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双语·美丽新世界 第四章

所属教程:译林版·美丽新世界

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2022年04月18日

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1

The lift was crowded with men from the Alpha Changing Rooms, and Lenina's entry wars greeted by many friendly nods and smiles. She was a popular girl and, at one time or another, had spent a night with almost all of them.

They were dear boys, she thought, as she returned their salutations. Charming boys! Still, she did wish that George Edzel's ears weren't quite so big (perhaps he'd been given just a spot too much parathyroid at Metre 328?). And looking at Benito Hoover, she couldn't help remembering that he was really too hairy when he took his clothes off.

Turning, with eyes a little saddened by the recollection of Benito's curly blackness, she saw in a corner the small thin body, the melancholy face of Bernard Marx.

“Bernard!” she stepped up to him. “I was looking for you.” Her voice rang clear above the hum of the mounting lift. The others looked round curiously. “I wanted to talk to you about our New Mexico plan.” Out of the tail of her eye she could see Benito Hoover gaping with astonishment. The gape annoyed her. “Surprised I shouldn't be begging to go with him again!” she said to herself. Then aloud, and more warmly than ever, “I'd simply love to come with you for a week in July,” she went on. (Anyhow, she was publicly proving her unfaithfulness to Henry. Fanny ought to be pleased, even though it was Bernard.) “That is,” Lenina gave him her most deliciously significant smile, “if you still want to have me.”

Bernard's pale face flushed. “What on earth for?” she wondered, astonished, but at the same time touched by this strange tribute to her power.

“Hadn't we better talk about it somewhere else?” he stammered, looking horribly uncomfortable.

“As though I'd been saying something shocking,” thought Lenina. “He couldn't look more upset if I'd made a dirty joke—asked him who his mother was, or something like that.”

“I mean, with all these people about…” He was choked with confusion.

Lenina's laugh was frank and wholly unmalicious. “How funny you are!” she said; and she quite genuinely did think him funny. “You'll give me at least a week's warning, won't you,” she went on in another tone. “I suppose we take the Blue Pacific Rocket? Does it start from the Charing-T Tower? Or is it from Hampstead?”

Before Bernard could answer, the lift came to a standstill.

“Roof!” called a creaking voice.

The liftman was a small simian creature, dressed in the black tunic of an Epsilon-Minus Semi-Moron.

“Roof!”

He flung open the gates. The warm glory of afternoon sunlight made him start and blink his eyes. “Oh, roof!” he repeated in a voice of rapture. He was as though suddenly and joyfully awakened from a dark annihilating stupor. “Roof!”

He smiled up with a kind of doggily expectant adoration into the faces of his passengers. Talking and laughing together, they stepped out into the light. The liftman looked after them.

“Roof?” he said once more, questioningly.

Then a bell rang, and from the ceiling of the lift a loud speaker began, very softly and yet very imperiously, to issue its commands.

“Go down,” it said, “go down. Floor Eighteen. Go down, go down. Floor Eighteen. Go down, go…”

The liftman slammed the gates, touched a button and instantly dropped back into the droning twilight of the well, the twilight of his own habitual stupor.

It was warm and bright on the roof. The summer afternoon was drowsy with the hum of passing helicopters; and the deeper drone of the rocket-planes hastening, invisible, through the bright sky five or six miles overhead was like a caress on the soft air. Bernard Marx drew a deep breath. He looked up into the sky and round the blue horizon and finally down into Lenina's face.

“Isn't it beautiful!” His voice trembled a little.

She smiled at him with an expression of the most sympathetic understanding. “Simply perfect for Obstacle Golf,” she answered rapturously. “And now I must fly, Bernard. Henry gets cross if I keep him waiting. Let me know in good time about the date.” And waving her hand she ran away across the wide flat roof towards the hangars. Bernard stood watching the retreating twinkle of the white stockings, the sunburnt knees vivaciously bending and unbending again, again, and the softer rolling of those well-fitted corduroy shorts beneath the bottle green jacket. His face wore an expression of pain.

“I should say she was pretty,” said a loud and cheery voice just behind him.

Bernard started and looked around. The chubby red face of Benito Hoover was beaming down at him—beaming with manifest cordiality. Benito was notoriously good-natured. People said of him that he could have got through life without ever touching soma. The malice and bad tempers from which other people had to take holidays never afflicted him. Reality for Benito was always sunny.

“Pneumatic too. And how!” then, in another tone, “But, I say,” he went on, “you do look glum! What you need is a gramme of soma.” Diving into his right-hand trouser-pocket, Benito produced a phial. “One cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy…But, I say!”

Bernard had suddenly turned and rushed away.

Benito stared after him. “What can be the matter with the fellow?” he wondered, and, shaking his head, decided that the story about the alcohol having been put into the poor chap's blood-surrogate must be true. “Touched his brain, I suppose.”

He put away the soma bottle, and taking out a packet of sex-hormone chewing-gum, stuffed a plug into his cheek and walked slowly away towards the hangars, ruminating.

