THE ENVOY. What do you mean by short work? I hope—
ZOZIM [with obviously feigned geniality] Oh, nothing, nothing, nothing. We are thinking of trying North America: thats all. You see, the Red Men of that country used to be white. They passed through a period of sallow complexions, followed by a period of no complexions at all, into the red characteristic of their climate. Besides, several cases of long life have occurred in North America. They joined us here; and their stock soon reverted to the original white of these islands.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. But have you considered the possibility of your colony turning red?
ZOZIM. That wont matter. We are not particular about our pigmentation. The old books mention red-faced Englishmen: they appear to have been common objects at one time.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [very persuasively] But do you think you would be popular in North America? It seems to me, if I may say so, that on your own shewing you need a country in which society is organized in a series of highly exclusive circles, in which the privacy of private life is very jealously guarded, and in which no one presumes to speak to anyone else without an introduction following a strict examination of social credentials. It is only in such a country that persons of special tastes and attainments can form a little world of their own, and protect themselves absolutely from intrusion by common persons. I think I may claim that our British society has developed this exclusiveness to perfection. If you would pay us a visit and see the working of our caste system, our club system, our guild system, you would admit that nowhere else in the world, least of all, perhaps in North America, which has a regrettable tradition of social promiscuity, could you keep yourselves so entirely to yourselves.
ZOZIM [good-naturedly embarrassed] Look here. There is no good discussing this. I had rather not explain; but it wont make any difference to our Colonizers what sort of short-livers they come across. We shall arrange all that. Never mind how. Let us join the ladies.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [throwing off his diplomatic attitude and abandoning himself to despair] We understand you only too well, sir. Well, kill us. End the lives you have made miserably unhappy by opening up to us the possibility that any of us may live three hundred years. I solemnly curse that possibility. To you it may be a blessing, because you do live three hundred years. To us, who live less than a hundred, whose flesh is as grass, it is the most unbearable burden our poor tortured humanity has ever groaned under.
THE ENVOY. Hullo, Poppa! Steady! How do you make that out?
ZOZIM. What is three hundred years? Short enough, if you ask me. Why, in the old days you people lived on the assumption that you were going to last out for ever and ever and ever. Immortal, you thought yourselves. Were you any happier then?
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. As President of the Baghdad Historical Society I am in a position to inform you that the communities which took this monstrous pretension seriously were the most wretched of which we have any record. My Society has printed an editio princeps of the works of the father of history, Thucyderodotus Macolly-buckle. Have you read his account of what was blasphemously called the Perfect City of God, and the attempt made to reproduce it in the northern part of these islands by Jonhobsnoxius, called the Leviathan? Those misguided people sacrificed the fragment of life that was granted to them to an imaginary immortality. They crucified the prophet who told them to take no thought for the morrow, and that here and now was their Australia: Australia being a term signifying paradise, or an eternity of bliss. They tried to produce a condition of death in life: to mortify the flesh, as they called it.
ZOZIM. Well, you are not suffering from that, are you? You have not a mortified air.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Naturally we are not absolutely insane and suicidal. Nevertheless we impose on ourselves abstinences and disciplines and studies that are meant to prepare us for living three centuries. And we seldom live one. My childhood was made unnecessarily painful, my boyhood unnecessarily laborious, by ridiculous preparations for a length of days which the chances were fifty thousand to one against my ever attaining. I have been cheated out of the natural joys and freedoms of my life by this dream to which the existence of these islands and their oracles gives a delusive possibility of realization. I curse the day when long life was invented, just as the victims of Jonhobsnoxius cursed the day when eternal life was invented.
ZOZIM. Pooh! You could live three centuries if you chose.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. That is what the fortunate always say to the unfortunate. Well, I do not choose. I accept my three score and ten years. If they are filled with usefulness, with justice, with mercy, with good-will: if they are the lifetime of a soul that never loses its honor and a brain that never loses its eagerness, they are enough for me, because these things are infinite and eternal, and can make ten of my years as long as thirty of yours. I shall not conclude by saying live as long as you like and be damned to you, because I have risen for the moment far above any ill-will to you or to any fellow-creature; but I am your equal before that eternity in which the difference between your lifetime and mine is as the difference between one drop of water and three in the eyes of the Almighty Power from which we have both proceeded.
ZOZIM [impressed] You spoke that piece very well, Daddy. I couldnt talk like that if I tried. It sounded fine. Ah! here comes the ladies.
To his relief, they have just appeared on the threshold of the temple.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [passing from exaltation to distress] It means nothing to him: in this land of discouragement the sublime has become the ridiculous. [Turning on the hopelessly puzzled Zozim] 'Behold, thou hast made my days as it were a span long; and mine age is even as nothing in respect of thee.'
THE WIFE.} [running] {{Poppa, Poppa: dont look like that.
THE DAUGHTER.}[to him] {Oh, granpa, whats the matter?
ZOZIM [with a shrug] Discouragement!
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [throwing off the women with a superb gesture] Liar! [Recollecting himself, he adds, with noble courtesy, raising his hat and bowing] I beg your pardon, sir; but I am NOT discouraged.
A burst of orchestral music, through which a powerful gong sounds, is heard from the temple. Zoo, in a purple robe, appears in the doorway.
ZOO. Come. The oracle is ready.
Zozim motions them to the threshold with a wave of his staff. The Envoy and the Elderly Gentleman take off their hats and go into the temple on tiptoe, Zoo leading the way. The Wife and Daughter, frightened as they are, raise their heads uppishly and follow flatfooted, sustained by a sense of their Sunday clothes and social consequence. Zozim remains in the portico, alone.
ZOZIM [taking off his wig, beard, and robe, and bundling them under his arm] Ouf! [He goes home].
ACT III
Inside the temple. A gallery overhanging an abyss. Dead silence. The gallery is brightly lighted; but beyond is a vast gloom, continually changing in intensity. A shaft of violet light shoots upward; and a very harmonious and silvery carillon chimes. When it ceases the violet ray vanishes.
Zoo comes along the gallery, followed by the Envoy's daughter, his wife, the Envoy himself, and the Elderly Gentleman. The two men are holding their hats with the brims near their noses, as if prepared to pray into them at a moment's notice. Zoo halts: they all follow her example. They contemplate the void with awe. Organ music of the kind called sacred in the nineteenth century begins. Their awe deepens. The violet ray, now a diffused mist, rises again from the abyss.
THE WIFE [to Zoo, in a reverent whisper] Shall we kneel?
ZOO [loudly] Yes, if you want to. You can stand on your head if you like. [She sits down carelessly on the gallery railing, with her back to the abyss].
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [jarred by her callousness] We desire to behave in