Close shot of Dr. Poole, as he watches the proceedings from a corner of the oratory.
Cut back to the crowd, face after mindless, ecstatic face enters the field of view and passes out again. And there, suddenly, is Loola’s face — the eyes shining, the lips parted, the dimples wildly alive. She turns her head, she catches sight of Dr. Poole.
«Alfie!» she cries.
Her tone and expression evoke an equally rapturous response.
«Loola!»
They rush together in a passionate embrace. Seconds pass. Vaselinelike, the strains of the Good Friday music from Parsifal make themselves heard on the sound track.
Then the faces come unstuck, the Camera pulls back.
«Quick, quick!»
Loola seizes his arm and drags him toward the altar.
«The apron,» she says.
Dr. Poole looks down at the apron, then, blushing as red as the NO embroidered upon it, averts his eyes.
«It seems so. . . so indecorous,» he says.
He stretches out his hand, withdraws it, then changes his mind yet again. Taking a corner of the apron between his thumb and forefinger, he gives it a couple of feebly ineffective tweaks.
«Harder,» she cries, «Much harder!»
With an almost frantic violence — for it is not only the apron that he is tearing away, it is also his mother’s influence and all his inhibitions, all the conventions in which he has been brought up — Dr. Poole does as he is told. The stitching yields more easily than he had anticipated and he almost falls over backward. Recovering his balance, he stands there, looking in sheepish embarrassment from the little nappy that represents the Seventh Commandment into Loola’s laughing face and then down again at the crimson prohibition. Cut back and forth: NO, dimples, NO, dimples, NO. . . .
«Yes!» shouts Loola triumphantly. «Yes!»
Snatching the apron out of his hand, she throws it down at the foot of the throne. Then with a «Yes» and another «Yes,» she rips the patches from her chest and, turning to the altar, makes her reverence to the Candle.
Medium close shot from the back of Look genuflecting. All at once an elderly man with a grey beard rushes excitedly into the shot, tears the twin NO’S off the seat of her homespun pants and starts to drag her toward the door of the shrine.
Giving him a slap in the face and a vigorous push, Loola breaks away and for the second time throws herself into Dr. Poole’s arms.
«Yes?» she whispers.
And emphatically he answers, «Yes!»
They kiss, smile rapturously at each other, then move in the direction of the darkness beyond the sliding doors. As they pass the throne, the Arch-Vicar leans down and, smiling ironically, taps Dr. Poole on the shoulder.
«What about my field glasses?» he says.
Dissolve to a night scene of ink-black shadows and expanses of moonlight. In the background stands the mouldering pile of the Los Angeles County Museum. Amorously interlaced, Loola and Dr. Poole enter the shot, then pass into impenetrable darkness. Silhouettes of men pursuing women, or women throwing themselves on men, appear for a moment and vanish. To the accompaniment of the Good Friday music we hear a rising and falling chorus of grunts and moans, of explosively shouted obscenities and long-drawn howls of agonising delight.
NARRATOR
Consider the birds. What a delicacy in their love-making, what old-world chivalry! For although the hormones produced within the body of the breeding hen predispose her to sexual emotion, their effect is neither so intense nor of so brief a duration as that of the ovarian hormones in the blood of female mammals during oestrus. Moreover, for obvious reasons, the cock bird is in no position to enforce his desires upon an unwilling hen. Hence the prevalence among male birds of bright plumage and of an instinct for courtship. And hence the conspicuous absence of these charming things among male mammals. For where, as in the mammals, the female’s amorous desires and her attractiveness to the male sex are wholly determined by chemical means, what need is there of masculine beauty of the niceties of preliminary courtship?
Among humans every day of the year is potentially the mating season. Girls are not chemically predestined during a few days, to accept the advances of the first male who presents himself. Their bodies manufacture hormones in doses sufficiently small to leave even the most temperamental of them a certain freedom of choice. That is why, unlike his fellow mammals, man has always been a wooer. But now the gamma rays have changed all that. The hereditary patterns of man’s physical and mental behaviour have been given another form. Thanks to the supreme Triumph of Modern Science, sex has become seasonal, romance has been swallowed up by the oestrus and the female’s chemical compulsion to mate has abolished courtship, chivalry, tenderness, love itself.
