Part 8

On that I roared with laughter. The idea was too preposterous. The superintendent reproved me and said that any ordinary man would give his eyes to be in my position, which I owed entirely to my wonderful physique. I declared my unwillingness and demanded as an American citizen to be set at liberty. She told me that the idea of nationality was not recognised and that I must serve the human race in the way marked out for me. “How?” said I. “Marked out for me? By whom?” I was assured by my own physical fitness. I protested that I could not look upon fatherhood as a career, but was told that I must consider it among the noblest. I maintained that it could never be for a man more than an incident, significant and delightful no doubt, but no more to be specialized in than any other natural function. Argument, however, was impossible, for on this subject the superintendent’s humour deserted her. However, her interest was roused and she was more friendly in her attitude, and consented to explain to me the institution which she served. It was not in the old sense a nunnery, for its inmates were not vowed to seclusion, and though portraits of William Christmas were plentiful on its walls, there was no formal devotion to his memory. It was literally a garden of girls. Female children were brought from the affiliated crèches to be trained and educated for the functions of life to which they were best fitted. The intelligent were equipped for the sciences, the strong for agriculture, the quick and cunning for industry, the beautiful for maternity. Male children were farmed out and given no instruction whatever, since they needed no intelligence for the duties they had to perform. “But the birth-rate?” I said, and received the answer: “Should never be such as to complicate the problem of food. It is better to have a small sensible population than one which is driven mad by its own multitude.”

I was far from convinced and said: “Such a world might a student of bees dream of after a late supper of radishes.”

My new friend replied that I had not lived through the nightmare of the great wars, or I would be in a better position to appreciate the blessings of a scientific society. She admitted that men were perhaps treated with undue severity, but added that, for her part, she believed it to be necessary for the gradual suppression of the masculine conceit and folly which had for so long ravaged the world. In time that would right itself, the severity would be relaxed, and men would assert an undeniable claim to a due share in the benefits of civilisation. In the meanwhile, she would do all in her power to befriend me. I implored her to certify me unfit for fatherhood, but she would only yield so far as to declare that I was in need of a month’s recuperation and distraction.

With that ended my interview with that extraordinary woman, who in happier circumstances would have been a glory to her sex.

I was presently removed from my cell to a pleasant room in the lodge by the gate, and I was made to earn my keep by working in the garden. At the end of a week I was despatched by road to the capital to appear there before the examining committee of the department of birth.

XIII: IN THE CAPITAL

As luck would have it my guardian on the long journey by road--for motor-cars had not been renounced--was a little chatterbox of a woman, who coquetted with me in the innocent and provocative manner of the born flirt. She meant no harm by it, but could not control her eyes and gestures. I encouraged her to make her talk, and she told me it would have gone hardly with me but that the medical superintendent had been passing by the gate of the nunnery as I was thrust in. But for her I should have been condemned to work in the sewers or to sell stamps in the post office, menial work reserved for criminals, for the authorities were becoming exasperated with the agitation for the rights of men. The outlaws no one minded. They inhabited the ruined cities and sooner or later would be starved out. It was absurd to expect the new society to be rid altogether of the pests which had plagued the old, but every reasonable woman was determined that for generations men should not enjoy the rights which they had so wantonly abused.

“But,” I said, “men never claimed rights.”

“No,” answered my coquette, “they stole them when we were not looking. They insisted that we should all be mothers, so that we should be too busy to keep them out of mischief.”

“My dear child,” said I, “it is the women who have kept us in mischief.”

“No one can say,” she replied, “that we do not keep you out of it now.” And she gave me one of those arch involuntary invitations which have before now been the undoing of Empires. I could not resist it. I seized her in my arms and kissed her full on the lips.

I half expected her to stop the car and denounce me, but when she had made sure that the girl driving had not seen she was undisturbed and remarked with a charming smile:

“Some foreign ways are rather pretty.”

I repeated the offence, and by the journey’s end we were very good friends and understood each other extremely well. She agreed with me when I said that all forms of society were dependent upon a lot of solemn humbug. She said yes, and she expected that before she had done she would be put upon her trial. I did not then understand her meaning, for we parted at the door of a large house, where she was given a receipt for me. She saluted me, the dear little trousered flirt, by putting her finger to her lips as the car drove off.

There were no women in that house. Its inhabitants were a number of young men like myself, all superb in physique and many of them extremely handsome, but they were all gloomy and depressed. I was right in guessing them to be other candidates for fatherhood. They were guarded and served by very old men in long robes like tea-gowns. Horrible old creatures they were, like wicked midwives who vary their habit of bringing human beings into the world by preparing their dead bodies to leave it. But the young men were hardly any better: they were dull, stupid, and listless, and their conversation was obscene.

