Олдос Хаксли - Eyeless in Gaza

‘Wasted, I’m afraid,’ Dr Miller answered good–humouredly as he took off his hat and sat down. ‘Either they haven’t got any beds for me to be at the side of—only a blanket on the floor. Or else they don’t speak any Spanish, and I don’t speak their brand of Indian dialect. And how’s yourself?’ he asked.

‘ Myself ,’ said Mark, returning the doctor his expression in a tone of emphatically contemptuous disgust, as though it were some kind of verbal ordure, ‘is very well, thanks.’

‘But doing a slight Bishop Berkeley,’ Anthony interposed. ‘Feeling pains in the knee he hasn’t got.’

Mark looked at him for a moment with an expression of stony dislike; then turning away and fixing his eyes on the bright evening landscape, visible through the open door of the hut, ‘Not pains,’ he said coldly, though it was as pains that he had described them to Anthony only half an hour before. ‘Just the sensation that the knee’s still there.’

‘Can’t avoid that, I’m afraid.’ The doctor shook his head.

‘I didn’t suppose one could,’ Mark said, as though he were replying with dignity to an aspersion on his honour.

Dr Miller broke the uncomfortable silence by remarking that there was a good deal of goitre in the higher valleys.

‘It has its charm,’ said Mark, stroking an imaginary bulge at his throat. ‘How I regret those cretins one used to see in Switzerland when I was a child! They’ve iodined them out of existence now, I’m afraid. The world’s too damned sanitary these days.’ He shook his head and smiled anatomically. ‘What do they do up there in the high valleys?’ he asked.

‘Grow maize,’ said the doctor. ‘And kill one another in the intervals. There’s a huge network of vendettas spread across these mountains. Everybody’s involved. I’ve been talking to the responsible men, trying to persuade them to liquidate all the old accounts and start afresh.’

‘They’ll die of boredom.’

‘No, I’m teaching them football instead. Matches between the villages.’ He smiled. ‘I’ve had a lot of experience with vendettas,’ he added. ‘All over the world. They all detest them, really. Are only too thankful for football when they’re used to it.’

‘Christ!’

‘Why “Christ”?’

‘Those games! Can’t we ever escape from them?’

‘But they’re the greatest English contribution to civilization,’ said the doctor. ‘Much more important than parliamentary government, or steam engines, or Newton’s Principia. More important even than English poetry. Poetry can never be a substitute for war and murder. Whereas games can be. A complete and genuine substitute.’

‘Substitutes!’ Mark echoed contemptuously. ‘You’re all content with substitutes. Anthony finds his in bed or in the British Museum Reading Room. You look for yours on the football field. God help you! Why are you so frightened of the genuine article?’

For a little while no one spoke. Dr Miller looked at Anthony, and, seeing that he did not propose to answer, turned back to the other. ‘It isn’t a question of being frightened, Mark Staithes,’ he said very mildly. ‘It’s a question of choosing something right instead of something wrong….’

‘I’m suspicious of right choices that happen to need less courage than the wrong ones.’

‘Is danger your measure of goodness?’

Mark shrugged his shoulders. ‘What is goodness? Hard to know, in most cases. But at least one can be sure that it’s good to face danger courageously.’

‘And for that you’re justified in deliberately creating dangerous situations—at other people’s expense?’ Dr Miller shook his head. ‘That won’t do, Mark Staithes. If you want to use courage, why not use it in a good cause.’

‘Such as teaching blackamoors to play football,’ Mark sneered.

‘Which isn’t so easy, very often, as it sounds.’

‘They can’t grasp the offside rule, I suppose.’

‘They don’t want to grasp any rule at all, except the rule of killing the people from the next village. And when you’re between two elevens armed to the teeth and breathing slaughter to one another … ’ He paused; his wide mouth twitched into a smile; the almost invisible hieroglyphs round his eyes deepened, as he narrowed the lids, into the manifest symbols of an inner amusement. ‘Well, as I say, it isn’t quite so easy as it sounds. Have you ever found yourself faced by a lot of angry men who wanted to kill you?’

