4
A.D. 3000
Act I
Burrin pier on the south shore of Galway Bay in Ireland, a region of stone-capped hills and granite fields. It is a fine summer day in the year 3000 A.D. On an ancient stone stump, about three feet thick and three feet high, used for securing ships by ropes to the shore, and called a bollard or holdfast, an elderly gentleman sits facing the land with his head bowed and his face in his hands, sobbing. His sunburnt skin contrasts with his white whiskers and eyebrows. He wears a black frock-coat, a white waistcoat, lavender trousers, a brilliant silk cravat with a jewelled pin stuck in it, a tall hat of grey felt, and patent leather boots with white spats. His starched linen cuffs protrude from his coat sleeves; and his collar, also of starched white linen, is Gladstonian. On his right, three or four full sacks, lying side by side on the flags, suggest that the pier, unlike many remote Irish piers, is occasionally useful as well as romantic. On his left, behind him, a flight of stone steps descends out of sight to the sea level.
A woman in a silk tunic and sandals, wearing little else except a cap with the number 2 on it in gold, comes up the steps from the sea, and stares in astonishment at the sobbing man. Her age cannot be guessed: her face is firm and chiselled like a young face; but her expression is unyouthful in its severity and determination.
THE WOMAN. What is the matter?
The elderly gentleman looks up; hastily pulls himself together; takes out a silk handkerchief and dries his tears lightly with a brave attempt to smile through them; and tries to rise gallantly, but sinks back.
THE WOMAN. Do you need assistance?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No. Thank you very much. No. Nothing. The heat. [He punctuates with sniffs, and dabs with his handkerchief at his eyes and nose.] Hay fever.
THE WOMAN. You are a foreigner, are you not?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No. You must not regard me as a foreigner. I am a Briton.
THE WOMAN. You come from some part of the British Commonwealth?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [amiably pompous] From its capital, madam.
THE WOMAN. From Baghdad?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Yes. You may not be aware, madam, that these islands were once the centre of the British Commonwealth, during a period now known as The Exile. They were its headquarters a thousand years ago. Few people know this interesting circumstance now; but I assure you it is true. I have come here on a pious pilgrimage to one of the numerous lands of my fathers. We are of the same stock, you and I. Blood is thicker than water. We are cousins.
THE WOMAN. I do not understand. You say you have come here on a pious pilgrimage. Is that some new means of transport?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [again shewing signs of distress] I find it very difficult to make myself understood here. I was not referring to a machine, but to a–a–a sentimental journey.
THE WOMAN. I am afraid I am as much in the dark as before. You said also that blood is thicker than water. No doubt it is; but what of it?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Its meaning is obvious.
THE WOMAN. Perfectly. But I assure you I am quite aware that blood is thicker than water.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [sniffing: almost in tears again] We will leave it at that, madam.
THE WOMAN [going nearer to him and scrutinizing him with some concern] I am afraid you are not well. Were you not warned that it is dangerous for shortlived people to come to this country? There is a deadly disease called discouragement, against which shortlived people have to take very strict precautions. Intercourse with us puts too great a strain on them.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [pulling himself together huffily] It has no effect on me, madam. I fear my conversation does not interest you. If not, the remedy is in your own hands.
THE WOMAN [looking at her hands, and then looking inquiringly at him] Where?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [breaking down] Oh, this is dreadful. No understanding, no intelligence, no sympathy–[his sobs choke him].
THE WOMAN. You see, you are ill.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [nerved by indignation] I am not ill. I have never had a day’s illness in my life.
THE WOMAN. May I advise you?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I have no need of a lady doctor, thank you, madam.
THE WOMAN [shaking her head] I am afraid I do not understand. I said nothing about a butterfly.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Well, I said nothing about a butterfly.
THE WOMAN. You spoke of a lady doctor. The word is known here only as the name of a butterfly.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [insanely] I give up. I can bear this no longer. It is easier to go out of my mind at once. [He rises and dances about, singing]
I’d be a butterfly, born in a bower,
Making apple dumplings without any flour.
THE WOMAN [smiling gravely] It must be at least a hundred and fifty years since I last laughed. But if you do that any more I shall certainly break out like a primary of sixty. Your dress is so extraordinarily ridiculous.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [halting abruptly in his antics] My dress ridiculous! I may not be dressed like a Foreign Office clerk; but my clothes are perfectly in fashion in my native metropolis, where yours–pardon my saying so–would be considered extremely unusual and hardly decent.
THE WOMAN. Decent? There is no such word in our language. What does it mean?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. It would not be decent for me to explain. Decency cannot be discussed without indecency.
THE WOMAN. I cannot understand you at all. I fear you have not been observing the rules laid down for shortlived visitors.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Surely, madam, they do not apply to persons of my age and standing. I am not a child, nor an agricultural laborer.
THE WOMAN [severely] They apply to you very strictly. You are expected to confine yourself to the society of children under sixty. You are absolutely forbidden to approach fully adult natives under any circumstances. You cannot converse with persons of my age for long without bringing on a dangerous attack of discouragement. Do you realize that you are already shewing grave symptoms of that very distressing and usually fatal complaint?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Certainly not, madam. I am fortunately in no danger of contracting it. I am quite accustomed to converse intimately and at the greatest length with the most distinguished persons. If you cannot discriminate between hay fever and imbecility, I can only say that your advanced years carry with them the inevitable penalty of dotage.
THE WOMAN. I am one of the guardians of this district; and I am responsible for your welfare–
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. The Guardians! Do you take me for a pauper?
THE WOMAN. I do not know what a pauper is. You must tell me who you are, if it is possible for you to express yourself intelligibly–
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [snorts indignantly]!
THE WOMAN [continuing]–and why you are wandering here alone without a nurse.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [outraged] Nurse!
THE WOMAN. Shortlived visitors are not allowed to go about here without nurses. Do you not know that rules are meant to be kept?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. By the lower classes, no doubt. But to persons in my position there are certain courtesies which are never denied by well-bred people; and–
THE WOMAN. There are only two human classes here: the shortlived and the normal. The rules apply to the shortlived, and are for their own protection. Now tell me at once who you are.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [impressively] Madam, I am a retired gentleman, formerly Chairman of the All-British Synthetic Egg and Vegetable Cheese Trust in Baghdad, and now President of the British Historical and Archaeological Society, and a Vice-President of the Travellers’ Club.
THE WOMAN. All that does not matter.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [again snorting] Hm! Indeed!
THE WOMAN. Have you been sent here to make your mind flexible?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. What an extraordinary question! Pray do you find my mind noticeably stiff?
THE WOMAN. Perhaps you do not know that you are on the west coast of Ireland, and that it is the practice among natives of the Eastern Island to spend some years here to acquire mental flexibility. The climate has that effect.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [haughtily] I was born, not in the Eastern Island, but, thank God, in dear old British Baghdad; and I am not in need of a mental health resort.
THE WOMAN. Then why are you here?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Am I trespassing? I was not aware of it.
THE WOMAN. Trespassing? I do not understand the word.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Is this land private property? If so, I make no claim. I proffer a shilling in satisfaction of damage (if any), and am ready to withdraw if you will be good enough to shew me the nearest way. [He offers her a shilling].
THE WOMAN [taking it and examining it without much interest] I do not understand a single word of what you have just said.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am speaking the plainest English. Are you the landlord?
THE WOMAN [shaking her head] There is a tradition in this part of the country of an animal with a name like that. It used to be hunted and shot in the barbarous ages. It is quite extinct now.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [breaking down again] It is a dreadful thing to be in a country where nobody understands civilized institutions. [He collapses on the bollard, struggling with his rising sobs]. Excuse me. Hay fever.
THE WOMAN [taking a tuning-fork from her girdle and holding it to her ear; then speaking into space on one note, like a chorister intoning a psalm] Burrin Pier Galway please send someone to take charge of a discouraged shortliver who has escaped from his nurse male harmless babbles unintelligibly with moments of sense distressed hysterical foreign dress very funny has curious fringe of white sea-weed under his chin.
THE GENTLEMAN. This is a gross impertinence. An insult.
THE WOMAN [replacing her tuning-fork and addressing the elderly gentleman] These words mean nothing to me. In what capacity are you here? How did you obtain permission to visit us?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [importantly] Our Prime Minister, Mr Badger Bluebin, has come to consult the oracle. He is my son-in-law. We are accompanied by his wife and daughter: my daughter and granddaughter. I may mention that General Aufsteig, who is one of our party, is really the Emperor of Turania travelling incognito. I understand he has a question to put to the oracle informally. I have come solely to visit the country.
THE WOMAN. Why should you come to a place where you have no business?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Great Heavens, madam, can anything be more natural? I shall be the only member of the Travellers’ Club who has set foot on these shores. Think of that! My position will be unique.
THE WOMAN. Is that an advantage? We have a person here who has lost both legs in an accident. His position is unique. But he would much rather be like everyone else.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. This is maddening. There is no analogy whatever between the two cases.
THE WOMAN. They are both unique.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Conversation in this place seems to consist of ridiculous quibbles. I am heartily tired of them.
THE WOMAN. I conclude that your Travellers’ Club is an assembly of persons who wish to be able to say that they have been in some place where nobody else has been.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Of Course if you wish to sneer at us–
THE WOMAN. What is sneer?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [with a wild sob] I shall drown myself.
He makes desperately for the edge of the pier, but is confronted by a man with the number one on his cap, who comes up the steps and intercepts him. He is dressed like the woman, but a slight moustache proclaims his sex.
THE MAN [to the elderly gentleman] Ah, here you are. I shall really have to put a collar and lead on you if you persist in giving me the slip like this.
THE WOMAN. Are you this stranger’s nurse?
THE MAN. Yes. I am very tired of him. If I take my eyes off him for a moment, he runs away and talks to everybody.
THE WOMAN [after taking out her tuning-fork and sounding it, intones as before] Burrin Pier. Wash out. [She puts up the fork, and addresses the man]. I sent a call for someone to take care of him. I have been trying to talk to him; but I can understand very little of what he says. You must take better care of him: he is badly discouraged already. If I can be of any further use, Fusima, Gort, will find me. [She goes away].
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Any further use! She has been of no use to me. She spoke to me without any introduction, like any improper female. And she has made off with my shilling.
THE MAN. Please speak slowly. I cannot follow. What is a shilling? What is an introduction? Improper female doesnt make sense.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Nothing seems to make sense here. All I can tell you is that she was the most impenetrably stupid woman I have ever met in the whole course of my life.
THE MAN. That cannot be. She cannot appear stupid to you. She is a secondary, and getting on for a tertiary at that.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. What is a tertiary? Everybody here keeps talking to me about primaries and secondaries and tertiaries as if people were geological strata.
THE MAN. The primaries are in their first century. The secondaries are in their second century. I am still classed as a primary [he points to his number]; but I may almost call myself a secondary, as I shall be ninety-five next January. The tertiaries are in their third century. Did you not see the number two on her badge? She is an advanced secondary.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. That accounts for it. She is in her second childhood.
THE MAN. Her second childhood! She is in her fifth childhood.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [again resorting to the bollard] Oh! I cannot bear these unnatural arrangements.
THE MAN [impatient and helpless] You shouldn’t have come among us. This is no place for you.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [nerved by indignation] May I ask why? I am a Vice-President of the Travellers’ Club. I have been everywhere: I hold the record in the Club for civilized countries.
THE MAN. What is a civilized country?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. It is–well, it is a civilized country. [Desperately] I don’t know: I–I–I–I shall go mad if you keep on asking me to tell you things that everybody knows. Countries where you can travel comfortably. Where there are good hotels. Excuse me; but, though you say you are ninety-four, you are worse company than a child of five with your eternal questions. Why not call me Daddy at once?
THE MAN. I did not know your name was Daddy.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. My name is Joseph Popham Bolge Bluebin Barlow, O.M.
THE MAN. That is five men’s names. Daddy is shorter. And O.M. will not do here. It is our name for certain wild creatures, descendants of the aboriginal inhabitants of this coast. They used to be called the O’Mulligans. We will stick to Daddy.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. People will think I am your father.
