CHAPTER V

I rose and followed Acquilla to the circular theatre which I learned formed the principal axis of every house.

“There are a number of interesting things going on,” said Acquilla, “particularly in Arcturus III, where there is a war on with Stella IV. Then you will be interested in the historical records of the wars of 1984 and 1994, but not tonight. Nine o’clock. The opera is beginning.”

She went to a switchboard at one side and made certain adjustments. A heavy screen immediately shut out the glass dome above us through which the stars had been shining down.

“How near do you want to be, Bogardus?”

“What! Can you regulate that, too?”

“Easiest thing in the world. It will probably be more interesting to you to have a front seat. Afterwards, if the orchestra is too loud, we can move back.”

She extinguished the lights and took a place at my side. All at once the theatre, for such I must call it, was flooded with light and before my astounded eyes I beheld a vast rippling of waters, while the air was filled with the opening bars. Across the glistening green seas under the blue dome a ship grew out of the horizon and bore down upon us with colored sails bellying above the glistening of iron and bronze upon the decks. The prelude closed and with a sudden shift, I found myself literally on the deck, so complete was the illusion presented. The figures appeared not only in their natural size and color, but in three dimensions so that I could not repress an exclamation of astonishment, so life like was the corporeal illusion. The orchestra was hidden and reinforced by new varieties of wind and string instruments that were exceedingly pleasant to the ear. The stage, needless to say, had disappeared. Above us was the cloud-swept sky, about us the grey-blue splash of waves. We were within twenty feet of the principal actors, who for all purposes of illusion, might have been bodily in the room.

Though only an amateur in my love of music, I perceived at once certain agreeable innovations. The stilted dramatic action had been replaced by a naturalness of movement which nevertheless harmonized with the melodic rhythm. The music, likewise, due no doubt to our proximity, was no longer delivered with the need of filling a vast auditorium, but phrased with a delicacy that revealed a hundred new shades. As for the performance of the celebrated Dianne, I cannot express my admiration. Isolde in her hands was no longer a stalking classical puppet of conventionality, a thinly disguised sophisticate, but a tempestuous, savage nature, barbaric and impulsive as a wild animal. She was strangely slender and youthful and eschewing the traditional flaxen wig, had the blue-black hair and the clear azure eyes of the dark Scandinavian, eyes which suggested now the mysteries of black caverns, now the leap of free seas. To my imagination at least, the impersonation, cleared of all artificiality, transported me back with an utter absence of criticism into the elemental, even brutal passions of a barbaric race.

I had never seen anything more entrancing than the lithe grace of her feline movements, nor listened with more troubled ecstasy to the thrill of her warm, full-throated notes. Whether art or nature, she was the woman of a forgotten age that never knew the sophisticated mincings of our modern coquettes, but were swept into turbulent, even tragic passions by elemental emotions. At the first glance of her startled eyes I fell hopelessly, headlong in love, love at first sight, as sudden, as poignant as though I had received the blow between my eyes.

So swift, so overwhelming was the shock that it blotted out all pale memories of my youth, Ernesta, Kitty, Emelia, even the radiant Acquilla, so fragrantly close to my side, Acquilla who a moment before seemed offered up to me in some incredible dream from the Arabian nights. And yet I did not even know if Dianne still existed or was nothing but the empty record of a great artist of another century.

But Schiappa’s performance of ‘Tristan’ aroused my indignation. Due to the female domination of the new society, an incredible liberty had been taken with the part. A complete transposition of rôles had been worked. It was Isolde now who visualized the possessive passion and Tristan the surrender. If it had not been so monstrously grotesque I should have burst into laughter. As it was, I was left staring and dumfounded.

“Well, Bogardus,” said Acquilla, when the opera had ended and the theatre emerged from its darkness, “I am anxious to know what your criticisms will be. For of course you lived when the Wagnerian tradition was still young.”

“I am overwhelmed,” I replied, coming out of the revery into which the exquisite performance of Dianne had plunged me. “But first of all, thank heavens, that you have found a genius to edit the score.”

“In what way? But that must have taken place in the last century then,” Acquilla added, after a minute’s reflection.

“In the first place, you have cut the heavy anti-climax at the end of the second act, where King Mark surprises the lovers and given it the natural dramatic expression it demanded.”

“But how was it in your day?”

I described the lengthy and ponderous recital of King Mark’s grievances, which to my modest imagination had always been an anti-climax to the glorious mounting ecstasy of the lovers’ song.

“But even in your day, you edited and rearranged Shakespeare, why not Wagner, who after all, was not a dramatist?”

“True, but men are traditionalists,” I replied ironically. “You see, you women have brought a fresh point of view to the consideration of all things.”

“True,” said Acquilla, without smiling, “Dianne will be tremendously interested.”