Henry Foster had had his machine wheeled out of its lock-up and, when Lenina arrived, was already seated in the cockpit, waiting.

“Four minutes late,” was all his comment, as she climbed in beside him. He started the engines and threw the helicopter screws into gear. The machine shot vertically into the air. Henry accelerated; the humming of the propeller shrilled from hornet to wasp, from wasp to mosquito; the speedometer showed that they were rising at the best part of two kilometres a minute. London diminished beneath them. The huge table-topped buildings were no more, in a few seconds, than a bed of geometrical mushrooms sprouting from the green of park and garden. In the midst of them, thin-stalked, a taller, slenderer fungus, the Charing-T Tower lifted towards the sky a disk of shining concrete.

Like the vague torsos of fabulous athletes, huge fleshy clouds lolled on the blue air above their heads. Out of one of them suddenly dropped a small scarlet insect, buzzing as it fell.

“There's the Red Rocket,” said Henry, “just come in from New York.” Looking at his watch. “Seven minutes behind time,” he added, and shook his head. “These Atlantic services—they're really scandalously unpunctual.”

He took his foot off the accelerator. The humming of the screws overhead dropped an octave and a half, back through wasp and hornet to bumble-bee, to cockchafer, to stag-beetle. The upward rush of the machine slackened off; a moment later they were hanging motionless in the air. Henry pushed at a lever; there was a click. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, till it was a circular mist before their eyes, the propeller in front of them began to revolve. The wind of a horizontal speed whistled ever more shrilly in the stays. Henry kept his eye on the revolution-counter; when the needle touched the twelve hundred mark, he threw the helicopter screws out of gear. The machine had enough forward momentum to be able to fly on its planes.

Lenina looked down through the window in the floor between her feet. They were flying over the six kilometre zone of park-land that separated Central London from its first ring of satellite suburbs. The green was maggoty with fore-shortened life. Forests of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy towers gleamed between the trees. Near Shepherd's Bush two thousand Beta-Minus mixed doubles were playing Riemann-surface tennis. A double row of Escalator Fives Courts lined the main road from Notting Hill to Willesden. In the Ealing stadium a Delta gymnastic display and Community Sing was in progress.

“What a hideous colour khaki is,” remarked Lenina, voicing the hypnopaedic prejudices of her caste.

The buildings of the Hounslow Feely Studio covered seven and a half hectares. Near them a black and khaki army of labourers was busy revitrifying the surface of the Great West Road. One of the huge travelling crucibles was being tapped as they flew over. The molten stone poured out in a stream of dazzling incandescence across the road, the asbestos rollers came and went; at the tail of an insulated watering cart the steam rose in white clouds.

At Brentford the Television Corporation's factory was like a small town.

“They must be changing the shift,” said Lenina.

Like aphides and ants, the leaf-green Gamma girls, the black Semi-Morons swarmed round the entrances, or stood in queues to take their places in the monorail tram-cars. Mulberry-coloured Beta-Minuses came and went among the crowd. The roof of the main building was alive with the alighting and departure of helicopters.

“My word,” said Lenina, “I'm glad I'm not a Gamma.”

Ten minutes later they were at Stoke Poges and had started their first round of Obstacle Golf.

2

With eyes for the most part downcast and, if ever they lighted on a fellow creature, at once and furtively averted, Bernard hastened across the roof. He was like a man pursued, but pursued by enemies he does not wish to see, lest they should seem more hostile even than he had supposed, and he himself be made to feel guiltier and even more helplessly alone.

“That horrible Benito Hoover!” And yet the man had meant well enough. Which only made it, in a way, much worse. Those who meant well behaved in the same way as those who meant badly. Even Lenina was making him suffer. He remembered those weeks of timid indecision, during which he had looked and longed and despaired of ever having the courage to ask her. Dared he face the risk of being humiliated by a contemptuous refusal? But if she were to say yes, what rapture! Well, now she had said it and he was still wretched—wretched that she should have thought it such a perfect afternoon for Obstacle Golf, that she should have trotted away to join Henry Foster, that she should have found him funny for not wanting to talk of their most private affairs in public. Wretched, in a word, because she had behaved as any healthy and virtuous English girl ought to behave and not in some other, abnormal, extraordinary way.

