Earthly Powers

by Anthony Burgess

He was three tables away and feigned not to have fully caught my rebuke. He aped a deaf old man, beefy hand cupped at ear, and said, "You make some remark, my friend?"

  "I asked you to cut it out."

  "Thought that's what you said," he said, and he tottered over to me. "Hog's piss," he said of the three beers on the table, making a gesture of being ready to smash them to the floor. "Garsong," he called, "whisky tooty sweety for this main sewer." The waiter did not respond. "Frogs," the man said to me, knocking one chair over but sitting on another. "Spilled good red blood for the bastards, drove the Krauts out of fucking Frogland and what you get?"

  "Watch the language," I said. "My sister's not used to it."

  "Sister, you got a sister?" He swerved round to look at Hortense then back again to me, achieving with some difficulty a maitre d'hotel's bunched finger specialite de la maison kiss. "You sure have," he said. "Cute little can there, see it shimmy, aaaaaoooo," doing a dog howl. "British?" he said. "You British sure were a long time getting the Hun on the run, I'll say, I'll tell the world, aaaaaoooo, garsong, whisky tooty sweety," and, in his beefy swerve, he sent a full beer glass crashing. It was then that Domenico left Hortense on the floor and came over smiling with his good Italian mouth. He now disclosed something I had not suspected in him, though I knew it to be an aspect of Italian gang protectionism, namely neat professional, as it were musical, violence. Meaning that in a swift clean and economical rhythm he slashed the Ohio man with his ringed right hand thrice on his beef face, in a single measure of slowish mazurka time. This surprised Cincinnatian, whose town was named for Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, a Roman general of great and simple virtue, looked up at Domenico open-mouthed, an aitch of bursting red on cheeks and upper lip.

  "Now," said Domenico, "we leave." And to the bald moustached manager, troubled, coming to see what the trouble was: "Ce monsieur americain va payer." Then we were off, and Hortense's eyes shone in delight and, for Domenico, admiration. This was better than dreary cold old England, and she'd not been here yet for much more than half a day. She wanted to go dancing somewhere else, where perhaps there might be other rude Americans to be slashed by Domenico, but I said no, home. But then, just outside a bar called the Palac (which might have been an English word in adventitious apocope or else the Serbo-Croat for Thumb), I was given my own chance to put down brutishness. A young fair-haired man was being sick on the pavement and two Monegascan policemen were bullying him to stop vomiting in public or else come with them, vomiting or not, to the lockup. The young man said, very English, "I've said I'm sorry, damn it, look, one can't really stop this sort of thing, something I ate, fish or something, oh dear, I have to again," and he did. While doing it he was punched on the shoulder by one of the constables, and the other laughed. I was over there at once with my good maternal French, abashing them. How dare they, did they not know who this was, a personal friend of His Serene Highness, and so on.

  "Where do you live?" I asked the young man.

  "A village in Berkshire, you may not know it. As for stay, here that is, hotel up the hill there, the Immoral, Balmoral that is, little joke, very moral place really, oh my God here we go again." So I held his head. The policemen went through the gestures of saying I was in charge, get him off the street, look at all that defilement of the pavement of the playground of the rich, disgusting (they did a kind of long-skirt-lifting mime), does the place no kind of good, then they saluted me and marched off. "Awfully sorry about all this," the young man said. "My name's Curry," holding up his hand for shaking while, perhaps under the stimulus of his own name, he got more up and then, splash, down.

  "Look," Hortense said, "while you're being the Good Samaritan, can't Domenico and I go dancing somewhere else and see you there?"

  "See you in the bar of the Hotel de Paris," I said. Not home this time, oh dear me no, not those two together alone going home, oh no. So off they went, her arm in his. A handsome couple, much of a height. "Better?" I said to the young Curry. "Ready to try walking up the hill? Take deep breaths, go on, really deep."

  "You're really being most awfully decent. It was some damned fish I ate, loup or something, wolf that means, wolfing a wolf, oh my God." But there seemed little more to come up. He stood upright and sniffed in briskly sea air. "Better, I think. That loup is still around though, flying through the ozone, I can smell it, a bloody werewolf, I say, what's the French for werewolf?"

  "Loup garou. Those police, look, are still looking. Can you walk more or less straight?" I took his left elbow and trembled. The first male flesh, or bone at least, I had handled since, ah God. "You needn't just blame the loup for my benefit," I said. "You've ingested more than loup tonight."