“You know her?” I said with a catch of my breath.

“Of course! Would you like to meet her?”

“Now? Then she exists?” I exclaimed, my imagination racing.

“Of course she exists. Oh, I see. You thought perhaps you were listening to a record taken fifty or a hundred years ago?”

“Nothing would surprise me, even to find that she was an automaton,” I answered, laughing. “You know, for a moment I wasn’t sure about you.”

“We have evolved automatons that are really extraordinary,” said Acquilla, looking at me with the mystified expression which she assumed whenever I gave way to my hilarity. “But they remain machines. No indeed, Dianne is very much alive. She has only just begun her career.”

I breathed a grateful sigh. At least then, the divine creature who had captured my imagination would have her own hair and teeth! But I checked my eagerness, for I was suddenly aware of a new flame in Acquilla’s steel-blue eyes, and though the world was topsy-turvy and women more so than anything else, I suspected that certain primal characteristics had not changed. So I answered with a show of casualness.

“Yes, there are a number of criticisms I could make, but probably they would not interest a prima donna.”

“We’ll talk to her now.” Acquilla rose, and opening a partition in the wall, disappeared. A moment later, she returned. “We’ll get her in a few moments, as soon as central locates her. Of course, Bogardus, that was a television record taken two years ago, but surely that doesn’t astonish you?”

“The theory, of course, had been established,” I answered with some pride, “but the complete achievement is astonishing. But then Acquilla, are there no more theatres?”

“Why should there be any theatres?” said Acquilla. “A theatre was simply a limited convention, where only a few hundred persons at a time could enjoy a performance and for that, think how conventionalized your theatre and opera had to be! It was only your great poets, like Shakespeare and the Greeks, who intuitively wrote for the future. To think that your actors performed on a stage with artificial trees and skies! Surely you do not regret such performances when you can have life itself?”

“Then every home has a theatre like this?”

“Why, of course! How could anyone live differently? The theatre _is_ the home! The theatre is the world before us; history, music and the drama; the past and the actual. Surely, Bogardus, you recognize that the stage as you saw it, was simply a conventionalized barrier between the free imagination of the creative artist and his audience.”

“I agree heartily,” I said enthusiastically, “and I can hardly wait to see more.”

“Now you are greatly excited again,” said Acquilla, “and I thought to relax you. I think Bogardus, I shall have to send you off to sleep.”

But at this moment, a low chiming rhythm sounded in the room, and Acquilla rising, disappeared through a partition.

“We are lucky. Dianne is in Chicago and will dine with us tomorrow night. Come, she is eager to talk to you.”

I rose and resolved to conceal my emotion, entered a secret closet in the wall, about twenty feet square, with some form of opaque glass forming the sides. Acquilla closed the door behind us and touched a switch. Instantly the figure of Dianne appeared before me, as distinctly as though she were sitting in the room. From the intense curiosity in her eyes, I divined that my presence was equally clear to her.

“So you are the man from the twentieth century?” her lovely voice said as distinctly as though she were at my side. “You cannot imagine what excitement your arrival has caused. Tell me, what did you think of my Isolde?”

“It was worth waiting two centuries to hear,” I began, but feeling the compliment rather banal, I hastened to say, “Acquilla tells me you are dining with us tomorrow night. We can discuss it then.”

“Did you find it changed? It satisfies you? Have I departed too much from tradition?” she asked rapidly.

“Changed, yes, but wonderfully so. I am still dazzled.”

“I don’t want compliments,” she said, smiling with pleasure, more at the intensity of feeling in my voice than at my halting words. “What was there to criticize?”

“In your performance--nothing,” I said emphatically. “The conception of Tristan, perhaps, was rather--rather--”

“Too masculine,” she interrupted avidly. “I knew it. I have always said so!” she continued with a satisfaction that showed me that the feminine in the artist had not changed so much.

“On the contrary--I found--what shall I say--I found it rather too feminine.”

“Feminine?” she cried, opening her lovely grey-blue eyes. “But I don’t understand, I thought it lacked rugged strength.”

“My dear Dianne,” I said, smiling, “I do not know what your new civilization has done to my fellowmen, but I assure you in my time, virility, robustness, vigor were qualities we associated with the male sex.”

“Oh--” Her glance rested on mine in renewed curiosity. “I see. How curious! That is a new point of view.”

“It is a point of view, isn’t it?”

“But rather hard to make comprehensible to a modern audience,” she said doubtfully. “You are different, Bogardus, very different. Your voice is different. You look at me differently, straight in the eyes. Yes, strangely, disconcertingly different.”

“You too,” I was about to continue, in the more personal tone her look seemed to permit, when the presence of Acquilla at my back recalled my caution. “At any rate,” I added, carefully, “even if we quarrel, our discussion promises to be interesting.”

