Facial Justice (7 page)

the Visitor sees it, she'll raise the Underworld." "Oh no," pleaded Jael. "I'll explain to her that I love looking at it--it gives me something. I'd like to take it with me when I go, as a memento of--of the Hospital and your kindness." "We don't know where you're going to, yet," said the Sister darkly. She sometimes spoke to Jael as if she was a criminal awaiting trial. "I shan't object if __they____ don't. What I'll do is to hide it while she's here, and give you a decent one instead, and when she's gone you shall have the old one back. But I still can't understand why you like it." "Because it's mine, I suppose." "_Mine__ is not a word you ought to use," the Sister said. "We only use it because we haven't found a substitute. We can say it's 'yours,' of course, but yours means everyone's. 'In my charge,' you ought to say, or 'in my care' or 'in my keeping,' only it takes so much longer." "But it isn't quite the same thing, is it?" said Jael. "When I say my face, it is mine, I'm not just in charge of it. I could be in charge of yours, if I was a beauty specialist." "No, because I'm a Beta," said the Sister, "and Betas don't need beautifying." "But all the same they do have treatments," Jael said, "I know quite a few who do." She saw she had made a slip, but went on defiantly. "They want to look _themselves__ as well as Betas." "I don't know why some of you are so struck on looking yourselves," the Sister observed good-humoredly. "I'd just as soon be taken for the next woman. But then I have a job to do, and it's no sinecure, I can tell you, with some of you face-conscious patients. Of course, it doesn't matter what you say to me, Jael, it won't go any further, but you'd better not talk that way to the Visitor." "Who is this Visitor?" asked Jael. "She's one of these Nosy Parkers who come around. There are several of them, and you never know which one you're going to get. Between you and me, they're a confounded nuisance. They ask a lot of questions, and we have to think up answers. They ask the patients questions, too. 'Are you quite comfortable, dear? Have you any complaints? Has the Matron, or the Sister, or the Nurse, or whoever, been quite kind to you? Is there any favoritism? Are you all treated just alike? Can you suggest any improvements, dear, in the running of the hospital? Would you rather be waked at six instead of five? Do you find the food as good as it is in your own home unit, if you have one?' All tommyrot, of course; but we have to put up with it, as we have to put up with so many things.... Those snoopers, mass observers or whatever they are, are all amateurs: they haven't the foggiest idea what it means to run a place like this! It doesn't matter whether Corday 964 or Thompson 71 or Medea 3003 thinks she has a grievance--they really don't come into it--it's the organization that matters--making them all do the right thing at the right time! If I listened to every moan and groan and squawk and squeak, do you think I should get _anywhere__? Discipline, discipline is what matters, and if they didn't have it they'd simply turn their toes up. I tell you, Jael 97, if I'd listened to all the various croakings I should have needed a Brain Brightener before now and this ward would have been full of corpses-Death Deviators, I should say. There isn't a single one that hasn't wanted something special done for her--more food or less food or different food, more light or less light or no light, more radio or less radio or louder radio or softer radio or no radio, they simply have no idea of collective action, they think that being ill (and it's their own fault they are, in most cases) entitles them to special consideration. They won't go on like that when they get out of here, or they'll have the Inspectors after them. Of course, I don't tell them so--we're not allowed to tell anyone what's coming to them--but I shouldn't be surprised if it wasn't P.S. for all of them when they get out." "P. S.?" queried Jael. "Permanent Sackcloth, and a good thing, too." What a prospect! Sackcloth, that dreary uniform! Day after day, every day! When worn as a punishment, sackcloth had to be worn plain: you weren't allowed to embroider it. Jael couldn't think of herself apart from the clothes she wore; her vision of herself was sartorial; she never thought of herself as naked, still less as a formless entity. Without an individual appearance, and appearance meant a vesture, she did not exist for herself. Clad in Permanent Sackcloth, she would not exist for herself, either. She felt herself shrinking, withering away. An overwhelming longing seized her to be reassured by the sight of her own face, to know that she was really there. Desperately she cried: "Oh, do please give me a looking glass!" "I'm afraid I can't," the Sister said. "We can't have patients looking at themselves, it isn't good for them. There's plenty else to look at. The whole secret of getting well is not to think about yourself, and the first step to that is not to look at yourself. Thinking about yourself disturbs the gastric juices. If I started thinking about myself, I should get nowhere, but luckily or not, I've got all of you to think about. I don't have time to look in a looking glass: I take my face for granted, and so will you, when you're my age. But you'll be given a looking glass all right, the day that you're discharged. Then you can look at yourself till you're blue in the face." Only another week, thought Jael, and then I shall see myself, and be myself! Mentally she invented a little dance she