At this moment a radiant Loola and a considerably dishevelled Dr. Poole emerge from the shadows. A burly male, temporarily unattached, comes striding into the shot. At the sight of Loola, he stops. His mouth falls open, his eyes widen, he breathes heavily.
Dr. Poole gives the stranger one look, then turns nervously to his companion.
«I think perhaps it might be a good thing if we walked this way . . .»
Without a word the stranger rushes at him, gives him a push that sends him flying and takes Loola in his arms. She resists for a moment; then the chemicals in her blood impose their Categorical Imperative, and she ceases to struggle.
Making a noise like a tiger at feeding time, the stranger lifts her off her feet and carries her into the shadows.
Dr. Poole, who has had time to pick himself up, makes as though to follow, to wreak vengeance, to rescue the distressed victim. Then a combination of apprehension and modesty causes him to slacken his pace. If he advances, heaven knows what he may find himself intruding upon. And then that man, that hairy hulk of bone and muscle. . . . On the whole it might perhaps be wiser. . . . He comes to a halt and stands hesitant, not knowing what to do. Suddenly two beautiful young mulatto girls come running out of the County Museum and simultaneously throw their brown arms round his neck and cover his face with kisses.
«You great big beautiful bastard,» they whisper in husky unison.
For a moment Dr. Poole hesitates between the inhibitory recollection of his mother, the fidelity to Loola prescribed by all the poets and novelists, and the warm, elastic Facts of Life. After about four seconds of moral conflict, he chooses, as we might expect, the Facts of Life. He smiles, he returns the kisses, he murmurs words which it would startle Miss Hook and almost kill his mother to hear, he encircles either body with an arm, caresses either bosom with hands that have never done anything of the kind except in unavowable imaginings. The noises of mating swell to a brief climax, then diminish. For a little while there is complete silence.
Accompanied by a train of Archimandrites, Familiars, Presbyters and Postulants, the Arch-Vicar and the Patriarch of Pasadena come pacing majestically into the shot. At the sight of Dr. Poole and the mulattos, they come to a halt. Making a grimace of disgusted abhorrence, the Patriarch spits on the ground. More tolerant, the Arch-Vicar only smiles ironically.
«Dr. Poole!» he flutes in his odd falsetto.
Guiltily, as though he had heard his mother calling, Dr. Poole drops those busy hands of his and, turning toward the Arch-Vicar, tries to assume an expression of airy innocence. «These girls,» his smile is meant to imply, «who are these girls? Why, I don’t even know their names. We were just having a little chat about the higher cryptogams, that’s all.»
«You great big beautiful . . .» begins a husky voice.
Dr. Poole coughs loudly and fends off the embrace that accompanies the words.
«Don’t mind us,» says the Arch-Vicar pleasantly. «After all, Belial Day comes but once a year.»
Approaching, he touches the gilded horns of his tiara, then lays his hands on Dr. Poole’s head.
«Yours,» he says with a suddenly professional unctuousness, «has been an almost miraculously sudden conversion. Yes, almost miraculously.» Then, changing his tone, «By the way,» he adds, «we’ve had a bit of trouble with your friends from New Zealand. This afternoon somebody spotted a group of them in Beverly Hills. I guess they were looking for you.»
«Yes, I suppose so.»
«But they’re not going to find you,» says the Arch-Vicar genially. «One of our Inquisitors went out with a posse of Familiars to deal with them.»
«What happened?» Dr. Poole anxiously enquires.
«Our men laid an ambush, let fly with arrows. One was killed, and the others made off with the wounded. I don’t think we shall be bothered again. But just to make certain. . .» He beckons to two of his attendants. «Listen,» he says. «There isn’t going to be a rescue and there isn’t going to be an escape. I make you responsible, do you understand?»
The two Postulants bow their heads.
«And now,» says the Arch-Vicar, turning back to Dr. Poole, «well leave you to beget all the little monsters you
