Meanwhile, in the Unholy of Unholies, Dr. Poole is still looking out through the crack between the sliding doors. The Arch-Vicar is picking his teeth. There is a comfortable, postprandial silence. Suddenly Dr. Poole turns to his companion.
«Something’s happening,» he cries excitedly. «They’re leaving their seats.»
«I’d been expecting that for quite a long time now,» replies the Arch-Vicar, without ceasing to pick his teeth. «It’s the blood that does it. That and, of course, the whipping.»
«They’re jumping down into the arena,» Dr. Poole continues. «They’re running after one another. What on earth . . . ? Oh, my God! I beg your pardon,» he hastily adds. «But really, really. . .»
Much agitated, he walks away from the door.
«There are limits,» he says.
«That’s where you’re wrong,» replies the Arch-Vicar. «There are no limits. Everybody’s capable of anything — but anything.»
Dr. Poole does not answer. Drawn irresistibly by a force that is stronger than his will, he has returned to his old place and is staring out, avidly and in horror, at what is going on in the arena.
«It’s monstrous!» he cries indignantly. «It’s utterly revolting.»
The Arch-Vicar rises heavily from his couch and, opening a little cupboard in the wall, takes out a pair of binoculars, which he hands to Dr. Poole.
«Try these,» he says. «Night glasses. Standard Navy equipment from before the Thing. You’ll see everything.»
«But you don’t imagine. . .»
«Not merely do I imagine,» says the Arch-Vicar, with an ironically benignant smile; «I see with my own eyes. Go ahead, man. Look. You’ve never seen anything like this in New Zealand.»
«I certainly have not,» says Dr. Poole in the kind of tone his mother might have used.
All the same he finally raises the binoculars to his eyes.
Long shot from his viewpoint. It is a scene of Satyrs and Nymphs, of pursuits and captures, provocative resistances followed by the enthusiastic surrender of lips to bearded lips, of panting bosoms to the impatience of rough hands, the whole accompanied by a babel of shouting, squealing and shrill laughter.
Cut back to the Arch-Vicar, whose face is puckered into a grimace of contemptuous distaste.
«Like cats,» he says at last. «Only cats have the decency not to be gregarious in their courting. And you still have doubts about Belial — even after this?»
There is a pause.
«Was this something that happened after. . . after the Thing?» Dr. Poole enquires.
«In two generations.»
«Two generations!» Dr. Poole whistles. «Nothing recessive about that mutation. And don’t they. . . well, I mean, don’t they feel like doing this sort of thing at any other season?»
«Just for these five weeks, that’s all. And we only permit two weeks of actual mating.»
«Why?»
The Arch-Vicar makes the sign of the horns.
«On general principles. They have to be punished for having been punished. It’s the Law of Belial. And, I may say, we really let them have it if they break the rules.»
«Quite, quite,» says Dr. Poole, remembering with discomfort the episode with Loola among the dunes.
«It’s pretty hard for the ones who throw back to the old-style mating pattern.»
«Are there many of those?»
«Between five and ten per cent of the population. We call them ‘Hots.’ «
«And you don’t permit. . . ?»
«We beat the hell out of them when we catch them.»
«But that’s monstrous!»
«Of course it is,» the Arch-Vicar agrees. «But remember your history. If you want solidarity, you’ve got to have either an external enemy or an oppressed minority. We have no external enemies, so we have to make the most of our Hots. They’re what the Jews were under Hitler, what the bourgeois were under Lenin and Stalin, what the heretics used to be in Catholic countries and the Papists under the Protestants. If anything goes wrong, it’s always the fault of the Hots. I don’t know what we’d do without them.»
«But don’t you ever stop to think what they must feel?»
«Why should I? First of all, it’s the law. Condign punishment for having been punished. Second, if they’re discreet, they won’t get punished. All they’ve got to do is to avoid having babies at the wrong season and to disguise the fact that they fall in love and make permanent connections with persons of the opposite sex. And, if they don’t want to be discreet, they can always run away.»
«Run away? Where to?»
«There’s a little community up North, near Fresno. Eighty-five per cent Hot. It’s a dangerous journey, of course. Very little water on the way. And if we catch them, we bury them alive. But if they choose to take the risk, they’re perfectly free to do so. And then finally there’s the priesthood.» He makes the sign of the horns. «Any bright boy, who shows early signs of being a Hot, has his future assured: we make a priest of him.»
