Seven Days in New Crete Page 5

  He recommended ‘anthropological enclaves’, the setting aside of small territories in Lithuania, North Wales (which had escaped the devastation of South Wales and England), Anatolia, the Catalan Pyrenees, Finland and Libya, and the re-erection there, as far as possible, of social and physical conditions as they had existed in prehistoric and early historical times. These enclaves were to represent successive stages of the development of civilization, from a Palaeolithic enclave in Libya to a Late Iron Age one in the Pyrenees; and were to be sealed off from the rest of the world for three generations, though kept under continuous observation by field-workers directly responsible to the Anthropological Council. Ben-Yeshu’s theory was that ‘these experiments will supply the necessary data as to when and why the freight train of civilization leapt the rails’.

  His suggestion was officially adopted, but it was found impossible to recruit sufficient numbers of volunteers for the enclaves, and the Anthropological Council turned down a suggestion that these should become penal colonies for delinquents of both sexes: they pointed out that ‘maladjustment to Sophocratic life was no guarantee of adjustability to less highly developed forms’, and that unless a better type of human being could be bred as a result of the experiments, these would be worthless. At that point a sudden epidemic of itching paralysis (deliberately, it seems, induced by the Council) made the Orkneys and Shetlands uninhabitable, and the survivors were persuaded to enter the Bronze and Early Iron Age enclaves and live the life prescribed by the anthropologists, with a guarantee of release after fifteen years if conditions should prove intolerable. The palaeolithic and neolithic enclaves were never, in fact, occupied, but those of the Bronze and Early Iron Age proved so successful that it was found easy to recruit colonists, mostly from Catalonia, for the Middle and Late Iron Age enclaves; the Late Iron Age was held to end before the invention of gunpowder and the printing press and the discovery of America. No infiltration was allowed into these enclaves, but after three generations they became overcrowded and the occupants were invited to send colonists to a much larger region that had meanwhile been prepared for them, consisting of the entire island of Crete. Here they were introduced to such natural products as tomatoes, potatoes, tobacco, red peppers, soya and a rice-like grain called dana – all of which had hitherto been withheld from them as being anachronisms – and instructed in their cultivation and use.

  Under their occupation the island became extraordinarily fertile, and presently the original enclaves were closed and the inhabitants taken to Crete. Together the five communities evolved a new religion, closely akin to the pre-Christian religion of Europe and linked with the festivals of their agricultural year and the antique mysteries of their handicrafts (imposed on their grand-parents by the Council, after long and acrimonious argument in committee); but with the Mother-goddess Mari as the Queen of Heaven. The New Cretans, no longer the subject of anthropological research, were now regarded as ‘the seed-bed of a Golden Age’, and when their swan-necked wooden galleys put into the port of Corinth, where they traded food and handicrafts for metal ore, china clay and pedigree cattle, the sailors had great trouble in keeping off would-be immigrants. Despite all precautions, illegal landings on the island itself became frequent, and once there, the immigrant was either accepted or destroyed; never sent back. The population increased rapidly, and the spread of the New Cretan system was further stimulated by apprenticeship: orphans of good physique and intelligence were sent there from all over the world, but the New Cretans had the right of refusing any that they did not like. A generation later, the islands of Rhodes and Cyprus were set aside for colonization.

  The limitations on the use of mechanical contrivances, which had been imposed for historical reasons on the original colonists, were jealously preserved by their descendants. Never having had a chance to become used to explosives, power-driven vehicles, the telephone, electric light, domestic plumbing and the printing press, they had no need to legislate about their destruction, as (speaking of Utopias) Samuel Butler’s Erewhonians did; and their view of the quays of Corinth – where they were not permitted to land – did nothing to recommend a more advanced form of living. In fact, the sailors made the voyage with increasing distaste: they called Corinth ‘the terrible city’, objecting to it on moral and aesthetic grounds. Eventually it was arranged for all trading to take place at Stalinopol, a small port some distance from Corinth and at the quietest hour of the night, when they would not be exposed to the whir of dock machinery, the unceasing blare of amplified dance-music, the ugly outlines of waterside buildings, and the garish, raucous, three-dimensioned cartoon-comedies telecast every hour in mid-air over the harbour.