THE MAN [shocked] Sh-sh! People here never allude to such relationships. It is not quite delicate, is it? What does it matter whether you are my father or not?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. My worthy nonagenarian friend: your faculties are totally decayed. Could you not find me a guide of my own age?
THE MAN. A young person?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Certainly not. I cannot go about with a young person.
THE MAN. Why?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Why! Why!! Why!!! Have you no moral sense?
THE MAN. I shall have to give you up. I cannot understand you.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But you meant a young woman, didn’t you?
THE MAN. I meant simply somebody of your own age. What difference does it make whether the person is a man or a woman?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I could not have believed in the existence of such scandalous insensibility to the elementary decencies of human intercourse.
THE MAN. What are decencies?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [shrieking] Everyone asks me that.
THE MAN [taking out a tuning-fork and using it as the woman did] Zozim on Burrin Pier to Zoo Ennistymon I have found the discouraged shortliver he has been talking to a secondary and is much worse I am too old he is asking for someone of his own age or younger come if you can. [He puts up his fork and turns to the Elderly Gentleman]. Zoo is a girl of fifty, and rather childish at that. So perhaps she may make you happy.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Make me happy! A bluestocking of fifty! Thank you.
THE MAN. Bluestocking? The effort to make out your meaning is fatiguing. Besides, you are talking too much to me: I am old enough to discourage you. Let us be silent until Zoo comes. [He turns his back on the Elderly Gentleman, and sits down on the edge of the pier, with his legs dangling over the water].
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Certainly. I have no wish to force my conversation on any man who does not desire it. Perhaps you would like to take a nap. If so, pray do not stand on ceremony.
THE MAN. What is a nap?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [exasperated, going to him and speaking with great precision and distinctness] A nap, my friend, is a brief period of sleep which overtakes superannuated persons when they endeavor to entertain unwelcome visitors or to listen to scientific lectures. Sleep. Sleep. [Bawling into his ear] Sleep.
THE MAN. I tell you I am nearly a secondary. I never sleep.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [awestruck] Good Heavens!
A young woman with the number one on her cap arrives by land. She looks no older than Savvy Barnabas, whom she somewhat resembles, looked a thousand years before. Younger, if anything.
THE YOUNG WOMAN. Is this the patient?
THE MAN [scrambling up] This is Zoo. [To Zoo] Call him Daddy.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [vehemently] No.
THE MAN [ignoring the interruption] Bless you for taking him off my hands! I have had as much of him as I can bear. [He goes down the steps and disappears].
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [ironically taking off his hat and making a sweeping bow from the edge of the pier in the direction of the Atlantic Ocean] Good afternoon, sir; and thank you very much for your extraordinary politeness, your exquisite consideration for my feelings, your courtly manners. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. [Clapping his hat on again] Pig! Ass!
ZOO [laughs very heartily at him]!!!
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [turning sharply on her] Good afternoon, madam. I am sorry to have had to put your friend in his place; but I find that here as elsewhere it is necessary to assert myself if I am to be treated with proper consideration. I had hoped that my position as a guest would protect me from insult.
ZOO. Putting my friend in his place. That is some poetic expression, is it not? What does it mean?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Pray, is there no one in these islands who understands plain English?
ZOO. Well, nobody except the oracles. They have to make a special historical study of what we call the dead thought.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Dead thought! I have heard of the dead languages, but never of the dead thought.
ZOO. Well, thoughts die sooner than languages. I understand your language; but I do not always understand your thought. The oracles will understand you perfectly. Have you had your consultation yet?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I did not come to consult the oracle, madam. I am here simply as a gentleman travelling for pleasure in the company of my daughter, who is the wife of the British Prime Minister, and of General Aufsteig, who, I may tell you in confidence, is really the Emperor of Turania, the greatest military genius of the age.
ZOO. Why should you travel for pleasure! Can you not enjoy yourself at home?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I wish to see the World.
ZOO. It is too big. You can see a bit of it anywhere.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [out of patience] Damn it, madam, you don’t want to spend your life looking at the same bit of it! [Checking himself] I beg your pardon for swearing in your presence.
ZOO. Oh! That is swearing, is it? I have read about that. It sounds quite pretty. Dammitmaddam, dammitmaddam, dammitmaddam, dammitmaddam. Say it as often as you please: I like it.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [expanding with intense relief] Bless you for those profane but familiar words! Thank you, thank you. For the first time since I landed in this terrible country I begin to feel at home. The strain which was driving me mad relaxes: I feel almost as if I were at the club. Excuse my taking the only available seat: I am not so young as I was. [He sits on the bollard]. Promise me that you will not hand me over to one of these dreadful tertiaries or secondaries or whatever you call them.
ZOO. Never fear. They had no business to give you in charge to Zozim. You see he is just on the verge of becoming a secondary; and these adolescents will give themselves the airs of tertiaries. You naturally feel more at home with a flapper like me. [She makes herself comfortable on the sacks].
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Flapper? What does that mean?
ZOO. It is an archaic word which we still use to describe a female who is no longer a girl and is not yet quite adult.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. A very agreeable age to associate with, I find. I am recovering rapidly. I have a sense of blossoming like a flower. May I ask your name?
ZOO. Zoo.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Miss Zoo.
ZOO. Not Miss Zoo. Zoo.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Precisely. Er–Zoo what?
ZOO. No. Not Zoo What. Zoo. Nothing but Zoo.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [puzzled] Mrs Zoo, perhaps.
ZOO. No. Zoo. Cant you catch it? Zoo.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Of course. Believe me, I did not really think you were married: you are obviously too young; but here it is so hard to feel sure–er–
ZOO [hopelessly puzzled] What?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Marriage makes a difference, you know. One can say things to a married lady that would perhaps be in questionable taste to anyone without that experience.
ZOO. You are getting out of my depth: I dont understand a word you are saying. Married and questionable taste convey nothing to me. Stop, though. Is married an old form of the word mothered?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Very likely. Let us drop the subject. Pardon me for embarrassing you. I should not have mentioned it.
ZOO. What does embarrassing mean?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Well, really! I should have thought that so natural and common a condition would be understood as long as human nature lasted. To embarrass is to bring a blush to the cheek.
ZOO. What is a blush?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [amazed] Dont you blush???
ZOO. Never heard of it. We have a word flush, meaning a rush of blood to the skin. I have noticed it in my babies, but not after the age of two.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Your babies!!! I fear I am treading on very delicate ground; but your appearance is extremely youthful; and if I may ask how many–?
ZOO. Only four as yet. It is a long business with us. I specialize in babies. My first was such a success that they made me go on. I–
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [reeling on the bollard] Oh! dear!
ZOO. Whats the matter? Anything wrong?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. In Heaven’s name, madam, how old are you?
ZOO. Fifty-six.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. My knees are trembling. I fear I am really ill. Not so young as I was.
ZOO. I noticed that you are not strong on your legs yet. You have many of the ways and weaknesses of a baby. No doubt that is why I feel called on to mother you. You certainly are a very silly little Daddy.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [stimulated by indignation] My name, I repeat, is Joseph Popham Bolge Bluebin Barlow, O.M.
ZOO. What a ridiculously long name! I cant call you all that. What did your mother call you?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. You recall the bitterest struggles of my childhood. I was sensitive on the point. Children suffer greatly from absurd nicknames. My mother thoughtlessly called me Iddy Toodles. I was called Iddy until I went to school, when I made my first stand for children’s rights by insisting on being called at least Joe. At fifteen I refused to answer to anything shorter than Joseph. At eighteen I discovered that the name Joseph was supposed to indicate an unmanly prudery because of some old story about a Joseph who rejected the advances of his employer’s wife: very properly in my opinion. I then became Popham to my family and intimate friends, and Mister Barlow to the rest of the world. My mother slipped back into Iddy when her faculties began to fail her, poor woman; but I could not resent that, at her age.
ZOO. Do you mean to say that your mother bothered about you after you were ten?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Naturally, madam. She was my mother. What would you have had her do?
ZOO. Go on to the next, of course. After eight or nine children become quite uninteresting, except to themselves. I shouldnt know my two eldest if I met them.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [again drooping] I am dying. Let me die. I wish to die.
ZOO [going to him quickly and supporting him] Hold up. Sit up straight. Whats the matter?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [faintly] My spine, I think. Shock. Concussion.
ZOO [maternally] Pow wow wow! What is there to shock you? [Shaking him playfully] There! Sit up; and be good.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [still feebly] Thank you. I am better now.
ZOO [resuming her seat on the sacks] But what was all the rest of that long name for? There was a lot more of it. Blops Booby or something.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [impressively] Bolge Bluebin, madam: a historical name. Let me inform you that I can trace my family back for more than a thousand years, from the Eastern Empire to its ancient seat in these islands, to a time when two of my ancestors, Joyce Bolge and Hengist Horsa Bluebin, wrestled with one another for the prime ministership of the British Empire, and occupied that position successively with a glory of which we can in these degenerate days form but a faint conception. When I think of these mighty men, lions in war, sages in peace, not babblers and charlatans like the pigmies who now occupy their places in Baghdad, but strong silent men, ruling an empire on which the sun never set, my eyes fill with tears: my heart bursts with emotion: I feel that to have lived but to the dawn of manhood in their day, and then died for them, would have been a nobler and happier lot than the ignominious ease of my present longevity.
ZOO. Longevity! [she laughs].
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Yes, madam, relative longevity. As it is, I have to be content and proud to know that I am descended from both those heroes.
ZOO. You must be descended from every Briton who was alive in their time. Dont you know that?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Do not quibble, madam. I bear their names, Bolge and Bluebin; and I hope I have inherited something of their majestic spirit. Well, they were born in these islands. I repeat, these islands were then, incredible as it now seems, the centre of the British Empire. When that centre shifted to Baghdad, and the Englishman at last returned to the true cradle of his race in Mesopotamia, the western islands were cast off, as they had been before by the Roman Empire. But it was to the British race, and in these islands, that the greatest miracle in history occurred.
ZOO. Miracle?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Yes: the first man to live three hundred years was an Englishman. The first, that is, since the contemporaries of Methuselah.
ZOO. Oh, that!
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Yes, that, as you call it so flippantly. Are you aware, madam, that at that immortal moment the English race had lost intellectual credit to such an extent that they habitually spoke of one another as fatheads? Yet England is now a sacred grove to which statesmen from all over the earth come to consult English sages who speak with the experience of two and a half centuries of life. The land that once exported cotton shirts and hardware now exports nothing but wisdom. You see before you, madam, a man utterly weary of the week-end riverside hotels of the Euphrates, the minstrels and pierrots on the sands of the Persian Gulf, the toboggans and funiculars of the Hindoo Koosh. Can you wonder that I turn, with a hungry heart, to the mystery and beauty of these haunted islands, thronged with spectres from a magic past, made holy by the footsteps of the wise men of the West. Consider this island on which we stand, the last foothold of man on this side of the Atlantic: this Ireland, described by the earliest bards as an emerald gem set in a silver sea! Can I, a scion of the illustrious British race, ever forget that when the Empire transferred its seat to the East, and said to the turbulent Irish race which it had oppressed but never conquered, ‘At last we leave you to yourselves; and much good may it do you,’ the Irish as one man uttered the historic shout ‘No: we’ll be damned if you do,’ and emigrated to the countries where there was still a Nationalist question, to India, Persia, and Corea, to Morocco, Tunis, and Tripoli. In these countries they were ever foremost in the struggle for national independence; and the world rang continually with the story of their sufferings and wrongs. And what poem can do justice to the end, when it came at last? Hardly two hundred years had elapsed when the claims of nationality were so universally conceded that there was no longer a single country on the face of the earth with a national grievance or a national movement. Think of the position of the Irish, who had lost all their political faculties by disuse except that of nationalist agitation, and who owed their position as the most interesting race on earth solely to their sufferings! The very countries they had helped to set free boycotted them as intolerable bores. The communities which had once idolized them as the incarnation of all that is adorable in the warm heart and witty brain, fled from them as from a pestilence. To regain their lost prestige, the Irish claimed the city of Jerusalem, on the ground that they were the lost tribes of Israel; but on their approach the Jews abandoned the city and redistributed themselves throughout Europe. It was then that these devoted Irishmen, not one of whom had ever seen Ireland, were counselled by an English Archbishop, the father of the oracles, to go back to their own country. This had never once occurred to them, because there was nothing to prevent them and nobody to forbid them. They jumped at the suggestion. They landed here: here in Galway Bay, on this very ground. When they reached the shore the older men and women flung themselves down and passionately kissed the soil of Ireland, calling on the young to embrace the earth that had borne their ancestors. But the young looked gloomily on, and said ‘There is no earth, only stone.’ You will see by looking round you why they said that: the fields here are of stone: the hills are capped with granite. They all left for England next day; and no Irishman ever again confessed to being Irish, even to his own children; so that when that generation passed away the Irish race vanished from human knowledge. And the dispersed Jews did the same lest they should be sent back to Palestine. Since then the world, bereft of its Jews and its Irish, has been a tame dull place. Is there no pathos for you in this story? Can you not understand now why I am come to visit the scene of this tragic effacement of a race of heroes and poets?