We had to spend our time in physical exercise, in taking baths and anointing our bodies with unguents and perfumes. We were decked out in beautiful clothes. Embroidered coats and white linen kilts. In the evenings there were lectures on physiology, and we were made to chant a poetical passage from the works of William Christmas, a description of the glory of the bridegroom, of which I remember nothing except an offensive comparison with a stallion.

The humiliation was terrible, and when I remembered the superintendent speaking of “the mothers of my children” I was seized with a nausea which I could not shake off, until, two days after my arrival, an epidemic of suicide among the candidates horrified me into a wholesome reaction against my surroundings. I found it hard to account for the epidemic until I noticed the coincidence of the disappearance of the most comely of the young men with the periodic visits of the high officials. This pointed, though at first I refused to believe it, to the vilest abuse of the system set up by the women in their pathetic attempt to solve the problem of population scientifically. Far, far better were it had they been content with their refusal to bear children and to impose chastity upon all without exception, and to let the race perish. Must the stronger sex always seek to degrade the weaker? My experience in that house filled me with an ungovernable hatred of women. The sight of them with the absurdities of their bodies accentuated by the trousered costumes they had elected to adopt filled me with scorn and bitter merriment. The smell of them, to which in my hatred I became morbidly sensitive, made me sick. The sound of their voices set my teeth on edge.

Such was my condition when, after three weeks’ training, I was called before the examination committee.

XIV: THE EXAMINATION

Nothing in all my strange experiences astonished me so much as the lack of ceremony in this matter of fatherhood. It was approached with a brutal disinterestedness, a cynical disregard of feeling equalled only by men of pleasure in other countries. I was filled with rage when I was introduced to the committee of middle-aged and elderly women and exposed to their cold scrutiny. First of all I was told to stand at the end of the hall and repeat the poem of William Christmas. I had been made to get it by heart, but in my distress I substituted the word Ram for the word Stallion. The chairwoman rapped angrily on the table.

“Why do you say Ram for Stallion?”

I replied: “Because it more aptly describes my condition. There is nobility in the stallion, but the ram is a foolish beast.”

There was a consultation, after which the chairwoman bade me approach and said:

“Your medical report is excellent but we are afraid you lack mental simplicity. You are an educated man.”

“I am an American citizen,” I replied proudly, “and I protest against the treatment to which I have been subjected.”

“We know nothing of that,” retorted the chairwoman. “You are before us as L.D. 8150, recommended for paternal duties and, if passed, to be entered in the stud-book. Your record since you have been in the country is a bad one, but points to the possession of a spirit which for our purposes may be valuable.”

I said: “You may call me what you like; you may register me in any book you please, send me where you choose, but I am a married man and will not oblige you.”

Then a fury seized me and I shouted:

“Can you not see that you are driving your people into madness or disaster, that you will soon be plunged again into barbarism, that your science is destroying the very spirit of civilisation? I tell you that even now, as you work and plan and arrange, there is growing a revolt against you, a revolt so strong that it will ignore you, as life in the end ignores those who would measure it with a silver rod.”

The chairwoman smiled as she rejoined:

“Those are almost identically the words I addressed to the late Prime Minister of Fatland when, after thirty years of prevarication, he was persuaded to receive a deputation. I am afraid we must reject you as a candidate for the duties for which you have been trained. In the ordinary course you would be put upon your trial and committed to a severe cross-examination, an art which has been raised by us to the pitch of perfection. As it is, we are satisfied that you are labouring under the disadvantage of contamination from a man-governed society and are probably not guilty of the usual offences which render candidates unfit. We therefore condemn you as a man of genius, and order you to be interned in the suburb set apart for that class.”

I bowed to cover my amazement, a bell was rung, and I was conducted forth. Outside, meeting another candidate, green with nervousness, I told him I had been rejected, whereupon he plucked up courage and asked me how I had managed it. I told him to say Billy-Goat instead of Stallion.

XV: MEN OF GENIUS

I had not then met Hohlenheim and did not know what a man of genius was, and for genius I still had a superstitious reverence. Before I left the committee hall I was given a coloured ribbon to wear across my breast and a brass button to pin into my hat. On the button was printed M.G. 1231. What! said I to myself, Over a thousand men of genius in the country! never dreaming that some of them might be of the same kind as myself, so obstinate are superstitions and so completely do they hide the obvious.