  They elevated this regard for their sensibilities into the religious principle ‘nothing without the hand of love’; meaning, that no product or process was acceptable unless love had a part in it. No product, for example, turned out by a machine, however harmless it might appear, whether a jam-pot, a screw-driver or a box of chocolates, had love in it, and neither had any hand-made goods produced for commercial ends only. An important incident in their new mythology was the Secession of the Drones, who left their hive, repudiated the Queen Bee – their Goddess – and went off to live in a privy where they contrived a mechanical Queen Bee and perpetuated un-love. In this myth, the Drones were led by Machna the god of Science, Dobeis the god of Money and Pill the god of Theft. Ben-Yeshu had stressed the need for the re-establishment of the long-defunct theory of sacred monarchy, and for separating the ecclesiastical side of religion from the magical; the latter should be fostered by every possible means. He pointed out that no writer of a Utopia had ever applied himself to make good the damage done by Plato, when he banished poets from his Republic and preached a scornful indifference to poetic myth. ‘If we strengthen the poets and let them become the acknowledged legislators of the new world,’ ben-Yeshu wrote confidently, ‘magic will come into its own again, bringing peace and fertility in its train.’

  An attempt was made to introduce ‘a mitigated New Cretan system’ into California and New Mexico, but since these mitigations included domestic plumbing, ice-cream machines, watches, rubber-goods and a long list of proprietary drugs, the New Cretans declined to have anything to do with it. Still later they were invited to colonize part of the State of New York on their own terms; but an advance party found it impossible to avoid contact with the press, sightseers and other incidentals of civilization. Nor had they been warned that they would be subject to the State and Federal Laws, as well as to the periodic visits of sanitary and agricultural inspectors, and that a public highway would run through the middle of their territory. They sailed back in their wooden galleys with a report that the climate of North America was too exhilarating, and the soil too denatured by artificial fertilizers, for the successful maintenance of the New Cretan system, even if political conditions were favourable, which they were not.

  The Brief History was reticent about what happened in the Sophocratic world once the system was well under way in New Crete. There seems to have been a gradual realization that an age had ended and that thenceforth whatever might be done or thought outside New Crete would be anachronistic, since mankind had now been reborn, for better or worse; but with this realization went a good deal of envy, resentment, and even active hostility. However, no serious attempt to wreck the system was made until the Sophocrats lost control, and the people relapsed into savagery; by that time New Crete was strong enough to hold her own against aggressors, not by armed force but by magic – a combined exercise of moral power that debilitated the will of the enemy war-lords and made the soldiers drop their weapons. ‘Three Invasions that Failed’ are commemorated in the Brief History – two from America, one from North Africa.

  Within five hundred years the system had spread over a great part of the still habitable world and absorbed many inventions of earlier ages which were held to agree with the principle ‘nothing without love’. Some regions, such as Australia, Russia, Central America and Central A
sia, were rejected as unsuitable for permanent occupation, cleared of inhabitants and written off as Lands of Mystery; others, such as Western China, Malaya, Central Africa, India and most of North America, were abandoned to degenerate forms of society and called Bad Lands. Eastern China, the East Indies and Japan had been devastated and their inhabitants massacred by AIRAR, but its deadly effects had not been permanent, and though uninhabited except for a New Cretan colony in the Pekin district and another in Southern Japan, they came within the boundaries of the new system, as also did the greater part of Africa.

  Chapter V

  Take a Look at Our World

  ‘Come out and take a look at our world,’ said See-a-Bird later that morning.

  ‘With pleasure,’ I answered. ‘Who’s coming with us?’

  ‘Sally’s coming, but not Sapphire or the brothers. Sapphire has business at Court and the three of them have ridden off together.’

  ‘To the law court?’

  ‘What’s a law court? – No, the Royal Court at Dunrena, a morning’s walk along the foot of the hill. Sapphire’s saying good-bye to the King.’