He opened the door of his lock-up and called to a lounging couple of Delta-Minus attendants to come and push his machine out on to the roof. The hangars were staffed by a single Bokanovsky Group, and the men were twins, identically small, black and hideous. Bernard gave his orders in the sharp, rather arrogant and even offensive tone of one who does not feel himself too secure in his superiority. To have dealings with members of the lower castes was always, for Bernard, a most distressing experience. For whatever the cause (and the current gossip about the alcohol in his blood-surrogate may very likely—for accidents will happen—have been true) Bernard's physique as hardly better than that of the average Gamma. He stood eight centimetres short of the standard Alpha height and was slender in proportion. Contact with members of the lower castes always reminded him painfully of this physical inadequacy. “I am I, and wish I wasn't”; his self-consciousness was acute and stressing. Each time he found himself looking on the level, instead of downward, into a Delta's face, he felt humiliated. Would the creature treat him with the respect due to his caste? The question haunted him. Not without reason. For Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons had been to some extent conditioned to associate corporeal mass with social superiority. Indeed, a faint hypnopaedic prejudice in favour of size was universal. Hence the laughter of the women to whom he made proposals, the practical joking of his equals among the men. The mockery made him feel an outsider; and feeling an outsider he behaved like one, which increased the prejudice against him and intensified the contempt and hostility aroused by his physical defects. Which in turn increased his sense of being alien and alone. A chronic fear of being slighted made him avoid his equals, made him stand, where his inferiors were concerned, self-consciously on his dignity. How bitterly he envied men like Henry Foster and Benito Hoover! Men who never had to shout at an Epsilon to get an order obeyed; men who took their position for granted; men who moved through the caste system as a fish through water—so utterly at home as to be unaware either of themselves or of the beneficent and comfortable element in which they had their being.

Slackly, it seemed to him, and with reluctance, the twin attendants wheeled his plane out on the roof.

“Hurry up!” said Bernard irritably. One of them glanced at him. Was that a kind of bestial derision that he detected in those blank grey eyes? “Hurry up!” he shouted more loudly, and there was an ugly rasp in his voice.

He climbed into the plane and, a minute later, was flying southwards, towards the river.

The various Bureaux of Propaganda and the College of Emotional Engineering were housed in a single sixty-story building in Fleet Street. In the basement and on the lower floors were the presses and offices of the three great London newspapers—The Hourly Radio, an upper-caste sheet, the pale-green Gamma Gazette, and, on khaki paper and in words exclusively of one syllable, The Delta Mirror. Then came the Bureaux of Propaganda by Television, by Feeling Picture, and by Synthetic Voice and Music respectively—twenty-two floors of them. Above were the research laboratories and the padded rooms in which Sound-Track Writers and Synthetic Composers did the delicate work. The top eighteen floors were occupied the College of Emotional Engineering.

Bernard landed on the roof of Propaganda House and stepped out.

“Ring down to Mr. Helmholtz Watson,” he ordered the Gamma-Plus porter, “and tell him that Mr. Bernard Marx is waiting for him on the roof.”

He sat down and lit a cigarette.

Helmholtz Watson was writing when the message came down.

“Tell him I'm coming at once,” he said and hung up the receiver. Then, turning to his secretary, “I'll leave you to put my things away,” he went on in the same official and impersonal tone; and, ignoring her lustrous smile, got up and walked briskly to the door.

He was a powerfully built man, deep-chested, broad-shouldered, massive, and yet quick in his movements, springy and agile. The round strong pillar of his neck supported a beautifully shaped head. His hair was dark and curly, his features strongly marked. In a forcible emphatic way, he was handsome and looked, as his secretary was never tired of repeating, every centimetre an Alpha-Plus. By profession he was a lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering (Department of Writing) and in the intervals of his educational activities, a working Emotional Engineer. He wrote regularly for The Hourly Radio, composed feely scenarios, and had the happiest knack for slogans and hypnopaedic rhymes.

“Able,” was the verdict of his superiors. “Perhaps” (and they would shake their heads, would significantly lower their voices) “a little too able.”

Yes, a little too able; they were right. A mental excess had produced in Helmholtz Watson effects very similar to those which, in Bernard Marx, were the result of a physical defect. Too little bone and brawn had isolated Bernard from his fellow men, and the sense of this apartness, being, by all the current standards, a mental excess, became in its turn a cause of wider separation. That which had made Helmholtz so uncomfortably aware of being himself and all alone was too much ability. What the two men shared was the knowledge that they were individuals. But whereas the physically defective Bernard had suffered all his life from the consciousness of being separate, it was only quite recently that, grown aware of his mental excess, Helmholtz Watson had also become aware of his difference from the people who surrounded him. This Escalator-Squash champion, this indefatigable lover (it was said that he had had six hundred and forty different girls in under four years), this admirable committee man and best mixer had realized quite suddenly that sport, women, communal activities were only, so far as he was concerned, second bests. Really, and at the bottom, he was interested in something else. But in what? In what? That was the problem which Bernard had come to discuss with him—or rather, since it was always Helmholtz who did all the talking, to listen to his friend discussing, yet once more.

Three charming girls from the Bureau of Propaganda by Synthetic Voice waylaid him as he stepped out of the lift.

“Oh, Helmholtz, darling, do come and have a picnic supper with us on Exmoor.” They clung round him imploringly.

He shook his head, he pushed his way through them. “No, no.”

“We're not inviting any other man.”

But Helmholtz remained unshaken even by this delightful promise. “No,” he repeated, “I'm busy.” And he held resolutely on his course. The girls trailed after him. It was not till he had actually climbed into Bernard's plane and slammed the door that they gave up pursuit. Not without reproaches.

