The Alteration

by Kingsley Amis

  At the news that Hubert must be considered a runaway, and on the instruction that any clue to his whereabouts must be reported, Tobias Anvil had done nothing. At the further news, the next evening, that Hubert was lying ill of an unspecified malady in Cholderton Hospital, Tobias had shared it with his wife, to whom he had not addressed a word since the previous morning, that of LyalPs death. He had proposed that the two of them put aside their own difficulties for the time being, and she had agreed at once. On arriving at the hospital, they had been introduced to a surgeon, who had nothing to tell them except that Hubert was receiving attention and that no danger to his life was foreseen as things stood, and to a priest from New England, who had not been very communicative either. It seemed that the latter had insisted on interrupting his journey home, in case Hubert, with whom he had only the most recent and accidental connection, should feel the need of spiritual or other comfort. Even now, when he might have departed with perfect propriety, and indeed with an English transatlantic aircraft near the point of rise-off, he refused to move until he should know the issue of the boy's illness, of the nature of which he said he was altogether ignorant.

  They had not had very long to wait. The surgeon had come back, a small paper in his hand; on seeing his face, Pastor Williams had turned and left without a word or a look. The Anvils had started to learn about what had afflicted their son, but after the opening phrases Margaret had collapsed, and Tobias had had to hear the rest of the story alone.

  'The name of it is torsion, master, in this case bilateral, which is somewhat unusual. I penetrated the scrotum and tried to untwist the cords, but with no success in the result. The swelling has increased, and one testicle begins to be necrosed, to die. The other must follow. That process would spread unless checked. I must be ready to remove them both.'

  'Is there anything different to be done?'

  'Believe me, master, I'd do it if there were.'

  'Very well.'

  'Would you sign this document, sir? It authorises the action.'

  Tobias had taken out his pocket-stylus. 'You'll need a priest's signature besides,' he had said in a voice that made the surgeon look at him suddenly.

  'No, this is a casualty, master. Thank you. My deep regrets.

  However, with God's help your son's health will soon be fully restored.'

  'Amen.'

  Hubert had not been told every detail of this, but, as on a previous occasion, his father had seen to it that he understood the essentials. Once again he went over them listlessly in his mind. The division where he lay was neither crowded nor noisy, but there was enough to distract him from his thoughts: the neat rapid movements of the nursing nuns, the shuffling progress of an aged vendor of eggs and fruit, the bell and shaken bowl of a mendicant friar. Then, through the double doors at the further end of the division, Anthony appeared. Hubert felt pleased. They greeted each other, and Anthony asked after Hubert's condition, a shade perfunctorily: it seemed he had a point to come to and, explaining that he could not stay long, he soon came to it.

  'There's something I must let you know.' He looked rather grim.

  'About me?'

  'No, my dear, not about you. About mama. When she came to you here with papa and me, did you see anything you found curious or unaccustomed?'

  'Yes,' said Hubert promptly. 'She was sad at what had had to be done to me, but there was more, more in her mind than me. And papa looked at her constantly, but she wouldn't look at him.'

  'Yes. This isn't agreeable, but you must hear it. If you don't, you'll be doubtful and distressed, and you may cause hurt.'

  'Oh, Anthony, say, for Jesus' sake.'

  Anthony took his brother's hand and brought his face close. 'Mama and Father Lyall... mated together. Then Father Lyall was murdered—I found him dying when I came home after taking you to the Embassy.'

  'Oh, Mother of God.'

  'As you say. When papa tells you of it, as he'll have to at last, be sure to seem to hear something altogether new.'

  'Yes, Anthony.'

  'There's more,' said Anthony, tightening his grip. 'Father Lyall wasn't only murdered. He'd been altered besides. That was the more that mama thought of when she was here.'

  'What a dreadful concurrence.' Hubert was mildly surprised at how flat the words sounded. 'Her... and then her son.'

  'Not a concurrence-not merely coincident. He tried to obstruct your alteration; perhaps mama persuaded him. That ran him foul of Church and State. So the pigs murdered him by altering him and... and seeing to it that he bled to death, as a piece of instruction and purification. I had no doubt they were vile, but I thought that the law at least-'

  'How do you know, Anthony?'

  'I know. I know without having to be let know. But the rest I saw. When mama was told of what had been done, she screamed and wept—she confessed by her actions that... about herself and Father Lyall. Papa saw it too, and abused her. So, when she was here, she wouldn't look at him, and he looked at her because he was—'

  'Yes, I see. How could mama do that with Father Lyall?'

  'You'll understand when you—when you've considered it. You mustn't hate her, Hubert.'

  'I don't; I grieve for her.'

  Neither spoke for a time. Irritably, Anthony tossed a farthing into the friar's bowl and hushed his blessing. Then Hubert said, 'What will papa do? Will he turn her out of doors?'

  'No. Our father isn't a bad man, simply one too much given to self-love. This may even improve him. Well, now you see why I had to let you know.'

  'Yes, I do. Thank you.'

  'Are you troubled? Greatly troubled?'

  'No, not greatly.'

  'You must consider everything, Hubert.'

