Seven Days in New Crete (Penguin Modern Classics) Read Free Page A

good epoch with no scope for humour, satire or parody. I remember an occasion when See-a-Bird absent-mindedly hung up a mirror on what he thought was a nail but what was really a fly that had settled on the wall. Everyone laughed loudly, but not because of his mistake: it was a laugh of pure pleasure that he caught the mirror on his toe as it fell, and saved it from a crash.

Chapter II
The Five Estates
    I am no student of fashion, and careless, usually, about the way I dress. Since nobody on this occasion was either naked or wearing anything really eccentric, such as painted wooden armour, or a cloak made of old newspapers, I paid little attention to their clothes, except to Sally’s. She was dressed in the witch costume in which she had officiated at my evocation ceremony: a conical moleskin cap, straw sandals, and a long-skirted, long-sleeved dark blue robe, embroidered in silver thread with an interlace of serpents and willow wreaths, and caught at the waist by a girdle of large lapis lazuli pentagons set in silver. For ritual reasons she had stained her feet dark blue. She sat opposite me and most of my talk was with her. But it was of Sapphire’s presence – she sat between me and the fire, dark-haired, slim, grey-eyed, delicate-fingered – that I was most conscious.
    ‘If my clothes embarrass you,’ Sally said, ‘I could change. ‘It wouldn’t be much trouble.’
    ‘No, certainly not. They’re very becoming. By the way, that isn’t woad on your feet, is it? You don’t mean to say that you New Cretans have gone back to woad?’
    She nodded. ‘It’s a nasty-smelling stuff to make, but we witches have to use it every now and then.’
    ‘May I ask what sort of a blue-stained witch you are? A black one? Or a white one?’
    ‘We don’t use those distinctions.’
    ‘I mean: do you specialize in destruction or in healing?’
    ‘There’s no healing without destruction.’
    ‘But do you sometimes kill people?’
    She looked serious. ‘Sometimes. That’s the least pleasant part of our calling.’
    ‘Whom do you kill? Personal enemies? Or public ones?’
    ‘Bad people.’
    ‘What do you mean by bad?’
    ‘Bad is when, for example, a calf is born with two heads, or a hen crows and doesn’t lay eggs. Or when a man behaves like a woman –’
    ‘– What, you kill your poor homosexuals? That seems a bit hard.’
    Sally went on unperturbed. ‘Or when a man deliberately violates custom, and his estate, that is to say his class, repudiates him.’
    ‘Oh yes, the Interpreter said something about estates. How many are there?’
    ‘Five.’
    ‘By the way, do you have kings? I’ve always had a weakness for kings.’
    ‘Yes, indeed. Without kings there can be no true religion. The New Cretan world is divided into kingdoms.’
    ‘Real kings, with gold crowns?’
    Everyone laughed. ‘Yes, kings with real gold crowns, entrusted to them by their queens.’
    ‘What a stable world it must be! No classless state? No republic?’
    ‘None.’
    ‘How are the estates chosen?’
    ‘I don’t quite understand your question.’
    ‘Is the classification, for example, by birth and property? Or by attainments?’
    ‘By capacity, of course. Birth is never a clear indication of capacity; parents of one estate may have children who properly belong to another. And property is an indication of a man’s estate, not his qualification for belonging to it. And attainments are the result of capacity.’
    ‘But who judges capacity? Local committees appointed by your Royal Psychological Society? You don’t still use the Funck-Hulme intelligence test, do you – the one with jigsaw puzzles and coloured electric light-bulbs and a trick slot-machine?’
    A gasp went up from the Interpreter. ‘Please, Sir,’ he protested, ‘it would take me a sadly long time to translate the second part of your question, the answer to which I can give you myself. It is “no”. May I be permitted to ask the witch on your behalf merely: who