  "Looooo garooooo. I say, I like that. Very well, right turn, quick whatsit." And off we went. "My name," he said, "is, no, better not say it, damned unfortunate name sometimes, can't stand the stuff, Indian muck."

  "I know it. It's to do with leather."

  "Ah, know it, do you? Interesting. Don't know yours though." He was weakishly handsome, very blond, thin, supple, smart in grey serge unspotted by vomit, a neat vomiter, not like, say, a Glaswegian at Hogmanay. "Ought to know yours really." I told him. "Ah, I like that. Rhymes with roomy, gloomy. To do with tombs, is it? Tomby. Grave, gravy. Oh my dear God." He heaved emptily.

  "Deep breaths. See, we're there."

  The little vestibule lounge was quite empty. He flopped, done, spent, soft, supple, edible, on a soft settee. I sat down more stiffly, saying, "You're here alone?"

  "Orphan," he said. "Only got aunts and things who don't give a Chinese damn. Just jumped twenty-one so that's all right as far as administration of things goes." He drunkenly thumbed his nose at someone unseen.

  "Half an orphan, me," I said. "Just buried my mother. Flu, you know."

  "Mine," he said boastfully, "was seen off in the second month of the war. In the VAD, matron. Bomb on base hospital near Mauberge. The old man was luckier. Amazing luck till Amiens, less than a year back. Sir James. That makes yours humbly and sincerely Sir Richard." He puffed himself up and then collapsed into tired limp thinness again.

  "All, baronet."

  "Sir Dick, Bart. Got a handle to it. I say, I've a mouth like a whatsit. Uncleaned parrot cage. Could do with some Perrier or Evian or something. Eau minerale," he called to the solitary man at the desk, writing. "You got any of that?" The man shrugged, peeked toward the vestibule clock, put an arm out at a closed bar, locked cupboards, then wrote again. "All well, got some upstairs, a drop," Sir Richard Curry Bart said, "in my gloomy room." The sight of writing, my rimesakes, then the memory of my name made him then turn with some small vigour toward me and say, "I say, you said Toomey. Are you Toomey who writes things? That Toomey?"

  "I've written things, yes. Kenneth M. Toomey, playwright, novelist, that sort of nonsense, yes."

  "Well, that Toomey and no stuck-up big Iamity, the Good Samaritan and all that rot, I say, that was kind, I shall remember that."

  "You're staying long?"

  "Thought of going to Barcelona. I say, I read one of your things, all about her heavy hair and heavy breasts and their lips were glued in a, ugh, I can taste that damned loo garoo."

  "It tastes that way to me too," I said. "What the public wants. The law doesn't allow some of us to be honest, if you know what I mean." He knew all right. Bright green eyes though a little bloodshot appraised me under a fallen blond lock. "That dare not speak its name, if you know what I mean." Oh, he knew all right.

  "Live here, do you?" he said. "Marine villa and chauffeur and aperitifs on the terrace?"

  "Nothing like that. Not a bit like that, not yet. I say, why don't you get a decent night's sleep and perhaps we could have a bit of a chat tomorrow if you feel like it. Have lunch if you want. Get a decent lunch here, do you?"

  "A bit gloomy, the dining room downstairs. Quiet, though. See you about oneish if you like, make up our minds about it. No loo garoo, though. What do I call you besides Mr. Toomey?"

  "Oh, Ken wil
l do very well. They all call me Ken."

  "When a new planet swam into his, right, Ken it is, Ken. I have a small bottle of, upstairs, not such a good idea, no, I can see that. Bedfordshire, sir, my old man used to say. Home's in Berkshire, great big bloody house, roomy, gloomy, coming up all the time now those aren't they, tomby, yes, you could say that. Tomorrow, then." And he got up. We shook hands, I gripping his warmly, his yielding, limp, boneless. Then I remembered that Hortense and Domenico were in the Hotel de Paris bar waiting, and that he, hot on seduction, would be getting her drunk. So I didn't see Sir Dick to the lift.