  Hubert promised he would and, after Anthony had gone, tried to do so, to consider everything. That began with his mother. She had suffered what anyone could have recognised as a cruel loss, and it was no more than the truth that he grieved for her; but, as he lay there, he found that the thought of that loss was being pushed aside—not for ever, not for long—by other thoughts, ones that would not go away.

  He believed, he would have had to say he believed, that his mother had had done to her what Ned had done to his girl in the woods, or she could never have borne two children, and that to have had it done to her by Father Lyall had somehow been wonderful enough to make her betray herself to her husband on learning that that would never happen again. He believed those things, but not in the way he believed her words to him in the bower concerning the love of man and woman; from them, he could imagine how she felt, even though he now knew that she had been founding them on a love in every way forbidden; he could reconcile that with all the many things he knew about her, her smile, her step, her handling of a needle or a bowl of tea. To believe both in the same way, to be able to consider both at once, was as difficult as it would be to understand how the same part of a man's mind or body could make Ned talk and behave as he had in the brewery and make de Kooning paint his picture of Eve.

  He, Hubert, was going to find that too much for him: he would never fit the pieces together, just as he would never decide what he really felt about having been altered. He saw for a moment that he would never have to do either: the sight of two lovers kissing, news of a friend's marriage, a successful performance in church or opera-house, the smile of a pretty woman, contemptuous stares and whispers as he passed, going among children, praise from an admired colleague, clumsy or malicious inquiries about what it was like to be as he was, suddenly-aroused memories of St Cecilia's, of the night of his escape, of any part of the time when he had been as others were—such small events would bring up one question or the other for a time, leave unaltered his state of confusion or apathy on the point, and then be forgotten as he went on with his life. Perhaps that was how everyone found themselves going about matters, nothing ever measured or settled or understood, not even when they came to die. After all, mankind was in a state of sin.

  But what about God? It must be His will that things
had turned out as they had, indeed more obviously so than seemed common. That meant that He must be praised for having put an end to all rebellion on the part of His child. The grave young monk who had twice at least visited Hubert's bedside had been positive that it was not required of the sick to pray on their knees, that prayers offered, when possible, in a pious attitude-face to the ceiling, legs extended and together, hands joined-were fully valid. Hubert turned on to his back and made the Sign of the Cross under the covers. In silence, barely moving his lips, he praised God for a time and thanked Him for His favour; then he turned to others. He petitioned that God should show his mother mercy and send her comfort, that He should soften his father's heart towards her, that He should not be angry with those who had helped him when he was a runaway: he ran through the list. What now? Perhaps, though he had ceased to rebel in action, there were still scraps of rebellion in his heart. He prayed for their removal and, after that, for resignation. Let him be patient whatever might befall; let him be not cast down nor puffed up; let him...

  Hubert realised suddenly that he had stopped praying for some seconds or minutes. Instead, he had been putting his mind into the undirected state in which music, music that must be his because it was nobody else's, might be found there. There was none, which was unexpected after so long an interval: he had not thought of music in this way since before his journey to Rome. This might be a result of the action: the surgeon had warned him not to hope to be altogether well at once. To exercise his abilities, then, he would hear through the Prometheus Variations. This went well enough for a few minutes, but at about the half-way point, immediately before the section in triple time, he was forced to stop, because he could not remember how to go on; the harmonic sequence stayed in his head as firmly as ever, but the flow of the notes had been checked.

  At this vexatious moment, one of the nuns, little Sister Ho from Indo-China, came bustling up, all smiles as usual, and presented him with a letter-packet. On the front, his name, nothing more, was written in a hand he thought he recognised; on the red-and-blue bordered card inside, the same hand had written, My wife and I are below. We know your true state. Hilda is with us. She believes you to be recovering from a stomach ailment. May any or all of us come to visit you for a few minutes?

  Hubert could not decide at once. He wanted very much to see his friends, but was afraid that doing so might cause him to feel sad. The thought that they had come nearly a hundred miles to visit him made up his mind. He sent Sister Ho to fetch the three and put the card out of sight. Very soon they were with him. Dame van den Haag kissed him on the cheek, and squeezed his shoulder to show that she would have embraced him more warmly in private. The Ambassador gave him a steady glance and a firm handshake. Hilda stayed near the end of his bed, but smiled and nodded cheerfully. She was dressed for travelling, in a coat of some short reddish-brown fur and a pointed hat of the same material.

  'How do you do, Hubert?' asked van den Haag.

  'Very well, sir. They tell me I may go home at the week's end.'

  'Good... I was grieved to hear of your sickness.'

  'Yes, it came at an unfortunate time.'

  'When I think of the immensity of the chance that brought it about, I'm reduced to silence. Just then. And just that. It's as if... I don't know. Maybe a man shouldn't speculate. Well, that's an end of the matter.'

  'Yes, sir. I'm heartily grateful for all you did and all the risks you ran.'

  'It's nothing, Hubert.'

  Van den Haag, by the look in his eyes and the way he spoke, had been trying to tell Hubert of his sorrow at what had happened. Now bitterness had entered his tone for a moment, but he quickly roused himself and asked about the hospital, the nuns, the food. His wife had questions too. Hilda was silent, gripping the bed-rail, leaning back and pulling herself upright after a fashion Hubert had seen before, but she still smiled at him now and then. Quite soon, van den Haag took out his watch and said they must think of going.