could do with the mirror in her hand; she saw herself bowing to it, curtsying to it, holding it at arm's length and _gazing__ into it, sinking onto the floor and (in defiance of the regulations) looking up at it: her dear Failed Alpha face! She couldn't believe that the Betas round her, poor darlings, would be so excited about seeing their reach-me-down faces. And why should she be? Didn't this face hunger, this face starvation argue lack of sense of humor, a quality she had always felt that she possessed? And what would the others say, when they beheld her antics? Would they attack her, fall upon her, smother her with pillows? Beat her to death with the very mirror she was looking at? Or would they, as they had at Ely (dancing is so infectious), join in and stifle her with praise, not pillows? Sing paeans to her glory--worship her? The vision faded. Suddenly she knew why she wanted so much to see herself--she wanted to see herself as _he__ would see her, as she would look through _his__ eyes, when he came; was it not what all women wanted, when they took out their little mirrors--to see themselves reflected in some man's eyes? "You look as if you were seeing things," the Sister said. "Well, perhaps I was." "You must be more on the spot when the Visitor comes. And here's a tip: just answer the questions that she asks you, don't volunteer anything. It's much the safest way. We don't want any trouble, do we? If you have anything to complain of, complain to me." "I haven't," said Jael. "You have been most kind, and so has Nurse. Of course, I would like to have a looking--" "All in good time, all in good time. They've made a very good job of you, if you ask me. Now one thing more--" She got no further, for at that moment the radio, which had been crooning to itself in a desultory fashion, suddenly changed its tone, seemed to clear its throat, made several impressive premonitory rumbles, and began its signature tune. Not once but three times did the opening phrase of "Every Valley" soar through the now silent ward. Foreign, indeed opposed, as its message was to all her present convictions, Jael felt her spirit lifting with it. "Gracious Dictator!" cried the Sister, awe-struck. "A triple summons!" Rather frigidly and jerkily, like a puppet directed by an unskillful hand, she went through the prescribed motions, while Jael sat up in bed and bowed three times, as did the other patients: it was the recognized routine for hospital use. "Patients and delinquents," said the Voice, whose intonation varied with every announcement, but was always designed to strike at the listeners' nerves and heart as a baby's cry does: "Our sleepless concern for our people has been much exercised and harassed by an event that happened over a month ago. We need not tell you to what we refer: the tragedy that overtook a fortunately small section of our community on the road from Ely. Happily the loss of life was slight: only five of our dear subjects paid the penalty of Death Deviation, and are now for ever beyond the reach of our most loving care. We need not remind you that in the bad old days thousands of patients and delinquents perished on the roads. They gave their lives, we will not say gladly, but ungrudgingly in the service of that most beastly and insatiable of deities, the God of Speed. Whether it be true, as some have claimed, that the growing disregard for human life that made possible, indeed inevitable, the three world wars was due to that invention, the internal, and infernal, combustion engine, we cannot say. We ourselves have never disguised the horror with which we regarded it, and accordingly we limited the pace at which our subjects could travel to a maximum pace of seven and a half miles an hour. During the many years in which it has been our painful duty to rule over you there has not been, until now, one single case of death on the roads. "Patients and delinquents! "It has always been our principle to reduce as far as may be those instincts of yours (alas, too many) that tend to homicide or suicide. It is our mission to save you from yourselves. If you knew how difficult that task was, you would perhaps behave with more consideration. Naturally you regard us as a tyrant, and naturally we behave like one, for even Dictators behave as they are expected to behave. Judging by the complaints that reach us from various sections of the community, bitterly attacking other sections of the community, sometimes even demanding their extinction, it appears that you would like us to behave like a tyrant, and so we have and shall, for it is our principle to give our people what they want. "Discontent and unrest and murmuring there will always be where you, our dear, dear people, are concerned. For your sakes, much more than for our own, we do not wish to see rebellion raise its ugly head, and this, our statisticians tell us, is bound to happen if so much as twenty-six per cent of the population feels, or thinks it feels, a grievance. We are not betraying any secret, either ours or yours, when we say that our main concern for you, our chief headache, to use one of your own vulgarisms, is to keep your bloodlust down. And by bloodlust we do not only mean your strange propensity for shedding other people's blood, but your still stranger wish to spill your own. "Accordingly we devised a system of safety valves, through which, when your haemophilia had passed the danger mark, it could escape. One of these was the Motor Expeditions (Country) Service, commonly known as Rural Rides, a regrettable and ridiculous survival from