Summary Chp. 7

Lenina thinks the pueblo of Malpais and their Indian guide queer. The conditions that people live in disgust her. An old man astonishes her because she is used to seeing people who have been preserved through inoculations from disease, transfusions of youthful blood. Bernard comments on how touching it is to see a woman breast feeding. Lenina is initially reminded of a lower-caste Community Sing or orgy porgy when they happen upon naked savages drumming and dancing but the snakes, crucifixes and flagellation make her cry and pine for her soma which she has left behind in the hotel. They meet a young Indian with straw-coloured hair and pale blue eyes who asks them if they've come from the Other Place. He tells them how he wishes he could be the one to be whipped as sacrifice, to please Pookong and Jesus, but they won't because he's disliked for his light complexion, an outcast. John and his mother Linda are strangers in the Reservation, she coming with a man, Tomakin, from the Other Place before he was born. She had fallen and hurt her head and was rescued by some Malpais hunters. (Bernard is making mental notes of all this, reminding himself that the Director's name is Thomas) They go to meet Linda at home who is overjoyed to see someone again from the Other Place, "civilised faces." She remembers parts of World State life and bemoans Reservation life that it is ".. like living with lunatics."