Time Will Run Back (8 page)

Peter admitted that he had. Bolshekov threw up his hands in a gesture of resignation and despair.

“Well, this proves that my feeling about it has always been right. I’ve always contended that on this point of music our ancestral communist leaders weakened in their resolution, that they failed to be thorough, and we are suffering from that mistake to this day.

“Here is what happened. They ordered all the music of the Dark Ages burned; and it was burned. But there was one thing they didn’t count on—people’s memories.”

“Memories of the bonfires?”

“No! Memories of the music! The musicians
remembered
the music! They remembered nearly all of it! Do you know that there were orchestra conductors who remembered whole symphonies, even when these were written for scores of instruments? It was found that among them the living musicians carried in their memories the whole of bourgeois composers like Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, Haydn! And of course the pianists remembered all the piano music; and so on.”

“I am not surprised to learn that,” said Peter; “but what could have been done about it?”

“They could have wiped out the melodies by wiping out everyone who remembered the melodies! They could at least have forbidden anyone to play or sing or hum them, on penalty of death, and gradually the memory would have died out.... But on this one point our communist ancestors were lax and weak. They compromised. They allowed people to rewrite the old scores, and even the tunes of the old songs, provided the words were left out or proletarian words substituted. They provided merely that none of these things could ever be played except by chosen members of the Steel Frame in the hearing only of other members of the Steel Frame.”

“Oh,
that’s
why His Supremacy allowed me to learn Mozart! And
that’s
why I couldn’t get at the scores in the library without a special card and key!”

“His Supremacy can never do anything wrong.” Bolshekov made the sign of the S on his breast, and then looked significantly into space.

“Well, to continue. The biggest split in the Politburo itself came on the question of science. Bourgeois biology was nonsense. Bourgeois astronomy was unnecessary, except for navigation. But bourgeois medicine had cured even communists.... And bourgeois physics and chemistry and mathematics had helped to direct artillery fire and were necessary for the industry and engineering that are necessary for wars.... Moreover, all the important discoveries of so-called bourgeois science or mathematics had in any case been made by Russians—”

“I’ve often wondered,” said Peter, “who discovered the differential calculus.”

“I’ve forgotten myself,” said Bolshekov, “whether it was Tchaikovsky or Lenin.... In any case, there was lengthy debate about the whole matter, and our ancestors finally decided on a selective purge of the sciences. They burned all the old books, but not until they had copied what they wanted out of them and rewritten them from a Marxist point of view.”

“Supposing somebody did not turn in all his books for the bonfires when they were demanded?”

“Our ancestors simply prescribed the death penalty for anyone in whose possession any of these books was found. If they were found in any house, every member of the family in that house—and everybody in the house on either side of it—was sentenced to death. This naturally made everyone alert to see that all the books were destroyed.”

“People were encouraged to spy on each other and to betray each other?”

“How else could a really thorough job have been done?”

Peter was silent. His thoughts went back to the peasant family in the May Day parade. “But what happened,” he resumed, “when people had memorized poetry as they had music—or parts in plays—or stories or novels or old sayings?”

“Ah,” answered Bolshekov, “here we come to the most brilliant stroke of our communist ancestors—the invention of Marxanto!”

“Didn’t people always speak Marxanto?”
⁵

“Not until after the former capitalist world had been wholly conquered! Our ancestors saw precisely the problem you have just raised. They saw that people might remember these stories and verses and pass them down from generation to generation word of mouth. And then they thought of a device that solved not one, but nearly all of their problems at a single stroke!”

Bolshekov paused dramatically.

“They invented a new language—Marxanto, and forced everybody to learn it!

