CHAPTER XII
SLAUGHTERHOUSE: To reassure him of the rightness of his mission—he has stinging doubts, he is not entirely obsessed, every so often Scop thinks that he may be mad and his evaluation of society based upon idiosyncratic perception, not some absolute truth—Scop goes to the Slaughter Games, taking a rear bench high in the stadium in the unreserved section, a place where hopefully he may sink amidst the crowd and be unnoticed. It would not be worthwhile for him to be discovered at this juncture. The unreserved section in which he sits is filled with the Mob: the lowest and crudest elements of the society are here, creatures so brutalized and broken by the poverty of their lives that they do little more than growl at one another while they stare at the Games and then occasionally in a fit of transferred lust turn upon one another and regardless of sexual identity begin to mime the gruesome motions of copulation on the hard planks. The state guards look at all of this without interest, only there to make sure that the disorder does not spill over the gates and into the upper class sections where the responses if no less savage are at least somewhat controlled. No one pays any attention to Scop as he finds a small space on the long, crowded bench, everyone’s attention is fixated upon the arena itself where several Reds and Whites are attacking one another with iron implements, the sounds of impact picked up by the on-field microphones, reverberating hugely from the speakers lined around the stadium. Fifteen or twenty Reds are down to only five of the Whites and the Reds are beginning to lose formation; there is little strategic interest in what will happen now but of course the battle, which is merely a preliminary, must go on to the conclusion. The crowd is not discomfited, only slightly bored by the failure of the Reds to make a better showing and now and then someone in the section faints or succumbs to a quiet, subterranean blow which caves him or her across the bench: only then do the guards become active and take out the struggling form. Scop takes a small bag of candy from his pocket and begins to chew on it absently while he stares at the field.
It is a terrible spectacle, of course. The Slaughter Games are only thirty years old and the formal league arrangements trace back barely a decade but the way in which they have seized upon the imagination to say nothing of the social structure of the populace is to Scop the clearest indication of how dreadfully far the society has run down, how feeling has become obliterated: now only mass murder within the superficial framework of the game format can be said to serve mass emotion. But there is no time for speculations of this sort; rather he finds himself riveted to the field where the advantage of the Whites is now being pressed to the point where the formation of the Reds has completely broken; they scatter on the grass, some of them in open flight, a few others making a last dismal effort to hold ground and to at least die bravely . . . but there is nothing to be done about it, the ground cannot be held nor is there any possibility of bravery when the Whites overflow and from the speakers comes the full resonating sound of heavy blows. A Red is decapitated, another is beaten to death by a gang of five Whites and as the last, stricken Reds now in full retreat try desperately to reach the safe area circumscribed outside of the grass the Whites set upon them . . . and Scop can take no more. He looks down at his feet. There are limits to his capacity to absorb this; he does not think that he is as cruel as most of the spectators at the games and has always felt that it is a certain sensitivity to this kind of brutality which marks him as finer and better than most of them; that it is in fact this loathing of the sadism of the games which has sent him upon his desperate attempt, the Masters to be damned, to change the past so that the present may live again.
Thatthepresentmayliveagain. It is a good phrase, it is indeed one which could become the slogan of his quest itself and he meditates upon it as he stares at his feet. In just a little while he will bring himself to a standing position, lurch out of the stadium. He has seen all that he needs to; has verified his relative humanity in relation to the barbarism of his times and now he may leave but he will just stay for a few moments if he might; standing is such an effort, fighting his way through the throngs who are now screaming for the next round to begin is such a difficult thing to do. Indeed, his companions in these stands are gone mad now with the excitement of the games, they seem to have lost all rationality, any measure of responsibility has been drained from them and looking at them with pity and disgust Scop feels again his distance from the madness and the crowds, the obsession and desires of the culture in which he is trapped. He must be an artifact. He must be some remnant from an earlier, gentler age, that is all he can say because he is totally revolted by the spectacle he is glimpsing and cannot bear to examine the true nature of a culture which could give rise to such spectacle.
Still, he cannot move. Sense tells him to move, also desire and yet he cannot urge himself from the seat. The point is that the games are kind of fascinating, the attitudes of the crowd compelling. The way in which the spectators and various lowlife surrounding him refuse to respond to one another, how their only relationships seem to be identificatory ones with the gladiators is distressing and yet to Scop enriching as well: they may have discovered the secret. The secret is to deny relationships other than abstract, externalized focus. The last Reds have now stumbled from the field and a new troupe comes out, Blacks and Greys this time Scop notices, taller, stronger, more richly attired contestants than those they have succeeded. The Blacks and Greys are, of course, the concluding event on the first part of the program and it would be senseless for him to leave at this point. The program is close enough to intermission; he can leave quietly at that time in the throngs without making an issue of himself as he would, of course, if he were to leave now. It is a strange manner of spectator who would leave the Games just before the concluding event and the Blacks and Greys come very highly recommended; Scop knows from third-hand information if not from direct access (he never reads about the Games or attends them ordinarily) that these teams are among the leaders of the First Division and their contest will decide the standings for the mid-season. Why should he leave now?
Of course he finds the Games repulsive; that is not the point. He does not have to leave to establish his distance from the spectacle, he thinks; he is hardly so uncertain, hardly has such a tenuous grip on his revulsion that he must flee the area. He can test his resolve by witnessing them and not being moved, he thinks. He does not have any ambivalence about his revulsion; he can expose it to the utter fury of the contest and have it remain as it was. But as the teams meet on the field for brief conference, their heads bowing then in the mandatory prayer and exercises of reemission, as he feels an uncharacteristic excitement begin to spread through him, working its way from thighs which seem to blend into his loins with a kind of mutual, aqueous excitement Scop wonders if this is quite the truth. Perhaps the Games are more important to him than he has ever admitted. He is not a creature who can stand apart from his culture; everyone, even the calmest and most dispassionate researcher is the creation of his cultural ambience and essentially falls within that culture. Can he comment upon it? Can he really stand aside? Damned if Scop knows, he thinks; the Blacks and Greys, deep in conference now, settling the preliminary exclusions do not seem to know either. It occurs to Scop that he really can make no more of an objective judgement on his culture than can these participants themselves; all of them are trapped within the eddying cycles and consequence and so for that matter are these spectators, his fellows for all his disgust: all of them are bound by the spectacle of the Games.
Something lurches within Scop. He is not as strong as he thought after all. He is not as capable as he might have suspected of using these games in the way that they should, as an object of proof. Quite to the contrary. He stands, discombobulated by small breezes, feeling nauseous in the dry air of the stadium. Spectators begin to shout at him. Scop turns, stumbles toward the end of the planking, the shouts rising. He is obstructing view. The formation breaks and the Blacks and Greys return to their separate sides of the playing area. Someone is going to get killed out there. They all are going to get killed out there; in a contest between teams as skilled as these at this stage of the season, as evenly matched as they are some ninety percent of the participants in a given game do not survive. Nor is it important that they survive; all of the continuity of the teams is in their programming and administrative personnel. Scop knows that he should not be concerned about this: the participants are willing, well paid, heavily insured, facing short, brutish lives anyway; to be a Black or Grey, even to be a Red or White is to incur more nobility than they would ever otherwise find. Someone kicks him heavily in the calves and Scop falls to his knees across the next row of spectators, his arms flailing. People curse at him but not in a language which he understands. He wants to explain to them that this is not his fault, that the accident was precipitated by others, that he would never on his own have done anything like this but he cannot seem to frame the words. He is falling. On the field the Blacks and the Greys approach one another, the speakers amplifying and nicely transmit the sound of their threats. He hears them full like birds in the air. He is falling. Falling.