Several seconds pass before Dr. Poole ventures to ask his next question.
«You mean, you. . . ?»
«Precisely,» says the Arch-Vicar. «For the Kingdom of Hell’s sake. Not to mention the strictly practical reasons. After all, the business of the community has got to be carried on somehow, and obviously the laity are in no condition to do it.»
The noise from the arena swells to a momentary climax.
«Nauseous!» squeaks the Arch-Vicar with a sudden intensification of abhorrence. «And this is nothing to what it will be later on. How thankful I am that I’ve been preserved from such ignominy! Not they, but the Enemy of Mankind incarnate in their disgusting bodies. Kindly look over there.» He draws Dr. Poole toward him; he points a thick forefinger. ‘To the left of the High Altar — with that little red-headed vessel. That’s the Chief. The Chief!» he repeats with derisive emphasis. «What sort of a ruler is he going to be during the next two weeks?»
Resisting the temptation to make personal remarks about a man who, though temporarily in retirement, is destined to return to power, Dr. Poole utters a nervous little laugh.
«Yes, he certainly seems to be relaxing from the cares of State.»
NARRATOR
But why, why does he have to relax with Loola? Vile brute and faithless strumpet! But there is at least one consolation — and to a shy man, plagued with desires he dares not act upon, a very great consolation: Loola’s conduct is the proof of an accessibility which, in New Zealand, in academic circles, in the neighbourhood of his Mother, could only be furtively dreamed about as something altogether too good to be true. And it is not only Loola who proves herself accessible. The same thing is being demonstrated, no less actively, no less vocally, by those mulatto girls, by Flossie, the plump and honey-coloured Teuton, by that enormous Armenian matron, by the little tow-headed adolescent with the big blue eyes. . . .
«Yes, that’s our Chief,» says the Arch-Vicar bitterly. «Until he and the other pigs stop being possessed, the Church just takes over.»
Incorrigibly cultured, in spite of his overwhelming desire to be out there with Loola — or almost anyone else, if it comes to that — Dr. Poole makes an apt remark about the Spiritual Authority and the Temporal Power.
The Arch-Vicar ignores it.
«Well,» he says briskly, «it’s time I got down to business.»
He calls a Postulant, who hands him a tallow dip, then crosses over to the altar at the east end of the shrine. Upon it stands a single candle of yellow beeswax, three or four feet high and disproportionately thick. The Arch-Vicar genuflects, lights the candle, makes the sign of the horns, then comes back to where Dr. Poole is staring out, wide-eyed with fascinated horror and shocked concupiscence, at the spectacle in the arena.
«Stand aside, please.»
Dr. Poole obeys.
A Postulant slides back first one door, then the other. The Arch-Vicar steps forward and stands in the centre of the opening, touching the gilded horns of his tiara. From the musicians on the steps of the High Altar comes a shrill screeching of thighbone recorders. The noises of the crowd die away into a silence that is only occasionally punctuated by the bestial utterance of some joy or anguish too savagely violent to be repressed. Antiphonally, the priests begin to chant.
SEMICHORUS I
This is the time,
SEMICHORUS II
For Belial is merciless,
SEMICHORUS I
Time for Time’s ending.
SEMICHORUS II
In the chaos of lust.
SEMICHORUS I
This is the time,
SEMICHORUS II
For Belial is in your blood,
SEMICHORUS I
Time for the birth in you
SEMICHORUS II
Of the Others, the Aliens,
SEMICHORUS I
Of Itch, of Tetter,
SEMICHORUS II
Of tumid Worm.
SEMICHORUS I
This is the time,
SEMICHORUS II
For Belial hates you,
SEMICHORUS I
Time for the Soul’s death,
SEMICHORUS II
For the Person to perish,
SEMICHORUS I
Sentenced by craving,
SEMICHORUS II
And pleasure is the hangman;
SEMICHORUS I
Time for the Enemy’s
SEMICHORUS II
Total triumph,
SEMICHORUS I
For the Baboon to be master,
SEMICHORUS II
That monsters may be begotten.
SEMICHORUS I
Not your will, but His,
SEMICHORUS II
That you may all be lost forever.
From the crowd rises a loud unanimous «Amen.»
«His curse be on you,» the Arch-Vicar intones in his high-pitched voice, then moves back to the end of the shrine and mounts the throne that stands next to the altar. From outside we hear a confused shouting that
