第15章

'Bolshevism,it seems to me,'said Charlie,'is just a superlative hatred of the thing they call the bourgeois;and what the bourgeois is,isn't quite defined.It is Capitalism,among other things.Feelings and emotions are also so decidedly bourgeois that you have to invent a man without them.

'Then the individual,especially the personal man,is bourgeois:so he must be suppressed.You must submerge yourselves in the greater thing,the Soviet-social thing.Even an organism is bourgeois:so the ideal must be mechanical.The only thing that is a unit,non-organic,composed of many different,yet equally essential parts,is the machine.Each man a machine-part,and the driving power of the machine,hate...hate of the bourgeois.That,to me,is Bolshevism.'

'Absolutely!'said Tommy.'But also,it seems to me a perfect deion of the whole of the industrial ideal.It's the factory-owner's ideal in a nut-shell;except that he would deny that the driving power was hate.

Hate it is,all the same;hate of life itself.Just look at these Midlands,if it isn't plainly written up...but it's all part of the life of the mind,it's a logical development.'

'I deny that Bolshevism is logical,it rejects the major part of the premisses,'said Hammond.

'My dear man,it allows the material premiss;so does the pure mind...exclusively.'

'At least Bolshevism has got down to rock bottom,'said Charlie.

'Rock bottom!The bottom that has no bottom!The Bolshevists will have the finest army in the world in a very short time,with the finest mechanical equipment.

'But this thing can't go on...this hate business.There must be a reaction...'said Hammond.

'Well,we've been waiting for years...we wait longer.Hate's a growing thing like anything else.It's the inevitable outcome of forcing ideas on to life,of forcing one's deepest instincts;our deepest feelings we force according to certain ideas.We drive ourselves with a formula,like a machine.The logical mind pretends to rule the roost,and the roost turns into pure hate.We're all Bolshevists,only we are hypocrites.The Russians are Bolshevists without hypocrisy.'

'But there are many other ways,'said Hammond,'than the Soviet way.

The Bolshevists aren't really intelligent.'

'Of course not.But sometimes it's intelligent to be half-witted:if you want to make your end.Personally,I consider Bolshevism half-witted;but so do I consider our social life in the west half-witted.So I even consider our far-famed mental life half-witted.We're all as cold as cretins,we're all as passionless as idiots.We're all of us Bolshevists,only we give it another name.We think we're gods...men like gods!It's just the same as Bolshevism.One has to be human,and have a heart and a penis if one is going to escape being either a god or a Bolshevist...for they are the same thing:they're both too good to be true.'

Out of the disapproving silence came Berry's anxious question:'You do believe in love then,Tommy,don't you?'

'You lovely lad!'said Tommy.'No,my cherub,nine times out of ten,no!Love's another of those half-witted performances today.Fellows with swaying waists fucking little jazz girls with small boy buttocks,like two collar studs!Do you mean that sort of love?Or the joint-property,make-a-success-of-it,My-husband-my-wife sort of love?No,my fine fellow,I don't believe in it at all!'

'But you do believe in something?'

'Me?Oh,intellectually I believe in having a good heart,a chirpy penis,a lively intelligence,and the courage to say "shit!"in front of a lady.'

'Well,you've got them all,'said Berry.

Tommy Dukes roared with laughter.'You angel boy!If only I had!If only I had!No;my heart's as numb as a potato,my penis droops and never lifts its head up,I dare rather cut him clean off than say "shit!"in front of my mother or my aunt...they are real ladies,mind you;and I'm not really intelligent,I'm only a "mental-lifer".It would be wonderful to be intelligent:then one would be alive in all the parts mentioned and unmentionable.The penis rouses his head and says:How do you do?--to any really intelligent person.Renoir said he painted his pictures with his penis...he did too,lovely pictures!I wish I did something with mine.

God!when one can only talk!Another torture added to Hades!And Socrates started it.'

'There are nice women in the world,'said Connie,lifting her head up and speaking at last.

The men resented it...she should have pretended to hear nothing.They hated her admitting she had attended so closely to such talk.

'My God!"If they be not nice to me What care I how nice they be ?"'No,it's hopeless!I just simply can't vibrate in unison with a woman.

There's no woman I can really want when I'm faced with her,and I'm not going to start forcing myself to it...My God,no!I'll remain as I am,and lead the mental life.It's the only honest thing I can do.I can be quite happy talking to women;but it's all pure,hopelessly pure.

Hopelessly pure!What do you say,Hildebrand,my chicken?'

'It's much less complicated if one stays pure,'said Berry.

'Yes,life is all too simple!'