Ape and Essence Read online

  Dr. Poole reaches into his pocket and pulls out the little volume which he rescued yesterday from the furnace. He opens it, turns the pages and begins to read aloud.

  "'Warm fragrance seems to fall from her light dress

  And her loose hair; and where some heavy tress

  The air of her own speed has disentwined,

  The sweetness seems to satiate the faint wind;

  And in the soul a wild odour is felt

  Beyond the sense, like fiery dews that melt

  Into the bosom of a frozen bud.'"

  "What's that?" Loola asks.

  "You!" He bends down and kisses her hair. "'And in the soul,'" he whispers, " 'a wild odour is felt beyond the sense.' In the soul," he repeats.

  "What's the soul?" Loola asks.

  "Well. . ." He hesitates; then, deciding to let Shelley give the answer, he resumes his reading.

  "'See where she stands, a mortal shape indued

  With love and life and light and deity,

  And motion which may change, but never die,

  An image of some bright Eternity,

  A shadow of some golden dream; a Splendour

  Leaving the third sphere pilotless; a tender

  Reflection of the eternal Moon of Love. . .'"

  "But I don't understand a word of it," Loola com­plains.

  "And until today," says Dr. Poole, smiling down at her, "until today, neither did I."

  We dissolve to the exterior of the Unholy of Unholies, two weeks later. Several hundreds of bearded men and slatternly women are queued up, in double file, awaiting their turn to enter the shrine. The Camera passes down the long line of dull and dirty faces, then holds on Loola and Dr. Poole, who are in the act of passing through the sliding doors.

  Within all is gloom and silence. Two by two the nymphs and prancing satyrs of a few short days ago shuffle despondently past an altar, whose mighty candle is now eclipsed by a tin extinguisher. At the foot of the Arch-Vicar's empty throne lies the heap of discarded Seventh Commandments. As the pro­cession slowly passes, the Archimandrite in charge of Public Morals hands out to every male an apron and to every female an apron and four round patches.

  "Out through the side door," he repeats to each recipient.

  And out through the side door, when their turn comes, Loola and Dr. Poole duly go. There, in the sunshine, a score of Postulants are busily at work, with thread and needle, stitching aprons to waist­bands, patches to trouser seats and shirt fronts.

  The Camera holds on Loola. Three young sem­inarists in Toggenberg cassocks accost her as she emerges into the open air.

  She hands her apron to the first, a patch to each of the others. All three set to work simultaneously and with extraordinary rapidity. NO, NO and NO.

  "Turn around, please."

  Handing over her last patches, she obeys; and, while the apron specialist moves away to attend to Dr. Poole, the others ply their needles so diligently that, in half a minute, she is no less forbidding from behind than when seen from in front

  "There!"

  "And there!"

  The two clerical tailors step aside and reveal a close shot of their handiwork. NO NO. Cut back to the Postulants, who express their sentiments by spitting in unison, then turn toward the door of the shrine.

  "Next lady, please."

  Wearing a look of extreme dejection, the two in­separable mulatto girls step forward together.

  Cut to Dr. Poole. Aproned and bearded with a fortnight's growth of hair, he walks over to where Loola is waiting for him.

  "This way, please," says a shrill voice.

  In silence they take their places at the end of yet another queue. Resignedly, two or three hundred per­sons are waiting to be assigned their tasks by the Grand Inquisitor's Chief Assistant in charge of Public Works. Three-horned and robed impressively in a white Saanen soutane, the great man is sitting with a couple of two-horned Familiars at a large table, on which stand several steel filing cabinets salvaged from the offices of the Providential Life Insurance Com­pany.

  A series of montage shots exhibits, in twenty seconds, the slow, hour-long advance of Loola and Dr. Poole towards the well-spring of Authority. And now at last they have reached their destination. Close shot of the Grand Inquisitor's Special Assistant as he tells Dr. Poole to report to the Director of Food Production at his office in the ruins of the Administration Building of the University of Southern California. This gentle­man will see that the botanist gets a laboratory, a plot of ground for his experimental planting, and up to four labourers to perform the manual work.