“These women!” he said, as the machine rose into the air. “These women!” And he shook his head, he frowned. “Too awful,” Bernard hypocritically agreed, wishing, as he spoke the words, that he could have as many girls as Helmholtz did, and with as little trouble. He was seized with a sudden urgent need to boast. “I'm taking Lenina Crowne to New Mexico with me,” he said in a tone as casual as he could make it.

“Are you?” said Helmholtz, with a total absence of interest. Then after a little pause, “This last week or two,” he went on, “I've been cutting all my committees and all my girls. You can't imagine what a hullabaloo they've been making about it at the College. Still, it's been worth it, I think. The effects…” He hesitated. “Well, they're odd, they're very odd.”

A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism.

The rest of the short flight was accomplished in silence. When they had arrived and were comfortably stretched out on the pneumatic sofas in Bernard's room, Helmholtz began again.

Speaking very slowly, “Did you ever feel,” he asked, “as though you had something inside you that was only waiting for you to give it a chance to come out? Some sort of extra power that you aren't using—you know, like all the water that goes down the falls instead of through the turbines?” He looked at Bernard questioningly.

“You mean all the emotions one might be feeling if things were different?”

Helmholtz shook his head. “Not quite. I'm thinking of a queer feeling I sometimes get, a feeling that I've got something important to say and the power to say it—only I don't know what it is, and I can't make any use of the power. If there was some different way of writing…Or else something else to write about…” He was silent; then, “You see,” he went on at last, “I'm pretty good at inventing phrases—you know, the sort of words that suddenly make you jump, almost as though you'd sat on a pin, they seem so new and exciting even though they're about something hypnopaedically obvious. But that doesn't seem enough. It's not enough for the phrases to be good; what you make with them ought to be good too.”

“But your things are good, Helmholtz.”

“Oh, as far as they go.” Helmholtz shrugged his shoulders. “But they go such a little way. They aren't important enough, somehow. I feel I could do something much more important. Yes, and more intense, more violent. But what? What is there more important to say? And how can one be violent about the sort of things one's expected to write about? Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly—they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced. That's one of the things I try to teach my students—how to write piercingly. But what on earth's the good of being pierced by an article about a Community Sing, or the latest improvement in scent organs? Besides, can you make words really piercing—you know, like the very hardest X-rays—when you're writing about that sort of thing? Can you say something about nothing? That's what it finally boils down to. I try and I try…”

“Hush!” said Bernard suddenly, and lifted a warning finger; they listened. “I believe there's somebody at the door,” he whispered.

Helmholtz got up, tiptoed across the room, and with a sharp quick movement flung the door wide open. There was, of course, nobody there.

“I'm sorry,” said Bernard, feeling and looking uncomfortably foolish. “I suppose I've got things on my nerves a bit. When people are suspicious with you, you start being suspicious with them.”

He passed his hand across his eyes, he sighed, his voice became plaintive. He was justifying himself. “If you knew what I'd had to put up with recently,” he said almost tearfully—and the uprush of his self-pity was like a fountain suddenly released. “If you only knew!”

Helmholtz Watson listened with a certain sense of discomfort. “Poor little Bernard!” he said to himself. But at the same time he felt rather ashamed for his friend. He wished Bernard would show a little more pride.

1

电梯里挤满了从阿尔法更衣室里走出来的人,列宁娜走进去后,许多人对她友好地点头微笑。她非常受欢迎,在过去的某个时候,她和他们中的几乎每个人都曾经共度良宵。

这些小伙子都那么可爱,她一边想,一边应答着他们的招呼。迷人的小伙子们!可是,她还是希望乔治·艾德兹尔的耳朵可以再小点(可能在三百二十八米的时候给他多注射了一点甲状腺素?)。看着本尼托·胡佛,她不禁想起,脱下衣服后他身上的体毛实在太多了。

回想起本尼托长满卷曲体毛的黑色身体,她的眼神里多了一丝伤感。她转过身去,发现了角落里伯纳德·马克斯瘦小的身躯和郁郁寡欢的脸。

“伯纳德!”她向前走了一步,“我正在找你呢。”她的声音在嗡嗡上升的电梯里显得格外清脆。其他人都好奇地扭脸看着她。“我想跟你谈谈我们去新墨西哥的计划。”透过眼睛的余光,她可以看到本尼托·胡佛吃惊地盯着这边。这让她很恼火。“他肯定很吃惊,我没有再次求着他,要跟他在一起!”她心里想。然后,她大声地、更加热情地说:“我很愿意跟你在七月份去一周。”(反正,她已经在公开证明对亨利的不忠了。尽管对象是伯纳德,范妮也该高兴了吧。)“当然,前提是,”她深情款款地展示出自己最迷人的微笑,“如果你还想跟我在一起的话。”

伯纳德苍白的脸涨得通红。“怎么会这样呢?”她很纳闷,也很吃惊,但是同时,她还是有点感动,他这种奇怪的表现恰恰证明了自己的魅力。

“咱们是不是在别处讨论这个问题更好?”他结结巴巴地说,看起来非常不自在。

“好像我在说什么大逆不道的话一样,”列宁娜心想,“如果我开个淫秽的玩笑,他也不会比现在更不安,比如说,问问他的妈妈是谁呀,或者那一类的话。”

“我是说,有这么多人在旁边……”他因为慌乱而顿住了。

列宁娜的笑声坦率而毫无恶意。“你可真有意思!”她说,她是真的认为他这个人有点好玩,“你会提前至少一周告诉我吧,是吧?”她换了一种口气说,“我想,我们是乘坐‘蓝色太平洋’号火箭吧?是从查令T字(1)塔起飞,还是从汉普斯特德站出发?”