  ‘Is she giving up her duties as a nymph?’

  ‘No, he’s giving up his duties as a King.’

  ‘Abdicating?’

  ‘You may call it that if you like: next month he’s due for death and despoilment.’

  ‘How very sad,’ I said politely.

  ‘Not sad at all. Sapphire and the other nymphs are going to congratulate him.’

  ‘Has he been ill for a long time?’

  ‘Oh no. He’s in perfect health, so far as I know. But all good things come to an end.’

  I asked no more questions for fear of saying something that might hurt their feelings. ‘Is the King going to commit suicide?’ I wondered. ‘Or are death and despoilment only a way of saying that his reign is ended?’ Sometimes these New Cretans had a queer way of expressing themselves.

  Sally opened the french windows, and the Interpreter, See-a-Bird and I followed her into the garden. The paths were paved with flags of moss-covered sandstone, and none of them ran quite straight through the smooth, green lawns. It was a very simple garden: a few gnarled apple-trees and leafy rose-bushes, two or three beds of brightly coloured flowers, like zinnias but shorter-stemmed and more profuse in bloom, a curving yew-hedge, an enormous oak, a mulberry-tree, three or four massive weather-worn stone benches, and a little brook running over slate pebbles. No rows of plants or bushes, no level surfaces whatever – the lawns were all slightly undulating – except the water of the fish-pool into which the brook emptied. Sally explained that straight lines, level surfaces and a large variety of flowers fatigued the eye, and that this garden was intended for relaxation. ‘In our gardens we have only the thorned damask-rose and the white moss-rose, and all our cornflowers are blue; we grow no double dahlias and no giant-flowered sweet-peas nor anything of that sort.’

  ‘Who does grow them, then?’

  ‘You’ll find thornless tea-roses and huge, pink cabbage-roses and different-coloured cornflowers, and so on, in the gardens of other estates,’ said Sally. ‘This is for magicians only. The orchard and vegetable plots are at the back of the house; the herbary, where we grow plants with magical virtues, is over there beyond the hedge.’

  ‘I’d like to see it.’

  I was taken through a tunnel in the yew-hedge, then down some steps and up again into a polygonal walled enclosure, each side built of a different sort of stone and lined with a different variety of tree; paths converged from the angles of the wall to a round central space and between them grew patches of disappointingly dull-looking shrubs and weeds.

  ‘They’re arranged in thirteen divisions according to their seasonal virtues,’ explained Sally.

  ‘Why thirteen?’ I asked, trying to be interested.

  ‘Because we observe the thirteen-month calendar and pick the herbs for use according to the age of the moon and the day of the week.’

  ‘How charmingly old-fashioned! Do you whisper spells over your herbs and bruise them with a gold pestle in a silver mortar?’

  ‘That depends on the herb. Quite often we use other metals.’

  ‘I don’t see any labels stuck in the ground to say which herbs are which.’

  ‘No, and we don’t write “apple” on the apples we eat; you must have noticed that at breakfast.’

  See-a-Bird looked up sharply at Sally and his brow furrowed anxiously. Her answer had been very tart for a New Cretan.

  ‘That’s a pity,’ I answered smoothly. ‘I confess I can’t distinguish sweet basil from devil’s bit, or turk’s nose from mandragora. They didn’t teach botany at my public school – or very much else, if it comes to that – so without labels, please don’t expect me to admire your lay-out. You’d better lead me out of here again, and show me the vegetables. I know my greens pretty well.’

  ‘Tell me, what medicines do doctors use in your epoch?’ See-a-Bird was tactfully changing the subject.

  ‘Animal, vegetable or mineral extracts prepared in sterilized laboratories usually after experiments on rats, rabbits and monkeys, and packed in pill-boxes, or glass bottles, or little china pots.’

  ‘No herbs?’