  "Up to four labourers," the prelate repeats, "Though at ordinary times. . ."

  Unauthorised, Loola breaks into the conversation.

  "Oh, let me be one of the labourers," she begs. "Please."

  The Grand Inquisitor's Special Assistant gives her a long withering look, then turns to his Familiars.

  "And who, pray, is this young vessel of the Unholy Spirit?" he asks.

  One of the Familiars extracts Loola's card from the file and provides the relevant information. Aged eighteen and hitherto sterile, the vessel in question is reported to have associated during one off-season with a notorious Hot, who was later liquidated while trying to resist arrest. Nothing however was ever proved against the said vessel and its conduct has been generally satisfactory. Said vessel has been em­ployed, for the past year, as a miner of cemeteries and is to be similarly employed during the coming season.

  "But I want to work with Alfie," she protests.

  "You seem to forget," says the first Familiar, "that this is a Democracy. . ."

  "A Democracy," adds his colleague, "in which every proletarian enjoys perfect freedom."

  "True freedom."

  "Freely doing the will of the Proletariat."

  "And vox proletariate, vox Diaboli."

  "While, of course, vox Diaboli, vox Ecclesiae."

  "And we here are the Church's representatives."

  "So you see."

  "But I'm tired of cemeteries," the girl insists. "I'd like to dig up live things for a change."

  There is a brief silence. Then the Grand Inquisitor's Special Assistant bends down and, from under his chair, produces a very large consecrated bull's pizzle, which he lays on the table before him. Then he turns to his subordinates.

  "Correct me if I'm wrong," he says. "But my im­pression is that any vessel rejecting proletarian liberty is liable to twenty-five lashes for each and every such offence."

  There is another silence. Pale and wide-eyed, Loola stares at the instrument of torture, then looks away, makes an effort to speak, finds herself voiceless and, swallowing hard, tries again.

  "I won't resist," she manages to bring out. "I really want to be free."

  "Free to go on mining cemeteries?"

  She nods affirmatively.

  "There's a good vessel!" says the Special Assistant.

  Loola turns to Dr. Poole and, for a few seconds, they look into one another's eyes without speaking.

  "Good-by, Alfie," she whispers at last.

  "Good-by, Loola."

  Two more seconds pass; then she drops her eyes and walks away.

  "And now," says the Special Assistant to Dr. Poole, "we can get back to business. At ordinary times, as I was saying, you would be expected to make use of not more than two labourers. Do I make myself clear?"

  Dr. Poole inclines his head.

  We dissolve to a laboratory in which the sophomores of the University of Southern California once pursued the study of Elementary Biology. There are the usual sinks and tables, Bunsen burners and bal­ances, cages for mice and guinea pigs, glass tanks for tadpoles. But the dust is thick over everything and scattered about the room lie half a dozen skele­tons, still associated with the crumbling remains of slacks and sweaters, of Nylons and costume jewellery and brassieres.

  The door opens and Dr. Poole enters, followed by the Director of F
ood Production, an elderly, grey-bearded man wearing homespun trousers, the standard apron and a cutaway coat that must once have be­longed to the English butler of some twentieth-century motion picture executive.

  "A little messy, I'm afraid," says the Director apol­ogetically. "But I'll have the bones cleared out this afternoon and tomorrow the charvessels can dust off the tables and wash the floors."

  "Quite," says Dr. Poole, "quite."

  Dissolve to the same room a week later. The skel­etons have been removed and thanks to the charvessels the floors, walls and furniture are almost clean. Dr. Poole has three distinguished visitors. Wearing his four horns and the brown, Anglo-Nubian habit of the Society of Moloch, the Arch-Vicar is seated beside the Chief, who is dressed in the much be-medalled uniform of a Rear-Admiral of the United States Navy, recently disinterred from Forest Lawn. At a respectful distance behind and to one side of the two Heads of Church and State sits the Director of Food Production, still disguised as a butler. Facing them, in the posture of a French Academician prepar­ing to read his latest production to some choice and privileged audience, sits Dr. Poole.

