A/N: Thank you very much for your reviews! You actually made me post this chapter, too. So there are people who are writing Brave New World, they're just not posting it!

2 Everything I do not miss

Bernard scowled angrily at the screeching brakes and dust that was the car of their driver. Now they were completely alone, silence and dark sky stretched into infinity, the wailing wind the only sound under the clouds. It was piercingly cold, the road was frozen. Bernard, struggling with his much to heavy suitcases slithered and stumbled until suddenly his feet were drawn from underneath him and he fell to his knees, dropping the luggage and spilling the contents of one bag.

He cried out like a disappointed child, hammering with his fists on the suitcases and started to sob, defiant and undignified, just like a little infant, Helmholtz thought, feeling terribly embarrassed although they were alone.

"Bernard..." he said, stepping behind him.

"I hate it, I hate it, I hate it! Why, why me! This terrible, horrible place!"

Helmholtz, sighing, knelt down behind his friend. He wanted to go into their new house, which was only a few metres away, and seemed comfortable enough with its promise of warmth. Instead he touched Bernard's gaunt shoulders, felt him shiver and sob, and tried to be gentle and patient. He was good-willed by nature, but sometimes Bernhard's seemingly infinite self- pity was pushing even him to his limits.

"Come on," he prodded, "Let's pick it up again, let's go inside...," with his best persuading voice, nearly as good as the synthetic anti-riot speeches. Bernard tried to push him away, his sobbing becoming angrier.

"No, no I don't want it! I don't want it anymore! Leave me alone!"

"It's freezing cold! Please Bernard, be reasonable..."

"Go away!" Bernard yelled. Helmholtz, with an exasperated noise, got up and picked up the spilt clothing and other items, took all of Bernard's luggage but the suitcase he was still clinging to, and easily lifted it.

"Come on. Let's go inside. I'll leave you alone, but let's go inside." Silence, sniffing.

"You'll freeze to death!"

"Yes! Yes, I will!"


Helmholtz was stunned speechless. Suicide was a concept alien to him, even the thought of it was strongly prohibited by the conditioning. Everyone had to be happy, had to be useful. It took him some moments to grasp what Bernard meant, that he intended to die, to deliberately die. It was hilarious, but also obscene, almost as much as saying : "Mother". Of course, Bernard wasn't serious, he'd never be, he was too squeamish by any means to ever even seriously consider suicide. But the thought of it alone was insane. Typically Bernard.


"But.." was the only thing Helmholtz managed. For a while they remained motionless like ice sculptures, which they would soon become, too, if they didn't move. He started shuddering, his eyes burned and became teary with cold. And Bernard, stubbornly, wouldn't move.



"For Ford's sake, Bernard, please!" he begged.

"Why? Why should I go on?" Bernard asked theatrically.

"What is there in life for me? All I had, all I where..."

"All you had was trash and all you were was nobody! Everyone hated you, they laughed about you... why do you mourn that world? I don't understand it, really, Bernard. What, what is there that you could possibly miss about that world? You yourself told me, told me a thousand times, that you hated it!"

"And don't tell me it's too cold here, that could easily be helped if just you'd finally act like a grown man!"


"But here is nothing, nobody... it's exile, Helmholtz, exile! It's worse than Iceland!" the shorter man wailed.



"What should there be? Obstacle Golf? Bumble-puppy? Soma bars and social service? You hate that! Don't tell me you miss it! And who, I ask, you, who should be here, who is not? I am here, Bernard, and although I'm very sorry to have to say this, I am your only friend!"



Bernard hung his head in defeat, but still didn't move. Helmholtz shook his head. He again put down the luggage, went to Bernard and simply dragged him towards the house, a small, red brick-house, with white windows and tiny stairs by the door. Bernard showed no resistance, he did indeed seem rather grateful to finally get into the warmth without having to give in.

Helmholtz unlocked the door and found the electric light, and soon after he had placed the sulking form of his friend on the small couch in the living room, he found the central heating and turned it on. He looked into the cupboards of the narrow kitchen but the only think he found was an empty freezer and a box with something that looked remotely like the dried grass and some cups, pots and cutlery. He went back to the living room. Bernard hadn't moved from the spot where he had left him, sitting gingerly on the edge of the couch. He hadn't taken off his anorak and he still wore his shawl. He looked miserable.

"There's no food," Helmholtz said practically. Bernard shrugged. He sat down beside his friend. Living with Bernard. Not an all too pleasant thought. It wasn't that he didn't like him. Bernard, with all his faults, had moments of brilliance, when he was by far more independent from societies expectations than Helmholtz. He had a talent to find situations and places that made you even lonelier. Bernard had suggested not playing stupid games, but walking in the parks. Helmholtz had never even thought of that. Bernard had insisted of talking instead of going to the feelies, Bernard had told him how lonely it was in the clouds of a stormy day, or above the sea at night, when you flew with your helicopter. And Bernard was, as that woman Lenina had put it, cute. Sometimes his whining was annoying, but at times it also amused Helmholtz, and that combination of amusement, sympathy and pity he felt for him made short man seem almost cute.


"Look, Bernard, what I wanted to say earlier, is that... that this place isn't all bad. The people here are real people, not just those mindless idiots of London. They will accept us. They will respect us."

"They will accept you," Bernard said plaintively.

"No! Bernard, there isn't any reason why a reasonable person shouldn't like you! You're intelligent, you're interesting, you're good-looking." Bernard laughed without mirth.

"Very amusing."

"Oh, when will you quit listening to that foolish talk about your height! It's only sleep school! It's only their conditioning that tells them not to like shorter people! And away from that you're looking perfectly normal. Your friend Lenina told me she found you attractive. And she was a good- looking girl if there ever was one!" Bernard sighed at the mention of Lenina.

"She didn't love me," he said accusingly. "Of course she didn't! Her conditioning interdicted it."

"She loved John."

"John?" This was news to him.

"The Savage?"

"Yes."

"Loved him? Really loved him?"

"I think so. You didn't know her as well as I do. I watched her watching him. I think that's love - no, I know that's love, because it was exactly the way I watched her, then, when she didn't even recognise me. And I did love her."

Helmholtz was taken aback. He had never even noticed these things. Bernard loved. Craved his love like in those poems of that old poet Shakespeare. And his love was unrequited. And Lenina loved John. And John, for all he had guessed, had fancied the girl. But they had never done it... there they were, those feelings he had thought were forgotten, those feelings he had wanted to write about, write about them like Shakespeare had, and he had never even known it! He had searched for the poetry in his mind and had been blind for the poetry that was life.

"And you tell me I have no reason to be miserable?" Bernard asked, looking at him for the first time in a while. His eyes were reddened and shining like in a fever. Helmholtz was caught in a whole jumble of incomprehensible feelings. He felt confusion and he envied Bernard, because Bernard always knew misery, and now Bernard knew love, too. And he, Helmholtz, who needed those so desperately, did not. And he felt a new surge of sympathy for poor Bernard. He really had bad luck. And he felt a very little bit jealous, because there was somebody who was more important to Bernard than he. He had always imagined Bernard as dependant of him. It was getting warmer. Bernard finally took off his coat. He seemed somewhat calmer now that he had told him the reasons for his desolation.

"She is the thing I miss about the past."