the Bad Old Times, but one which, we were assured, would release a three and a half per cent pressure of unrest. For several years this service fulfilled its function, and that apparently irreducible element of disobedience in you seemed to be appeased. But not long ago the Discontentometer showed a sudden rise; and it was then, after much painful deliberation, that we decided to make the experiment of the Death and Glory Service, the outcome of which you all know. Five human units lost their lives and twenty-seven were injured. The experiment seemed to be successful; the Discontentometer recorded a sharp drop of nineteen and a half degrees. A cry of horror and indignation went up; everybody criticized everybody else and we ourselves, yes we, were blamed for having allowed the incident to happen. Thankfully we suspended the provision for accidents in the Motor Expeditions (Country) Service and decreed that the Service should be conducted without mishaps as before. We thought that this would be your wish, as it was ours. "Patients and delinquents! "We were mistaken. Again the Discontentometer has risen and it is still rising. Can it be that our subjects have not learned their lesson? Do they still wish to spill their own blood, or drink the blood of others? Are we on our way back to the Bad Old Times with their unslaked thirst for death? We did not promise you immortality but we did promise that, accidents apart, you should die natural deaths, and it was only in response to your own craving for danger that we revoked our promise. Has that craving not been glutted? Has it in fact grown on what it fed on? We cannot think so; we can only suppose that the Voluntary Principle, that unavoidable but noxious adjunct, has become inflamed at the prospect of what it calls compulsion. Compulsion! Has not the motto of our regime always been 'Free Will'? Would any of you, standing, sitting, or lying (alas, you are all of you too fond of lying), who hear these words, dare to say that since the time Our envoy led you from the Shades, into this unpromising land, you have ever acted under compulsion? That we have ever forced you, our dear subjects, to do anything you did not want to do? "Patients and delinquents! "The Motor Expeditions (Country) Service will be resumed, but with this difference: in future not one but three of the six coaches will meet with an accident. Never since our accession has the Voluntary Principle been stretched so far; and we are confident that when the day comes those chariots of death will stand empty on Progress Square: no drivers, no ticket collectors, no passengers will be seen; everyone will be on his knees or on hers (please do not laugh, as pleasantry is meant), thanking us for having saved them from themselves. "Patients and delinquents! We have spoken." Again the valleys were exalted, again the Sister and the nurses made their ritual curtsy, again the bedridden bowed three times. And so strong was the feeling of relief that for a moment no one noticed the small figure in the doorway who made her curtsy not once but several times. "Gracious Dictator!" exclaimed the Sister, who all this time had been immobilized beside Jael's bed. "There she is! And now there's no time to hide the flower! Ten to one she won't spot it, all these old girls are as blind as bats, but if she does, Jael 97, you'd better say an angel sent it! This old thing is not too bad, and she's quite religious. She's a bit ga-ga, too, if you ask me. But mind, don't start any hares. Just answer what she asks." The Sister bustled off toward the doorway where the Visitor was still standing, peering round the ward with her nearsighted eyes.

Chapter Twelve

JAEL'S bed was halfway down the ward on the left side. With a mixture of impatience, curiosity, and misgiving she watched the Visitor's progress from bed to bed. She did not go straight up the row, she zigzagged, so she would have seen twelve patients before Jael's turn came. She seemed to stay about five minutes with each. An hour of waiting! Jael wished that it was over. Try as she would, she couldn't think her own thoughts; like an examination candidate she kept imagining questions that the Visitor might put to her. She would see at once, of course, that Jael was a Failed Alpha; that would prejudice her from the start. She would know of course, that Jael was a coach casualty, as every woman in the ward was; but would she know that she had been the ringleader in the dance round the tower? Would the Sister have told her? Jael didn't think so; she didn't talk much to the Sister, whose chief part in the proceedings seemed to be to accompany her from bed to bed, wheeling a sort of canvas hut, with straight sides and a barrel roof, such as road men sometimes use, big enough to enclose bed, Visitor, and patient. It had the air of a Confessional, sightproof and soundproof. Why were her thoughts so self-accusing? Jael wondered. She couldn't think of a single virtue she possessed, or any quality that would pass as a virtue in the eyes of the regime. The Visitor, who was no doubt an emissary of the regime, would look upon her as a hopeless backslider. How did the other patients look, after their ordeal? Shattered, in tears? Jael couldn't see very well, for some of the lights had been turned off, perhaps at the Visitor's request. Radio and television had been turned off, too. She told herself she was working herself up about nothing. Punishments were notoriously light; many critics of the regime said they were too light. Sometimes they were intended to make the culprit