Back to Methuselah · Part III (2/2) (3/6)

| The Archbishop | No. Nothing of the kind. They simply believed that mankind could live any length of time it knew to be absolutely necessary to save civilization from extinction. I did not share their belief: at least I was not conscious of sharing it: I thought I was only amused by it. To me my father-in-law and his brother were a pair of clever cranks who had talked one another into a fixed idea which had become a monomania with them. It was not until I got into serious difficulties with the pension authorities after turning seventy that I began to suspect the truth. | | Confucius | The truth? | | The Archbishop | Yes, Mr. Chief Secretary: the truth. Like all revolutionary truths, it began as a joke. As I showed no signs of ageing after forty-five, my wife used to make fun of me by saying that I was certainly going to live three hundred years. She was sixty-eight when she died; and the last thing she said to me, as I sat by her bedside holding her hand, was “Bill: you really don’t look fifty. I wonder⁠—” She broke off, and fell asleep wondering, and never awoke. Then I began to wonder too. That is the explanation of the three hundred years, Mr. Secretary. | | Confucius | It is very ingenious, Mr. Archbishop. And very well told. | | Burge-Lubin | Of course you understand that I don’t for a moment suggest the very faintest doubt of your absolute veracity, Archbishop. You know that, don’t you? | | The Archbishop | Quite, Mr. President. Only you don’t believe me: that is all. I do not expect you to. In your place I should not believe. You had better have a look at the films. Pointing to the Accountant General. He believes. | | Burge-Lubin | But the drowning? What about the drowning? A man might get drowned once, or even twice if he was exceptionally careless. But he couldn’t be drowned four times. He would run away from water like a mad dog. | | The Archbishop | Perhaps Mr. Chief Secretary can guess the explanation of that. | | Confucius | To keep your secret, you had to die. | | Burge-Lubin | But dash it all, man, he isn’t dead. | | Confucius | It is socially impossible not to do what everybody else does. One must die at the usual time. | | Barnabas | Of course. A simple point of honour. | | Confucius | Not at all. A simple necessity. | | Burge-Lubin | Well, I’m hanged if I see it. I should jolly well live forever if I could. | | The Archbishop | It is not so easy as you think. You, Mr. Chief Secretary, have grasped the difficulties of the position. Let me remind you, Mr. President, that I was over eighty before the 1969 Act for the Redistribution of Income entitled me to a handsome retiring pension. Owing to my youthful appearance I was prosecuted for attempting to obtain public money on false pretences when I claimed it. I could prove nothing; for the register of my birth had been blown to pieces by a bomb dropped on a village church years before in the first of the big modern wars. I was ordered back to work as a man of forty, and had to work for fifteen years more, the retiring age being then fifty-five. | | Burge-Lubin | As late as fifty-five! How did people stand it? | | The Archbishop | They made difficulties about letting me go even then, I still looked so young. For some years I was in continual trouble. The industrial police rounded me up again and again, refusing to believe that I was over age. They began to call me The Wandering Jew. You see how impossible my position was. I foresaw that in twenty years more my official record would prove me to be seventy-five; my appearance would make it impossible to believe that I was more than forty-five; and my real age would be one hundred and seventeen. What was I to do? Bleach my hair? Hobble about on two sticks? Mimic the voice of a centenarian? Better have killed myself. | | Barnabas | You ought to have killed yourself. As an honest man you were entitled to no more than an honest man’s expectation of life. | | The Archbishop | I did kill myself. It was quite easy. I left a suit of clothes by the seashore during the bathing season, with documents in the pockets to identify me. I then turned up in a strange place, pretending that I had lost my memory, and did not know my name or my age or anything about myself. Under treatment I recovered my health, but not my memory. I have had several careers since I began this routine of life and death. I have been an archbishop three times. When I persuaded the authorities to knock down all our towns and rebuild them from the foundations, or move them, I went into the artillery, and became a general. I have been President. | | Burge-Lubin | Dickenson? | | The Archbishop | Yes. | | Burge-Lubin | But they found Dickenson’s body: its ashes are buried in St. Paul’s. | | The Archbishop | They almost always found the body. During the bathing season there are plenty of bodies. I have been cremated again and again. At first I used to attend my own funeral in disguise, because I had read about a man doing that in an old romance by an author named Bennett, from whom I remember borrowing five pounds in 1912. But I got tired of that. I would not cross the street now to read my latest epitaph. | | | The Chief Secretary* and the President look very glum. Their