ZOO. We still tell our little children stories like that, to help them to understand. But such things do not happen really. That scene of the Irish landing here and kissing the ground might have happened to a hundred people. It couldn’t have happened to a hundred thousand: you know that as well as I do. And what a ridiculous thing to call people Irish because they live in Ireland! you might as well call them Airish because they live in air. They must be just the same as other people. Why do you shortlivers persist in making up silly stories about the world and trying to act as if they were true? Contact with truth hurts and frightens you: you escape from it into an imaginary vacuum in which you can indulge your desires and hopes and loves and hates without any obstruction from the solid facts of life. You love to throw dust in your own eyes.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. It is my turn now, madam, to inform you that I do not understand a single word you are saying. I should have thought that the use of a vacuum for removing dust was a mark of civilization rather than of savagery.
ZOO [giving him up as hopeless] Oh, Daddy, Daddy: I can hardly believe that you are human, you are so stupid. It was well said of your people in the olden days, ‘Dust thou art; and to dust thou shalt return.’
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [nobly] My body is dust, madam: not my soul. What does it matter what my body is made of? the dust of the ground, the particles of the air, or even the slime of the ditch? The important thing is that when my Creator took it, whatever it was, He breathed into its nostrils the breath of life; and Man became a living soul. Yes, madam, a living soul. I am not the dust of the ground: I am a living soul. That is an exalting, a magnificent thought. It is also a great scientific fact. I am not interested in the chemicals and the microbes: I leave them to the chumps and noodles, to the blockheads and the muckrakers who are incapable of their own glorious destiny, and unconscious of their own divinity. They tell me there are leucocytes in my blood, and sodium and carbon in my flesh. I thank them for the information, and tell them that there are blackbeetles in my kitchen, washing soda in my laundry, and coal in my cellar. I do not deny their existence; but I keep them in their proper place, which is not, if I may be allowed to use an antiquated form of expression, the temple of the Holy Ghost. No doubt you think me behind the times; but I rejoice in my enlightenment; and I recoil from your ignorance, your blindness, your imbecility. Humanly I pity you. Intellectually I despise you.
ZOO. Bravo, Daddy! You have the root of the matter in you. You will not die of discouragement after all.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I have not the smallest intention of doing so, madam. I am no longer young; and I have moments of weakness; but when I approach this subject the divine spark in me kindles and glows, the corruptible becomes incorruptible, and the mortal Bolge Bluebin Barlow puts on immortality. On this ground I am your equal, even if you survive me by ten thousand years.
ZOO. Yes; but what do we know about this breath of life that puffs you up so exaltedly? Just nothing. So let us shake hands as cultivated Agnostics, and change the subject.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Cultivated fiddlesticks, madam! You cannot change this subject until the heavens and the earth pass away. I am not an Agnostic: I am a gentleman. When I believe a thing I say I believe it: when I don’t believe it I say I don’t believe it. I do not shirk my responsibilities by pretending that I know nothing and therefore can believe nothing. We cannot disclaim knowledge and shirk responsibility. We must proceed on assumptions of some sort or we cannot form a human society.
ZOO. The assumptions must be scientific, Daddy. We must live by science in the long run.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I have the utmost respect, madam, for the magnificent discoveries which we owe to science. But any fool can make a discovery. Every baby has to discover more in the first years of its life than Roger Bacon ever discovered in his laboratory. When I was seven years old I discovered the sting of the wasp. But I do not ask you to worship me on that account. I assure you, madam, the merest mediocrities can discover the most surprising facts about the physical universe as soon as they are civilized enough to have time to study these things, and to invent instruments and apparatus for research. But what is the consequence? Their discoveries discredit the simple stories of our religion. At first we had no idea of astronomical space. We believed the sky to be only the ceiling of a room as large as the earth, with another room on top of it. Death was to us a going upstairs into that room, or, if we did not obey the priests, going downstairs into the coal cellar. We founded our religion, our morality, our laws, our lessons, our poems, our prayers, on that simple belief. Well, the moment men became astronomers and made telescopes, their belief perished. When they could no longer believe in the sky, they found that they could no longer believe in their Deity, because they had always thought of him as living in the sky. When the priests themselves ceased to believe in their Deity and began to believe in astronomy, they changed their name and their dress, and called themselves doctors and men of science. They set up a new religion in which there was no Deity, but only wonders and miracles, with scientific instruments and apparatus as the wonder workers. Instead of worshipping the greatness and wisdom of the Deity, men gaped foolishly at the million billion miles of space and worshipped the astronomer as infallible and omniscient. They built temples for his telescopes. Then they looked into their own bodies with microscopes, and found there, not the soul they had formerly believed in, but millions of micro-organisms; so they gaped at these as foolishly as at the millions of miles, and built microscope temples in which horrible sacrifices were offered. They even gave their own bodies to be sacrificed by the microscope man, who was worshipped, like the astronomer, as infallible and omniscient. Thus our discoveries instead of increasing our wisdom, only destroyed the little childish wisdom we had. All I can grant you is that they increased our knowledge.
ZOO. Nonsense! Consciousness of a fact is not knowledge of it: if it were, the fish would know more of the sea than the geographers and the naturalists.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. That is an extremely acute remark, madam. The dullest fish could not possibly know less of the majesty of the ocean than many geographers and naturalists of my acquaintance.
ZOO. Just so. And the greatest fool on earth, by merely looking at a mariners’ compass, may become conscious of the fact that the needle turns always to the pole. Is he any the less a fool with that consciousness than he was without it?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Only a more conceited one, madam, no doubt. Still, I do not quite see how you can be aware of the existence of a thing without knowing it.
ZOO. Well, you can see a man without knowing him, can you not?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [illuminated] Oh how true! Of course, of course. There is a member of the Travellers’ Club who has questioned the veracity of an experience of mine at the South Pole. I see that man almost every day when I am at home. But I refuse to know him.
ZOO. If you could see him much more distinctly through a magnifying glass, or examine a drop of his blood through a microscope, or dissect out all his organs and analyze them chemically, would you know him then?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Certainly not. Any such investigation could only increase the disgust with which he inspires me, and make me more determined than ever not to know him on any terms.
ZOO. Yet you would be much more conscious of him, would you not?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I should not allow that to commit me to any familiarity with the fellow. I have been twice at the Summer Sports at the South Pole; and this man pretended he had been to the North Pole, which can hardly be said to exist, as it is in the middle of the sea. He declared he had hung his hat on it.
ZOO [laughing] He knew that travellers are amusing only when they are telling lies. Perhaps if you looked at that man through a microscope you would find some good in him.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I do not want to find any good in him. Besides, madam, what you have just said encourages me to utter an opinion of mine which is so advanced! so intellectually daring! that I have never ventured to confess to it before, lest I should be imprisoned for blasphemy, or even burnt alive.
ZOO. Indeed! What opinion is that?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [after looking cautiously round] I do not approve of microscopes. I never have.
ZOO. You call that advanced! Oh, Daddy, that is pure obscurantism.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Call it so if you will, madam; but I maintain that it is dangerous to shew too much to people who do not know what they are looking at. I think that a man who is sane as long as he looks at the world through his own eyes is very likely to become a dangerous madman if he takes to looking at the world through telescopes and microscopes. Even when he is telling fairy stories about giants and dwarfs, the giants had better not be too big nor the dwarfs too small and too malicious. Before the microscope came, our fairy stories only made the children’s flesh creep pleasantly, and did not frighten grown-up persons at all. But the microscope men terrified themselves and everyone else out of their wits with the invisible monsters they saw: poor harmless little things that die at the touch of a ray of sunshine, and are themselves the victims of all the diseases they are supposed to produce! Whatever the scientific people may say, imagination without microscopes was kindly and often courageous, because it worked on things of which it had some real knowledge. But imagination with microscopes, working on a terrifying spectacle of millions of grotesque creatures of whose nature it had no knowledge, became a cruel, terror-stricken, persecuting delirium. Are you aware, madam, that a general massacre of men of science took place in the twenty-first century of the pseudo-Christian era, when all their laboratories were demolished, and all their apparatus destroyed?
ZOO. Yes: the shortlived are as savage in their advances as in their relapses. But when Science crept back, it had been taught its place. The mere collectors of anatomical or chemical facts were not supposed to know more about Science than the collector of used postage stamps about international trade or literature. The scientific terrorist who was afraid to use a spoon or a tumbler until he had dipt it in some poisonous acid to kill the microbes, was no longer given titles, pensions, and monstrous powers over the bodies of other people: he was sent to an asylum, and treated there until his recovery. But all that is an old story: the extension of life to three hundred years has provided the human race with capable leaders, and made short work of such childish stuff.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [pettishly] You seem to credit every advance in civilization to your inordinately long lives. Do you not know that this question was familiar to men who died before they had reached my own age?
ZOO. Oh yes: one or two of them hinted at it in a feeble way. An ancient writer whose name has come down to us in several forms, such as Shakespear, Shelley, Sheridan, and Shoddy, has a remarkable passage about your dispositions being horridly shaken by thoughts beyond the reaches of your souls. That does not come to much, does it?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. At all events, madam, I may remind you, if you come to capping ages, that whatever your secondaries and tertiaries may be, you are younger than I am.
ZOO. Yes, Daddy; but it is not the number of years we have behind us, but the number we have before us, that makes us careful and responsible and determined to find out the truth about everything. What does it matter to you whether anything is true or not? your flesh is as grass: you come up like a flower, and wither in your second childhood. A lie will last your time: it will not last mine. If I knew I had to die in twenty years it would not be worth my while to educate myself: I should not bother about anything but having a little pleasure while I lasted.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Young woman: you are mistaken. Shortlived as we are, we–the best of us, I mean–regard civilization and learning, art and science, as an ever-burning torch, which passes from the hand of one generation to the hand of the next, each generation kindling it to a brighter, prouder flame. Thus each lifetime, however short, contributes a brick to a vast and growing edifice, a page to a sacred volume, a chapter to a Bible, a Bible to a literature. We may be insects; but like the coral insect we build islands which become continents: like the bee we store sustenance for future communities. The individual perishes; but the race is immortal. The acorn of today is the oak of the next millennium. I throw my stone on the cairn and die; but later comers add another stone and yet another; and lo! a mountain. I–
ZOO [interrupts him by laughing heartily at him]!!!!!!
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [with offended dignity] May I ask what I have said that calls for this merriment?
ZOO. Oh, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, you are a funny little man, with your torches, and your flames, and your bricks and edifices and pages and volumes and chapters and coral insects and bees and acorns and stones and mountains.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Metaphors, madam. Metaphors merely.