“Well, if I can put off an engagement, I’ll come,” she answered in a changed voice, which for the moment puzzled me. “Thanks all the same, Acquilla. Your find ought to prove most instructive, I’m sure.”

We returned to the theatre.

“Do you find her beautiful?” said Acquilla, looking at me sharply.

“Oh, in a stagey sort of way,” I replied on my guard. “Is she intelligent?”

“In a limited way, yes, but rather capricious.”

“As a matter of fact, I had to be polite, but one or two things in her performance rather shocked me. For instance, Isolde should be played as a blonde.”

Deceived by my manner, Acquilla replied:

“That is part of her capriciousness. She never will consent to appear as a blonde. There are, of course, strong differences between the blondes and the brunettes as we breed them, and to tell you a little secret, the brunettes are extremely jealous of us.”

“Aha!” I exclaimed, suppressing a smile.

“Because, after all, they are usually of a lower caste, you know.”

I suspected that this remark would lead to new revelations in this strictly scientific society, but already overwhelmed by the mystery of the new knowledge to be acquired, I did not persist.

Acquilla took my hand and led me to my room, where I perceived a low broad couch, soft and covered with silken cushions.

“What are you staring at now?”

“But where are the bed-clothes?” I asked, looking around.

“Bed-clothes? Did you put on clothes to go to bed?” said Acquilla with a drawing of her eyebrows.

“By bed-clothes I mean sheets--”

“But there is the sheet.”

“I see. But the upper sheet--and the blanket--and the bedspread--and the comforter?”

“What, you actually slept beneath all that! How unhygienic! No wonder you all died young!”

“But I shall catch my death of cold!”

“Don’t you realize, my dear, that the human body like any other animal body craves air and sunshine? Throw off your toga and try the couch. You will find it deliciously soft. As for catching cold, that is impossible. We adjust the temperature of the room by this thermostat. So. Now you have the warm dry glow you require for perfect rest.”

“And you sleep without anything on,” I said hesitating, “the whole year round?”

“Naturally. Night is the great renovator. Not only does the body require contact with oxygen but we charge the atmosphere with invigorating electric currents. Even the air you will breathe will be modified according to your chemical needs. Tomorrow when you have been thoroughly examined your chemical formula will be worked out. I am speaking of course of the abc’s of modern scientific prolongation of life.”

“So this at last is the fountain of youth,” I exclaimed, extending my arms languorously to the warm incoming current. “I can feel my eyes closing already!”

“Well--good night!” said Acquilla after a moment’s hesitation, and taking me up into her arms she whispered, “You are unlike any man I ever knew. What is it that draws me so to you with such strange and bewildering force? Are you glad that it was I that found you?”

I nodded shyly, with a twentieth-century prudery, hoping desperately that she would go and leave me alone. But as she remained staring at me entranced, there was no help for it. I slipped from my garment and flung myself on the couch which was indeed of a voluptuous softness truly astounding.

“Good night, my beautiful one,” said Acquilla softly.

I counterfeited an extreme drowsiness.

“Good night, dear--I can hardly keep my eyes open--tired, so tired--so many bewildering things--”

She slipped from the room, extinguishing the lights. My twentieth-century inhibitions, of course! Ridiculous? Yes, even archaic, such prudery! For after all I freely acknowledge the superiority of this new self-unconsciousness. Besides, even in my day were there not enfranchised spirits on the beaches of Scandinavia and Russia, to say nothing of Germany?

Acquilla was right. After a moment I found myself perfectly accustomed to the new hygiene. In fact nothing could have been more delightful than this warm indolence, lying under the great panorama of the stars that shone down on me through the transparency above, as they shone down once on the Garden of Eden.

But for a long time I was unable to close my eyes. All the startling discoveries of the day surged through my head in a confused torrent. What did I know after all? Even the hints that Acquilla had dropped added to my mystification. All had changed that I had known, but what had replaced the old in this era of women’s ascendancy? A world where a billion and a half human beings had been wiped out of existence! A world where all social traditions seemed to have been discarded! And in all this mystery what had become of man? Had we evolved into a state of polyandry and communism? Gradually these disturbing speculations passed away. I grew drowsy with some faint perfume that pervaded the room. I thought of Dianne with a quickening of my imagination. I thought of Acquilla too with an involuntary admiration, and yet with an instinctive apprehension.

Acquilla and Dianne, both beautiful, yet so differently appealing. Acquilla who stimulated my mind and drew me to her with a soberer affection, Dianne who fascinated me dangerously and set my blood to racing with the flame of her young passion. Acquilla or Dianne? Perhaps in this new society Acquilla _and_ Dianne--and thus deliciously perplexed I fell asleep.