His words and, still more, his pious gesture allay Loola’s suspicions. Her face clears; she gives him her most charming smile. The dimples in her cheeks come to life like a pair of adorable little creatures fitfully leading a secret and autonomous existence in independence of the rest of Loola’s face. Dr. Poole returns her smile, but almost instantly looks away, blushing as he does so to the roots of his hair.
NARRATOR
Out of the enormity of his respect for his mother, our poor friend here is still, at thirty-eight, a bachelor. Too full of an unnatural piety to marry, he has spent half a lifetime surreptitiously burning. Feeling that it would be a sacrilege to ask a virtuous young gentlewoman to share his bed, he inhabits, under the carapace of academic respectability, a hot and furtive world, where erotic phantasies beget an agonising repentance and adolescent desires forever struggle with the maternal precepts. And now here is Loola — Loola without the least pretension to education or good breeding, Loola au naturel with a musky redolence which, on second thought, has something really rather fascinating about it. What wonder if he reddens and (against his will, for he longs to go on looking at her) averts his eyes.
For consolation and in hope of an accession of boldness, he resorts again to the bottle. Suddenly the boulevard narrows to a mere footpath between two dunes of sand.
«After you,» says Dr. Poole, politely bowing.
She smiles her acknowledgment of a courtesy, to which, in this place where men take precedence and the vessels of the Unholy Spirit follow after, she is wholly unaccustomed.
Trucking shot, from Dr. Poole’s viewpoint, of Loola’s back: NO NO, NO NO, NO NO, step after step in undulant alternation. Cut back to a close shot of Dr. Poole, gazing, wide-eyed, and from Dr. Poole’s face once again to Loola’s back.
NARRATOR
It is the emblem, outward, visible, tangible, of his own inner consciousness. Principle at odds with concupiscence, his mother and the Seventh Commandment superimposed upon his fancies and the facts of Life.
The dunes subside. Once more the road is wide enough for two to walk abreast. Dr. Poole steals a glance at his companion’s face and sees it clouded with an expression of melancholy.
«What is it?» he asks solicitously and, greatly daring, adds «Loola» and lays a hand on her arm.
«It’s terrible,» she says in a tone of quiet despair.
«What’s terrible?»
«Everything. You don’t want to think about those things; but you’re one of the unlucky ones — you can’t help thinking about them. And you almost go crazy. Thinking and thinking about someone, and wanting and wanting. And you know you mustn’t. And you’re scared to death of what they might do if they found out. But you’d give everything in the world just for five minutes, to be free for five minutes. But no, no, no. And you clench your fists and hold yourself in — and it’s like tearing yourself to pieces. And then suddenly, after all that suffering, suddenly. . .» she breaks off.
«Suddenly what?» enquires Dr. Poole.
She looks at him sharply, but sees on his face only an expression of inquiring and genuinely innocent incomprehension.
«I can’t make you out,» she says at last. «Is it true, what you told the Chief? You know, about your not being a priest.»
All at once she blushes.
«If you don’t believe me,» says Dr. Poole with wine-begotten gallantry, «I’m ready to prove it.»
She looks at him for a moment, then shakes her head and, in a kind of terror, turns away. Nervously she smooths her apron.
«And meanwhile,» he continues, emboldened by her new-found shyness, «you haven’t told me just what it is that suddenly happens.»
Loola glances about her to make sure that nobody is within earshot, then speaks at last almost in a whisper.
«Suddenly He starts to take possession of everybody. For weeks he makes them think about those things — and it’s against the Law, it’s wicked. The men get so mad, they start hitting you and calling you a vessel, the way the priests do.»
«A vessel?»
She nods.
«Vessel of the Unholy Spirit.»
«Oh, I see.»
«And then comes Belial Day,» she goes on after a little pause. «And then. . . well, you know what that means. And afterwards, if you have a baby, the chances are that He’ll punish you for what He has made you do.» She shudders, then makes the sign of the horns. «I know we have to accept what He wills,» she adds. «But oh, I do so hope that, if ever I have any babies, they’ll be all right.»
«But of course they’ll be all right,» cries Dr. Poole. «After all, there isn’t anything wrong about you.»