ZOO. Images, images, images. I was talking about men, not about images.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I was illustrating–not, I hope, quite infelicitously–the great march of Progress. I was shewing you how, shortlived as we orientals are, mankind gains in stature from generation to generation, from epoch to epoch, from barbarism to civilization, from civilization to perfection.
ZOO. I see. The father grows to be six feet high, and hands on his six feet to his son, who adds another six feet and becomes twelve feet high, and hands his twelve feet on to his son, who is full-grown at eighteen feet, and so on. In a thousand years you would all be three or four miles high. At that rate your ancestors Bilge and Bluebeard, whom you call giants, must have been about quarter of an inch high.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am not here to bandy quibbles and paradoxes with a girl who blunders over the greatest names in history. I am in earnest. I am treating a solemn theme seriously. I never said that the son of a man six feet high would be twelve feet high.
ZOO. You didn’t mean that?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Most certainly not.
ZOO. Then you didn’t mean anything. Now listen to me, you little ephemeral thing. I knew quite well what you meant by your torch handed on from generation to generation. But every time that torch is handed on, it dies down to the tiniest spark; and the man who gets it can rekindle it only by his own light. You are no taller than Bilge or Bluebeard; and you are no wiser. Their wisdom, such as it was, perished with them: so did their strength, if their strength ever existed outside your imagination. I do not know how old you are: you look about five hundred–
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Five hundred! Really, madam–
ZOO [continuing]; but I know, of course, that you are an ordinary shortliver. Well, your wisdom is only such wisdom as a man can have before he has had experience enough to distinguish his wisdom from his folly, his destiny from his delusions, his–
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. In short, such wisdom as your own.
ZOO. No, no, no, no. How often must I tell you that we are made wise not by the recollections of our past, but by the responsibilities of our future. I shall be more reckless when I am a tertiary than I am today. If you cannot understand that, at least you must admit that I have learnt from tertiaries. I have seen their work and lived under their institutions. Like all young things I rebelled against them; and in their hunger for new lights and new ideas they listened to me and encouraged me to rebel. But my ways did not work; and theirs did; and they were able to tell me why. They have no power over me except that power: they refuse all other power; and the consequence is that there are no limits to their power except the limits they set themselves. You are a child governed by children, who make so many mistakes and are so naughty that you are in continual rebellion against them; and as they can never convince you that they are right: they can govern you only by beating you, imprisoning you, torturing you, killing you if you disobey them without being strong enough to kill or torture them.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. That may be an unfortunate fact. I condemn it and deplore it. But our minds are greater than the facts. We know better. The greatest ancient teachers, followed by the galaxy of Christs who arose in the twentieth century, not to mention such comparatively modern spiritual leaders as Blitherinjam, Tosh, and Spiffkins, all taught that punishment and revenge, coercion and militarism, are mistakes, and that the golden rule–
ZOO. [interrupting] Yes, yes, yes, Daddy: we longlived people know that quite well. But did any of their disciples ever succeed in governing you for a single day on their Christ-like principles? It is not enough to know what is good: you must be able to do it. They couldn’t do it because they did not live long enough to find out how to do it, or to outlive the childish passions that prevented them from really wanting to do it. You know very well that they could only keep order–such as it was–by the very coercion and militarism they were denouncing and deploring. They had actually to kill one another for preaching their own gospel, or be killed themselves.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. The blood of the martyrs, madam, is the seed of the Church.
ZOO. More images, Daddy! The blood of the shortlived falls on stony ground.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [rising, very testy] You are simply mad on the subject of longevity. I wish you would change it. It is rather personal and in bad taste. Human nature is human nature, longlived or shortlived, and always will be.
ZOO. Then you give up the idea of progress? You cry off the torch, and the brick, and the acorn, and all the rest of it?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I do nothing of the sort. I stand for progress and for freedom broadening down from precedent to precedent.
ZOO. You are certainly a true Briton.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am proud of it. But in your mouth I feel that the compliment hides some insult; so I do not thank you for it.
ZOO. All I meant was that though Britons sometimes say quite clever things and deep things as well as silly and shallow things, they always forget them ten minutes after they have uttered them.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Leave it at that, madam: leave it at that. [He sits down again]. Even a Pope is not expected to be continually pontificating. Our flashes of inspiration shew that our hearts are in the right place.
ZOO. Of course. You cannot keep your heart in any place but the right place.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Tcha!
ZOO. But you can keep your hands in the wrong place. In your neighbor’s pockets, for example. So, you see, it is your hands that really matter.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [exhausted] Well, a woman must have the last word. I will not dispute it with you.
ZOO. Good. Now let us go back to the really interesting subject of our discussion. You remember? The slavery of the shortlived to images and metaphors.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [aghast] Do you mean to say, madam, that after having talked my head off, and reduced me to despair and silence by your intolerable loquacity, you actually propose to begin all over again? I shall leave you at once.
ZOO. You must not. I am your nurse; and you must stay with me.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I absolutely decline to do anything of the sort [he rises and walks away with marked dignity].
ZOO [using her tuning-fork] Zoo on Burrin Pier to Oracle Police at Ennistymon have you got me?… What?… I am picking you up now but you are flat to my pitch…. Just a shade sharper…. That’s better: still a little more…. Got you: right. Isolate Burrin Pier quick.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [is heard to yell] Oh!
ZOO [still intoning] Thanks…. Oh nothing serious I am nursing a shortliver and the silly creature has run away he has discouraged himself very badly by gadding about and talking to secondaries and I must keep him strictly to heel.
The Elderly Gentleman returns, indignant.
ZOO. Here he is you can release the Pier thanks. Goodbye. [She puts up her tuning-fork].
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. This is outrageous. When I tried to step off the pier on to the road, I received a shock, followed by an attack of pins and needles which ceased only when I stepped back on to the stones.
ZOO. Yes: there is an electric hedge there. It is a very old and very crude method of keeping animals from straying.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. We are perfectly familiar with it in Baghdad, madam; but I little thought I should live to have it ignominiously applied to myself. You have actually Kiplingized me.
ZOO. Kiplingized! What is that?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. About a thousand years ago there were two authors named Kipling. One was an eastern and a writer of merit: the other, being a western, was of course only an amusing barbarian. He is said to have invented the electric hedge. I consider that in using it on me you have taken a very great liberty.
ZOO. What is a liberty?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [exasperated] I shall not explain, madam. I believe you know as well as I do. [He sits down on the bollard in dudgeon].
ZOO. No: even you can tell me things I do not know. Havnt you noticed that all the time you have been here we have been asking you questions?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Noticed it! It has almost driven me mad. Do you see my white hair? It was hardly grey when I landed: there were patches of its original auburn still distinctly discernible.
ZOO. That is one of the symptoms of discouragement. But have you noticed something much more important to yourself: that is, that you have never asked us any questions, although we know so much more than you do?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am not a child, madam. I believe I have had occasion to say that before. And I am an experienced traveller. I know that what the traveller observes must really exist, or he could not observe it. But what the natives tell him is invariably pure fiction.
ZOO. Not here, Daddy. With us life is too long for telling lies. They all get found out. Youd better ask me questions while you have the chance.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. If I have occasion to consult the oracle I shall address myself to a proper one: to a tertiary: not to a primary flapper playing at being an oracle. If you are a nurserymaid, attend to your duties; and do not presume to ape your elders.
ZOO. [rising ominously and reddening] You silly–
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [thundering] Silence! Do you hear! Hold your tongue.
ZOO. Something very disagreeable is happening to me. I feel hot all over. I have a horrible impulse to injure you. What have you done to me?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [triumphant] Aha! I have made you blush. Now you know what blushing means. Blushing with shame!
ZOO. Whatever you are doing, it is something so utterly evil that if you do not stop I will kill you.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [apprehending his danger] Doubtless you think it safe to threaten an old man–
ZOO [fiercely] Old! You are a child: an evil child. We kill evil children here. We do it even against our own wills by instinct. Take care.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [rising with crestfallen courtesy] I did not mean to hurt your feelings. I–[swallowing the apology with an effort] I beg your pardon. [He takes off his hat, and bows].
ZOO. What does that mean?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I withdraw what I said.
ZOO. How can you withdraw what you said?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I can say no more than that I am sorry.
ZOO. You have reason to be. That hideous sensation you gave me is subsiding; but you have had a very narrow escape. Do not attempt to kill me again; for at the first sign in your voice or face I shall strike you dead.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I attempt to kill you! What a monstrous accusation!
ZOO [frowns]!
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [prudently correcting himself] I mean misunderstanding. I never dreamt of such a thing. Surely you cannot believe that I am a murderer.
ZOO. I know you are a murderer. It is not merely that you threw words at me as if they were stones, meaning to hurt me. It was the instinct to kill that you roused in me. I did not know it was in my nature: never before has it wakened and sprung out at me, warning me to kill or be killed. I must now reconsider my whole political position. I am no longer a Conservative.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [dropping his hat] Gracious Heavens! you have lost your senses. I am at the mercy of a madwoman: I might have known it from the beginning. I can bear no more of this. [Offering his chest for the sacrifice] Kill me at once; and much good may my death do you!
ZOO. It would be useless unless all the other shortlivers were killed at the same time. Besides, it is a measure which should be taken politically and constitutionally, not privately. However, I am prepared to discuss it with you.
ZOO. What good have our counsels ever done you? You come to us for advice when you know you are in difficulties. But you never know you are in difficulties until twenty years after you have made the mistakes that led to them; and then it is too late. You cannot understand our advice: you often do more mischief by trying to act on it than if you had been left to your own childish devices. If you were not childish you would not come to us at all: you would learn from experience that your consultations of the oracle are never of any real help to you. You draw wonderful imaginary pictures of us, and write fictitious tales and poems about our beneficent operations in the past, our wisdom, our justice, our mercy: stories in which we often appear as sentimental dupes of your prayers and sacrifices; but you do it only to conceal from yourselves the truth that you are incapable of being helped by us. Your Prime Minister pretends that he has come to be guided by the oracle; but we are not deceived: we know quite well that he has come here so that when he goes back he may have the authority and dignity of one who has visited the holy islands and spoken face to face with the ineffable ones. He will pretend that all the measures he wishes to take for his own purposes have been enjoined on him by the oracle.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But you forget that the answers of the oracle cannot be kept secret or misrepresented. They are written and promulgated. The Leader of the Opposition can obtain copies. All the nations know them. Secret diplomacy has been totally abolished.
ZOO. Yes: you publish documents; but they are garbled or forged. And even if you published our real answers it would make no difference, because the shortlived cannot interpret the plainest writings. Your scriptures command you in the plainest terms to do exactly the contrary of everything your own laws and chosen rulers command and execute. You cannot defy Nature. It is a law of Nature that there is a fixed relation between conduct and length of life.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No, no, no. I had much rather discuss your intention of withdrawing from the Conservative party. How the Conservatives have tolerated your opinions so far is more than I can imagine: I can only conjecture that you have contributed very liberally to the party funds. [He picks up his hat, and sits down again].
ZOO. Do not babble so senselessly: our chief political controversy is the most momentous in the world for you and your like.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [interested] Indeed? Pray, may I ask what it is? I am a keen politician, and may perhaps be of some use. [He puts on his hat, cocking it slightly].
ZOO. We have two great parties: the Conservative party and the Colonization party. The Colonizers are of opinion that we should increase our numbers and colonize. The Conservatives hold that we should stay as we are, confined to these islands, a race apart, wrapped up in the majesty of our wisdom on a soil held as holy ground for us by an adoring world, with our sacred frontier traced beyond dispute by the sea. They contend that it is our destiny to rule the world, and that even when we were shortlived we did so. They say that our power and our peace depend on our remoteness, our exclusiveness, our separation, and the restriction of our numbers. Five minutes ago that was my political faith. Now I do not think there should be any shortlived people at all. [She throws herself again carelessly on the sacks].
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Am I to infer that you deny my right to live because I allowed myself–perhaps injudiciously–to give you a slight scolding?