  Hortense was drinking creme de menthe frappee and laughing too much. Domenico was telling her some story that made her laugh. As far as I knew, Domenico knew no funny stories. When I went up to them they turned from each other, together on the red velvet banquette, to grin at me with what I would have termed in those days affectionate derision. Or, if you wish, the derision of conspiratorial heterosexuality, two young people who found each other attractive--no, wait, that young is vague and dangerous: Hortense was a child, Domenico an unattached man, hence by definition a womaniser, Latin also, also not of my persuasion--and were encouraged to be bold by their shared knowledge of my sexual aberrancy, an ambulant dirty joke forced upon them; nothing like a dirty joke to foster intimacy. And of course I saw what I was doing and saw why my position was hopeless: proposing an affair in a hotel bedroom and thus taking time off from guarding Hortense from possible indeed probable indeed certain importunacy from Domenico. "Pouring in oil and wine," Hortense said crudely. Then she hiccuped like a character in a French comic paper: hips. Domenico was delighted to bang her on the back. She separated her back from the banquette so that he could bang it better.

  "You're not used to it, Hortense," I said kindly. "Let's go--" I could not say home.

  "You. The Good hips Samarit hips. Dancing's the thing for. Let's hips go back to that place."

  "Bed for you, dear. And for me. It's been a long day for both of us."

  "Dance of the sheets, I see, hips. What do men do together?"

  "That's quite enough, Hortense. Drink your drink and we'll go." And then, as she hipsed and hipsed, "Nine sips and hold your breath."

  Domenico counted gravely nine crotchets in Italian. "Brava," when she emerged gasping.

  She filled her lungs in much the same rhythm as Sir Richard Curry Bart had. "Good. Gone. Hips. Damn." But she got up to go, and Domenico obeyed me too in mock meekness, making himself sib and coeval to Hortense, submissive to frowning elder brother, something incestuous in it. "Hips. Bloody thing."

  "Hortense, language."

  So we walked back down the hill, sea lights flashing on our left. Hips. She recovered with the three-story climb. My bedroom was between Domenico's and hers, and I lay awake for a time, listening for padding feet and whispers. But I heard nothing except Domenico's light snores and Hortense's crying "Maman" once in her sleep and then sobbing.

  CHAPTER 24

  My old-fashioned inlocoparental fears for Hortense's honor were, you will say out of the future which is your enlightened present, absurd as well as hypocritical. They were also, if Domenico were to be considered the sole candidate or ingrate for battering at that honor, proved, temporarily at least I thought, needless by his receipt of a letter from Merlini in Milan. A letter I brought with his coffee the following morning, being up early to resume my moral watch. Idiot, considering that I proposed going off duty in the mufti of my own lust at the most sensitive time of the day. However. Merlini urgently wanted at least the vocal score of I Poveri Ricchi. It was proposed to open the autumn season at the Teatro alla Scala with the first two little operas of Puccini's Trittico. There had been serious consideration of making up the weight with Bayer's Die Puppenfee, last performed on February 9, 1893, after the prima rappresentazione of Verdi's Falstaff, but an examination of the score had confirmed the legend of its mediocrity. So, though there was no firm promise, here might be Domenico's big chance. The letter made Domenico fandango barechested about the apartment, kissing Hortense in joy and also, though with less conviction, myself. He remembered at one point that I was part-librettist and went into a mist-eyed routine about what dressing-gowned uncrapulous Hortense called Kunstbruderschaft. But soon it was all his dawn again.

  Hortense and I went with him to the station just before noon. He would be back, he had left most of his clothes, his luggage being mostly the full vocal and half-completed orchestral scores, he would send news. He kissed us both again, in the same degrees as before, before climbing aboard the stopping train to Ventimiglia. Extravagant Tuscan waves from him, prim Anglo-French ones from us. Hortense and I looked at each other when he had gone.

  She said, "It's all right, you know. I'm not a Henry James heroine, all eager to be seduced by the glamorous south."

  "I see. 'Which particular heroine were you thinking of?"

  "Oh, that one in the little book he gave you, Maisie or Tilly or somebody, he's a terrible old bore. The one with the long loving scrawl from your alas temporarily infirm but still fundamentally gay friend and master. Is it too early for lunch?"

  "Well, now," I said. "Today I have a luncheon appointment. Do you mind terribly? A young actor who happens to be on holiday here. Why don't you make yourself a snack and we'll have a big dinner tonight, the two of us, and talk about the future. Eze, perhaps. The place where Nietzsche was. He wrote part of Also Sprach Zarathustra there."