  'But, sir, it's only a minute since you arrived, and to have come so far for so little...'

  'We have another reason. We'd still have come without it, but we have an aircraft to take. To New England.'

  'How long will you stay, sir?'

  'For a long time, I think. I'll be back here next month for a few days, but my office is ended. Our First Citizen has displaced me.'

  'Not for what you did on my behalf?' asked Hubert in two sorts of distress.

  'No, no. Well, only partly. I'd offended the English authorities a couple of times before. This was just the finale. They knew of your visit to me in Coverley, you were discovered in the aircraft apartment of a New Englander just come from my Embassy, and, although it seems they've learned nothing of the process that took you from one place to the other, that was enough. Yes, the suspect and the guilty are the same to a Romanist-my excuses, Hubert.'

  'I should never have asked you... I should never have allowed you...'

  Dame van den Haag laid her hand on Hubert's head. 'Peace, Hubert. We're honoured that you trusted us and asked our help. It was only an evil dispensation that exposed us. And—in private—my husband was never a happy ambassador. For that, a man has to love ceremony, and he doesn't.'

  'But to be displaced...'

  'He's talked already of resigning-no, Cornelius? And we miss our country.'

  'But isn't your First Citizen angry?'

  'Maybe, maybe,' said van den Haag, smiling. 'He may swell up with rage till he bursts, for me. Oh, it's quite true, I'm altogether too much a Schismatic for this function. So are most of my countrymen. It amounts to a national weakness.'

  Half Hubert's distress had been half relieved. 'What function will you take to, sir?'

  'I'll build a concert-hall and you shall come and sing in it. We must go, Anna. Yes, Hubert, I will and you shall. I'll write to you at St Cecilia's. Well, I reckon even in England a father can kiss his son, so...'

  He bent and kissed Hubert and his wife did the same.

  'Good-bye, my dear. The Lord protect you.' He turned to Hilda and said severely, 'Two minutes, maid.'

  'Ya ya, paps.'

  When they were alone, Hubert said awkwardly, 'Your father and mother are very gracious folk.'

  Hilda came a little nearer and leaned her hip against the side of the bed. She spoke not fast but with great determination, as if she had taken a wager to finish what she had to say however it was received. 'We have a farm in Latimeria with two hundred Indians on it. Sometimes in the evening we go to their huts and see them dance and play. There are cows and pigs and hens—paps has me help in the dairy. And horses—I have one to myself, named Springer. I mean when I'm there he's mine. He's all black but for a white stocking on his far hind. Some of the tracks in the hills are rough, but he never stumbles, not Springer. It's good that we're done with England and Naples: we can be at the farm much more. Do you love horses?'

  'Yes.'

  'But maybe you love cities more than farms.' She looked at him, frowning, then said, businesslike as before, 'Would you come to our farm?'

  'Yes, but-'

  'The sun shines all day long and we swim in the lake. We bring fruit and cookies to eat there, and we light a fire and make hot chocolate, because the water's all melted ice and snow from the mountain. I give you this.'

  With hasty movements, she took from the pocket of her coat and passed to him a plain cross enamelled blue, not the same blue as her eyes, but blue.

  'Oh, Hilda, how pretty. You must have paid shillings for it.'

  'No, nothing. It was mine.'

  'Thank you,' said Hubert, closing his hand round the object. 'I wish I had something to give you in return.' (He could not give her, or anyone, the cross Mark had given him.)

  She smiled and shook her head, looking at him very directly. 'No need, no need. So...'

  'What was that word you said in the garden that afternoon? It began with a C or a K. You said it was an Indian word.'

  'Kisahkihitin?'

  'Yes. What does it
mean?'

  'Oh, now... Well: it means "I love thee." It's Indian. It's truly what they say to each other, the Indians. But other folk say it too. Sometimes. Good-bye till we meet.'

  She pointed towards the window, but it must be New England she was pointing at. Before he could speak or make any movement, she had kissed her hand to him, turning away as she did so, and was running off down the aisle of the division.

  Hubert realised at once that he had failed to wish Hilda, and her parents too, any kind of divine blessing on departure, and, more slowly and dimly, that that failure had not sprung from any fear of offending Schismatic susceptibilities as he had Domingo's. He would pray to God that the omission might be remedied, but he would not do that for the moment. He could not: he could think only of how it was impossible that he should go to New England before he was twenty-one years old, because his father must by law either go too or send an accredited proxy, and his father would do neither. And after he was twenty-one, indeed much sooner, the design was even more impossible, because he could never be with Hilda after it was obvious that he had been altered. What had Master van den Haag meant by his talk of a concert-hall and singing?

  Here, the reasoning part of Hubert's mind shut down. He turned on to his side and pulled the covers up almost over his head, so that only a little light came through. With the blue cross still in his fist, he pretended that he and Hilda were riding horses, side by side. Then he found he could pretend that her horse was running faster and faster, but that his horse did the same, and, even when the ground began to slope upwards and the track became rough, they stayed near each other.