伯纳德还没有来得及回答,电梯停了下来。

“到楼顶了!”一个沙哑的声音喊道。

电梯工是一个长得像猴子的小矮人,穿着艾普西隆-半白痴的那种黑色袍子。

“到楼顶了!”

他打开电梯门。温暖的午后阳光让他吓了一跳,他眨了眨眼睛。“哦,到楼顶了!”他又兴奋地喊道,好像从刚才那种吞没一切的黑暗和呆滞中突然清醒了过来,欢喜异常,“到楼顶了!”

他抬起头对着他的乘客们微笑着,执着地、期待地、心怀崇拜地微笑着。他们说着笑着,一起走出电梯,迈入阳光。电梯工盯着他们的背影。

“到楼顶了?”他又以询问的语气说了一遍。

然后,一声铃响,电梯顶部的一个扩音器以轻柔但不可抗拒的口吻发出了命令。

“下去,”这声音说,“下去,到十八楼。下去,下去,到十八楼。下去,下……”

电梯工关上门,按了个按钮,马上又回到了电梯井的昏暗和嗡嗡声之中,那种他所熟悉的昏暗和呆滞状态。

楼顶上非常温暖,阳光明亮。在这个夏日的午后,空中的直升机来来往往,嗡嗡作响,让人昏昏欲睡。火箭飞机在五六英里高处的蔚蓝天空中快速掠过,尽管看不见它们,但它们低沉的轰鸣声听起来就像在抚慰着柔和的空气。伯纳德·马克斯深深地吸了一口气,他抬头看看天空,扫了一眼蔚蓝的天际线,最后目光落在列宁娜的脸上。

“多美啊!”他的声音有一丝颤抖。

她对他微笑了一下,露出最体贴、最善解人意的表情。“玩障碍高尔夫再好不过了。”她狂喜地回答,“现在,我必须马上飞走了,伯纳德。如果让亨利久等,他该生气了。提前告诉我出发的日期。”她挥挥手,穿过宽阔平坦的楼顶,跑向飞机库。伯纳德站在那里看着,她白色袜子上的闪光越来越远,晒成棕色的膝盖活泼地弯曲,伸直,再弯曲,再伸直,在她玻璃瓶绿色的上衣下面,合体的灯芯绒短裤柔和地起伏着。他脸上现出痛苦的表情。

“我得说,她太漂亮了。”一个响亮愉快的声音从他背后传来。

伯纳德吓了一跳,扭脸去看。本尼托·胡佛红润的胖脸正望着他笑呢,带着一股明显的热诚劲儿。本尼托脾气好得很,大家都知道的。人们都说,他一生不碰唆麻都可以过得好好的。其他人需要靠吃唆麻、去度个假才能逃离的那些恶意和坏脾气什么的,从来不会烦扰他。对本尼托来说,现实总是那么阳光灿烂。

“胸部还那么丰满,那么丰满!”然后,他换了种口气,继续说,“我说,你看起来愁眉苦脸的!你需要一克唆麻。”本尼托把手伸进长裤右侧的口袋,掏出一个药瓶,“吃下一小片,烦恼都不……嗨!我说!”

伯纳德突然转身,匆匆走掉了。

本尼托盯着他的背影。“那个家伙是怎么回事啊?”他很纳闷,摇摇头,觉得有人把酒精倒入这个可怜人的代血浆的说法一定是真的,“影响了他的脑子,我想。”

他收起唆麻瓶子,拿出一包性荷尔蒙口香糖,往嘴里塞了一块,慢慢走向飞机库,边走边思考着。

亨利·福斯特已经让人把飞机从机库里推出来了,列宁娜赶到时,他已经坐在驾驶舱里等她了。

“晚了四分钟。”当她爬进去,坐在他旁边时,他只说了这一句。他发动了引擎,将直升机推进器推上挡。飞机垂直地蹿入云霄。亨利在加速,螺旋桨尖叫起来,轰鸣声由大变小,从大黄蜂的嗡嗡声变为小黄蜂的嗡嗡声,又变成蚊子的哼哼声。速度表显示,他们的速度已接近每分钟两千米。伦敦在他们下面渐渐变小了。几秒钟后,巨大的平顶楼房看起来不过是一片几何形地面上的一丛蘑菇,从绿色的公园和花园间冒出来。在这些蘑菇中间,有一朵细茎的、更高、更纤细的蘑菇,那就是查令T字塔,高耸入云,像是撑起了一个闪亮的水泥圆盘。