  "And that makes the food good, does it? Sister Gertrude was always going on about the Ubermensch. The Menschlein you met last night, is it? The willowy blond one you succoured?"

  "What's that word?"

  "Helped, assisted in his vomity torment, held the suffering head of."

  "I recognized him, you see. He was going to be in one of my things, but then he wasn't. I knew his father too," I added. "Sir James Curry. Dead now. He's a double orphan now, poor boy."

  "You needn't give me all that," she said. "I could see you positively dithering to take his willowy form in your arms. All right, get on with it. But please do stop being the big moral disapproving elder brother with me, that's all. Ugh." And then, "What do men do together?"

  "Pretty men I mean pretty well what men and women do together. Except there's an obvious difference. A matter of equipment, you might say."

  "And it's wrong, isn't it? It's what Sister Magda would call a sin against biology. It has to be wrong, it's not natural." We were walking down rue Grimaldi in March sunlight.

  "To some of us," I said, "the natural thing seems unnatural."

  "And that's obviously wrong, isn't it? Diseased, isn't it?"

  "So Michelangelo's diseased, is he?" I had said that before to her. No, of course, it had been our mother. But, of course, there was something diseased about the extravagant musculature of the David and the Sistine Last Judgment. "It's the way some of us are," I said as I'd undoubtedly said before, "the way we're made."

  "I don't believe it, nobody's made that way. God wouldn't allow it."

  "Ah, bringing in God again. Got over the God-hating, have we?"

  "You ought to see a psychowhatsit," she said.

  "I thought the Church didn't hold with amateur soul surgery."

  "You're not in the Church. Only the biologically pure can be in the Church. All right, forget it." We had arrived at the front door of the apartment house opposite the Societe Marsellaise de Credit. On this door there was a smirking cowled monk's head knocker, perhaps a pun on the name of the principality. I gave her the keys.

  "I'll be back about three or four," I said. "You'll find cold ham and salad and things in that sort of cooler thing."

  She looked evilly at me and then sadly smiled, saying, right hand on my left cheek, "Poor old Kenny Penny."

  What happened that afternoon after lunch in the single bedroom of the Immoral or Amoral, as Sir Dick Bart indifferently called it, need not be described here. It was satisfying to deprived glands and, indeed, emotions. But the term love, despite the warnin
g implicit in that filthy limerick of filthy Norman Douglas (whom Dick had once met and been drunkenly fingered by briefly and whom he called Abnorman Fuckless), threatened to mean more than merely lust and gratitude. I love you, my lovely and lovable boy, signifying desire to possess dog-in-the-mangerishly (Who is this man you're having dinner with? Who was that one you smiled at on the Boulevard des Moulins? Who are these people who invited you aboard their yacht? Yes yes, I know I'm taking my sister to Eze or Antibes or Cannes, but that is duty, not pleasure. I have to know where you are, and so on). Yet Dick was amusing as well as capriciously accommodating, though he made too many jokes about his name. Coming to the hotel on the third day of our liaison I found an enraging note awaiting me: "Off with the Pettimans. Pizzle in sauce piquante not on the menu today." On the fourth afternoon he pouted and said, "I expected a little gift, you know, something nice and useless, you know, from Cartier's." But, though I now had it to give, he would never demand money, like that little whore Val, for the private printing of his poems. He had plenty of money of his own and he did not write poems. He did not do anything. Some time in the early autumn, he said, he would cease his wandering over Europe and go back to the tomby house in Berkshire, there to consider putting the greenhouses in order and, my dear, start learning something, seriously, you know, really seriously, about orchids, lovely ballock-shaped things.

  Hortense, as I had half anticipated, developed her own routines. There were no real facilities for seabathing at Monaco, though the organisation that ran us was called the Societe des Bains de Mer, so she took to traveling by train further up the coast, to Beaulieu or Menton, where there was sand as well as rocks, and lunching off a pan bagnat and a ballon blanc, playing tennis back in the principality in the late afternoon with some nice harmless English people (right out of the court, what, thought I was playing cricket haha) who had a bookish seventeen-year-old pimpled son, and dining with me in the evening, least I could do, sometimes a film show at the Prince after, Lon Chaney, Charlot.

  "Off to Barcelona," Dick said, showing me half-packed bags. "Call in at Avignon on the way." This was the tenth day, or eleventh.