Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley

sleeping in an empested atmosphere. Hundreds of thousands of couples are at this moment engaged in mutually caressing one another in a manner too hideous to be thought of, but in no way differing from the manner in which each of us performs, delightfully, passionately and beautifully, his similar work of love. Thousands of women are now in the throes of parturition, and of both sexes thousands are dying of the most diverse and appalling diseases, or simply because they have lived too long. Thousands are drunk, thousands have overeaten, thousands have not had enough to eat. And they are all alive, all unique and separate and sensitive, like you and me. It’s a horrible thought. Ah, if I could lead them all into that great hole of centipedes.’
    He tapped and tapped on the pavement in front of him, as though searching for the crevasse. At the top of his voice he began to chant: ‘O all ye Beasts and Cattle, curse ye the Lord: curse him and vilify him for ever.’
    â€˜All this religion,’ sighed Mercaptan. ‘What with Lypiatt on one side, being a muscular Christian artist, and Coleman on the other, howling the black mass . . . Really!’ He elaborated an Italianate gesture, and turned to Zoe. ‘What do you think of it all?’ he asked.
    Zoe jerked her head in Coleman’s direction. ‘I think ’e’s a bloody swine,’ she said. They were the first words she had spoken since she had joined the party.
    â€˜Hear, hear!’ cried Coleman, and he waved his stick.
    In the warm yellow light of the coffee-stall at Hyde Park Corner loitered a little group of people. Among the peaked caps and the chauffeurs’ dust-coats, among the weather-stained workmen’s jackets and the knotted handkerchiefs, emerged an alien elegance. A tall tubed hat and a silk-faced overcoat, a cloak of flame-coloured satin, and in bright, coppery hair a great Spanish comb of carved tortoiseshell.
    â€˜Well, I’m damned,’ said Gumbril as they approached. ‘I believe it’s Myra Viveash.’
    â€˜So it is,’ said Lypiatt, peering in his turn. He began suddenly to walk with an affected swagger, kicking his heels at every step. Looking at himself from outside, his divining eyes pierced through the veil of cynical
je-m’en-fichisme
to the bruised heart beneath. Besides, he didn’t want any one to guess.
    â€˜The Viveash, is it?’ Coleman quickened his rapping along the pavement. ‘And who is the present incumbent?’ He pointed at the top hat.
    â€˜Can it be Bruin Opps?’ said Gumbril dubiously.
    â€˜Opps!’ Coleman yelled out the name. ‘Opps!’
    The top hat turned, revealing a shirt front, a long grey face, a glitter of circular glass over the left eye. ‘Who the devil are you?’ The voice was harsh and arrogantly offensive.
    â€˜I am that I am,’ said Coleman. ‘But I have with me’ – he pointed to Shearwater, to Gumbril, to Zoe – ‘a physiologue, a pedagogue and a priapagogue; for I leave out of account mere artists and journalists whose titles do not end with the magic syllable. And finally,’ indicating himself, ‘plain Dog, which, being interpreted kabbalistically backwards, signifies God. All at your service.’ He took off his hat and bowed.
    The top hat turned back towards the Spanish comb. ‘Who is this horrible drunk?’ it inquired.
    Mrs Viveash did not answer him, but stepped forward to meet the newcomers. In one hand she held a peeled, hard-boiled egg and a thick slice of bread and butter in the other, and between her sentences she bit at them alternately.
    â€˜Coleman!’ she exclaimed, and her voice, as she spoke, seemed always on the point of expiring, as though each word were the last, uttered faintly and breakingly from a death-bed – the last, with all the profound and nameless significance of the ultimate word. ‘It’s a very long time since