“Can’t you see how many problems that solved?” he went on, smiling. “The language we think in determines the very way we think. The words we use come already loaded with the meanings that decide our conclusions. Now all the ancient languages—all of them now dead and fortunately irrecoverable—were loaded almost from the beginning of time with bourgeois and capitalistic connotations, implications, emotions, sentiments, attitudes. We had already seen how much could be done to change all these by describing everything in a new vocabulary. This was the great discovery and the great triumph of our Prophet and Redeemer, Karl Marx. When he had finally maneuvered his opponents into talking in his vocabulary they were already in the linguistic trap. For everyone who used the Marxist terms—
capitalism, finance capitalism, bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie, proletariat, the masses, the class struggle, class antagonism, capitalist imperialism, historical determinism, dialectic materialism, utopianism, capitalist exploitation
—whoever used these terms accepted along with them the concepts that must inevitably lead him to the Marxist conclusions. Why not, then, complete and nail down the intellectual triumph by eradicating every word embodying a bourgeois concept and substituting for it words embodying the Marxist concepts?

“That is what our revolutionary ancestors did. They called together an assembly of their greatest Marxist dialecticians, linguists, lexicographers, semanticists and propagandists, and ordered them to create an entirely new language. They made a new dictionary, consisting not only of new words, but of new, precise Marxist definitions of each of those words. They replaced the bourgeois grammar of the old languages with a new proletarian grammar for the new language!”

“But how did they get people to learn the new language and to forget their own?”

“Ah! They were forced to issue new bilingual dictionaries in each of the scores of existing national languages. The new equivalents were given with the new definitions. Each of these dictionaries was numbered and allowed to be held for only three years. Henceforth only Marxanto was allowed to be taught in the schools. Children and adults both were given three years to learn and use the new language. Then they were forced to turn in all bilingual dictionaries, and all of these were burned. Meanwhile everything that was worth preserving was rewritten and translated into the new language. And thereafter no one could use anything but Marxanto on penalty of death!

“Now look at all that was accomplished at a single stroke! The old bourgeois languages, words, meanings and connotations were totally destroyed. People were prohibited, on penalty of death, from speaking any poetry or phrase that they remembered from the old languages—and their grandchildren wouldn’t have been able to understand them anyway. Wonworld was cemented together by a single international language! And this language itself was so constructed, and its words so defined, that nobody could henceforth arrive at any but Marxist conclusions!

“We constructed a new poetry, a new science, a new logic! It meant at last a clean slate, a fresh start, a new dawn in the history of man!”

An exalted light came into Bolshekov’s eyes.

“Well, I have talked too long. You are so ignorant, there is so much to tell you, and the excitement of having for the first time a grown man to whom all this wonderful history can be communicated, has carried me far beyond the hour I had set aside. Here: I must give you a list of books.”

He wrote down some names rapidly on a pad and handed a slip to Peter. “Here are the three best histories—though if you begin with the three volumes of Ordanov you won’t need the other two small volumes: they are merely popular condensations.

Get these from a State bookstore today. Be here again at ten tomorrow.” “Have you time now, Your Highness, to answer one question?” Peter asked, getting up.

“What is it?”

“If all the old histories of the ancient world and the Dark Ages were destroyed, in order to wipe out the very memory of these so-called civilizations, how is it that you yourself know so much about them?”

“You don’t seem to understand. What I have given you is the present
official
history of that dead world. It is the history that the Protectors of Wonworld have voted to teach. When they wiped out all the old books, they had to decide what history to put in its place. What I have told you is the
agreed-upon
history.”

“But did things actually happen that way? Was it actually so?”

“I will explain all that when we get to neo-Marxian logic. The only question to be raised about a statement is not, Is it so? but What good will it do?”

“You mean you don’t actually know whether the history you have just recited is true or not?”

“What do you mean by ‘true’? Truth, as you will see by the Marxanto dictionary, is just an instrument; it is simply whatever belief works satisfactorily. Truth is whatever is good for Communism. But that opens up the whole subject of neo-Marxian logic, and we can’t go into that today. Be here tomorrow at ten.”

STALENIN took up a pad of paper and signed his name on it. He shoved it toward Peter.

“Imitate that.”