  "Shall I begin?" he asks.

  The heads of Church and State exchange glances; then turn to Dr. Poole and simultaneously nod their assent. He opens his notebook and adjusts his spectacles.

  "Notes on Soil Erosion and Plant Pathology in Southern California," he reads aloud. "Followed by a Preliminary Report on the Agricultural Situation and a Plan of Remedial Action for the Future. By Alfred Poole D.Sc. Assistant Professor of Botany at the University of Auckland."

  As he reads, we dissolve to a slope among the foot­hills of the San Gabriel Mountains. Naked but for a cactus here and there, the stony ground lies dead and mangled in the sunshine. A network of ramifying gullies furrows the hillside. Some of them are still in the infancy of erosion, others have cut their way deep into the ground. The ruins of a substantial house, half of which has already been engulfed, stand pre­cariously at the edge of one of these strangely fretted canyons. In the plain, at the foot of the hill, dead walnut trees emerge from the dried mud in which successive rains have buried them.

  Over the shot we hear the sonorous drone of Dr. Poole's voice.

  "In true symbiosis," he is saying, "there is a mu­tually beneficial relationship between two associated organisms. The distinguishing mark of parasitism, on the other hand, is that one organism lives at the expense of another. In the end this one-sided rela­tionship proves fatal to both parties; for the death of the host cannot but result in the death of the parasite by which it has been killed. The relation­ship between modern man and the planet, of which, until so recently, he regarded himself as the master, has been that, not of symbiotic partners, but of tape­worm and infested dog, of fungus and blighted po­tato."

  Cut back to the Chief. Within its nest of curly black beard, the red-lipped mouth has opened into an enormous yawn. Over the shot Dr. Poole reads on.

  "Ignoring the obvious fact that his devastation of natural resources would, in the long run, result in the ruin of his civilization and even in the extinction of his species, modern man continued, generation after gen­eration, to exploit the earth in such a way that. . ."

  "Couldn't you make it a bit snappier?" asks the Chief.

  Dr. Poole begins by looking offended. Then he remembers that he is a condemned captive on proba­tion among savages, and forces a nervous smile.

  "Perhaps it might be best," he says, "if we passed without more ado to the section on Plant Pathology."

  "I don't care," says the Chief, "so long as you make it snappy."

  "Impatience," pipes the Arch-Vicar sententiously, "is one of Belial's favourite vices."

  Dr. Poole, meanwhile, has turned over three or four pages and is ready to start again.

  "Given the existing state of the soil, yield per acre would be abnormally low, even if the principal food plants were completely healthy. But they are not healthy. After viewing crops in the field, after inspect­ing grains, fruits and tubers in storage, after examining botanical specimens under an almost undamaged pre-Thing microscope, I feel certain that there is only one explanation for the number and variety of plant diseases now rampant in the area -- namely, deliberate infection of the crops by means of fungus bombs, bacteria-bearing aerosols and the release of many species of virus-carrying aphides and other insects. Otherwise how account for the prevalence and ex­treme virulence of Giberella Saubinettii and Puccinia graminis? Of Phytophthora infestans and Synchitrium endobioticum? Of all the mosaic diseases due to viruses? Of Bacillus amylovorus, Bacillus carotovorus, Pseudomonas citri, Pseudomonas tumefaciens, Bac­terium. . ."

  Cutting short his recitation almost before it has begun, the Arch-Vicar interrupts him.

  "And you still maintain," he says, "that these people weren't possessed by Belial!" He shakes his head. "It's incredible how prejudice can blind even the most intelligent, the most highly educated. . ."

  "Yes, yes, we know all that," says the Chief im­patiently. "But now let's cut all the cackle and get down to practical business. What can you do about all this?"

  Dr. Poole clears his throat.

  "The task," he says impressively, "will be long-drawn and extremely arduous."

  "But I want more food now," says the Chief im­periously. "I've got to have it this very year."