ZOO. Is it worth living for so short a time? Are you any good to yourself?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [stupent] Well, upon my soul!
ZOO. It is such a very little soul. You only encourage the sin of pride in us, and keep us looking down at you instead of up to something higher than ourselves.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Is not that a selfish view, madam? Think of the good you do us by your oracular counsels!
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I have never heard of any such law, madam.
ZOO. Well, you are hearing of it now.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Let me tell you that we shortlivers, as you call us, have lengthened our lives very considerably.
ZOO. How?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. By saving time. By enabling men to cross the ocean in an afternoon, and to see and speak to one another when they are thousands of miles apart. We hope shortly to organize their labor, and press natural forces into their service, so scientifically that the burden of labor will cease to be perceptible, leaving common men more leisure than they will know what to do with.
ZOO. Daddy: the man whose life is lengthened in this way may be busier than a savage; but the difference between such men living seventy years and those living three hundred would be all the greater; for to a shortliver increase of years is only increase of sorrow; but to a long-liver every extra year is a prospect which forces him to stretch his faculties to the utmost to face it. Therefore I say that we who live three hundred years can be of no use to you who live less than a hundred, and that our true destiny is not to advise and govern you, but to supplant and supersede you. In that faith I now declare myself a Colonizer and an Exterminator.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Oh, steady! steady! Pray! pray! Reflect, I implore you. It is possible to colonize without exterminating the natives. Would you treat us less mercifully than our barbarous forefathers treated the Redskin and the Negro? Are we not, as Britons, entitled at least to some reservations?
ZOO. What is the use of prolonging the agony? You would perish slowly in our presence, no matter what we did to preserve you. You were almost dead when I took charge of you today, merely because you had talked for a few minutes to a secondary. Besides, we have our own experience to go upon. Have you never heard that our children occasionally revert to the ancestral type, and are born shortlived?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [eagerly] Never. I hope you will not be offended if I say that it would be a great comfort to me if I could be placed in charge of one of those normal individuals.
ZOO. Abnormal, you mean. What you ask is impossible: we weed them all out.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. When you say that you weed them out, you send a cold shiver down my spine. I hope you don’t mean that you–that you–that you assist Nature in any way?
ZOO. Why not? Have you not heard the saying of the Chinese sage Dee Ning, that a good garden needs weeding? But it is not necessary for us to interfere. We are naturally rather particular as to the conditions on which we consent to live. One does not mind the accidental loss of an arm or a leg or an eye: after all, no one with two legs is unhappy because he has not three; so why should a man with one be unhappy because he has not two? But infirmities of mind and temper are quite another matter. If one of us has no self-control, or is too weak to bear the strain of our truthful life without wincing, or is tormented by depraved appetites and superstitions, or is unable to keep free from pain and depression, he naturally becomes discouraged, and refuses to live.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Good Lord! Cuts his throat, do you mean?
ZOO. No: why should he cut his throat? He simply dies. He wants to. He is out of countenance, as we call it.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Well!!! But suppose he is depraved enough not to want to die, and to settle the difficulty by killing all the rest of you?
ZOO. Oh, he is one of the thoroughly degenerate shortlivers whom we occasionally produce. He emigrates.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. And what becomes of him then?
ZOO. You shortlived people always think very highly of him. You accept him as what you call a great man.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. You astonish me; and yet I must admit that what you tell me accounts for a great deal of the little I know of the private life of our great men. We must be very convenient to you as a dumping place for your failures.
ZOO. I admit that.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Good. Then if you carry out your plan of colonization, and leave no shortlived countries in the world, what will you do with your undesirables?
ZOO. Kill them. Our tertiaries are not at all squeamish about killing.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Gracious Powers!
ZOO [glancing up at the sun] Come. It is just sixteen o’clock; and you have to join your party at half-past in the temple in Galway.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [rising] Galway! Shall I at last be able to boast of having seen that magnificent city?
ZOO. You will be disappointed: we have no cities. There is a temple of the oracle: that is all.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Alas! and I came here to fulfil two long-cherished dreams. One was to see Galway. It has been said, ‘See Galway and die.’ The other was to contemplate the ruins of London.
ZOO. Ruins! We do not tolerate ruins. Was London a place of any importance?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [amazed] What! London! It was the mightiest city of antiquity. [Rhetorically] Situate just where the Dover Road crosses the Thames, it–
ZOO [curtly interrupting] There is nothing there now. Why should anybody pitch on such a spot to live? The nearest houses are at a place called Strand-on-the-Green: it is very old. Come. We shall go across the water. [She goes down the steps].
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Sic transit gloria mundi!
ZOO [from below] What did you say?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [despairingly] Nothing. You would not understand. [He goes down the steps].
Act II
A courtyard before the columned portico of a temple. The temple door is in the middle of the portico. A veiled and robed woman of majestic carriage passes along behind the columns towards the entrance. From the opposite direction a man of compact figure, clean-shaven, saturnine, and self-centred: in short, very like Napoleon I, and wearing a military uniform of Napoleonic cut, marches with measured steps; places his hand in his lapel in the traditional manner; and fixes the woman with his eye. She stops, her attitude expressing haughty amazement at his audacity. He is on her right: she on his left.
NAPOLEON [impressively] I am the Man of Destiny.
THE VEILED WOMAN [unimpressed] How did you get in here?
NAPOLEON. I walked in. I go on until I am stopped. I never am stopped. I tell you I am the Man of Destiny.
THE VEILED WOMAN. You will be a man of very short destiny if you wander about here without one of our children to guide you. I suppose you belong to the Baghdad envoy.
NAPOLEON. I came with him; but I do not belong to him. I belong to myself. Direct me to the oracle if you can. If not, do not waste my time.
THE VEILED WOMAN. Your time, poor creature, is short. I will not waste it. Your envoy and his party will be here presently. The consultation of the oracle is arranged for them, and will take place according to the prescribed ritual. You can wait here until they come [she turns to go into the temple].
NAPOLEON. I never wait. [She stops]. The prescribed ritual is, I believe, the classical one of the pythoness on her tripod, the intoxicating fumes arising from the abyss, the convulsions of the priestess as she delivers the message of the God, and so on. That sort of thing does not impose on me: I use it myself to impose on simpletons. I believe that what is, is. I know that what is not, is not. The antics of a woman sitting on a tripod and pretending to be drunk do not interest me. Her words are put into her mouth, not by a god, but by a man three hundred years old, who has had the capacity to profit by his experience. I wish to speak to that man face to face, without mummery or imposture.
THE VEILED WOMAN. You seem to be an unusually sensible person. But there is no old man. I am the oracle on duty today. I am on my way to take my place on the tripod, and go through the usual mummery, as you rightly call it, to impress your friend the envoy. As you are superior to that kind of thing, you may consult me now. [She leads the way into the middle of the courtyard]. What do you want to know?
NAPOLEON [following her] Madam: I have not come all this way to discuss matters of State with a woman. I must ask you to direct me to one of your oldest and ablest men.
THE ORACLE. None of our oldest and ablest men or women would dream of wasting their time on you. You would die of discouragement in their presence in less than three hours.
NAPOLEON. You can keep this idle fable of discouragement for people credulous enough to be intimidated by it, madam. I do not believe in metaphysical forces.
THE ORACLE. No one asks you to. A field is something physical, is it not. Well, I have a field.
NAPOLEON. I have several million fields. I am Emperor of Turania.
THE ORACLE. You do not understand. I am not speaking of an agricultural field. Do you not know that every mass of matter in motion carries with it an invisible gravitational field, every magnet an invisible magnetic field, and every living organism a mesmeric field? Even you have a perceptible mesmeric field. Feeble as it is, it is the strongest I have yet observed in a shortliver.
NAPOLEON. By no means feeble, madam. I understand you now; and I may tell you that the strongest characters blench in my presence, and submit to my domination. But I do not call that a physical force.
THE ORACLE. What else do you call it, pray? Our physicists deal with it. Our mathematicians express its measurements in algebraic equations.
NAPOLEON. Do you mean that they could measure mine?
THE ORACLE. Yes: by a figure infinitely near to zero. Even in us the force is negligible during our first century of life. In our second it develops quickly, and becomes dangerous to shortlivers who venture into its field. If I were not veiled and robed in insulating material you could not endure my presence; and I am still a young woman: one hundred and seventy if you wish to know exactly.
NAPOLEON [folding his arms] I am not intimidated: no woman alive, old or young, can put me out of countenance. Unveil, madam. Disrobe. You will move this temple as easily as shake me.
THE ORACLE. Very well [she throws back her veil].
NAPOLEON [shrieking, staggering, and covering his eyes] No. Stop. Hide your face again. [Shutting his eyes and distractedly clutching at his throat and heart] Let me go. Help! I am dying.
THE ORACLE. Do you still wish to consult an older person?
NAPOLEON. No, no. The veil, the veil, I beg you.
THE ORACLE [replacing the veil] So.
NAPOLEON. Ouf! One cannot always be at one’s best. Twice before in my life I have lost my nerve and behaved like a poltroon. But I warn you not to judge my quality by these involuntary moments.
THE ORACLE. I have no occasion to judge of your quality. You want my advice. Speak quickly; or I shall go about my business.
NAPOLEON [After a moment’s hesitation, sinks respectfully on one knee] I–
THE ORACLE. Oh, rise, rise. Are you so foolish as to offer me this mummery which even you despise?
NAPOLEON [rising] I knelt in spite of myself. I compliment you on your impressiveness, madam.
THE ORACLE [impatiently] Time! time! time! time!
NAPOLEON. You will not grudge me the necessary time, madam, when you know my case. I am a man gifted with a certain specific talent in a degree altogether extraordinary. I am not otherwise a very extraordinary person: my family is not influential; and without this talent I should cut no particular figure in the world.
THE ORACLE. Why cut a figure in the world?
NAPOLEON. Superiority will make itself felt, madam. But when I say I possess this talent I do not express myself accurately. The truth is that my talent possesses me. It is genius. It drives me to exercise it. I must exercise it. I am great when I exercise it. At other moments I am nobody.
THE ORACLE. Well, exercise it. Do you need an oracle to tell you that?
NAPOLEON. Wait. This talent involves the shedding of human blood.
THE ORACLE. Are you a surgeon, or a dentist?
NAPOLEON. Psha! You do not appreciate me, madam. I mean the shedding of oceans of blood, the death of millions of men.
THE ORACLE. They object, I suppose.
NAPOLEON. Not at all. They adore me.
THE ORACLE. Indeed!
NAPOLEON. I have never shed blood with my own hand. They kill each other: they die with shouts of triumph on their lips. Those who die cursing do not curse me. My talent is to organize this slaughter; to give mankind this terrible joy which they call glory; to let loose the devil in them that peace has bound in chains.
THE ORACLE. And you? Do you share their joy?
NAPOLEON. Not at all. What satisfaction is it to me to see one fool pierce the entrails of another with a bayonet? I am a man of princely character, but of simple personal tastes and habits. I have the virtues of a laborer: industry and indifference to personal comfort. But I must rule, because I am so superior to other men that it is intolerable to me to be misruled by them. Yet only as a slayer can I become a ruler. I cannot be great as a writer: I have tried and failed. I have no talent as a sculptor or painter; and as lawyer, preacher, doctor, or actor, scores of second-rate men can do as well as I, or better. I am not even a diplomatist: I can only play my trump card of force. What I can do is to organize war. Look at me! I seem a man like other men, because nine-tenths of me is common humanity. But the other tenth is a faculty for seeing things as they are that no other man possesses.
THE ORACLE. You mean that you have no imagination?
NAPOLEON [forcibly] I mean that I have the only imagination worth having: the power of imagining things as they are, even when I cannot see them. You feel yourself my superior, I know: nay, you are my superior: have I not bowed my knee to you by instinct? Yet I challenge you to a test of our respective powers. Can you calculate what the methematicians call vectors, without putting a single algebraic symbol on paper? Can you launch ten thousand men across a frontier and a chain of mountains and know to a mile exactly where they will be at the end of seven weeks? The rest is nothing: I got it all from the books at my military school. Now this great game of war, this playing with armies as other men play with bowls and skittles, is one which I must go on playing, partly because a man must do what he can and not what he would like to do, and partly because, if I stop, I immediately lose my power and become a beggar in the land where I now make men drunk with glory.
