Boone and Eula appeared, working together in Boone’s small pious church, and bantering in a way that suggested their approaching nuptials; but they were interrupted by a troop of Secular Policemen who barged in and accused Boone of speaking such forbidden words as “faith” and “heaven.” These thugs led Boone away to prison, while Eula wept piteously. Boone, as he was dragged through the street in chains, sang the first song, which according to the program was: Aria: The hand of God, not gentle.
The filmed actor was expressive, and he was voiced by a masculine tenor who lent fire and discipline to the lyrics. ( The hand of God, not gentle but just / Descends upon the wicked by and by , and so forth).
If the Secular Policemen by this brutish behavior had earned themselves a place in Hell, their city was already halfway there. We witnessed a montage of strikes, rioting, and fires, the tall buildings beginning to burn as if they had been built of kindling. Now the audience was introduced to Foster, the industrialist, who labored mightily to subdue a fire in his iron mill, which had been set ablaze by unruly workers; but he was forced back by the heat and fallen timbers. Against this backdrop of destruction Foster wiped his sooty brow and sang in resignation the Aria: Gone, all that I have built.
All this was sorrowful enough to melt the hardest cynic’s heart, but it wasn’t finished. Eula appeared once more. She had left the scene of Boone’s cruel arrest, only to find her family home engulfed in flame, and her mother and father crying out from a window from which they could not be rescued. The flames consumed them. Overwhelmed with grief, Eula stumbled on to the jail where she believed Boone had been taken; but that building, too, had burned to the ground.
Several of the Eupatridian ladies in the audience were moved by this tragic scene, and they dabbed their eyes and blew their noses in a manner that distracted from Eula’s excellently performed Aria: Lost and alone among the ruins, which was the conclusion of Act I.
The lights came up for an intermission. Many of the Eupatridians adjourned at once to the lobby; but Calyxa and Julian and I were young and staunch of bladder, and we kept our seats. Images from the film were still vivid in my mind’s eye, and I began to think about the lost wonders of the Secular Ancients. I said to Julian, “The Secular Ancients made movies, didn’t they?—you told me so, I think.”
“Movies too numerous to count, though none survive, unless they’ve been locked away in the Dominion Archives.” The Dominion’s Cultural Committee kept a large stone building in New York City , Julian explained, where it preserved antique texts and documents and other items too blasphemous to be seen by the public. No one outside the licensed clergy knew what treasures it contained.
“And their movies had recorded sound, and color photography?”
“They did.”
“Then why can’t we have such movies? Or at least a larger number of the ones we do make? I don’t understand it, Julian. The simpler technologies of the past are no mystery to us. We may not have bountiful supplies of oil, but we can burn coal to much the same effect.”
“We could make movies with recorded sound,” Julian said, “but the resources haven’t been allotted that way. The same is true of that typewriter by which Theodore Dornwood seduced your services. We could build a typewriter for every human being in Manhattan if we liked; but it would be a reckless expenditure of iron or rubber or whatever they make typewriters out of—materials the Senate assigns to Eupatridian manufacturers, who in turn supply the military with weapons and other necessities.”
I had not thought of it in those terms. I supposed every Trench Sweeper in Labrador could be considered a typewriter not manufactured or a movie not produced. A painful bargain, but what patriot could disagree with it?
“An artist,” Julian said, “or a small manufacturer or shopkeeper, has to make do with whatever resources trickle down as surplus from above, or with second-pickings from some local Tip. The justice of this is debatable, of course.” He turned to Calyxa. “What do you think of the film so far?”
“As drama?” She rolled her eyes scornfully. “And the songs—excuse me, the arias —are simple-minded. The female singer is good, though. A little flat in the upper registers, but bold and fluent overall.”
I politely disagreed with her about the quality of the drama; but what she said about the music amounted to high praise, for Calyxa dispensed her approval grudgingly at the best of times.
Now the audience filed back into the auditorium and the lights were extinguished for Act II. The production resumed with yet another Spectacle: hundreds of ragged men and women fleeing the Fall of the Cities, set to a mournful trumpet eulogy and the rhythm of tramping feet. Among these individuals was the convicted pastor Boone, who (unknown to Eula) had escaped ahead of the flames. In one touching scene he came across his former captors, the brutal Secular Policemen, now starving and suffering from burns; and despite their sins against him he helped them renounce their apostasy, and led them to redemption in the moment of their deaths. Rising tear-streaked from this sacred task, Boone spotted a distant Banner of the Cross among the plodding refugees. He recognized it as a symbol of the nascent Dominion of Jesus Christ on Earth—a union of all the Persecuted Churches—and he marked the event by singing his Aria: In the wilderness, a flag.
Eula, unknown to Boone, was part of the same mass of vagrant urbanites. When hunger threatened to overcome her she was forced to beg help from Foster, the former industrialist. Foster, traveling in a wagon, explained that he was aiming to reach a certain rural plantation he owned. His behavior toward Eula was impeccably kind and chaste, and although she still loved Boone she believed the pastor had been killed in the fire; so she accepted Foster’s gifts with a relatively free heart. Eula’s plaintive second-act song, accompanied by piano rather than full orchestra, was Aria: I will take this offered hand.
Then Foster and Eula—growing ever closer—traveled in Foster’s horse-drawn wagon through a montage of scenes of the degraded world of the False Tribulation. There were ruined houses, dust-blown farms, starved cattle, fallen Airplanes, rusted Automobiles, and so forth. Eventually, and after arduous adventures, they came to a hilltop town not far from the rural property Foster owned. This town had survived the Fall of the Cities intact, and was protected by the steadfast Christianity of its population. The inhabitants had erected a huge symbol of their faith at the highest point of land, prompting Foster’s Aria: What shines on that far hill? A cross!
The Act concluded with Eula’s astonished glimpse of one of the many clerics who had assembled in this virtuous town to join in the work of defending its piety: none other than Boone, her former intended husband.
The curtain closed on this breathless discovery.
This time the three of us adjourned to the lobby during the intermission. While attending to human necessity I discovered yet another of the unanticipated luxuries of the Eupatridian class: indoor plumbing so immaculate that the enameled receptacles for gentlemen gleamed as if freshly polished, and were scented with lemon. Amazing, what subtle easements human ingenuity can contrive!
I made my way back to my seat in time for Act III.
Act III was that portion of the movie in which a Choice, prominent in the title, was set before poor Eula. That would provide great opportunities for the actresses portraying her (both voice and on film) to exert themselves; but first we saw Foster facing a dilemma of his own. His plantation, not far from the pious town where he and Eula had taken refuge, was in a shambles. The wheat crop had been trampled by hungry refugees, and what remained could not be harvested for lack of help. Meanwhile refugees crowded into town on a daily basis, hoping to be fed. Clearly the solution was to use landless vagrants as field-hands—but he couldn’t hire any, in the classic sense, because he had no money with which to pay them. In any case farm work (which guaranteed a daily meal) was so desirable that the mob would have fought for it. Therefore Foster worked out an ingenious solution: Aria: All that may be sold generosity may buy, he sang, accepting pledges of lifelong indenture from men willing to forego daily wages. [A pledge alone secures the deed / Your labor’s mine, while I fulfill your need , etc. If there was any haggling over this bargain, the film did not depict it.]