Babel Tower (13 page)

The Theatre of Tongues was still lit dimly by Gothic windows along its two flanking walls, but where the altar would have been a new stage had been constructed, with midnight-blue velvet curtains spangled with golden stars, and everything necessary to raise and lower stage-sets, plinths, thrones, plaster walls, and other such useful adjuncts. The seats in this building were carved, high-backed benches, pews you might have called them, if in a church, not a theatre. They were not uncomfortable but gave the company, perforce, the rigid attentive posture of a jury.

Culvert made an entry from the rear of the stage, looking modest and dynamic, as he knew well how to look. He was beautifully
dressed in green breeches and white stockings, with a simple but intricately tied cravat, and his glistening hair tied back. He spoke fluently, with wit and passion, for an hour and a half at least, reading from time to time from his unfinished Memorandum when his ideas became too intricate.

The main matters he touched on are listed below, for the convenience of the present reader. The truly curious may find his theory of the human passions and velleities set out in exhaustive detail in Appendix A2 of the present work—though it must be stressed here that his ideas at the time of his appearance in the Theatre of Tongues were in a very early stage of their formulation, and had by no means even begun to resemble their final carbuncular multi-faceted brilliance or their intricately systematised web of correspondences and cross-referred psychopolitical acuities. Indeed at that time the genius of Culvert was only instinctively
reaching towards
his visionary understanding that a community of bodies and minds could be forged by the general will and the general confluence of desires into One Being acting simply for its own self-preservation and its own entire delectation. To this end he was to elaborate his understanding, his taxonomy, of the co-operal passions, great and small, of human creatures, of the ways to release their energies as flowers release sweet smells and puff out pollen, all natural as breathing and bleeding.

These are the substantive headings of Culvert’s speech. Whilst he delivered it, the Lady Roseace, and not only she, took intense pleasure in observing the decision and flexibility of his upper lip, the energetic pulse in his white throat, the muscular swell of his buttocks in his shining breeches and, not least, as his rhetorical urgency increased, the harder and rounder pressure of his virile member in its satin casing. By the end of the speech the Lady Roseace was positively aching to touch and release him, and relieved herself in a wild frenzy of clapping.

1 The community must strive towards complete freedom for each and every member to live and express himself—or herself—to the utmost.

2 To this end all false distinctions of the corrupt world from which they had fled must be abolished. There must be no masters and no servants, no payment and no debt, but a common consent about the work to be done, the delights to be enjoyed, the just sharing of these, and the proper remuneration of all from the common fund of goods and talents. Professions must be abolished, along with privileges, all
must turn their hands to all that was possible, as their desires led them, for work desired to be done is work well done, and slave labour is always ill done.

3 “It will be found,” Culvert said, “I believe, upon just reflection, that many of the evil distinctions and oppressions in our world come from institutions we have not dared to question. Most of us have already questioned and rejected the religions of our forefathers and compatriots, seeing to what evils they have led, but we have not sufficiently studied how those
unnatural
institutions—marriage, the family, the patriarchy, the pedagogic authoritarian relation between teacher and pupil—have also harmed our natural impulses and inclinations. I believe I may be able to demonstrate how much harm has been done to female affections, as well as to male vigour, by the institution of monogamy, as I believe I may be able to show that both rationally and emotionally a child may be stunted by being left only to the attentions of its progenitors, however amiable and well-meaning.”

He discussed also:

4 How it might be possible to fit work to the natural inclinations of all—men, women, and children—as they varied from home to home and from age to age.

5 How a more beautiful and less restrictive form of dress might be devised, doing away with false modesty, which in the new order would be unnecessary, and with harmful bones and laces, unless there were those—as he believed there would be found to be—who took pleasure in the constraints of such things on the flesh.