incredulity is vanquished at last. | | Burge-Lubin | Look here. Do you chaps realize how awful this is? Here we are sitting calmly in the presence of a man whose death is overdue by two centuries. He may crumble into dust before our eyes at any moment. | | Barnabas | Not he. He’ll go on drawing his pension until the end of the world. | | The Archbishop | Not quite that. My expectation of life is only three hundred years. | | Barnabas | You will last out my time anyhow: that’s enough for me. | | The Archbishop | Coolly. How do you know? | | Barnabas | Taken aback. How do I know! | | The Archbishop | Yes: how do you know? I did not begin even to suspect until I was nearly seventy. I was only vain of my youthful appearance. I was not quite serious about it until I was ninety. Even now I am not sure from one moment to another, though I have given you my reason for thinking that I have quite unintentionally committed myself to a lifetime of three hundred years. | | Burge-Lubin | But how do you do it? Is it lemons? Is it Soya beans? Is it⁠— | | The Archbishop | I do not do it. It happens. It may happen to anyone. It may happen to you. | | Burge-Lubin | The full significance of this for himself dawning on him. Then we three may be in the same boat with you, for all we know? | | The Archbishop | You may. Therefore I advise you to be very careful how you take any step that will make my position uncomfortable. | | Burge-Lubin | Well, I’m dashed! One of my secretaries was remarking only this morning how well and young I am looking. Barnabas: I have an absolute conviction that I am one of the⁠—the⁠—shall I say one of the victims?⁠—of this strange destiny. | | The Archbishop | Your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather formed the same conviction when he was between sixty and seventy. I knew him. | | Burge-Lubin | Depressed. Ah! But he died. | | The Archbishop | No. | | Burge-Lubin | Hopefully. Do you mean to say he is still alive? | | The Archbishop | No. He was shot. Under the influence of his belief that he was going to live three hundred years he became a changed man. He began to tell people the truth; and they disliked it so much that they took advantage of certain clauses of an Act of Parliament he had himself passed during the Four Years War, and had purposely forgotten to repeal afterwards. They took him to the Tower of London and shot him. | | | The apparatus rings. | | Confucius | Answering. Yes? He listens. | | A Woman’s Voice | The Domestic Minister has called. | | Burge-Lubin | Not quite catching the answer. Who does she say has called? | | Confucius | The Domestic Minister. | | Barnabas | Oh, dash it! That awful woman! | | Burge-Lubin | She certainly is a bit of a terror. I don’t exactly know why; for she is not at all bad-looking. | | Barnabas | Out of patience. For Heaven’s sake, don’t be frivolous. | | The Archbishop | He cannot help it, Mr. Accountant General. Three of his sixteen great-great-great-grandfathers married Lubins. | | Burge-Lubin | Tut tut! I am not frivolling. I did not ask the lady here. Which of you did? | | Confucius | It is her official duty to report personally to the President once a quarter. | | Burge-Lubin | Oh, that. Then I suppose it’s my official duty to receive her. They’d better send her in. You don’t mind, do you? She will bring us back to real life. I don’t know how you fellows feel; but I’m just going dotty. | | Confucius | Into the telephone. The President will receive the Domestic Minister at once. | | | They watch the door in silence for the entrance of the Domestic Minister. | | Burge-Lubin | Suddenly, to the Archbishop. I suppose you have been married over and over again. | | The Archbishop | Once. You do not make vows until death when death is three hundred years off. | | | They relapse into uneasy silence. The Domestic Minister enters. She is a handsome woman, apparently in the prime of life, with elegant, tense, well held-up figure, and the walk of a goddess. Her expression and deportment are grave, swift, decisive, awful, unanswerable. She wears a Dianesque tunic instead of a blouse, and a silver coronet instead of a gold fillet. Her dress otherwise is not markedly different from that of the men, who rise as she enters, and incline their heads with instinctive awe. She comes to the vacant chair between Barnabas and Confucius. | | Burge-Lubin | Resolutely genial and gallant. Delighted to see you, Mrs. Lutestring. | | Confucius | We are honored by your celestial presence. | | Barnabas | Good day, madam. | | The Archbishop | I have not had the pleasure of meeting you before. I am the Archbishop of York. | | Mrs. Lutestring | Surely we have met, Mr. Archbishop. I remember your face. We⁠—She checks herself suddenly. Ah, no: I remember now: it was someone else. She sits down. They all sit down. | | The Archbishop | Also puzzled. Are you sure you are mistaken? I also have some association with your face, Mrs. Lutestring. Something like a door opening continually and revealing you. And a smile of welcome when you recognized me. Did you ever open a door for me, I wonder? | | Mrs. Lutestring | I often opened a door for the person you have just reminded me of. But he has been dead many years. The rest, except the Archbishop, look