Mark nodded, and an expression of rather malevolent satisfaction appeared on his face. ‘Several times,’ he answered. ‘When I was running a coffee finca a bit further down the coast, in Chiapas.’

‘And you faced them without arms?’

‘Without arms,’ Mark repeated, and, by the way of explanation, ‘The politicians,’ he added, ‘were still talking about revolution in those days. The land for the people—and all the rest. One fine morning the villagers came to seize the estate.’

‘Which, on your principles,’ said Anthony, ‘you ought to have approved of.’

‘And did approve, of course. But I could hardly admit it—not in those circumstances.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, surely that’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? There they were, marching against me. Was I to tell them I sympathized with their politics and then hand over the estate? No, really, that would have been a bit too simple!’

‘What did you do, then?’

‘There were about a hundred of them the first time,’ Mark explained. ‘Festooned with guns and cartridge–belts like Christmas trees, and all with their machetes. But polite, soft–spoken. They had no particular quarrel with me, and the revolutionary idea was strange; they didn’t feel too certain of themselves. Not that they ever make much noise,’ he added. ‘I’ve seen them killing in silence. Like fish. It’s an aquarium, this country.’

‘Seems like an aquarium,’ Dr Miller emended. ‘But when one has learnt how the fishes think … ’

‘I’ve always found it more important to learn how they drink,’ said Mark. ‘ Tequila ’s the real enemy. Luckily, mine were sober. Otherwise …Well, who knows what would have happened?’ After a pause, ‘They were standing on the cement drying floor,’ he went on, ‘and I was sitting at the door of the office, up a few steps, above them. Superior, as though I were holding a durbar of my loyal subjects.’ He laughed; the colour had come to his cheeks, and he spoke with a kind of gusto, as though the words had a pleasant taste in his mouth. ‘A hundred villainous, coffee–coloured peons, staring up at one with those beady tortoises’ eyes of theirs—it wasn’t reassuring. But I managed to keep my face and voice from giving anything away. It helped a lot, I found, to think of the creatures as some kind of rather squalid insects. Cockroaches, dung beetles. Just a hundred big, staring bugs. It helped, I say. But still my heart did beat a bit. On its own—you know the sensation, don’t you? It’s as though you had a live bird under your ribs. A bird with its own birdlike consciousness. Suffering from its own private fears. An odd sensation, but exhilarating. I don’t think I was ever happier in my life than I was that day. The fact of being one against a hundred. A hundred armed to the teeth. But bugs, only bugs. Whereas the one was a man. It was a wonderful feeling.’ He was silent for a little, smiling to himself.

‘And what happened then?’ Anthony asked.

‘Nothing. I just gave them a little speech from the throne. Told them the finca wasn’t mine to give away. That, meanwhile, I was responsible for the place. And if I caught anybody trespassing on the land, or doing any mischief—well. I should know what to do. Firm, dignified, the real durbar touch. After which I got up, told them they could go, and walked up the path towards the house. I suppose I was within sight of them for about a minute. A full minute with my back turned to them. And there were at least a hundred of the creatures; nobody could have ever discovered who fired the shot. That bird under the ribs!’ Lifting a hand, he fluttered the fingers in the air. ‘And there was a new sensation—ants running up and down the spine. Terrors—but of the body only; autonomous, if you see what I mean. In my mind I knew that they wouldn’t shoot, couldn’t shoot. A hundred miserable bugs—it was morally impossible for them to do it. Bird under the ribs, ants up and down the spine; but inside the skull there was a man; and he was confident, in spite of the body’s doubts, he knew that the game had been won. It was a long minute, but a good one. A very good one. And there were other minutes like it afterwards. The only times they ever shot at me were at evening, from out of the bushes. I was within their range, but they were out of mine. Out of the range of my consciousness and will. That was why they had the courage to shoot. When the man’s away, the bugs will play. Luckily, no amount of courage has ever taught an Indian to shoot straight. In time, of course, they might have got me by a fluke; but meanwhile revolution went out of fashion. It never cut very much ice on the Pacific coast.’ He lit a cigarette. There was a long silence.