The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [261]
It was hard to tell whether Hari saw what he meant or not, for he merely grunted and fished in the pocket of his waistcoat for his watch; this was a gold watch, as it happened, but one would not have thought so, because Hari had spent so much time in the mercury-laden atmosphere of this room that both watch and chain had become coated with a white amalgam. He was frowning now as he picked up a copper plate coated with silver and began to polish it with soft leather and pumice, using slow, deliberate strokes parallel to the edges of the plate, first in one direction, then in the other.
“A spear that shoots someone as well as stabbing him? Ludicrous! And all these other things you have shown me, collections of this and that, sea-shells and carved ivory, disgraceful pictures, chairs made of antlers and astronomical clocks, d’you know what they remind me of?”
“No,” said Hari sullenly. He was now looking pale as well as angry, perhaps from his exertions or because he had inhaled too much mercury vapour...He was still polishing the silvered copper plate but had exchanged the leather for a pad of silk.
“They remind me of the Great Exhibition!”
“They had disgraceful pictures in Great Exhibition, I did not know?” said Hari, curious in spite of himself and slightly mollified by this comparison.
“No, of course not. But what I mean is that the Great Exhibition was not, as everyone said it was, a landmark of civilization; it was for the most part a collection of irrelevant rubbish such as your ancestors might well have collected.”
Hari winced at this reference to his ancestors and turned paler than ever; his polishing of the plate intensified. But Fleury did not notice. He was seething with excitement and would have sprung to his feet, gesticulating, had not his head been firmly wedged in the iron ring.
“Take the Indian Court in the Crystal Palace, it was full of useless objects. There were spears, a life-sized elephant with a double howdah, swords, umbrellas, jewels, and rich cloths...the very things you have just been showing me. In fact, the whole Exhibition was composed merely of collections of this and that, utterly without significance...There was an Observatory Hive...ah, the tedious comparisons that were made between mankind and the hive’s ‘quietly-employed inhabitants, those living emblems of industry and order.’!”
Hari, whose face remained stony and expressionless, had finished polishing; the plate no longer had a silver appearance but seemed black. He now had to focus the lens of the camera on Fleury.
“Take your hands off chest, Fleury,” he ordered, for Fleury was gripping his lapels and the movement of his breathing would undoubtedly blur the image.
“I’m afraid I’m not making myself very clear,” Fleury groaned; he had become carried away with his denunciation of materialism and was dizzy, moreover, with the heat and the fumes of chemicals and the pressure of the clamps on his skull. “What I mean is that collections of objects, whether weapons or sea-shells or a life-sized stuffed elephant, are nothing but distractions for people who have been unable to make a real spiritual advance.”
“And Science? Were there not many wonderful machines?”
“It’s true that the Agricultural Court was often full of bushy-whiskered farmers staring at strange engines...But reflect, these engines were merely improved methods for doing the wrong thing.”
“The wrong thing! I am sad, Fleury, that you should be so very backwards. These machines make more food, more money, save very much labour,” said Hari coldly and vanished under a tent of dark muslin hung over a frame in one corner of the room. An instant later his head reappeared from beneath the draped muslin, black eyes glittering in his pale, flabby face. “And this that I am doing to you at the moment, perhaps this is not progress also!” he demanded angrily. His head vanished again.