THE ORACLE. No doubt then you wish to know how to extricate yourself from this unfortunate position?
NAPOLEON. It is not generally considered unfortunate, madam. Supremely fortunate rather.
THE ORACLE. If you think so, go on making them drunk with glory. Why trouble me with their folly and your vectors?
NAPOLEON. Unluckily, madam, men are not only heroes: they are also cowards. They desire glory; but they dread death.
THE ORACLE. Why should they? Their lives are too short to be worth living. That is why they think your game of war worth playing.
NAPOLEON. They do not look at it quite in that way. The most worthless soldier wants to live for ever. To make him risk being killed by the enemy I have to convince him that if he hesitates he will inevitably be shot at dawn by his own comrades for cowardice.
THE ORACLE. And if his comrades refuse to shoot him?
NAPOLEON. They will be shot too, of course.
THE ORACLE. By whom?
NAPOLEON. By their comrades.
THE ORACLE. And if they refuse?
NAPOLEON. Up to a certain point they do not refuse.
THE ORACLE. But when that point is reached, you have to do the shooting yourself, eh?
NAPOLEON. Unfortunately, madam, when that point is reached, they shoot me.
THE ORACLE. Mf! It seems to me they might as well shoot you first as last. Why don’t they?
NAPOLEON. Because their love of fighting, their desire for glory, their shame of being branded as dastards, their instinct to test themselves in terrible trials, their fear of being killed or enslaved by the enemy, their belief that they are defending their hearths and homes, overcome their natural cowardice, and make them willing not only to risk their own lives but to kill everyone who refuses to take that risk. But if war continues too long, there comes a time when the soldiers, and also the taxpayers who are supporting and munitioning them, reach a condition which they describe as being fed up. The troops have proved their courage, and want to go home and enjoy in peace the glory it has earned them. Besides, the risk of death for each soldier becomes a certainty if the fighting goes on for ever: he hopes to escape for six months, but knows he cannot escape for six years. The risk of bankruptcy for the citizen becomes a certainty in the same way. Now what does this mean for me?
THE ORACLE. Does that matter in the midst of such calamity?
NAPOLEON. Psha! madam: it is the only thing that matters: the value of human life is the value of the greatest living man. Cut off that infinitesimal layer of grey matter which distinguishes my brain from that of the common man, and you cut down the stature of humanity from that of a giant to that of a nobody. I matter supremely: my soldiers do not matter at all: there are plenty more where they came from. If you kill me, or put a stop to my activity (it is the same thing), the nobler part of human life perishes. You must save the world from that catastrophe, madam. War has made me popular, powerful, famous, historically immortal. But I foresee that if I go on to the end it will leave me execrated, dethroned, imprisoned, perhaps executed. Yet if I stop fighting I commit suicide as a great man and become a common one. How am I to escape the horns of this tragic dilemma? Victory I can guarantee: I am invincible. But the cost of victory is the demoralization, the depopulation, the ruin of the victors no less than of the vanquished. How am I to satisfy my genius by fighting until I die? that is my question to you.
THE ORACLE. Were you not rash to venture into these sacred islands with such a question on your lips? Warriors are not popular here, my friend.
NAPOLEON. If a soldier were restrained by such a consideration, madam, he would no longer be a soldier. Besides [he produces a pistol], I have not come unarmed.
THE ORACLE. What is that thing?
NAPOLEON. It is an instrument of my profession, madam. I raise this hammer; I point the barrel at you; I pull this trigger that is against my forefinger; and you fall dead.
THE ORACLE. Shew it to me [she puts out her hand to take it from him].
NAPOLEON [retreating a step] Pardon me, madam. I never trust my life in the hands of a person over whom I have no control.
THE ORACLE [sternly] Give it to me [she raises her hand to her veil].
NAPOLEON [dropping the pistol and covering his eyes] Quarter! Kamerad! Take it, madam [he kicks it towards her]: I surrender.
THE ORACLE. Give me that thing. Do you expect me to stoop for it?
NAPOLEON [taking his hands from his eyes with an effort] A poor victory, madam [he picks up the pistol and hands it to her]: there was no vector strategy needed to win it. [Making a pose of his humiliation] But enjoy your triumph: you have made me–ME! Cain Adamson Charles Napoleon! Emperor of Turania! cry for quarter.
THE ORACLE. The way out of your difficulty, Cain Adamson, is very simple.
NAPOLEON [eagerly] Good. What is it?
THE ORACLE. To die before the tide of glory turns. Allow me [she shoots him].
He falls with a shriek. She throws the pistol away and goes haughtily into the temple.
NAPOLEON [scrambling to his feet] Murderess! Monster! She-devil! Unnatural, inhuman wretch! You deserve to be hanged, guillotined, broken on the wheel, burnt alive. No sense of the sacredness of human life! No thought for my wife and children! Bitch! Sow! Wanton! [He picks up the pistol]. And missed me at five yards! Thats a woman all over.
He is going away whence he came when Zoo arrives and confronts him at the head of a party consisting of the British Envoy, the Elderly Gentleman, the Envoy’s wife, and her daughter, aged about eighteen. The envoy, a typical politician, looks like an imperfectly reformed criminal disguised by a good tailor. The dress of the ladies is coeval with that of the Elderly Gentleman, and suitable for public official ceremonies in western capitals at the XVIII-XIX fin de siècle.
They file in under the portico. Zoo immediately comes out imperiously to Napoleon’s right, whilst the Envoy’s wife hurries effusively to his left. The Envoy meanwhile passes along behind the columns to the door, followed by his daughter. The Elderly Gentleman stops just where he entered, to see why Zoo has swooped so abruptly on the Emperor of Turania.
ZOO [to Napoleon, severely] What are you doing here by yourself? You have no business to go about here alone. What was that noise just now? What is that in your hand?
Napoleon glares at her in speechless fury; pockets the pistol; and produces a whistle.
THE ENVOY’S WIFE. Arnt you coming with us to the oracle, sire?
NAPOLEON. To hell with the oracle, and with you too [he turns to go]!
THE ENVOY’S WIFE [simultaneous w/ Zoo] Oh, sire!!
ZOO [simultaneous w/ the Envoy’s Wife] Where are you going?
NAPOLEON. To fetch the police. [He goes out past Zoo, almost jostling her, and blowing piercing blasts on his whistle].
ZOO [whipping out her tuning-fork and intoning] Hallo Galway Central. [The whistling continues]. Stand by to isolate. [To the Elderly Gentleman, who is staring after the whistling Emperor] How far has he gone?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. To that curious statue of a fat old man.
ZOO [quickly, intoning] Isolate the Falstaff monument isolate hard. Paralyze–[the whistling stops]. Thank you. [She puts up her tuning-fork]. He shall not move a muscle until I come to fetch him.
THE ENVOY’S WIFE. Oh! he will be frightfully angry! Did you hear what he said to me?
ZOO. Much we care for his anger!
THE DAUGHTER [coming forward between her mother and Zoo]. Please, madam, whose statue is it? and where can I buy a picture postcard of it? It is so funny. I will take a snapshot when we are coming back; but they come out so badly sometimes.
ZOO. They will give you pictures and toys in the temple to take away with you. The story of the statue is too long. It would bore you [she goes past them across the courtyard to get rid of them].
THE WIFE [gushing] Oh no, I assure you.
THE DAUGHTER [copying her mother] We should be so interested.
ZOO. Nonsense! All I can tell you about it is that a thousand years ago, when the whole world was given over to you shortlived people, there was a war called the War to end War. In the war which followed it about ten years later, hardly any soldiers were killed; but seven of the capital cities of Europe were wiped out of existence. It seems to have been a great joke: for the statesmen who thought they had sent ten million common men to their deaths were themselves blown into fragments with their houses and families, while the ten million men lay snugly in the caves they had dug for themselves. Later on even the houses escaped; but their inhabitants were poisoned by gas that spared no living soul. Of course the soldiers starved and ran wild; and that was the end of pseudo-Christian civilization. The last civilized thing that happened was that the statesmen discovered that cowardice was a great patriotic virtue; and a public monument was erected to its first preacher, an ancient and very fat sage called Sir John Falstaff. Well [pointing], thats Falstaff.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [coming from the portico to his granddaughter’s right] Great Heavens! And at the base of this monstrous poltroon’s statue the War God of Turania is now gibbering impotently.
ZOO. Serve him right! War God indeed!
THE ENVOY [coming between his wife and Zoo] I don’t know any history: a modern Prime Minister has something better to do than sit reading books; but–
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [interrupting him encouragingly] You make history, Ambrose.
THE ENVOY. Well, perhaps I do; and perhaps history makes me. I hardly recognize myself in the newspapers sometimes, though I suppose leading articles are the materials of history, as you might say. But what I want to know is, how did war come back again? and how did they make those poisonous gases you speak of? We should be glad to know; for they might come in very handy if we have to fight Turania. Of course I am all for peace, and don’t hold with the race of armaments in principle; still, we must keep ahead or be wiped out.
ZOO. You can make the gases for yourselves when your chemists find out how. Then you will do as you did before: poison each other until there are no chemists left, and no civilization. You will then begin all over again as half-starved ignorant savages, and fight with boomerangs and poisoned arrows until you work up to the poison gases and high explosives once more, with the same result. That is, unless we have sense enough to make an end of this ridiculous game by destroying you.
THE ENVOY [aghast] Destroying us!
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I told you, Ambrose. I warned you.
THE ENVOY. But–
ZOO [impatiently] I wonder what Zozim is doing. He ought to be here to receive you.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Do you mean that rather insufferable young man whom you found boring me on the pier?
ZOO. Yes. He has to dress-up in a Druid’s robe, and put on a wig and a long false beard, to impress you silly people. I have to put on a purple mantle. I have no patience with such mummery; but you expect it from us; so I suppose it must be kept up. Will you wait here until Zozim comes, please [she turns to enter the temple].
THE ENVOY. My good lady, is it worth while dressing-up and putting on false beards for us if you tell us beforehand that it is all humbug?
ZOO. One would not think so; but if you wont believe in anyone who is not dressed-up, why, we must dress-up for you. It was you who invented all this nonsense, not we.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But do you expect us to be impressed after this?
ZOO. I don’t expect anything. I know, as a matter of experience, that you will be impressed. The oracle will frighten you out of your wits. [She goes into the temple].
THE WIFE. These people treat us as if we were dirt beneath their feet. I wonder at you putting up with it, Amby. It would serve them right if we went home at once: wouldnt it, Eth?
THE DAUGHTER. Yes, mamma. But perhaps they wouldnt mind.
THE ENVOY. No use talking like that, Molly. Ive got to see this oracle. The folks at home wont know how we have been treated: all theyll know is that Ive stood face to face with the oracle and had the straight tip from her. I hope this Zozim chap is not going to keep us waiting much longer; for I feel far from comfortable about the approaching interview; and thats the honest truth.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I never thought I should want to see that man again; but now I wish he would take charge of us instead of Zoo. She was charming at first: quite charming; but she turned into a fiend because I had a few words with her. You would not believe: she very nearly killed me. You heard what she said just now. She belongs to a party here which wants to have us all killed.
THE WIFE [terrified] Us! But we have done nothing: we have been as nice to them as nice could be. Oh, Amby, come away, come away: there is something dreadful about this place and these people.
THE ENVOY. There is, and no mistake. But youre safe with me: you ought to have sense enough to know that.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I am sorry to say, Molly, that it is not merely us four poor weak creatures they want to kill, but the entire race of Man, except themselves.
THE ENVOY. Not so poor neither, Poppa. Nor so weak, if you are going to take in all the Powers. If it comes to killing, two can play at that game, longlived or shortlived.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No, Ambrose: we should have no chance. We are worms beside these fearful people: mere worms.