look silly, like the stocks and pillory of olden days; but they were seldom physically painful. If it wasn't a fine, it would be the withdrawal of her entertainment license. But supposing it was something much, much worse! The hut was being moved again. Trundled on wheels, it scarcely made a sound. Now there were only four more patients to be examined before she was. Reviewing her past life, Jael felt herself a stranger to it, almost as if she had died and been reborn. In those days she hadn't felt it empty; she had fulfilled herself in many ways. By dancing chiefly, and by little flirtations, gossip, meeting friends. Little spirals of femininity had welled up in her, like bubbles in a soda-water siphon. How she had laughed and giggled over nothing. Nothing! Yes, at that time she had been content with nothing. Now she was not content with anything. How had the change come about? What had marked it? That day at the Ministry of Facial Justice, she supposed, when Judith had persuaded her against being Betafied. Or earlier, really, with the stirring of conscience, or whatever it was, that told her she ought to look more like her fellows. Till then she had been as frivolous as they were: more frivolous, in fact. Then the blight of seriousness had descended on her; she had discerned a purpose in her life. The hut was crossing the ward again: only three more patients intervened. Since then she had lived much more intensely; her life had narrowed down. The Purpose! She had felt she must serve it; it had become a sort of deity that demanded sacrifice, a Voice she must obey, a Voice that spoke with different accents, and a different message, from the Voice she had heard just now. For the first time, almost, she had been aware of opposition, of hostility: she was resisting a surrounding will, the combined wills of other people. At times she had felt guilty, but at other times she took a fierce pleasure in her resistance, because it made her feel herself; the feeling of unlikeness was a positive pleasure, whereas to be like was only a neutral happiness. Yet most of the time she was unhappy, because it was foreign to her to be in opposition, she was a natural conformer, in conforming her being had fulfilled itself. With the tail of her eye she saw the hut moving across the ward. She did not have to count, she knew that after two more visits it would be her turn. But at Ely she had turned the tables on them, she had been in opposition then, she had made her will prevail, she had brought them over to her side. She couldn't recapture that sense of triumph now, for now she was among enemies, and going to be "visited" by an enemy: they were all against her, everyone, and here she was, confined to her bed, unable to make herself felt or her views known, in disgrace, who knew in how much disgrace, or what her punishment would be? Would the Visitor know? The Visitor was a poor old thing, a welfare worker, no one to pay attention to or be afraid of. A piece of window-dressing, the Sister had said, a splash of eyewash, no one that counted. Besides she was, nominally at any rate, the patients' friend; the purpose of her visits was to hear their complaints. She wasn't an accuser or a judge, she was an ally! Remember that, Jael! She is here to help you. Why had she thought otherwise? But no, any report she made would at once be pigeonholed: it would never reach Authority; she would leave it with the Sister, perhaps, and the Sister, who wasn't a bad sort really, would forget to forward it to the Matron, or the Matron would forget to pass it on to the Supervisor, or the Supervisor would forget to pass it on to the Inspector. Only one bed now between her and the examination. The Inspector! And at the word (for it was a word, she breathed it to herself, almost aloud) Jael's thoughts took on another hue, and a more sanguine one. The thought of the Inspector was a talisman which, so long as she did not consider it too closely, supported the tottering fabric of her emotional life. When she considered it closely she realized how insecure it was. Two meetings and was the second real, or had she dreamed it? It had left her with a memory of rapture, rapture pure and unalloyed, such as only comes in dreams. But common sense told her that the whole experience was far more likely to have been a result of the accident. Concussion, shock, anything might have mirrored it on her wishful-thinking mind. But if at times her faith in the experience burned too low to give a light, it never quite went out, for always there was the flower. And since the flower was real, must not the experience be real, too? She had no proof that the two were connected; yet in her feelings they were: when she thought of one, automatically she thought of the other: the flower was a symbol of the experience. If the flower had some quality of the forbidden, so had the experience. If the flower was so rare as to be almost fabulous, so was the experience. If other flowers were substitutes for this one, so were other experiences for this experience. And just as the flower was so full of awe and dread that it must not be shown or even named, so was the experience; neither could be shared with anyone, on pain of... on pain of... So intense were Jael's thoughts, so far had they taken her outside herself, that she did not hear the light trundle of the wheels or notice the familiar ward sounds die away, or see the unfamiliar light shine on her eyes. The Sister's voice recalled her to herself. "Jael 97," she was saying in official tones, "here is the Visitor to see you."