NARRATOR
An inch from the eyes the ape’s black paw
Eclipses the stars, the moon, and even
Space itself. Five stinking fingers
Are all the World.
The silhouette of a baboon’s hand advances toward the Camera, grows larger and more menacing, and finally engulfs everything in blackness.
We cut to the interior of the Los Angeles Coliseum. By the smoky and intermittent light of torches we see the faces of a great congregation. Tier above tier, like massed gargoyles, spouting the groundless faith, the subhuman excitement, the collective imbecility which are the products of ceremonial religion — spouting them from black eyeholes, from quivering nostrils, from parted lips, while the chanting monotonously continues: «Glory to Belial, to Belial in the lowest.» Below, in the arena, hundreds of shaven girls and women, each with her tiny monster in her arms, are kneeling before the steps of the High Altar. Awe-inspiring in their chasubles of Anglo-Nubian fur, in their tiaras of gilded horns, Patriarchs and Archimandrites, Presbyters and Postulants stand in two groups at the head of the altar steps, chanting anti-phonally in a high treble to the music of bone recorders and a battery of xylophones.
SEMICHORUS I
Glory to Belial,
SEMICHORUS II
To Belial in the lowest!
Then, after a pause, the music of the chant changes and a new phase of the service begins.
SEMICHORUS I
It is a terrible thing,
SEMICHORUS II
Terrible terrible,
SEMICHORUS I
To fall into the hands,
SEMICHORUS II
The huge hands and the hairy,
SEMICHORUS I
Into the hands of living Evil,
SEMICHORUS II
Hallelujah!
SEMICHORUS I
Into the hands of the Enemy of man,
SEMICHORUS II
Our boon companions;
SEMICHORUS I
Of the Rebel against the Order of Things —
SEMICHORUS II
And we have conspired with him against ourselves;
SEMICHORUS I
Of the great Blowfly who is the Lord of Flies,
SEMICHORUS II
Crawling in the heart;
SEMICHORUS I
Of the naked Worm that never dies,
SEMICHORUS II
And, never dying, is the source of our eternal life;
SEMICHORUS I
Of the Prince of the Powers of the Air —
SEMICHORUS II
Spitfire and Stuka, Beelzebub and Azazel, Hallelujah!
SEMICHORUS I
Of the Lord of this world;
SEMICHORUS II
And its defiler;
SEMICHORUS I
Of the great Lord Moloch,
SEMICHORUS II
Patron of all nations;
SEMICHORUS I
Of Mammon our master,
SEMICHORUS II
Omnipresent.
SEMICHORUS I
Of Lucifer the all-powerful,
SEMICHORUS II
In Church, in State;
SEMICHORUS I
Of Belial,
SEMICHORUS II
Transcendent,
SEMICHORUS I
Yet, oh, how immanent
ALL TOGETHER
Of Belial, Belial, Belial, Belial
As the chanting dies away, two hornless Postulants descend, seize the nearest of the shaven women, raise her to her feet and lead her up, dumb with terror, to where, at the head of the altar steps, the Patriarch of Pasadena stands whetting the blade of a long butcher’s knife. The thickset Mexican mother stands staring at him in fascinated horror, open-mouthed. Then one of the Postulants takes the child out of her arms and holds it up before the Patriarch.
Close shot of a characteristic product of progressive technology — a harelipped, Mongolian idiot. Over the shot we hear the chanting of the Chorus.
SEMICHORUS I
I show you the sign of Belial’s enmity,
SEMICHORUS II
Foul, foul;
SEMICHORUS I
I show you the fruit of Belial’s grace,
SEMICHORUS II
Filth infused in filth.
SEMICHORUS I
I show you the penalty for obedience to His Will,
SEMICHORUS II
On earth as it is in Hell.
SEMICHORUS I
Who is the Breeder of all deformities?
SEMICHORUS II
Mother.
SEMICHORUS I
Who is the chosen vessel of Unholiness?
SEMICHORUS II
Mother.
SEMICHORUS I
And the curse that is on our race?
SEMICHORUS II
Mother.
SEMICHORUS I
Possessed, possessed —
SEMICHORUS II
Inwardly, outwardly:
SEMICHORUS I
Her incubus an object, her subject a succubus —
SEMICHORUS II
And both are Belial;
SEMICHORUS I
Possessed by the Blowfly.
SEMICHORUS II
Crawling and stinging,
SEMICHORUS I
Possessed by that which irresistibly
SEMICHORUS II
Goads her, drives her,
SEMICHORUS I
Like the soiled fitchew,
SEMICHORUS II
Like the sow in her season,
SEMICHORUS I
Down a steep place
SEMICHORUS II
Into filth unutterable;
SEMICHORUS I
Whence, after much wallowing,
SEMICHORUS II
After many long draughts of the swill,
SEMICHORUS I
Mother emerging, nine months later,
SEMICHORUS II
Bears this monstrous mockery of a man.
SEMICHORUS I
How then shall there be atonement?
SEMICHORUS II
By blood.
SEMICHORUS I
How shall Belial be propitiated?
SEMICHORUS II
Only by blood.