Zozim comes from the temple, robed majestically, and wearing a wreath of mistletoe in his flowing white wig. His false beard reaches almost to his waist. He carries a staff with a curiously carved top.
ZOZIM [in the doorway, impressively] Hail, strangers!
ALL [reverently] Hail!
ZOZIM. Are ye prepared?
THE ENVOY. We are.
ZOZIM [unexpectedly becoming conversational, and strolling down carelessly to the middle of the group between the two ladies] Well, I’m sorry to say the oracle is not. She was delayed by some member of your party who got loose; and as the show takes a bit of arranging, you will have to wait a few minutes. The ladies can go inside and look round the entrance hall and get pictures and things if they want them.
THE WIFE [simultaneous w/ the Daughter] Thank you.
The DAUGHTER [simultaneous w/ the Wife] I should like to, very much. [They go into the temple.]
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [in dignified rebuke of Zozim’s levity] Taken in this spirit, sir, the show, as you call it, becomes almost an insult to our common sense.
ZOZIM. Quite, I should say. You need not keep it up with me.
THE ENVOY [suddenly making himself very agreeable] Just so: just so. We can wait as long as you please. And now, if I may be allowed to seize the opportunity of a few minutes’ friendly chat–?
ZOZIM. By all means, if only you will talk about things I can understand.
THE ENVOY. Well, about this colonizing plan of yours. My father-in-law here has been telling me something about it; and he has just now let out that you want not only to colonize us, but to–to–to–well, shall we say to supersede us? Now why supersede us? Why not live and let live? Theres not a scrap of ill-feeling on our side. We should welcome a colony of immortals–we may almost call you that–in the British Middle East. No doubt the Turanian Empire, with its Mahometan traditions, overshadows us now. We have had to bring the Emperor with us on this expedition, though of course you know as well as I do that he has imposed himself on my party just to spy on me. I dont deny that he has the whip hand of us to some extent, because if it came to a war none of our generals could stand up against him. I give him best at that game: he is the finest soldier in the world. Besides, he is an emperor and an autocrat; and I am only an elected representative of the British democracy. Not that our British democrats wont fight: they will fight the heads off all the Turanians that ever walked; but then it takes so long to work them up to it, while he has only to say the word and march. But you people would never get on with him. Believe me, you would not be as comfortable in Turania as you would be with us. We understand you. We like you. We are easy-going people; and we are rich people. That will appeal to you. Turania is a poor place when all is said. Five-eighths of it is desert. They dont irrigate as we do. Besides–now I am sure this will appeal to you and to all right-minded men–we are Christians.
ZOZIM. The old uns prefer Mahometans.
THE ENVOY [shocked] What!
ZOZIM [distinctly] They prefer Mahometans. Whats wrong with that?
THE ENVOY. Well, of all the disgraceful–
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [diplomatically interrupting his scandalized son-in-law] There can be no doubt, I am afraid, that by clinging too long to the obsolete features of the old pseudo-Christian Churches we allowed the Mahometans to get ahead of us at a very critical period of the development of the Eastern world. When the Mahometan Reformation took place, it left its followers with the enormous advantage of having the only established religion in the world in whose articles of faith any intelligent and educated person could believe.
THE ENVOY. But what about our Reformation? Dont give the show away, Poppa. We followed suit, didnt we?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Unfortunately, Ambrose, we could not follow suit very rapidly. We had not only a religion to deal with, but a Church.
ZOZIM. What is a Church?
THE ENVOY. Not know what a Church is! Well!
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. You must excuse me; but if I attempted to explain you would only ask me what a bishop is; and that is a question that no mortal man can answer. All I can tell you is that Mahomet was a truly wise man; for he founded a religion without a Church; consequently when the time came for a Reformation of the mosques there were no bishops and priests to obstruct it. Our bishops and priests prevented us for two hundred years from following suit; and we have never recovered the start we lost then. I can only plead that we did reform our Church at last. No doubt we had to make a few compromises as a matter of good taste; but there is now very little in our Articles of Religion that is not accepted as at least allegorically true by our Higher Criticism.
THE ENVOY [encouragingly] Besides, does it matter? Why, I have never read the Articles in my life; and I am Prime Minister! Come! if my services in arranging for the reception of a colonizing party would be acceptable, they are at your disposal. And when I say a reception I mean a reception. Royal honors, mind you! A salute of a hundred and one guns! The streets lined with troops! The Guards turned out at the Palace! Dinner at the Guildhall!
ZOZIM. Discourage me if I know what youre talking about! I wish Zoo would come: she understands these things. All I can tell you is that the general opinion among the Colonizers is in favor of beginning in a country where the people are of a different color from us; so that we can make short work without any risk of mistakes.
THE ENVOY. What do you mean by short work? I hope–
ZOZIM [with obviously feigned geniality] Oh, nothing, nothing, nothing. We are thinking of trying North America: thats all. You see, the Red Men of that country used to be white. They passed through a period of sallow complexions, followed by a period of no complexions at all, into the red characteristic of their climate. Besides, several cases of long life have occurred in North America. They joined us here; and their stock soon reverted to the original white of these islands.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But have you considered the possibility of your colony turning red?
ZOZIM. That wont matter. We are not particular about our pigmentation. The old books mention red-faced Englishmen: they appear to have been common objects at one time.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [very persuasively] But do you think you would be popular in North America? It seems to me, if I may say so, that on your own shewing you need a country in which society is organized in a series of highly exclusive circles, in which the privacy of private life is very jealously guarded, and in which no one presumes to speak to anyone else without an introduction following a strict examination of social credentials. It is only in such a country that persons of special tastes and attainments can form a little world of their own, and protect themselves absolutely from intrusion by common persons. I think I may claim that our British society has developed this exclusiveness to perfection. If you would pay us a visit and see the working of our caste system, our club system, our guild system, you would admit that nowhere else in the world, least of all, perhaps in North America, which has a regrettable tradition of social promiscuity, could you keep yourselves so entirely to yourselves.
ZOZIM [good-naturedly embarrassed] Look here. There is no good discussing this. I had rather not explain; but it wont make any difference to our Colonizers what sort of short-livers they come across. We shall arrange all that. Never mind how. Let us join the ladies.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [throwing off his diplomatic attitude and abandoning himself to despair] We understand you only too well, sir. Well, kill us. End the lives you have made miserably unhappy by opening up to us the possibility that any of us may live three hundred years. I solemnly curse that possibility. To you it may be a blessing, because you do live three hundred years. To us, who live less than a hundred, whose flesh is as grass, it is the most unbearable burden our poor tortured humanity has ever groaned under.
THE ENVOY. Hullo, Poppa! Steady! How do you make that out?
ZOZIM. What is three hundred years? Short enough, if you ask me. Why, in the old days you people lived on the assumption that you were going to last out for ever and ever and ever. Immortal, you thought yourselves. Were you any happier then?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. As President of the Baghdad Historical Society I am in a position to inform you that the communities which took this monstrous pretension seriously were the most wretched of which we have any record. My Society has printed an editio princeps of the works of the father of history, Thucyderodotus Macolly-buckle. Have you read his account of what was blasphemously called the Perfect City of God, and the attempt made to reproduce it in the northern part of these islands by Jonhobsnoxius, called the Leviathan? Those misguided people sacrificed the fragment of life that was granted to them to an imaginary immortality. They crucified the prophet who told them to take no thought for the morrow, and that here and now was their Australia: Australia being a term signifying paradise, or an eternity of bliss. They tried to produce a condition of death in life: to mortify the flesh, as they called it.
ZOZIM. Well, you are not suffering from that, are you? You have not a mortified air.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Naturally we are not absolutely insane and suicidal. Nevertheless we impose on ourselves abstinences and disciplines and studies that are meant to prepare us for living three centuries. And we seldom live one. My childhood was made unnecessarily painful, my boyhood unnecessarily laborious, by ridiculous preparations for a length of days which the chances were fifty thousand to one against my ever attaining. I have been cheated out of the natural joys and freedoms of my life by this dream to which the existence of these islands and their oracles gives a delusive possibility of realization. I curse the day when long life was invented, just as the victims of Jonhobsnoxius cursed the day when eternal life was invented.
ZOZIM. Pooh! You could live three centuries if you chose.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. That is what the fortunate always say to the unfortunate. Well, I do not choose. I accept my three score and ten years. If they are filled with usefulness, with justice, with mercy, with good-will: if they are the lifetime of a soul that never loses its honor and a brain that never loses its eagerness, they are enough for me, because these things are infinite and eternal, and can make ten of my years as long as thirty of yours. I shall not conclude by saying live as long as you like and be damned to you, because I have risen for the moment far above any ill-will to you or to any fellow-creature; but I am your equal before that eternity in which the difference between your lifetime and mine is as the difference between one drop of water and three in the eyes of the Almighty Power from which we have both proceeded.
ZOZIM [impressed] You spoke that piece very well, Daddy. I couldnt talk like that if I tried. It sounded fine. Ah! here comes the ladies.
To his relief, they have just appeared on the threshold of the temple.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [passing from exaltation to distress] It means nothing to him: in this land of discouragement the sublime has become the ridiculous. [Turning on the hopelessly puzzled Zozim] ‘Behold, thou hast made my days as it were a span long; and mine age is even as nothing in respect of thee.’
THE WIFE [running to him; simultaneous w/ the Daughter] Poppa, Poppa: dont look like that.
THE DAUGHTER [running to him; simultaneous w/ the Wife] Oh, grandpa, whats the matter?
ZOZIM [with a shrug] Discouragement!
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [throwing off the women with a superb gesture] Liar! [Recollecting himself, he adds, with noble courtesy, raising his hat and bowing] I beg your pardon, sir; but I am NOT discouraged.
A burst of orchestral music, through which a powerful gong sounds, is heard from the temple. Zoo, in a purple robe, appears in the doorway.
ZOO. Come. The oracle is ready.
Zozim motions them to the threshold with a wave of his staff. The Envoy and the Elderly Gentleman take off their hats and go into the temple on tiptoe, Zoo leading the way. The Wife and Daughter, frightened as they are, raise their heads uppishly and follow flatfooted, sustained by a sense of their Sunday clothes and social consequence. Zozim remains in the portico, alone.
ZOZIM [taking off his wig, beard, and robe, and bundling them under his arm] Ouf! [He goes home].
Act III
Inside the temple. A gallery overhanging an abyss. Dead silence. The gallery is brightly lighted; but beyond is a vast gloom, continually changing in intensity. A shaft of violet light shoots upward; and a very harmonious and silvery carillon chimes. When it ceases the violet ray vanishes.
Zoo comes along the gallery, followed by the Envoy’s daughter, his wife, the Envoy himself, and the Elderly Gentleman. The two men are holding their hats with the brims near their noses, as if prepared to pray into them at a moment’s notice. Zoo halts: they all follow her example. They contemplate the void with awe. Organ music of the kind called sacred in the nineteenth century begins. Their awe deepens. The violet ray, now a diffused mist, rises again from the abyss.
THE WIFE [to Zoo, in a reverent whisper] Shall we kneel?
ZOO [loudly] Yes, if you want to. You can stand on your head if you like. [She sits down carelessly on the gallery railing, with her back to the abyss].
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [jarred by her callousness] We desire to behave in a becoming manner.
ZOO. Very well. Behave just as you feel. It doesn’t matter how you behave. But keep your wits about you when the pythoness ascends, or you will forget the questions you have come to ask her.
THE ENVOY [simultaneous w/ the Daughter; very nervous, takes out a paper to refresh his memory] Ahem!
THE DAUGHTER [simultaneous w/ the Envoy; alarmed] The pythoness? Is she a snake?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Tch-ch! The priestess of the oracle. A sybil. A prophetess. Not a snake.
THE WIFE. How awful!
ZOO. I’m glad you think so.
THE WIFE. Oh dear! Dont you think so?