6 How language might in the end need to be reforged and reinvented, for there were no words in the language for many of the pleasurable exercises and human relations he proposed, and such words as there were were pejorative and harsh, carrying with them associations from the old prohibitions and pruriences of priests, patriarchs, and pedagogues. “Language,” cried Culvert, throwing open the damp cavern of his mouth, with its hot quivering tongue and gleaming teeth, “language is a bodily product, a product of our earliest intimacies and desires, from the babble of the infant at the breast to the impassioned discourse of the visionary who tries to speak what is yet unformulated and unshaped. We will remake language in our own images,” cried Culvert, “with our own kissings and sippings will we
make new names for what we will do and be, for the relations between ourselves, and the relations between ourselves and the world.”

7 He proposed also that the whole community should take part in various theatrical performances from time to time, and on a regular schedule to be mutually agreed. There should be dance, mime, music, debate, choral singing, gymnastic displays, tumbling, juggling—

“Sword swallowing and fire-breathing,” interjected a voice from the hinder pews.

“Those too if there can be found amongst our number persons whose sensuality inclines towards the taste of cold steel, or the thrill of scorched gullets.

“There shall also be dramatic presentations, and not only of old plays about old things, the ambitions of kings and generals, the moanings of monogamous lovers, but of new plays about new social forms, new encounters, new desires, new resolutions of new conflicts. And after the plays there shall be debates concerning the meanings and the value and the excellence and demerits of the performances, and these debates shall be no less full of energy and passion than the plays themselves.

“Also I propose that we regularly meet for story-telling. There may be those among you who suppose story-telling to be primitive and childish, but I say that story-telling is the primal
human
converse, since we are the only animals who look before and after, referring to past events and wisdom, and envisaging the future in the light of these things. I propose that we tell each other, one by one, the true stories of our lives, and this with several ends in view, viz., the greater understanding and friendship this will bring about for each of the other, and equally the greater understanding these narratives will give of the true patterns of passions and desires that rule each of our lives. And when these passions and desires are in this way made manifest, the community will the more easily be able to see how these energies may be cunningly put to use for the common good and the common delight. And as the narrators become more skilled and trusting, and as the listeners become more subtle in questioning and probing, so shall the stories become more and more truthful, as hidden things, shameful secrets, desires suppressed with violence in the harsh old days, are brought out into a clear and reasonable, friendly, and accepting light and warmth. For it is also my belief that what is kept secret and separate festers in body and brain, to the detriment of the individual and the community.
Sunlight cures suppurating diseases of the skin, and friendly contemplation may cure many boils and carbuncles on the psyche.

“Later we may even wish to
enact
these stories together, to enact them even with beneficent and healing differences, restoring losses, fulfilling desperate needs, who knows? I should hope that the tale-telling may become the central, the sacramental activity, so to speak, of our union.

“But these are only thoughts, and only
my
thoughts. We must all think long and deeply as to how to proceed, and skilfully and quickly about the immediately pressing problems.”

Not only the Lady Roseace, but all the assembled company, including the little children and infants who could not have understood a word, applauded vigorously after this speech. Various questions were raised, in a spirit of co-operation and enthusiasm. Turdus Cantor, for instance, asked whether the proposal for autobiographical narrations—which he believed might be both instructive and amusing—did not smack in some way of the confessional practices of the old Church, and might not be, as the confessional had been, manipulated by unscrupulous men to instil fear and obedience in the weak. To which Culvert replied that that might be so in a
secret
confessional, as the Church’s was, but not in the frank and open and sympathetic group of loving supporters he envisaged.

The Lady Mavis, clutching her infant Florizel to her breast, asked how soon Culvert proposed to institute communal care of the young, and whether it would be done without further thought being given to providing for all the needs of the smallest members of the community, including mother’s milk and the lalling of the maternal voice. For speaking of her own desires, she said, she felt a passionate need to feed and cradle and comfort her own infants, and so she was sure did every woman. To which Culvert replied that nothing would be done without full debate, and that her confessed proclivities seemed to suggest,
prima facie
, her suitability for employment in the nurseries, but that this too, would need looking into, considering also the passional needs of the infants themselves, and of other possible nurses and wetnurses.

