The Reign of Brainwash: Dystopia Box Set. Эдгар Аллан По

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СКАЧАТЬ suddenly her arms were round his neck; he felt her lips soft against his own. So deliciously soft, so warm and electric that inevitably he found himself thinking of the embraces in Three Weeks in a Helicopter. Ooh! ooh! the stereoscopic blonde and aah! the more than real blackamoor. Horror, horror, horror... he tried to disengage himself; but Lenina tightened her embrace.

      'Why didn't you say so?' she whispered, drawing back her face to look at him. Her eyes were tenderly reproachful.

      'The murkiest den, the most opportune place' (the voice of conscience thundered poetically), 'the strongest suggestion our worser genius can, shall never melt mine honour into lust. Never, never!' he resolved.

      'You silly boy!' she was saying. 'I wanted you so much. And if you wanted me too, why didn't you?...'

      'But, Lenina...' he began protesting; and as she immediately untwined her arms, as she stepped away from him, he thought, for a moment, that she had taken his unspoken hint. But when she unbuckled her white patent cartridge belt and hung it carefully over the back of a chair, he began to suspect that he had been mistaken.

      'Lenina!' he repeated apprehensively.

      She put her hand to her neck and gave a long vertical pull; her white sailor's blouse was ripped to the hem; suspicion condensed into a too, too solid certainty. 'Lenina, what are you doing?'

      Zip, zip! Her answer was wordless. She stepped out of her bell-bottomed trousers. Her zippicamiknicks were a pale shell pink. The Arch-Community-Songster's golden T dangled at her breast.

      'For those milk paps that through the window bars bore at men's eyes...' The singing, thundering, magical words made her seem doubly dangerous, doubly alluring. Soft, soft, but how piercing! boring and drilling into reason, tunnelling through resolution. 'The strongest oaths are straw to the fire i' the blood. Be more abstemious, or else...'

      Zip! The rounded pinkness fell apart like a neatly divided apple. A wriggle of the arms, a lifting first of the right foot, then the left: the zippicamiknicks were lying lifeless and as though deflated on the floor.

      Still wearing her shoes and socks, and her rakishly tilted round white cap, she advanced towards him. 'Darling. Darling! If only you'd said so before!' She held out her arms.

      But instead of also saying 'Darling!' and holding out his arms, the Savage retreated in terror, flapping his hands at her as though he were trying to scare away some intruding and dangerous animal. Four backward steps, and he was brought to bay against the wall.

      'Sweet!' said Lenina and, laying her hands on his shoulders, pressed herself against him. 'Put your arms round me,' she commanded. 'Hug me till you drug me, honey.' She too had poetry at her command, knew words that sang and were spells and beat drums. 'Kiss me'; she closed her eyes, she let her voice sink to a sleepy murmur, 'kiss me till I'm in a coma. Hug me, honey, snuggly...'

      The Savage caught her by the wrists, tore her hands from his shoulders, thrust her roughly away at arm's length.

      'Ow, you're hurting me, you're... oh!' She was suddenly silent. Terror had made her forget the pain. Opening her eyes, she had seen his face--no, not hisface, a ferocious stranger's, pale, distorted, twitching with some insane, inexplicable fury. Aghast, 'But what is it, John?' she whispered. He did not answer, but only stared into her face with those mad eyes. The hands that held her wrists were trembling. He breathed deeply and irregularly. Faint almost to imperceptibility, but appalling, she suddenly heard the grinding of his teeth. 'What is it?' she almost screamed.

      And as though awakened by her cry he caught her by the shoulders and shook her. 'Whore!' he shouted. 'Whore! Impudent strumpet!'

      'Oh, don't, do-on't,' she protested in a voice made grotesquely tremulous by his shaking.

      'Whore!'

      'Plea-ease.'

      'Damned whore!'

      'A gra-amme is be-etter...' she began.

      The Savage pushed her away with such force that she staggered and fell. 'Go,' he shouted, standing over her menacingly, 'get out of my sight or I'll kill you.' He clenched his fists.

      Lenina raised her arm to cover her face. 'No, please don't, John...'

      'Hurry up. Quick!'

      One arm still raised, and following his every movement with a terrified eye, she scrambled to her feet and still crouching, still covering her head, made a dash for the bathroom.

      The noise of that prodigious slap by which her departure was accelerated was like a pistol-shot.

      'Ow!' Lenina bounded forward.

      Safely locked into the bathroom, she had leisure to take stock of her injuries. Standing with her back to the mirror, she twisted her head. Looking over her left shoulder she could see the imprint of an open hand standing out distinct and crimson on the pearly flesh. Gingerly she rubbed the wounded spot.

      Outside, in the other room, the Savage was striding up and down, marching, marching to the drums and music of magical words. 'The wren goes to't, and the small gilded fly does lecher in my sight.' Maddeningly they rumbled in his ears. 'The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to't with a more riotous appetite. Down from the waist they are Centaurs, though women all above. But to the girdle do the gods inherit. Beneath is all the fiends'. There's hell, there's darkness, there is the sulphurous pit, burning, scalding, stench, consumption; fie, fie, fie, pah, pah! Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination.'

      'John!' ventured a small ingratiating voice from the bathroom. 'John!'

      'O thou weed, who art so lovely fair and smell'st so sweet that the sense aches at thee. Was this most goodly book made to write "whore" upon? Heaven stops the nose at it...'

      But her perfume still hung about him, his jacket was white with the powder that had scented her velvety body. 'Impudent strumpet, impudent strumpet, impudent strumpet.' The inexorable rhythm beat itself out. 'Impudent...'

      'John, do you think I might have my clothes?'

      He picked up the bell-bottomed trousers, the blouse, the zippicamiknicks.

      'Open!' he ordered, kicking the door.

      'No, I won't.' The voice was frightened and defiant.

      'Well, how do you expect me to give them to you?'

      'Push them through the ventilator over the door.'

      He did what she suggested and returned to his uneasy pacing of the room. 'Impudent strumpet, impudent strumpet. The devil Luxury with his fat rump and potato finger...'

      'John.'

      He would not answer. 'Fat rump and potato finger.'

      'John.'

      'What is it?' he asked gruffly.

      'I wonder if you'd mind giving me my Malthusian belt.'

      Lenina sat listening to the footsteps in the other room, wondering, as she listened, how long he was likely to go tramping up and down like that; whether she would have to wait until he left the flat; or if it would be safe, after allowing his madness a reasonable СКАЧАТЬ