大团大团的蓬松白云从他们头顶上方的蓝天中飘过,像是神话中天神运动员们的模糊身躯。从这些云团中,突然坠下了一只小小的红色昆虫,一边降落,一边吱吱地叫着。

“那是‘红色火箭’号,”亨利说,“刚刚从纽约来的。”他看看表,“晚了七分钟。”他补了句,摇摇头,“这些大西洋航线,总是不够准时,真是够丢人的。”

他把脚从加速器上挪开,头顶上螺旋桨的轰鸣声陡降了八度半,又从小黄蜂变成大黄蜂,变成蜜蜂,金龟子,鹿角虫。飞机急速向上的势头慢下来,过了一会儿,他们便静止不动地悬在空中了。亨利推动了一根杠杆,听到咔嗒一声后,他们眼前的螺旋桨开始旋转,最初很慢,然后逐渐加速,越来越快,直到最后,螺旋桨在他们眼前转成了一片圆环状的迷雾。平行前进引起的风在拉杆间呼啸着。亨利的眼睛盯着转速表,当指针指向一千两百转时,他将螺旋桨放了空挡。飞机已经有了足够前进的推力,可以靠自身飞行了。

列宁娜从两脚中间的地板窗户向下望去,他们正飞过将中央伦敦和它的第一圈卫星郊区隔开的六公里宽的公园地带。绿地上面有许多缩小了的人,看上去像是蛆虫。狗狗离心碰碰球的高塔亮闪闪的,掩映在树林中。在牧羊人树丛附近,两千对贝塔-正在以混双形式打黎曼曲面网球。从诺丁山到威尔士登的主路两侧,排列着五号升降机球场。在伊令球场,一场德尔塔体操表演和社区歌曲演唱正在进行。

“卡其色可真难看!”列宁娜说,表达了她这个种姓的人在睡眠教育中形成的偏见。

豪恩斯洛感官电影制片厂占地七个半公顷。制片厂附近,一大队穿着黑色和卡其色服装的劳工正在忙碌地为西大路重新铺设玻璃路面。当他们飞过的时候,工人正在打开一个移动的巨大坩埚,融化的矿石倾泻出来,闪闪发光,滚滚地流向路面;石棉压路机来来往往;在一辆绝缘洒水车后面,水雾腾空而起,如同白色的云团。

在布伦特福德,电视机公司的工厂看起来就像个小城镇。

“他们一定是在换班。”列宁娜说。

穿着叶绿色衣服的伽马姑娘们,穿着黑色衣服的半白痴们,像蚜虫和蚂蚁一样,有的在入口处涌来涌去,有的在单轨电车旁排着队准备上车。穿着桑葚色衣服的贝塔-们在人群中走来走去。主楼的楼顶上,直升机不间断地降落或起飞,一片繁忙。

“天啊,”列宁娜说,“我真高兴我不是伽马。”

十分钟之后,他们已经到了斯托克波吉斯,玩起了第一局障碍高尔夫。

2

伯纳德匆匆走过楼顶,眼睛大多时候都低垂着,如果瞄到其他同伴,他会马上偷偷地掉转视线,就像背后有人追踪他一样,但他又不愿意看见追踪他的敌人,因为他害怕敌人比他预想的还要凶恶,害怕自己会显得更为内疚,显得更不可救药地孤独。

“那个可怕的本尼托·胡佛!”可是,那个人本意并不坏,某种意义上,这就让事情变得更糟糕了。那些好心人表现得和有坏心眼儿的人没有什么两样。连列宁娜都让他感到难受。他回忆起那几星期里自己是如何畏惧、如何犹豫,既盼望着能鼓起勇气邀请她,又因感到不够勇敢而心生绝望。他敢于面对她居高临下的拒绝带来的羞辱吗?可是,如果她同意了,哦,那将是多么高兴啊!现在,她已经同意了,可他还是觉得难过,她居然认为这是玩障碍高尔夫的好天气,她居然乐颠颠地跑过去找亨利·福斯特,她居然因为他不愿意在公众场合讨论私事儿觉得他可笑。一句话,他难过,是因为她和任何一个健康、品行良好的英国女孩的言行没有什么两样,毫无异常或出奇之处。

