Earthly Powers

by Anthony Burgess

  Pope Innocent I said: Heresy. Augustine was happy. Then came Pope Zosimus (417-18). Zosimus was rather pleased with Pelagius's emphasis, in a new book, on free will, as well as his lofty view of morality and papal authority. He told Augustine and the rest of the Africans that Pelagius must be adjudged orthodox. Augustine, expectedly, went wild. But Pelagius had, in Sicily (how these people got around), written a socialistic pamphlet denouncing the irresponsibility of the rich toward the poor and the sinfulness of the maintenance of governmental power by means of torture and wanton execution. Augustine drew the attention of the Emperor at Ravenna to this preaching of social revolution. On April 30, 418, an imperial edict banished Pelagius and his followers from Rome as a menace to peace. Zosimus had to bow to the ultimate secular authority. He formally condemned Pelagius as a heresiarch, and the Church ever since had endorsed that condemnation. But, Carlo (it had to be Carlo) seemed to say, the condemnation, being made under duress, had no true validity, and there were grounds for accepting (he was discreet and cautious here) the Pelagian thesis as more consonant with the True Reformed premise of the goodness and dignity of man than the Augustinian doctrine of his natural depravity.

  I had got to that word depravity when Carlo came out with a snore that seemed devised by his unconscious to wake him. He emerged a minute later in his shirt, creased but clearly refreshed, lipsmacking, brighteyed, ready for the fray. I closed the typescript. I would read more of it later, but I felt compelled already to tell him that I couldn't, that he had better give it to somebody else, that it was not my cup of tea. Carlo nodded without displeasure, unlidded the pot to find tea still in it, though cold, and fed himself with the bitter amber fluid straight from the spout. With wet lips, "No hurry," he said. "Don't make a hasty decision. Read it with care."

  "I think," I dared to say, "that this is a highly dangerous document."

  He was delighted. "Exactly. Religion is the most dangerous thing in the world. It is not little girls in their communion frocks and silly holy pictures and the Children of Mary. It is," he said, "high explosive, dynamite, the," he smiled at the conceit, "splitting of the atom."

  CHAPTER 45

  I did not drive, I have never driven. I made use in Los Angeles of a studio car to take me to Culver City and back and taxis for excursions of pleasure. Carlo and I, then, traveled in a taxi to the party, and, because of the garrulity of the driver, were able to talk no more for the moment of the holy or unholy project. "Picked up this guy, British, Cary Grant, stingy as hell, you know what I mean, he give me a lousy dime on a five-dollar fare. But Ginger Rogers, she's a lady, yes sir, that ain't her real name, you know that?" And then, "You guys in motion pictures?" and so on. Carlo looked as at the world of fallen man on the endless suburbs that passed for a city--an eatery in the likeness of a sphinx (enter between its forepaws); another, for jumbo malts so thick you can't suck 'em through a straw, in the form of an elephant crouched as at the bidding of its mahout; gimcrack temples of various faiths; attap roofs of nutburger stands with Corinthian columns; loans loans loans; stores crammed with cut--price radios; a doughnuttery; homes like Swiss chalets, like Bavarian castles, miniature Blenheims, Strawberry Hills, Taj Mahals; a bank in the form of a tiny ocean liner; dusty trees on the boulevards (date palm, orange, oleander); bars with neon bottles endlessly pouring; colleges for stuntmen, beauticians, morticians, degrees in drummajoretteship. It was better at night, even under the sick lamps: the surgical exposure to the Californian sun made one's eyes prick with shame and pity. We arrived at an exclusive residential world of Aztec temples, Parthena, Loire chateaux. I tipped the driver a dollar. Picked up this guy, British, stingy as hell, he give me a lousy buck.

  The Storm residence had a long driveway with gravel carparks already fast filling on either side, a driveway guarded by stone or plaster patriarchs in robes with open mouths that gave out soft organ music. It led to a facade roughly modelled on Borromini's (ha) San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane. Within, as I knew, the hall was a miniature Balthasar Neumann pilgrim church of Vierzehnheiligen in which a cinema screen could be lowered over the reredos. Hidden elevators led up and down to rooms in Chinese or Byzantine or Colonial Spanish or Regency styles. If you saw the mansion from the back, you found something like Martino Lunghi the Younger's SS Vincenzo ed Anastasio.