The Camera moves from the altar to where, tier above tier, the pale gargoyles stare down in hungry anticipation at the scene below. And suddenly the faces open their black mouths and start to chant in unison, hesitantly at first, then with growing confidence and ever greater volume of sound.
«Blood, blood, blood, the blood, the blood, blood, blood, the blood. . .»
We cut back to the altar. The sound of the mindless, subhuman chanting continues monotonously over the shot.
The Patriarch hands his whetstone to one of the attendant Archimandrites, and then with his left hand takes the deformed child by the neck and impales it on his knife. It utters two or three little bleating cries, and is silent.
The Patriarch turns, allows half a pint of blood to spill out on the altar, then tosses the tiny corpse into the darkness beyond. The chanting rises in a savage crescendo. «Blood, blood, the blood, the blood, blood, blood, the blood. . .»
«Drive her away!» cries the Patriarch in a commanding squeak.
In terror the mother turns and hurries down the steps. The two Postulants follow, striking at her savagely with their consecrated bulls’ pizzles. The chanting is punctuated by piercing screams. From the congregation comes a noise that is half commiserating groan, half grunt of satisfaction. Flushed and a little breathless from so unusually strenuous an exercise, the plump young Postulants seize another woman — a girl this time, frail and slender almost to the point of childishness. Her face is hidden as they drag her up the steps. Then one of them steps back a little and we recognise Polly.
Thumbless, eight-nippled, the child is held up before the Patriarch.
SEMICHORUS I
Foul, foul! How shall there be atonement?
SEMICHORUS II
By blood.
SEMICHORUS I
How shall Belial be propitiated?
This time it is the entire congregation that answers. «Only by blood, blood, blood, blood, the blood. . .»
The Patriarch’s left hand closes about the infant’s neck.
«No, no, don’t. Please!»
Polly makes a movement toward him, but is held back by the Postulants. Very deliberately, while she sobs, the Patriarch impales the child on his knife, then tosses the body into the darkness behind the altar.
There is a loud cry. We cut to a medium close shot of Dr. Poole. Conspicuous in his front-row seat, he has fainted.
Dissolve to the interior of the Unholy of Unholies. The shrine, which stands at one end of the arena’s shorter axis, to the side of the high altar, is a small oblong chamber of adobe brick, with an altar at one end and, at the other, sliding doors, closed at present, except for a gap at the centre through which one can see what is going on in the arena. On a couch in the centre of the shrine reclines the Arch-Vicar. Not far off a hornless Postulant is frying pig’s trotters over a charcoal brazier, and near him a two-horned Archimandrite is doing his best to revive Dr. Poole, who lies inanimate on a stretcher. Cold water and two or three sharp slaps in the face at last produce the desired result. The botanist sighs, opens his eyes, wards off another slap and sits up.
«Where am I?» he asks.
«In the Unholy of Unholies,» the Archimandrite answers, «And there is his Eminence.»
Dr. Poole recognises the great man and has enough presence of mind to incline his head respectfully.
«Bring a stool,» commands the Arch-Vicar.
The stool is brought. He beckons to Dr. Poole, who scrambles to his feet, walks a little unsteadily across the room and sits down. As he does so a particularly loud shriek makes him turn his head.
Long shot, from his viewpoint, of the High Altar. The Patriarch is in the act of tossing yet another little monster into the darkness, while his acolytes shower blows upon its screaming mother.
Cut back to Dr. Poole, who shudders and covers his face with his hands. Over the shot we hear the monotonous chanting of the congregation. «Blood, blood, blood.»
«Horrible!» says Dr. Poole, «Horrible!»
«And yet there’s blood in your religion too,» remarks the Arch-Vicar, smiling ironically. » ‘Washed in the blood of the Lamb.’ Isn’t that correct?»
«Perfectly correct,» Dr. Poole admits. «But we don’t actually do the washing. We only talk about it — or, more often, we only sing about it, in hymns.»
Dr. Poole averts his eyes. There is a silence. At this moment the Postulant approaches with a large platter, which, together with a couple of bottles, he sets down on a table beside the couch. Spearing one of the trotters with a genuine antique twentieth-century forgery of an early Georgian fork, the Arch-Vicar starts to gnaw.
«Help yourself,» he squeaks between two bites. «And here’s some wine,» he adds, indicating one of the bottles.
Dr. Poole, who is extremely hungry, obeys with alacrity and there is another silence, loud with the noise of eating and the chant of the blood.
«You don’t believe it, of course,» says the Arch-Vicar at last, with his mouth full.
«But I assure you. . .» Dr. Poole protests.
His zeal to conform is excessive, and the other holds up a plumb, pork-greasy hand.
«Now, now, now! But I’d like you to know that we have good reasons for believing as we do. Ours, my dear sir, is a rational and realistic faith.» There is a pause while he takes a swig from the bottle and helps himself to another trotter. «I take it that you’re familiar with world history?»
«Purely as a dilettante,» Dr. Poole answers modestly. But he thinks he can say that he has read most of the more obvious books on the subject — Graves’s Rise and Extinction of Russia, for example; Basedow’s Collapse of