As I passed through the streets of the capital I found that I was the object of amused contemptuous glances from the women, who walked busily and purposefully along. There were no shops in the streets, which were bordered with trees and gardens and seemed to be very well and skilfully laid out. I was free to go where I liked, or I thought I was, and I determined not to go to the suburb, but to find a lodging where I could for a while keep out of trouble and at my leisure discover some means of getting out of the abominable country. Coming on what looked like an eating-house, I entered the folding doors, but was immediately ejected by a diminutive portress. When I explained that I was hungry she told me to go home.

I was equally unfortunate at other places, and at last put their unkind receptions down to my badges. Is this, I thought, how they treat their men of genius? My applications for lodgings were no more prosperous, and I was preparing to sleep in the streets when I met an enormously fat man wearing a ribbon and button like my own. He hailed me as a comrade, flung his arm round my shoulder and said: “The cold winds of misfortune may blow through an æolian harp, but they make music. Ah! Divine music, in paint, in stone, in words, and many other different materials.” “I beg your pardon,” said I, “but the wind of misfortune is blowing an infernal hunger through my ribs, and I should be obliged if you will lead me to a place where I can be fed.” “Gladly, gladly. We immortals, living and dead, are brothers.” So saying he led me through a couple of gardens until we came to a village of little red houses set round a green, in the center of which was a statue. “Christmas!” I cried. “Christmas it is,” said my guide, “the only statue left in the country, save in our little community, where the rule is, Every man his own statue.”

Community within community! This society in which I was floundering was like an Indian puzzle-box which you open and open until you come to a little piece of cane like a slice of a dried pea.

However, I was too hungry to pursue reflection any further and without more words followed my companion into one of the little red houses, where for the first time for many months I was face to face with a right good meal. Here at any rate were sensible people who had not forgotten that a man’s first obligation is to his stomach. I ate feverishly and paid no heed to my companions at table, two little gentlemen whom at home I would have taken for elderly store-clerks. When at last I spoke, one of the little gentlemen was very excited to discover that I was an American. “Can you tell me,” he said, “can you tell me who are now the best sellers?”

“What,” I asked, “are they?”

They looked at each other in dismay.

“_We_ were best sellers,” they cried in chorus.

After the meal they brought out volumes of cuttings from the American newspapers, and I recognised the names of men who had in their works brought tears to my eyes and a smile to my lips.

“Do I behold,” I said, “the authors of those delightful books which have made life sweeter for thousands?”

They hung their heads modestly, each apparently expecting the other to speak. At last my fat friend said:

“Brothers, we will have a bottle of port on this.”

The port was already decanted and ready to his hand. Over it they poured out their woes. Publication had stopped in Fatland. There was no public, and the public of America had been made inaccessible. How can a man write a book without a public? It would be sheer waste of his genius. When a man has been paid two hundred dollars for a story he could not be expected to work for less, could he? I supposed not, and the little man with the long hair and pointed Elizabethean beard cried hysterically:

“But these women, these harpies, expect us to work for their bits of paper, their drafts on their miserable stores. When they drew up their confounded statutes they admitted genius: they acknowledged that we should be useless on farms or in factories. They allowed us this, the once-famous garden suburb, for our residence and retreat, but they made us work--work--us, the dreamers of dreams! But what work? The sweet fruits of our inspiration? No. We have been set to edit the works of William Christmas, to write the biography of William Christmas, to prepare the sayings of William Christmas for the young. No Christmas, no dinner, and there you are. Is such a life tolerable?”

“No!” cried the fat man.

“What is more,” continued the indignant one, “we are asked to dwell among nincompoops who have never had and never could have any reputation, young men who used to insult us in the newspapers, cranks and faddists who have never reached the heart of the great public and are jealous of those who have. And these men are set to work with us in our drudgery, and they are paid exactly at the same rate. Fortunately many of them waste their time in writing poetry and drama while we do their work and make them pay in contributions to our table. Pass the port, brother.”

They spent the evening reading aloud from their volumes of press cuttings, living in the glorious past, while they appealed to me every now and then for news of the publishing world in America. I invented the names of best sellers and made my hosts’ mouths water over the prices I alleged to be then current. They were so pleased with me that they pressed me to stay with them and to work on the new Concordance of Christmas.

XVI: REVOLUTION

Work on the Index, I soon found, meant preparing the whole mighty undertaking, while my three men of genius smoked, ate, drank, slept, talked, and went a-strolling in the capital. There was this advantage about being a man of genius that I was free to come and go as and when I liked, though I was everywhere scoffed at and treated with good-humoured scorn. I was always liable to insult at the hands of the high-spirited young women of the capital who held places in the Government offices and had acquired the insolent manners of a ruling class. However, I soon learned to recognise the type and to avoid an encounter, though my poor old friends often came home black and blue.