他打开机库的大门,招呼两个正在闲逛的德尔塔-服务员过来把他的飞机推到楼顶上。整个机库的工作人员都是来自一个波卡诺夫斯基组别的多胞胎,长得一模一样,矮小黝黑,很丑陋。伯纳德严厉地发出命令,语气傲慢,令人不快,表现得就像一个对自己的优越地位不太有把握的人。对伯纳德来说,和等级低于自己的人打交道一向不是什么愉快的经历。不知道怎么回事(那些有关他的代血浆里有酒精的传闻很可能是真的,因为这类事故总是可能会发生的),他比一个中等个子的伽马体格好不了多少。他比阿尔法的标准身高矮了八厘米,也单薄了许多。同低等级的人打交道总是让他想到自己身体上的缺陷,令他痛苦。“我就是我,可我希望不是。”他的自我意识非常强烈,令他烦恼。每当他发现自己在平视而不是俯视一个德尔塔的脸时,他就感到羞愧难当。这个家伙会不会因为他的种姓而给予他应得的尊敬?这个问题总是纠缠着他,可这也并非毫无道理。伽马、德尔塔和艾普西隆都受过一定的条件训练,将强壮的体格与优越的社会地位联系在一起。实际上,在睡眠教育中,他们都普遍接受了这种对大个头的偏爱。因此,每当他向女人求爱时,她们总是笑话他,同等种姓的男人们也经常开他的玩笑。那些嘲讽让他感觉自己像个局外人,有了这种感觉后,他真的就表现得像个局外人,这又加深了人们对他的偏见,加剧了人们对他的身体缺陷的鄙视和厌恶,反过来,这一切又进一步加深了他的局外感和孤独感。因为总是害怕被轻视,他总是刻意躲避同样等级的人。而在比他等级低的人看来,他的自尊心总是显得过分强烈。他多么羡慕像亨利·福斯特和本尼托·胡佛那样的男人!那样的男人从来不需要对艾普西隆们大喊大叫,就能让他们听从命令,他们心安理得地享受着自己的地位,他们在种姓制度之间轻车熟路,如鱼得水——他们那么怡然自得,根本意识不到自我,对于他们的等级带来的好处和舒适也熟视无睹。

在他看来,两个服务员在将他的飞机推到楼顶上时,动作懒散,好像不太情愿似的。

“快点!”伯纳德急躁地说。其中一个人看了他一眼。他从那双茫然的灰眼睛里觉察到的是畜生般的嘲弄吗?“快点!”他加大了声音喊道,声音干涩难听。

他爬进飞机,一分钟之后,他就在朝南,向着泰晤士河的方向飞去。

各个宣传局和情绪工程学院都位于舰队街的一座六十二层的大楼里。地下室和低楼层是伦敦三大报纸的印刷厂和办公室,它们分别是供高种姓人阅读的《每时广播》、淡绿色的《伽马公报》和印刷在卡其色纸张上、仅包括单音节文字的《德尔塔镜报》。往上的楼层是电视宣传局、感官电影宣传局、合成声音与音乐宣传局,总共占了二十二层。再往上,是各个研究实验室和一些墙壁四周镶了软垫的隔音房间,供那些音带作家和合成作曲家进行一些精细的工作。最上面的十八个楼层是情绪工程学院。

伯纳德降落在宣传大楼的楼顶上,从飞机上走了下来。

“给赫尔姆霍茨·华生先生的房间打个电话,”他命令那个伽马-看门人,“告诉他,伯纳德·马克斯先生在楼顶等他呢。”

他坐下来,点着了一支香烟。

消息传下去的时候,赫尔姆霍茨·华生正在写作。

“告诉他我马上来。”他说,放下了听筒,然后,他扭头转向秘书,“你把我的东西收拾好吧。”他对秘书明媚的微笑视若无睹,继续以公事公办的语气说,然后站起来,快步朝门口走去。

他身体结实,胸膛深厚,肩膀宽阔,非常魁梧,然而,他行动迅速,步履灵活、有弹性。结实的脖子像个圆柱,支撑着形状漂亮的脑袋。他长着黑黑的鬈发,五官分明。他英俊潇洒,帅气逼人。他的秘书总是不厌其烦地说,他身上的每一厘米都显示出他是个阿尔法+。他的职业是情绪工程学院(写作系)的讲师,但在教书工作的间隙,他也做情绪工程师。他定期为《每时广播》写稿子,创作感官电影的剧本,他非常擅长编写各种口号和睡眠教育的顺口溜。

“能干,”这就是他的上司对他的评价,“可能(他们会摇摇头,意味深长地把声音放低)有点太能干了。”

是的,有点太能干了,他们说得对。超群的脑力在赫尔姆霍茨·华生身上产生的效果,和身体缺陷在伯纳德·马克斯身上产生的影响相差无几。骨架太小、肌肉太少这个事实让伯纳德孤立于同伴们之外,而根据流行的标准,如果这种隔绝感是由超群的脑力引发的,这种隔阂感会更加难以逾越。让赫尔姆霍茨·华生过于意识到自我、让他感到孤独的东西,就是他超凡的能力。这两个人有一个共同之处,那就是,他们都知道自己过于独特。但是,由于这种隔绝感,身体有缺陷的伯纳德几乎已经痛苦一生了,而赫尔姆霍茨·华生是不久前才意识到自己超人的脑力,意识到了自己和周围人的不同。这个升降机壁球冠军,这个不知疲倦的情人(有人说,他在不到四年内已经占有了六百四十个姑娘),这个令人钦佩的委员会成员,这个交际大师,最近突然意识到,对他本人而言,运动、女人、社会活动等都只不过是生命中退而求其次的事情。真的,在心灵深处,他对另外的某种东西更感兴趣,但是,那是什么东西呢?是什么呢?这就是伯纳德来和他谈论的问题,或者说,因为每次都是赫尔姆霍茨一个人在说话,是伯纳德来听他谈论的问题,是的,这次也是如此。