  This, tonight, was floodlit from the commodious lawns where the party was being held, though there would be cardplaying, roulette, a new movie, and fornication indoors. Over the lawns shone seven artificial moons; the real, dimmer, moon was rising over the distant hills. A dance orchestra was playing on a raised platform under a Pier Luigi Nervi waffled ceiling. A singer sang through a microphone:

  I'll crash the moon

  To fetch a spoon

  Of precious lunar dust.

  I'll fly as high

  As heaven's eye.

  I'll even die

  If I must...

  Popular songs were, at that time, going through a brief phase of literacy. Guests already drank, twirled, laughed, bitched, ate--men in white and silver and gold tuxedos; women in flame, royal purple, cerulean, mock virgin white, bosoms hoisted and teeth snow-capped, many famous, all vulgar. There was a smell of scorched meat, ginger and soy sauce. Fire flared for an instant as cognac was thrown over a Hawaiian pig roast. The dance floor was a polished silver disk by the heartshaped swimming pool. Searchlights played like lewd fat fingers on ravishing girls diving and ploughing the water, from which a loud scent of patchouli arose. Lorelei-like, these girls with perfect teeth tempted fat bald dressed men to jump in just as they were. Carlo seemed awed by all this. Faces he had known only in unnatural enlargement were now, however, reduced to accessibility: it was like a reversal of heaven. Still he murmured, "That, surely, is Joan Blondell. And that Clark Gable. And there is Norma Shearer. And there's Domenico. But where is Hortense?"

  One could not first greet one's hostess. One could not find one's hostess. We went to the bar where Domenico, who now wore a corset on ceremonial occasions, was drinking, on the showing of the white flecks round his mouth, a Ramos fizz. He was still handsome, and the recession of his hairline had been disguised with careful blow-combing. It was without grey, and it glistened under the moons like a grilled steak. Drinking with him was a small Mexican starlet called, I think, Rita Morelos, hair like ink, not one straight line in her shape, her scarlet dress subtly slit to the thigh, eyes naughty and lips wet and apout. Domenico, who now called himself Nicky, did not appear to be pleased to see his brother. "I would not have thought," he said, "I mean, a priest."

  "Is there some law?" frowned Carlos. "Where is your wife?"

  "Hortense," Domenico said, pronouncing the name to rhyme with hence, "is looking after Johnny. He fell riding a pony. He twisted his ankle. There is a little pain. He woke up crying. She is staying with him. Anyway, she doesn't much like parties."

  "You do, I see, you do. What's that drink, my child?" he said kindly to Rita Morelos. She was holding a glass long as a bottle on whose foam sat a miniature parasol. It was a Mai-Tai. Carlo asked for whisky.

  Anything at all

  I'll gladly do

  To prove a lasting

  Love for you.

  Each and every task

  Beneath the sun:

  You only have to ask--

  It's done...

  Fitted out with a heavy rummer of scotch, Carlo was now ready to be introduced to the cinematic great. My situation in Hollywood was a comfortable one. I was glad to get money out of the industry but I did not really need it. I did not have to bow or yes or cringe. There was one writer there, I noticed, down on his luck: Godfrey (God) Thurston trying to ingratiate himself with a couple of stone-faced moguls. I was Kenneth M. Toomey, distinguished British novelist in distinguished early middle age, whose face was known from book jackets, whose sexual proclivities had not been declared (though all British were supposed to be fags: sour grapes because of our patrician accents and European elegance), who was known by as much as he knew and
didn't give a damn anyway. So, at ease, I led Carlo from group to group, introducing him, for convenience, as my brother-in-law, high officer of the Apostolic Delegation to the United States. Some thought this to be a new religious sect and a widemouthed comedian named Joe E. Brown swore he knew some guy who had joined it: no nooky, no booze, take nothing dead into your system, right? But Edward G. Robinson, an actor of about Carlo's height though not as ugly, knew all about it, could catalogue from memory the Vatican's art treasures, and gave, as a bonne bouche, a crisp summary of the Sabellian heresy. At length we met our hostess. Say what one would about the cynical craft of stellifaction, there had to be a donnee, and Astrid Storm did really possess a charm which ate Carlo like Venus's-flytrap. Transfixed by those great violet eyes, even when they looked away from him, he gulped and agreed when she uttered nonsense about the need of the Christian churches to be, you know, spiritualized by techniques of Mayan umbilical breathing.