ZOO. No. This sort of thing is got up to impress you, not to impress me.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I wish you would let it impress us, then, madam. I am deeply impressed; but you are spoiling the effect.
ZOO. You just wait. All this business with colored lights and chords on that old organ is only tomfoolery. Wait til you see the pythoness.
The Envoy’s wife falls on her knees, and takes refuge in prayer.
THE DAUGHTER [trembling] Are we really going to see a woman who has lived three hundred years?
ZOO. Stuff! Youd drop dead if a tertiary as much as looked at you. The oracle is only a hundred and seventy; and you’ll find it hard enough to stand her.
THE DAUGHTER [piteously] Oh! [she falls on her knees].
THE ENVOY. Whew! Stand by me, Poppa. This is a little more than I bargained for. Are you going to kneel; or how?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Perhaps it would be in better taste.
The two men kneel.
The vapor of the abyss thickens; and a distant roll of thunder seems to come from its depths. The pythoness, seated on her tripod, rises slowly from it. She has discarded the insulating robe and veil in which she conversed with Napoleon, and is now draped and hooded in voluminous folds of a single piece of grey-white stuff. Something supernatural about her terrifies the beholders, who throw themselves on their faces. Her outline flows and waves: she is almost distinct at moments, and again vague and shadowy: above all, she is larger than life-size, not enough to be measured by the flustered congregation, but enough to affect them with a dreadful sense of her supernaturalness.
ZOO. Get up, get up. Do pull yourselves together, you people.
The Envoy and his family, by shuddering negatively, intimate that it is impossible. The Elderly Gentleman manages to get on his hands and knees.
ZOO. Come on, Daddy: you are not afraid. Speak to her. She wont wait here all day for you, you know.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [rising very deferentially to his feet] Madam: you will excuse my very natural nervousness in addressing, for the first time in my life, a–a–a–a goddess. My friend and relative the Envoy is unhinged. I throw myself upon your indulgence–
ZOO [interrupting him intolerantly] Dont throw yourself on anything belonging to her or you will go right through her and break your neck. She isnt solid, like you.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I was speaking figuratively–
ZOO. You have been told not to do it. Ask her what you want to know; and be quick about it.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [stooping and taking the prostrate Envoy by the shoulders] Ambrose: you must make an effort. You cannot go back to Baghdad without the answers to your questions.
THE ENVOY [rising to his knees] I shall be only too glad to get back alive on any terms. If my legs would support me I’d just do a bunk straight for the ship.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No, no. Remember: your dignity–
THE ENVOY. Dignity be damned! I’m terrified. Take me away, for God’s sake.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [producing a brandy flask and taking the cap off] Try some of this. It is still nearly full, thank goodness!
THE ENVOY [clutching it and drinking eagerly] Ah! Thats better. [He tries to drink again. Finding that he has emptied it, he hands it back to his father-in-law upside down].
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [taking it] Great heavens! He has swallowed half-a-pint of neat brandy. [Much perturbed, he screws the cap on again, and pockets the flask].
THE ENVOY [staggering to his feet; pulling a paper from his pocket; and speaking with boisterous confidence] Get up, Molly. Up with you, Eth.
The two women rise to their knees.
THE ENVOY. What I want to ask is this. [He refers to the paper]. Ahem! Civilization has reached a crisis. We are at the parting of the ways. We stand on the brink of the Rubicon. Shall we take the plunge? Already a leaf has been torn out of the book of the Sybil. Shall we wait until the whole volume is consumed? On our right is the crater of the volcano: on our left the precipice. One false step, and we go down to annihilation dragging the whole human race with us. [He pauses for breath].
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [recovering his spirits under the familiar stimulus of political oratory] Hear, hear!
ZOO. What are you raving about? Ask your question while you have the chance. What is it you want to know?
THE ENVOY [patronizing her in the manner of a Premier debating with a very young member of the Opposition] A young woman asks me a question. I am always glad to see the young taking an interest in politics. It is an impatient question; but it is a practical question, an intelligent question. She asks why we seek to lift a corner of the veil that shrouds the future from our feeble vision.
ZOO. I don’t. I ask you to tell the oracle what you want, and not keep her sitting there all day.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [warmly] Order, order!
ZOO. What does ‘Order, order!’ mean?
THE ENVOY. I ask the august oracle to listen to my voice–
ZOO. You people seem never to tire of listening to your voices; but it doesn’t amuse us. What do you want?
THE ENVOY. I want, young woman, to be allowed to proceed without unseemly interruptions.
A low roll of thunder comes from the abyss.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. There! Even the oracle is indignant. [To the Envoy] Do not allow yourself to be put down by this lady’s rude clamor, Ambrose. Take no notice. Proceed.
THE ENVOY’S WIFE. I cant bear this much longer, Amby. Remember: I havn’t had any brandy.
HIS DAUGHTER [trembling] There are serpents curling in the vapor. I am afraid of the lightning. Finish it, Papa; or I shall die.
THE ENVOY [sternly] Silence. The destiny of British civilization is at stake. Trust me. I am not afraid. As I was saying–where was I?
ZOO. I don’t know. Does anybody?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [tactfully] You were just coming to the election, I think.
THE ENVOY [reassured] Just so. The election. Now what we want to know is this: ought we to dissolve in August, or put it off until next spring?
ZOO. Dissolve? In what? [Thunder]. Oh! My fault this time. That means that the oracle understands you, and desires me to hold my tongue.
THE ENVOY [fervently] I thank the oracle.
THE WIFE [to Zoo] Serve you right!
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Before the oracle replies, I should like to be allowed to state a few of the reasons why, in my opinion, the Government should hold on until the spring. In the first–
Terrific lightning and thunder. The Elderly Gentleman is knocked flat; but as he immediately sits up again dazedly it is clear that he is none the worse for the shock. The ladies cower in terror. The Envoy’s hat is blown off; but he seizes it just as it quits his temples, and holds it on with both hands. He is recklessly drunk, but quite articulate, as he seldom speaks in public without taking stimulants beforehand.
THE ENVOY [taking one hand from his hat to make a gesture of stilling the tempest] Thats enough. We know how to take a hint. I’ll put the case in three words. I am the leader of the Potterbill party. My party is in power. I am Prime Minister. The Opposition–the Rotterjacks–have won every bye-election for the last six months. They–
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [scrambling heatedly to his feet] Not by fair means. By bribery, by misrepresentation, by pandering to the vilest prejudices [muttered thunder]–I beg your pardon [he is silent].
THE ENVOY. Never mind the bribery and lies. The oracle knows all about that. The point is that though our five years will not expire until the year after next, our majority will be eaten away at the bye-elections by about Easter. We can’t wait: we must start some question that will excite the public, and go to the country on it. But some of us say do it now. Others say wait til the spring. We cant make up our minds one way or the other. Which would you advise?
ZOO. But what is the question that is to excite your public?
THE ENVOY. That doesnt matter. I dont know yet. We will find a question all right enough. The oracle can foresee the future: we cannot. [Thunder]. What does that mean? What have I done now?
ZOO. [severely] How often must you be told that we cannot foresee the future? There is no such thing as the future until it is the present.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Allow me to point out, madam, that when the Potterbill party sent to consult the oracle fifteen years ago, the oracle prophesied that the Potterbills would be victorious at the General Election; and they were. So it is evident that the oracle can foresee the future, and is sometimes willing to reveal it.
THE ENVOY. Quite true. Thank you, Poppa. I appeal now, over your head, young woman, direct to the August Oracle, to repeat the signal favor conferred on my illustrious predecessor, Sir Fuller Eastwind, and to answer me exactly as he was answered.
The oracle raises her hands to command silence.
ALL. Sh-sh-sh!
Invisible trombones utter three solemn blasts in the manner of Die Zauberflöte.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. May I–
ZOO [quickly] Hush. The oracle is going to speak.
THE ORACLE. Go home, poor fool.
She vanishes; and the atmosphere changes to prosaic daylight. Zoo comes off the railing; throws off her robe; makes a bundle of it; and tucks it under her arm. The magic and mystery are gone. The women rise to their feet. The Envoy’s party stare at one another helplessly.
ZOO. The same reply, word for word, that your illustrious predecessor, as you call him, got fifteen years ago. You asked for it; and you got it. And just think of all the important questions you might have asked. She would have answered them, you know. It is always like that. I will go and arrange to have you sent home: you can wait for me in the entrance hall [she goes out].
THE ENVOY. What possessed me to ask for the same answer old Eastwind got?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But it was not the same answer. The answer to Eastwind was an inspiration to our party for years. It won us the election.
THE ENVOY’S DAUGHTER. I learnt it at school, granpa. It wasn’t the same at all. I can repeat it. [She quotes] ‘When Britain was cradled in the west, the east wind hardened her and made her great. Whilst the east wind prevails Britain shall prosper. The east wind shall wither Britain’s enemies in the day of contest. Let the Rotterjacks look to it.’
THE ENVOY. The old man invented that. I see it all. He was a doddering old ass when he came to consult the oracle. The oracle naturally said ‘Go home, poor fool.’ There was no sense in saying that to me; but as that girl said, I asked for it. What else could the poor old chap do but fake up an answer fit for publication? There were whispers about it; but nobody believed them. I believe them now.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Oh, I cannot admit that Sir Fuller Eastwind was capable of such a fraud.
THE ENVOY. He was capable of anything: I knew his private secretary. And now what are we going to say? You don’t suppose I am going back to Baghdad to tell the British Empire that the oracle called me a fool, do you?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Surely we must tell the truth, however painful it may be to our feelings.
THE ENVOY. I am not thinking of my feelings: I am not so selfish as that, thank God. I am thinking of the country: of our party. The truth, as you call it, would put the Rotterjacks in for the next twenty years. It would be the end of me politically. Not that I care for that: I am only too willing to retire if you can find a better man. Dont hesitate on my account.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No, Ambrose: you are indispensable. There is no one else.
THE ENVOY. Very well, then. What are you going to do?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. My dear Ambrose, you are the leader of the party, not I. What are you going to do?
THE ENVOY. I am going to tell the exact truth; thats what I’m going to do. Do you take me for a liar?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [puzzled] Oh. I beg your pardon. I understood you to say–
THE ENVOY [cutting him short] You understood me to say that I am going back to Baghdad to tell the British electorate that the oracle repeated to me, word for word, what it said to Sir Fuller Eastwind fifteen years ago. Molly and Ethel can bear me out. So must you, if you are an honest man. Come on.
He goes out, followed by his wife and daughter.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [left alone and shrinking into an old and desolate figure] What am I to do? I am a most perplexed and wretched man. [He falls on his knees, and stretches his hands in entreaty over the abyss]. I invoke the oracle. I cannot go back and connive at a blasphemous lie. I implore guidance.
The Pythoness walks in on the gallery behind him, and touches him on the shoulder. Her size is now natural. Her face is hidden by her hood. He flinches as if from an electric shock; turns to her; and cowers, covering his eyes in terror.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. No: not close to me. I’m afraid I can’t bear it.
THE ORACLE [with grave pity] Come: look at me. I am my natural size now: what you saw there was only a foolish picture of me thrown on a cloud by a lantern. How can I help you?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. They have gone back to lie about your answer. I cannot go with them. I cannot live among people to whom nothing is real. I have become incapable of it through my stay here. I implore to be allowed to stay.
THE ORACLE. My friend: if you stay with us you will die of discouragement.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. If I go back I shall die of disgust and despair. I take the nobler risk. I beg you, do not cast me out.
He catches her robe and holds her.
THE ORACLE. Take care. I have been here one hundred and seventy years. Your death does not mean to me what it means to you.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. It is the meaning of life, not of death, that makes banishment so terrible to me.
THE ORACLE. Be it so, then. You may stay.
She offers him her hands. He grasps them and raises himself a little by clinging to her. She looks steadily into his face. He stiffens; a little convulsion shakes him; his grasp relaxes; and he falls dead.
THE ORACLE [looking down at the body] Poor shortlived thing! What else could I do for you?