at one another quickly. | | Confucius | May I ask how many years? | | Mrs. Lutestring | Struck by his tone, looks at him for a moment with some displeasure; then replies. It does not matter. A long time. | | Burge-Lubin | You mustn’t rush to conclusions about the Archbishop, Mrs. Lutestring. He is an older bird than you think. Older than you, at all events. | | Mrs. Lutestring | With a melancholy smile. I think not, Mr. President. But the subject is a delicate one. I had rather not pursue it. | | Confucius | There is a question which has not been asked. | | Mrs. Lutestring | Very decisively. If it is a question about my age, Mr. Chief Secretary, it had better not be asked. All that concerns you about my personal affairs can be found in the books of the Accountant General. | | Confucius | The question I was thinking of will not be addressed to you. But let me say that your sensitiveness on the point is very strange, coming from a woman so superior to all common weaknesses as we know you to be. | | Mrs. Lutestring | I may have reasons which have nothing to do with common weaknesses, Mr. Chief Secretary. I hope you will respect them. | | Confucius | After bowing to her in assent. I will now put my question. Have you, Mr. Archbishop, any ground for assuming, as you seem to do, that what has happened to you has not happened to other people as well? | | Burge-Lubin | Yes, by George! I never thought of that. | | The Archbishop | I have never met any case but my own. | | Confucius | How do you know? | | The Archbishop | Well, no one has ever told me that they were in this extraordinary position. | | Confucius | That proves nothing. Did you ever tell anybody that you were in it? You never told us. Why did you never tell us? | | The Archbishop | I am surprised at the question, coming from so astute a mind as yours, Mr. Secretary. When you reach the age I reached before I discovered what was happening to me, I was old enough to know and fear the ferocious hatred with which human animals, like all other animals, turn upon any unhappy individual who has the misfortune to be unlike themselves in every respect: to be unnatural, as they call it. You will still find, among the tales of that twentieth-century classic, Wells, a story of a race of men who grew twice as big as their fellows, and another story of a man who fell into the hands of a race of blind men. The big people had to fight the little people for their lives; and the man with eyes would have had his eyes put out by the blind had he not fled to the desert, where he perished miserably. Wells’s teaching, on that and other matters, was not lost on me. By the way, he lent me five pounds once which I never repaid; and it still troubles my conscience. | | Confucius | And were you the only reader of Wells? If there were others like you, had they not the same reason for keeping the secret? | | The Archbishop | That is true. But I should know. You short-lived people are so childish. If I met a man of my own age I should recognize him at once. I have never done so. | | Mrs. Lutestring | Would you recognize a woman of your age, do you think? | | The Archbishop | I⁠—He stops and turns upon her with a searching look, startled by the suggestion and the suspicion it rouses. | | Mrs. Lutestring | What is your age, Mr. Archbishop? | | Burge-Lubin | Two hundred and eighty-three, he says. That is his little joke. Do you know, Mrs. Lutestring, he had almost talked us into believing him when you came in and cleared the air with your robust common sense. | | Mrs. Lutestring | Do you really feel that, Mr. President? I hear the note of breezy assertion in your voice. I miss the note of conviction. | | Burge-Lubin | Jumping up. Look here. Let us stop talking damned nonsense. I don’t wish to be disagreeable; but it’s getting on my nerves. The best joke won’t bear being pushed beyond a certain point. That point has been reached. I⁠—I’m rather busy this morning. We all have our hands pretty full. Confucius here will tell you that I have a heavy day before me. | | Barnabas | Have you anything more important than this thing, if it’s true? | | Burge-Lubin | Oh, if if, if it’s true! But it isn’t true. | | Barnabas | Have you anything at all to do? | | Burge-Lubin | Anything to do! Have you forgotten, Barnabas, that I happen to be President, and that the weight of the entire public business of this country is on my shoulders? | | Barnabas | Has he anything to do, Confucius? | | Confucius | He has to be President. | | Barnabas | That means that he has nothing to do. | | Burge-Lubin | Sulkily. Very well, Barnabas. Go on making a fool of yourself. He sits down. Go on. | | Barnabas | I am not going to leave this room until we get to the bottom of this swindle. | | Mrs. Lutestring | Turning with deadly gravity on the Accountant General. This what, did you say? | | Confucius | These expressions cannot be sustained. You obscure the discussion in using them. | | Barnabas | Glad to escape from her gaze by addressing Confucius*. Well, this unnatural horror. Will that satisfy you? | | Confucius | That is in order. But we do not commit ourselves to the implications of the word horror. | | The Archbishop | By the word horror the Accountant General means only something unusual. |