As for Lady Mavis’s naïve view that all women had a natural inclination to caring for infants, specifically their own infants, he had only to call on history to prove her wrong. He had only to refer to the habit of exposing unwanted infants, usually females, in jars outside the walls of civilised Athens, or the Chinese habit of regular infanticide of
unwanted female young, whom they suffocated with affection, or punished too captiously.

A young woman called Dora, who was, or had until that moment been, a lady’s maid—if indeed that moment was the moment of emancipation, or unshackling, or evolution desiderated by Culvert—this young woman asked, in a pretty and languid voice, which the Lady Roseace prevented herself from characterising as “insolent,” whether her own natural passional need to live the life of a lady, and drink tea, and lie on a couch, and flirt with gentlemen, could now be put to good use, in the new order. Culvert answered this flippancy with a most beaming gravity, saying that he hoped that from now on, from time to time, to be regulated and ordered by the organism of the community, everyone who so desired might lie on a couch and sip tea, for these were not insignificant pleasures by any means. And that also flirting with gentlemen, fulfilling the desires of gentlemen, and indeed sharing mutual pleasures with them, would be part of the rights and duties of all women in the Tower. And that also productive work must be done, the community must be fed, agriculture, cooking and so on must happen, and those unable to carry out any duties in the fields or kitchens must find other ways of benefiting the common wealth. The questioner could hardly be employed as a whore in the new order, he supposed, for pleasuring should be by mutual consent and freely given—unless particular passions felt an irreducible need to be paid for their services—for he had noticed that to some, coins of the realm in the palm of the hand, or the stocking under the bed, were a greater delight than any number of ejaculations or embraces, and he was not yet firm in his own mind as to whether this proclivity would disappear in a harmonious world, or persist ineradicably. The young woman appeared to be taking some time to think out the implications of this last observation—her pretty brow was knit and her mouth pouted thoughtfully.

From the back of the theatre, in the shadows, the dark voice of Colonel Grim could be heard, breaking into the momentary silence.

“And who will be responsible for cleaning the latrines?”

A further silence ensued. Colonel Grim said, brisk and conversational, “I ask again, who will be responsible for cleaning the latrines? And I offer you the observation that many previous attempts to found ideal societies or just commonwealths have foundered on just this question, which is not trivial but, if you will forgive a little wordplay, of
fundamental
importance.”

No one could think of an answer to this question, though Narcisse proposed that the task be shared by the whole community, by rota, everyone working with a partner for so many days of the month or year. He added, with a graceful smile, that he would be only too happy himself to purchase his release from this duty with anything it might be in his power to offer anyone, after the institution of the new order. Merkurius said that the best way would be to find someone whose natural passion was ingenious invention, and who, with a system of pulleys and funnels, runnels and pumps, might perhaps make the latrines self-sufficient, might construct a self-perpetuating, self-evacuating, self-purifying
system.
Turdus Cantor said that if they were to work on the assumption that everyone had a set of passional inclinations that contributed to the good of a society, perhaps they should ask if anyone here had a passional inclination to the clearing of excrement. He had seen Bedlam lunatics happily at play with the substance, but he thought there were not yet any Bedlam lunatics amongst them. Culvert said that the persons in question might only have been restrained in Bedlam because their natural desire to handle turds was disapproved by society, and that such persons might indeed be usefully employed in latrines in a reasonable community. Another silence ensued which was broken by Marius, a twelve-year-old boy, who remarked that cleaning latrines could be a form of punishing offenders here, as in schools and military camps he had seen. The Lady Paeony said she hoped that no form of punishment would be thought desirable in the new world they intended to build, and the discussion moved away from Colonel Grim’s question to the question of the desirability, or otherwise, of punishments and sanctions, which took up several sage, delightful and exhausting hours.