Page 79 - BraveNewWorld

IDPH 79

“I ought to have been there,” the young man went on. “Why wouldn’t they let
me be the sacrifice? I’d have gone round ten times-twelve, fifteen. Palowhtiwa
only got as far as seven. They could have had twice as much blood from me.
The multitudinous seas incarnadine.” He flung out his arms in a lavish gesture;
then, despairingly, let them fall again. “But they wouldn’t let me. They disliked
me for my complexion. It’s always been like that. Always.” Tears stood in the
young man’s eyes; he was ashamed and turned away.
Astonishment made Lenina forget the deprivation of soma. She uncovered her
face and, for the first time, looked at the stranger. “Do you mean to say that you
wanted to be hit with that whip?”
Still averted from her, the young man made a sign of affirmation. “For the
sake of the pueblo-to make the rain come and the corn grow. And to please
Pookong and Jesus. And then to show that I can bear pain without crying out.
Yes,” and his voice suddenly took on a new resonance, he turned with a proud
squaring of the shoulders, a proud, defiant lifting of the chin “to show that
I’m a man. Oh!” He gave a gasp and was silent, gaping. He had seen, for
the first time in his life, the face of a girl whose cheeks were not the colour
of chocolate or dogskin, whose hair was auburn and permanently waved, and
whose expression (amazing novelty!) was one of benevolent interest. Lenina
was smiling at him; such a nice-looking boy, she was thinking, and a really
beautiful body. The blood rushed up into the young man’s face; he dropped
his eyes, raised them again for a moment only to find her still smiling at him,
and was so much overcome that he had to turn away and pretend to be looking
very hard at something on the other side of the square.
Bernard’s questions made a diversion. Who? How? When? From where?
Keeping his eyes fixed on Bernard’s face (for so passionately did he long to see
Lenina smiling that he simply dared not look at her), the young man tried to
explain himself. Linda and he-Linda was his mother (the word made Lenina
look uncomfortable)-were strangers in the Reservation. Linda had come from
the Other Place long ago, before he was born, with a man who was his father.
(Bernard pricked up his ears.) She had gone walking alone in those mountains
over there to the North, had fallen down a steep place and hurt her head. (“Go
on, go on,” said Bernard excitedly.) Some hunters from Malpais had found
her and brought her to the pueblo. As for the man who was his father, Linda
had never seen him again. His name was Tomakin. (Yes, “Thomas” was the
D.H.C.’s first name.) He must have flown away, back to the Other Place, away
without her-a bad, unkind, unnatural man.
“And so I was born in Malpais,” he concluded. “In Malpais.” And he shook his
head.
The squalor of that little house on the outskirts of the pueblo!

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