There was a great deal more sense in Christmas than I had at first supposed, and, as I progressed with my work, I saw that what he meant was very near what Edmund and his father had been at, namely, that men and women, if only they set about it the right way, can find in each other the interest, amusement, and imaginative zest to dispel the boredom which is alone responsible for social calamities. His appeal had been to men, but he had only reached the ears of women, and they had hopelessly misunderstood him. They had expected him to have a new message and had taken his old wisdom for novelty by identifying it with his personality. He had not taken the precaution to placate the men of genius of his time. Without a marketable reputation they could not recognise him. They refused to acknowledge him and drove him into the strange courses which made him seem to the nerve-ridden women of the country new, fresh, and Heaven-sent. Certainly he had genius, as my professional men of genius had it not, and it came into too direct a contact with the public mind. The smouldering indignation of ages burst into flame. More and more as I worked I was filled with respect for this idealist and with pity for the human beings who had followed him to their undoing. His insight was remarkable, and I made a collection of his works to take back with me to America, if I should ever go there.

I stayed in the Suburb of Genius for a couple of years, very pleased to be away from the women, and among people many of whom were amusing. There were painters and sculptors, who spent their time making Christmas portraits and effigies, cursing like sailors as they worked. Very good company some of these men, and most ingenious in their shifts and devices to dodge the rules and regulations with which they were hemmed in. Some of them had smuggled women into their houses and lived in a very charming domesticity. I envied them and was filled with longing for my home.

One day as I was at my work I came on an unpublished manuscript of Christmas. It contained a poem which I liked and a saying which fired me. This was the poem:

“The woman’s spirit kindles man’s desire, And both are burned up by a quenchless fire. Let but the woman set her spirit free, Then it is man’s unto eternity. It is a world within his hands, and there They two may dwell encircled in a square.”

I could never quite make sense of it, but it seized my imagination as nonsense sometimes will, and prepared it for the convulsion which was to happen.

This was the saying:

“There will come one after me who shall build where I have destroyed, and he shall capture the flame wherewith I have burned away the dying thoughts of men.”

The words haunted me. They were in none of the Christmas books, nor in the biography. I inserted it in the Concordance and in a new edition of the Speeches, on my own responsibility and without saying a word to my employers. There might or might not be trouble, but I knew that the Chairwoman of the Governing Committee was a vain old creature and would take the words to mean herself. To my mind they pointed straight to Edmund. I knew that his cause was gaining ground and that, if I could gain sufficient publicity for the saying, his following would be vastly increased.

I was on good terms with the chief of the publishing department and was able to persuade her to announce that the new edition of the Speeches was the only one authorised by the Governing Committee; all others to be called in. The success of my trick exceeded all my dreams. There was something like an exodus from the capital.

I met my dear Audrey one day. She had come to spy out the land. Her news was glorious. For miles round the once ruined city the farms were occupied with happy men and women working together to supply food for the towns, which in return furnished their wants from its workshops, which the toilers filled with song as they worked. The fame of it was everywhere growing. Other ruined cities had been occupied. Two of the great nunneries were deserted. Edmund with a great company of young men had taken possession of a town by the sea and opened the harbour and released the ships.

“Ships!” I said. “There are ships sailing on the sea!”

That settled it. No more men of genius for me. That night I spent in chalking up the saying of William Christmas on the walls of the capital. The next morning I was with Audrey wandering about the streets, hearing Edmund’s name on all lips, and then, satisfied that all would be well, I made for the sea-board.

It was good to see America again, but I suffered there as acutely as I had done in Fatland. I had been among women who, if misguided, were free. My dear wife and I could never understand one another and she died within a very few years after my return of a broken heart. I thought I could not survive her, and should not have done but for my fortunate encounter with Hohlenheim, who could understand my loathing of woman in Fatland, of man in America, draw it up into his own matchless imagination and distil the passion of it into beauty.

Out of Work

I: MR. BLY’S HEART BREAKS

In a little house, one of many such houses, in a town, one of many such towns in Fatland, sat Nicholas Bly, a small stationer and newsagent, by the bedside of his wife. She said: “Ain’t I thin, Nick?” and again she said: “My hair is only half what it was.” And he said: “It’s very pretty hair.” She smiled and took his hand in hers and she died. When Nicholas Bly was quite sure that she was dead, when he could believe that she was dead, he did not weep, for there were no tears in his eyes. He said nothing, for there were no words in his mind. He felt nothing, for his heart was breaking, and so little was he alive that he did not know it. His wife was dead, his two children were dead, his shop was closed, and he had two shillings in the world, and they were borrowed.