadn’t dared to look at her. Another glimpse of that pale suffering face might have been too much for him. She had risen