Island - Aldous Huxley [49]
Like a muezzin in his minaret, one of the talking birds began to shout from the tall palm beyond the mango trees, “Here and now, boys. Here and now, boys.”
Will decided to take the plunge—but to take it indirectly, by talking first, not about his problems, but about hers. Without looking at Susila (for that, he felt, would be indecent), he began to speak.
“Dr. MacPhail told me something about…about what happened to your husband.”
The words turned a sword in her heart; but that was to be expected, that was right and inevitable. “It’ll be four months next Wednesday,” she said. And then, meditatively, “Two people,” she went on after a little silence, “two separate individuals—but they add up to something like a new creation. And then suddenly half of this new creature is amputated; but the other half doesn’t die—can’t die, mustn’t die.”
“Mustn’t die?”
“For so many reasons—the children, oneself, the whole nature of things. But needless to say,” she added, with a little smile that only accentuated the sadness in her eyes, “needless to say the reasons don’t lessen the shock of the amputation or make the aftermath any more bearable. The only thing that helps is what we were talking about just now—Destiny Control. And even that…” She shook her head. “DC can give you a completely painless childbirth. But a completely painless bereavement—no. And of course that’s as it should be. It wouldn’t be right if you could take away all the pain of a bereavement; you’d be less than human.”
“Less than human,” he repeated. “Less than human…” Three short words; but how completely they summed him up! “The really terrible thing,” he said aloud, “is when you know it’s your fault that the other person died.”
“Were you married?” she asked.
“For twelve years. Until last spring…”
“And now she’s dead?”
“She died in an accident.”
“In an accident? Then how was it your fault?”
“The accident happened because…well, because the evil that I didn’t want to do, I did. And that day it came to a head. The hurt of it confused and distracted her, and I let her drive away in the car—let her drive away into a head-on collision.”
“Did you love her?”
He hesitated for a moment, then slowly shook his head.
“Was there somebody else—somebody you cared for more?”
“Somebody I couldn’t have cared for less.” He made a grimace of sardonic self-mockery.
“And that was the evil you didn’t want to do, but did?”
“Did and went on doing until I’d killed the woman I ought to have loved, but didn’t. Went on doing it even after I’d killed her, even though I hated myself for doing it—yes, and really hated the person who made me do it.”
“Made you do it, I suppose, by having the right kind of body?”
Will nodded, and there was a silence.
“Do you know what it’s like,” he asked at length, “to feel that nothing is quite real—including yourself?”
Susila nodded. “It sometimes happens when one’s just on the point of discovering that everything, including oneself, is much more real than one ever imagined. It’s like shifting gears: you have to go into neutral before you change into high.”
“Or low,” said Will. “In my case, the shift wasn’t up, it was down. No, not even down; it was into reverse. The first time it happened I was waiting for a bus to take me home from Fleet Street. Thousands upon thousands of people, all on the move, and each of them unique, each of them the center of the universe. Then the sun came out from behind a cloud. Everything was extraordinarily bright and clear; and suddenly, with an almost audible click, they were all maggots.”
“Maggots?”
“You know, those little