  After an hour I had already had enough. Somebody said to Domenico, "Nick boy, I loved your last score, it was the greatest." And Domenico, seeming to be in a hurry to do something somewhere else, said, "Well, thanks, Dave." There was a woman of unearthly beauty who said nothing to her interlocutor but "Yah. A-a-a. Yah." A young blond man of magnificent physique which his tuxedo could not disguise, evidently desperate to be working again, dove from the high board fully clothed and entered the pool hardly raising a ripple. Nobody seemed to notice. A paid ribber came round to insult people.

  Carlo said to me, "They tell me there's poker-playing in there," jerking his thumb at SS Vincenzo ed Anastasio.

  "Very high stakes, Carlo. Can you afford it?"

  "None of these people look like serious card players. Come in and tell me when you think we ought to leave."

  "But you'll be going back with Domenico."

  "I think not on second thoughts. I think we ought to discuss the book."

  "But, Carlo, I have to go to work tomorrow morning."

  "Four or five hours' discussion, then sleep. We'll discuss all the better for the little relaxation we're having. Our hostess is a charming woman. I regret," he said roguishly, "my vow of chastity."

  "She's been four times divorced."

  "American divorce," he said, "is serial polygamy. The Garden of Allah," and he waddled off.

  I went back to the bar. A drunken man with a long head and no back to it looked at me narrowly and said, "You call yourself Toomey?"

  "That's my name."

  "It's not. You stole it from me, you bastard."

  "Ah, you a Toomey too? There aren't all that many of us. Where does your family come from?"

  "There's only one fucking Toomey and that's me. You're a fucking limey fag thief, you bastard." He picked up a Southern Comfort bottle from the bar and prepared to strike. Such a bore. Two dark-jowled men in black tuxedos, sixty-inch chests on them, rose like exhalations from the dry grass and bore this cursing other Toomey or pseudotoomey away complete with Southern Comfort. Then my eyes were drawn to the Pier Luigi Nervi bandstand. The orchestra had started playing "Happy Birthday," and the singer, an epicene willow-wand with a tow lock over his right eye, was singing it. "Happy birthday, dear Astrid.--The lights were on dear Astrid. She smiled like a piano concerto, not Domenico's. The brass fanfared in a massive cake on wheels, apparently self-driven, an exhaust farting bluely behind. It was far too beautiful to savage with a knife, but chefs with toques fell on it as though it were a white whale. Champagne was poured from methuselahs and dear Astrid's beauty and youth, unassailed by yet another year, were toasted. The cake was passed round in tiny nibbles. "Happy Birthday" was played as a creamy waltz, and men lined up to twirl Astrid in a few celebratory steps each. Very wholesome, but in dark corners of shrubbery low-voiced assignations were being initiated and quarrels smouldered. Teeth gleamed more in snarls than in smiles. But an unknown happy girl dove in in her Directoire gown and emerged with it pasted to her succulent body, and a tap dancer took over the dance floor and tap-danced, a man admirably pared to bone and a fixed smile, to the tune of "Sweet Sue."

  There emerged from the facade of SS Vincenzo ed Anastasio what many took at first to be a comic duo. It was Carlo dragging out Domenico and both cursing each other in the Milanese of the streets, a tongue unknown to the Sicilian gorillas in tuxedos who, with their ears pricked to what should have been familiar but was not, were getting ready to move in there. But the fat dragger-out was clearly revealed as a priest, one who ought to know what he was doing. Domenico's coiffure was disarranged and recession showed. His feet were socked but unshod, and under his tuxedo a hairy chest wobbled. In flagrante was the term. Carlo, his face contorted to shame and rage, had no goodnight for anyone. He dragged and occasionally hit Domenico over the lawns toward the front of the house. I had, though discreetly, to follow. Toward the carpark. I knew Domenico's car, a Studebaker in lime and apple, but Domenico would, I knew, pretend not to know it. Dragged home, indeed, by his priestly brother, and he only (I assumed; what else was there to assume?) committing mandatory fornication. "There," I called, pointing, "is what I presume you're looking for. But what in the name of God has been happening?" Domenico twisted himself to spit at me and Carlo used his freehand to try the driver's door. Cars were not locked in this private carpark with its black, probably armed, attendants. And the ignition keys were left in so that these attendants could redistribute locations and facilitate egress. As now. A Plymouth huge as a rock was swung out of the path of the Studebaker.