他刚走出电梯,三个合成声音宣传局的漂亮女孩就拦住了他。

“赫尔姆霍茨,亲爱的,一定要和我们一起去埃克斯荒原上野餐啊。”她们缠在他身边,乞求他。

他摇摇头,把她们推开,继续向前走。“不去,不去。”

“我们不邀请别的男人。”

即使这么诱人的承诺都不能动摇赫尔姆霍茨。“不去,”他又说了一遍,“我忙着呢。”他步履坚定地往前走,女孩子们在后面跟着他。直到他爬进伯纳德的飞机,砰地关上了机舱门,她们才不再追他了,对他不无谴责。

“这些女人!”他说,飞机跃升入天空,“这些女人啊!”他摇摇头,皱着眉头。“太糟糕了。”伯纳德虚伪地应和着,一边说着这种话,一边却暗地里希望,自己也能和赫尔姆霍茨一样,不费吹灰之力地占有那么多的女孩子。他突然产生了一种自我夸耀的迫切需要。“我要带列宁娜·克朗去新墨西哥。”他尽量让语气显得轻松随意。

“是吗?”赫尔姆霍茨说,一点也不感兴趣。停顿了一会儿,他接着说:“在过去的一两周,我一直在躲避着我的那些委员会会议和那些姑娘。你都想象不出来,为此,他们在学院里居然掀起了轩然大波。不过,我还是认为,这么做是值得的。这个结果嘛……”他迟疑着说,“结果很奇怪,真的很奇怪。”

身体的缺陷可以造成精神负担过重,而这个过程似乎是可逆的。精神负担过重本身,也可以让人蓄意地孤立自我,从而自觉地陷入盲目和聋聩状态,陷入禁欲主义人为的性无能。

在剩下的一段飞行中,他俩都没有说话。来到伯纳德的房间,舒舒服服地伸展着身子坐在充气沙发上之后,赫尔姆霍茨才继续刚才的话题。

他缓缓地说:“你是否有过这种感觉,好像你的身体里有种东西,就等着你给它一个机会,把它给释放出来?某种你现在还没有加以利用的多余力量?你知道的,就比如所有那些河水,没有流入涡轮发动机,而是形成瀑布倾泻而下了?”他带着疑问看着伯纳德。

“你是指,如果情况不同,我们可能会感觉到的那些情绪?”

赫尔姆霍茨摇摇头。“不完全是,我说的是,我偶尔会有一种奇怪的感觉,觉得我有什么非常重要的话要说,也有能力把它表达出来,可是,我不知道我要说的到底是什么,有能力也用不上。如果有一种不同的写作方式……或者有些别的东西可写……”他沉默了,然后接着说,“你看啊,我很擅长编写词语,你知道的,那种刺激得你突然跳起来的词语,就好像你坐到了一根针上似的,那些词语那么新奇,那么令人兴奋,尽管它们都是睡眠教育中的一些明显道理。可是,这些似乎还不够,光这些词语好听是没用的,这些词语得有意义才行呢。”

“你写的东西都很好啊,赫尔姆霍茨。”

“还差不多吧,”赫尔姆霍茨耸了耸肩,“但是,那些东西没什么大的影响,在某种意义上,它们还不够重要。我觉得自己还可以干更重要的事情。是的,更激烈、更猛烈的事情。可是什么呢?那些更重要的话语是什么?总写那些别人让你写的东西,你怎么可能做出猛烈的事情呢?词语就像X光射线,如果用得恰当,它们可以穿透一切。你去阅读时,就会感觉被刺到了。如何让写的东西具有穿透力,这就是我想教给我的学生的东西之一。可是,让一篇关于社区歌曲或者最新的香味乐器进展的文章穿透了,这又到底有什么用呢?况且,当你写那类玩意儿的时候,真的可以让词语具有穿透力吗?你知道的,就如同最强烈的X光射线那样?归根结底,这就是问题的所在。我试啊,试啊……”

“别出声!”伯纳德突然说,伸出一个手指头警告着。他们俩听了听。“我想门口有人。”他悄声说。

赫尔姆霍茨站起来,踮起脚尖穿过房间,突然快速打开房门。自然,门口一个人也没有。

“不好意思,”伯纳德说,觉得自己很傻,显得很难堪,“我想我最近神经有点紧张。当人们怀疑你时,你也会变得疑神疑鬼的。”

他用手抹了一下眼睛,叹了口气,声音变得惆怅起来。他在为自己辩解。“要是你知道我最近经受的那一切,”他几乎带着哭腔说,自我怜悯就像开了口的喷泉,“要是你知道就好了!”

赫尔姆霍茨·华生带着一丝不安听他说话。“可怜的小伯纳德。”他心里想。但同时,他也为自己的朋友感到羞惭,他真希望伯纳德能够表现得更有尊严。

————————————————————

(1) Charing-T,作者模仿伦敦的Charing-Cross(查令十字车站)造的词。

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