Delighted by his own audacity, he looks down at her.
Close shot from his viewpoint: NO NO NO, NO NO NO. . .
Mournfully, Loola shakes her head.
«That’s where you’re wrong,» she says. «I’ve got an extra pair of nipples.»
«Oh,» says Dr. Poole in a tone which makes us realize that the thought of his mother has momentarily obliterated the effects of the red wine.
«Not that there’s anything really bad about that,» Loola hastily adds. «Even the best people have them. It’s perfectly legal. They allow you up to three pairs. And seven toes and fingers. Anything over that gets liquidated at the Purification. My friend Polly — she had a baby this season. Her first one. And it’s got four pairs, and no thumbs. There isn’t any chance for it. In fact it’s been condemned already. She’s had her head shaved.»
«Had her head shaved?»
«They do it to all the girls whose babies are liquidated.»
«But why?»
Loola shrugs her shoulders. «Just to remind them that He’s the Enemy.»
NARRATOR
«To put it,» as Schroedinger has said, «drastically, though perhaps a little naively, the injuriousness of a marriage between first cousins might very well be increased by the fact that their grandmother had served for a long period as an X-ray nurse. It is not a point that need worry any individual personally. But any possibility of gradually infecting the human race with unwanted latent mutations ought to be a matter of concern to the community.» It ought to be; but, needless to say, it isn’t. Oakridge is working three shifts a day; an atomic power plant is going up on the coast of Cumberland; and on the other side of the fence, goodness only knows what Kapitza is up to on the top of Mount Ararat, what surprises that wonderful Russian Soul, about which Dostoevsky used to write so lyrically, has in store for Russian bodies and the carcasses of Capitalists and Social Democrats.
Once again sand bars the road. They enter another winding pathway between the dunes and are suddenly alone, as though in the middle of the Sahara.
Trucking shot from Dr. Poole’s viewpoint: NO NO, NO NO. . . Loola halts and turns back toward him: NO NO NO. The Camera moves up to her face and all at once he notices that its expression is tragical.
NARRATOR
The Seventh Commandment, the Facts of Life. But there is also another Fact, to which one cannot react by a mere departmentalized negation or a no less fragmentary display of lust — the Fact of Personality.
«I don’t want them to cut my hair,» she says in a breaking voice.
«But they won’t.»
«They will.»
«They can’t, they mustn’t.» Then, amazed by his own daring, he adds, «It’s much too beautiful.»
Still tragic, Loola shakes her head.
«I feel it,» she says, «in my bones. I just know it’ll have more than seven fingers. They’ll kill it, they’ll cut my hair off, they’ll whip me — and He makes us do those things.»
«What things?»
She looks at him for a moment without speaking; then, with an expression almost of terror, drops her eyes.
«It’s because He wants us to be miserable.»
Covering her face with her hands, she starts to sob uncontrollably.
NARRATOR
The wine within and, without, the musky reminder
Of those so near, warm, ripe, orby and all but
Edible Facts of Life. . . And now her tears, her tears. . .
Dr. Poole takes the girl in his arms and, while she sobs against his shoulder, strokes her hair with all the tenderness of the normal male he has momentarily become.
«Don’t cry,» he whispers, «don’t cry. It’ll be all right. I’ll always be there. I won’t let them do anything to you.»
She permits herself gradually to be comforted. The sobbing becomes less violent and finally ceases altogether. She looks up and the smile she gives him through her tears is so unequivocally amorous that anyone but Dr. Poole would have accepted the invitation forthwith. The seconds pass and, while he is still hesitating, her expression changes, she drops her eyelids over an avowal that she suddenly feels to have been too frank, and turns away.
«I’m sorry,» she murmurs, and starts to rub away her tears with the knuckles of a hand that is as grubby as a child’s.
Dr. Poole takes out his handkerchief and tenderly wipes her eyes.
«You’re so sweet,» she says. «Not a bit like the men here.»
She smiles up at him again. Like a pair of enchanting little wild animals emerging from concealment, out come the dimples.
So impulsively that he has no time to feel surprise at what he is doing, Dr. Poole takes her face between his hands and kisses her on the mouth.
Loola resists for a moment, then abandons herself in a surrender so complete as