Peter did his best.

“Try again.”

Peter tried.

“That’s a little better.”

Stalenin took a clean sheet and signed his name half a dozen times. “Take this. Don’t let anyone know you have it. But keep perfecting my signature.”

“But what’s the purpose of—”

Stalenin pointed significantly to his heart, and then rather vaguely to his brain. “We may have less time than I thought.” He looked appraisingly at Peter’s new but ill-fitting Deputy uniform.

“That’s more becoming.... Here is the address of my personal tailor.” He handed Peter a card. “He will measure you for Protectors’ uniforms, but you are not to wear them until the time is right. And now”—his tone was unexpectedly soft—“is there anything else you want?”

Peter got up his courage: “Would it be possible, father, for me to have a piano?”

“In this emergency you can’t afford to waste your time drumming—”

“But only for an hour a day, in the evening? Even your organized recreation platoons recognize—”

“I’ll think about it.”

At the government book store Peter found that he needed special ration coupons to get the history volumes Bolshekov had recommended. It would take at least a week to get these, he learned. It suddenly occurred to him that he might borrow the books at Edith’s little branch library.

He had not dared to see her since the kiss and the slap. But his new Deputy uniform, it struck him, gave him an excuse to patch things up....

Her glance was hostile.

“I don’t know how to apologize for kissing you—” he began.

“Oh, it isn’t that. But when you knew you were being followed by the secret police, and you led them to our house—”

“But I found I was being followed, not because I was under suspicion, but because they were thinking of promoting me. Notice?” He looked down proudly at his new Deputy uniform.

He was surprised himself to hear how plausible his explanation sounded. And, he thought, it’s even close to the truth.

He not only got his history books, but before he left had persuaded her to let him call the following evening.

He spent the night in his hotel room assiduously practicing forgeries of his father’s signature.

BOLSHEKOV motioned Peter to a chair.

“There is something,” he began, “that I perhaps failed to explain yesterday. You asked how I happened to know so much about the history of the Ancients and the Dark Ages when all the records had been destroyed. I told you that what I knew was the
agreed-upon
history of those times, the history we had decided to teach. But I should have made it clear that a few specialists among the Protectors are permitted to know more about the past than the rest of Wonworld. If you think about the matter a moment it will be easy to understand why this is so. The old fallacies, the old errors, the old vicious and dangerous doctrines held before and during the Dark Ages are liable to recur. They might recur through the discovery of some old book—though that doesn’t seem likely—or by a sort of spontaneous combustion. In any case we must be prepared with the answers. So a small group of scholars among the Protectors are permitted access to some things that it would be too dangerous to allow everyone to have access to. That’s how you—prematurely—happen to know about Mozart’s music, for example.”

“You mean, Your Highness, that this is withheld from the masses?”

“You’d better not be caught playing it in their hearing! I might give you a better illustration from economics. The version of Karl Marx’s
Capital
that is available in the State bookstores is, of course, an abridged and expurgated volume. It is not a mere translation into the Marxanto of Marx’s original book.”

“Why not?”

“Because if our communist ancestors had retained all the passages in which Marx denounced capitalism it might have been possible for someone to reconstruct from them what capitalism was actually like, and to try to restore it. It would be obviously foolish to allow any such idea to get into anyone’s head. The people, left to themselves, are capable of any sort of perverse idea.”

“But might not the same idea occur to a Protector?”

“There we have powerful safeguards. In the first place, the Protectors comprise less than one in a hundred out of the whole population. You will gradually come to realize how enormous are the power and prestige which that confers. No Protector risks his position lightly. In the second place, our communist ancestors were not so foolish as to permit even the Protectors complete access to Marx’s
Capital
and the other sacred writings in the original. Even the special editions for the Protectors have been edited in translation—abridged and expurgated—but not as much as the editions for the masses. We must give the scholars of the Protectorate just enough knowledge to be ready with answers should any old errors reappear.”