  Somewhat apprehensively Dr. Poole is forced to tell him that disease-resisting varieties of plants can­not be bred and tested in under ten or twelve years. And meanwhile there is the question of the land; the erosion is destroying the land, erosion must be checked at all costs. But the labour of terracing and draining and composting is enormous and must go on unremit­tingly, year after year. Even in the old days, when manpower and machinery were plentiful, people had failed to do what was necessary to preserve the fer­tility of the soil.

  "It wasn't because they couldn't," puts in the Arch-Vicar. "It was because they didn't want to. Between World War II and World War III they had all the time and all the equipment they needed. But they preferred to amuse themselves with power politics, and what were the consequences?" He counts off the answers on his thick fingers. "Worse malnutrition for more people. More political unrest. Resulting in more aggressive nationalism and imperialism. And finally the Thing. And why did they choose to destroy them­selves? Because that was what Belial wanted them to do, because He had taken possession. . ."

  The Chief holds up his hand.

  "Please, please," he protests. "This isn't a course in Apologetics or Natural Diabology. We're trying to do something."

  "And unfortunately the doing will take a long time," says Dr. Poole.

  "How long?"

  "Well, in five years you might find yourself hold­ing your own against erosion. In ten years there'd be a perceptible improvement. In twenty years, some of your land might be back to as much as seventy per cent of its original fertility. In fifty years. . ."

  "In fifty years," puts in the Arch-Vicar, "the de­formity rate will be double what it is at present. And in a hundred years the triumph of Belial will be complete. But complete!" he repeats with a childlike giggle. He makes the sign of the horns and gets up from his chair. "But meanwhile I'm all for this gentle­man doing everything he can."

  Dissolve to the Hollywood Cemetery. Trucking shot of the monuments, with which our earlier visit to the graveyard has already made us familiar.

  Medium close shot of the statue of Hedda Boddy. The Camera drops from the figure to the pedestal and the inscription.

  ". . . . affectionately known as Public Sweetheart Number One. 'Hitch your wagon to a Star.' "

  Over the shot we hear the sound of a spade being thrust into the ground, then the rattle of sand and gravel as the earth is tossed aside.

  The Camera pulls back, and we see Loola standing in a three-foot hole, wearily digging.

  The sound of footsteps makes her look up. Flossie, the plump girl of the earlier sequence, enters the shot.

&n
bsp; "Getting on all right?" she asks.

  Loola nods without speaking and wipes her fore­head with the back of her hand.

  "When you hit the pay dirt," the plump girl goes on, "come and report to us."

  "It'll take at least an hour more," says Loola gloomily.

  "Well, keep at it, kid," says Flossie in the madden­ingly hearty tones of a person delivering a pep talk. "Put your back into it. Prove to them that a vessel can do as much as a man! If you work well," she goes on encouragingly, "maybe the Superintendent will let you keep the Nylons. Look at the pair I got this morning!"

  She pulls the coveted trophies from her pocket. Except for a greenish discoloration around the toes, the stockings are in perfect condition.

  "Oh!" cries Loola in envious admiration.

  "But we didn't have any luck with the jewellery," says Flossie, as she puts the stockings away again. "Just the wedding ring and a rotten little bracelet. Let's hope this one won't let us down."

  She pats the Parian stomach of Public Sweetheart Number One.

  "Well, I must get back," she continues. "We're digging for the vessel who's buried under that red stone cross -- you know, the big one, near the north gate."

  Loola nods.

  "I'll be there as soon as I make a strike," she says.

  Whistling the tune of "When I survey the Wondrous Horns," the plump girl walks out of the shot. Loola sighs, and resumes her digging.

  Very softly, a voice pronounces her name.

  She starts violently and turns in the direction from which the sound has come.

  Medium shot from her viewpoint of Dr. Poole ad­vancing cautiously from behind the tomb of Rudolf Valentine.

  Cut back to Loola.

  She flushes, then turns deathly pale. Her hand goes to her heart.

  "Alfie," she whispers.