  "Get in there in the back," Carlo commanded. "Both of you." And he pushed Domenico in and me after him.

  "Look," I protested, "I've done no wrong. I'm guiltless as the Pelagian snow." Carlo was not amused. "Damn it," I said, "this is none of my business. I'm going back to the party." But Carlo had slammed the door and was getting into the driver's seat. "You," I said to Domenico, "have presumably been doing something naughty."

  "Go and say the same thing to your whore of a sister," Domenico growled. I could not resent that locution: a husband had more rights than a brother. The back of Carlo's neck said:

  "You, Kenneth, remind me of the way. We are going back to the Garden of Allah. You, fratello, say no more. What you have to say I desire to see you saying. I need to look into your insolent and adulterous face." That was very Italian. Italians, like women, had to see the true meaning behind the spoken words. Or written. Italians did not write letters because there was no face in letters.

  "It was not adultery," Domenico said in sulky pedantry. "She is not married."

  "That Mexican puttana," Carlo corrected, "is a married woman. I follow these things. You will say she has been divorecd. There is no such thing as divorce. I do not have to tell you that. Now be quiet. You will have plenty of time to speak. Not about your fornication of which there is nothing more to say. About the thing you said and then said you did not say. Stai zitto!" he cried, though Domenico was taking a breath only to breathe. So there was a kind of grumbling silence as we passed facetious mansions and grandiloquent hash joints, though Carlo rumbled at the view as at a long scrawled signature of human depravity.

  "Left here," I said. He obeyed, thoroughly expert with somebody else's, anybody's, car.

  We arrived. "La ilaha illa'lah," Carlo mocked. He parked by the Black Sea, between Constanta and Cetatea. We got out, and Carlo was now free to shove Domenico brutally toward my apartment. I unlocked and put lights on. Two scowling brothers were now fully illuminated, sweat and rumples and all.

  "A drink?" I said.

  Carlo said, "For me yes, for him nothing. Now," he truculently invited. "The thing you said."

  "I said nothing except that you had no right." All this, by the way, was in English. "You call it sin and I say that everybody does it. It is the way here. And I say that whatever you call it a man is free to do what he wants. You had no right, you disgraced me, you made me look a fool."

  "You looked a fool and also an animal lying on top of that woman. Naked," as though that were a worse sin th
an fornication. "Your stupid cub working away." Carlo took his neat Old Mortality with no thanks and grimly mimed the movement.

  "You had no right to burst in, you knew it was not the gabinetto. I was ready to come, blast you, ready to come, and you have the filthy stupidity to talk about sin." He then snarled some filthy Italian. Carlo drank with one hand and slapped at him, though missing, with the other.

  "A lucky accident, little brother, that it was you and this puttana and not the gabinetto. I caught you in sin and your shame may lead to sincere repentance. I want to know what it was you said."

  "I said you had no right."

  "No right as what? As a priest of your Church? Or as your brother?"

  "I said you had no right."

  "I ask," I said, "by what right you call my sister a whore?"

  "That," Carlo said, "is another thing. One thing at a time."

  "I said you had no right."

  "Why," I asked loudly, "is my sister a whore?"

  "I will say nothing else until I too have a whisky like this drunken priest here." Carlo, of course, hit out at that, but Domenico dodged. I slopped a cheaper whisky into a tumbler and handed it to Domenico. Domenico drank thirstily, all the time dodging Carlo, who was trying to knock the glass out of his fist. "You will listen." Domenico was panting less from emotion than from the single swift draught. Carlo could not now take that drink away from him. He held on to the glass firmly, his knuckles creamed, any more hitting and he would counter with that. "It's not my habit," he said, "to fornicate and commit adultery. I am not like the other people here." Carlo combined a whoop and a sneer. "If you want to listen, listen. If not I will go home."