  ‘A few herbalists do business in country towns, but they don’t rank as real doctors. Public medicine is scientific and as most people trust science blindly, it works in most cases. As well as pre-scientific medicine used to work, if not better. When it doesn’t have the right effect, the explanation given is that it isn’t quite scientific enough: doesn’t take into account all the relevant morbid factors. Ask an honest doctor whether such and such a drug is a reliable cure for sciatica, and he’ll tell you: “Use it while it still cures.” We pay no attention to the moon or the day of the week – that would be superstitious. And very little to the temperament, or moral peculiarities or spiritual condition of the patient: most doctors are too busy signing certificates and filling in forms and keeping their accounts to have any time for refinements of that sort.’

  ‘How utterly loveless!’ said Sally with a little shiver.

  ‘Oh, we can’t grumble. When the system was introduced into backward countries like India and Egypt it worked almost too well. The native systems discouraged the survival of weakly children or of people too old to do useful work. Now the population’s increasing absurdly, and will go on increasing, I suppose, until war or famine reduces it to a sensible size.’

  Beyond the herbary lay parkland with a few cows grazing over it. ‘Magic houses are always surrounded by parkland,’ See-a-Bird explained. ‘We can’t concentrate on our work if a highway runs close by or if a row of cottages is built at our gates. It’s not merely the incidental noises that distract, but the agitation set up by alien rhythms of thought and feeling.’

  ‘You’re very particular.’

  ‘What sort of a magician would an unparticular one be?’ Sally asked.

  ‘What indeed?’ I wished that Sapphire had come with us. When Sally was about I felt the temptation to criticize all I saw, almost to the extent of feeling a loyalty to my own obviously inferior epoch. With Sapphire, it would have been different: I should have accepted everything without question for her sake, as I had once accepted Antonia’s home and family at her own high valuation.

  ‘I wonder that you allow cows in the parks,’ I said, after a pause.

  ‘Why not? They make no disturbance.’

  ‘You misunderstand me. I wasn’t thinking of their mental and emotional rhythms; I meant that their hooves and their droppings spoil the turf.’

  ‘If you look closely you’ll see that they’re wearing wide leather shoes, and that there aren’t any casual droppings. Cattle are trained to drop into pits – there’s one over there by the wall – and the manure is returned to the land once a year, sprayed over the whole surface, so that the grass grows evenly.’

  ‘How charmingly scientific!’

  Sally pretended not to hear.

  We were approaching a grou
p of houses each with its garden and fence; a stream ran around the bottom of the gardens and dark-haired children were bathing and fishing in it. The houses were built of stone with tiled roofs and brightly-painted shutters. Most of the walls were whitewashed, but some were colour-washed in yellow, smoke-grey or pink. A morose-looking man in leather shorts and sandals with criss-cross straps was setting out pea-sticks in a near-by garden. He looked up as we passed, greeting us with his fingers extended in the Latin blessing, and called something to his wife. She looked out of the window in obvious excitement, then disappeared and soon came hurrying to meet us with a basket of plums. She wore a short-sleeved white linen blouse with gold buttons, and a heavily embroidered skirt, and looked rather Moorish.

  ‘In Mari’s name, all’s well?’ This seemed to be the formal greeting.

  ‘All’s well,’ Sally returned with a polite smile.

  The woman looked inquiringly at me.

  ‘A poet from the past, who has consented to visit us.’

  ‘Offer him one of my plums and ask him to swallow the stone.’ She spoke gravely but her mouth twitched.

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘To take the stone back to his own epoch so that it may in time become the ancestress of my plum-tree.’

  It was a relief to know that the commons at least made their little jokes; but Sally, See-a-Bird and the Interpreter did not laugh. From the abstracted look on See-a-Bird’s face I guessed that he was working out the logical possibility of the experiment.

  ‘And your child?’ asked Sally.

  ‘Mari be praised! I did as you told me, Witch, and to-day he walks without a limp. He ran a race with the cat just now and beat her easily. She ran up a tree.’

  ‘This is a village of the commons,’ See-a-Bird explained, as we went on. ‘It’s called Horned Lamb. Each village is famous for something; this has a carp-pool and an unusual way of thatching barns with heather and rush. Over there on the green is the totem-pole, the centre of their worship.’