Earthly Powers

by Anthony Burgess

  "Home," tolled Carlo. "You will not sleep in her bed or even in the same room. You defile her purity with just being there. You will keep away from her until you receive absolution and do penance. And, by God," Carlo fiercely promised, "it will be a long and hard penance. Many many many many decades of the rosary. You will never have done with saying them."

  "You have no right. I have the right to go to my own priest."

  "I know the man. I will tell him all. I will tell him what to give you."

  "You have no right and you know you have no right." And then Domenico sneered. "Purity. Chastity. Fidelity. These fine big words that mean nothing. What I say now is: whose are those children? Who is the father of those two kids who call me dad?" Ah. "It's from the orecchioni I start to learn the truth."

  "Orecchioni?" I did not know the word. Both Carlo and Domenico distractedly mimed big ears and big cheeks. "Swollen glands? Oh, mumps." I remembered. Johnny and Ann had had mumps. Domenico had been infected. It was a painful harmless ailment. There was a certain danger when male adults caught it. Hortense too had caught it but there was no danger for adult females.

  "I go to the studio doctor," Domenico said, "because I do not like the shrinking of the balls. What he calls with his big words partial atrophy of the testicles. He neither likes it nor dislikes it. He says it happens in thirty percent of the cases. I tell him they are not his balls to like or dislike. They are my balls. And I do not like it. He says to give him some of my seed. So I go into another room to get some. It's not easy. He gives me a book of dirty pictures and that helps."

  "Filthy," Carlo pronounced. "Pollution. Masturbation."

  "Ah, cazzo," Domenico cried in disgust. "You know nothing about anything, stupid priest." Very fascist. "He takes my semen and he puts it under a microscope. This afternoon he gave me the results. He said there was nothing. He said," crescendo, "there was nothing there. He told me that there was the most perfect example of infertility he had ever seen. Perfect was the word he used. He said another thing. He said that it was very very very unusual for the disease of orecchioni to make a man infertile. He said that it was almost certain that I had been born like that. And then I told him I had two children, twins. And then he said very quickly, too quickly, very well then obviously it must be the orecchioni that are the cause, very rare but it does sometimes happen. But I can guess he's saying this to quieten my mind. But my mind is not quiet, very far from it. Now you see the doubt that comes into my mind."

  "There must be no doubt," Carlo bellowed. The Manhattan humorist in the next apartment laughed. "For a man to doubt his wife, especially when his wife is a woman like Hortense, is not to be considered. How dare you ask who is the father of your children!"

  "Staying the night with you," Domenico scowled at me. "How do I know where she spent the night? How do I know where she would go when she said she was spending the afternoon at the Louvre? I've seen her smile at men in Paris. You're her brother, I suppose you will protect her."

  "There's nothing to protect," I said fiercely. "Hortense has been a good and faithful wife and also a much provoked wife if you wish to know the truth. You know your terrible tempers which you would call temperament as if you were Verdi or Puccini and your cowardice in lashing out at a woman."

  "Oh, now it's she who does the lashing out," Domenico cried, "when I speak to her about the doctor and his damned microscope and his saying there are no spermatozoa swimming around. And I spoke reasonably, ready to forgive if she's done wrong, because after all it was a long time ago. She said how dare you how dare you louder even than Carlo here. Be honest, I said, dear Ortensia, be honest, I'll forgive you, I love these children whoever the father is or the fathers are, and then it's how dare you and she lashes out with her fists. And then she said go and ask your brother Carlo about the purpose of the act of marriage, the act of marriage is for producing children, how many children can you produce now, you infertile bastard, keep away from me in future."

  "She's wrong, Carlo said, though weakly. The Church doesn't penalise anybody because of the failure of Nature. When the sacrament of matrimony is entered on in good faith then the pleasures of matrimony are legitimate."

  "Ah," Domenico said, "she wants different pleasures. We Italians are all innocent fools, not like the French and the English. I wondered about this friendship between her and my fagotto. Bassoon, if you like," he said to me. "In the studio orchestra. All this friendliness and how are you darling and little kisses when they meet."

  "A male bassoonist?"

  "No no no no no no, stolto, a woman bassoonist," as though it were selfevidently a female occupation blowing that long heavy thing. "Her name is Fran Lilienthal, a ridiculous name, but she's a good fagottista, she can reach high mi bemolle, E flat if you like. That is not the point," with ferocity as though somebody else had gotten him off it. "Hortense said to me several times that men know nothing about making love to a woman. Especially Italian men. I asked her what she knew of other men, and she said she talked enough with other women and learned plenty from them, and also she reads books. She says it requires a woman to understand a woman. So now I begin to think. There is a lot of this among the women of Hollywood." We were all still standing up, but now Carlo sat down. The whisky in his glass tried to stay where it was and splashed his black jacket. He ignored this, looking, frowning, up at his brother. "You know the word," Domenico said to me. "I think there's something wrong with your family."

  "That's a stupid and cruel thing to say," with much heat. "Retract those words or I'll push them down your throat. Along with your silly crowned fornicating Latin lover teeth." The humorist next door clapped and went hooray.

  "You're saying stupidities," Carlo said, "as you so often do. You're being insincere and sinfully so, as you so often are. You wish to commit adultery or at least fornication, so you find all the excuses you can. Your wife pushes you away, or so you like to think, then you dream up this abomination of perverseness. Women," he pronounced sagely, "are not the same as men. They kiss each other and embrace each other. I've seen this among young nuns even, novices. It's friendship, no more. Women are more emotional and more demonstrative than men, it is their nature. Women are incapable by their physical nature of committing the sin of Onan. But now you dream up this filthy calumny and because of a frustrated and bitterly broken love of Kenneth here, which you know all about, all, you say words he is right to want to ram down through your throat. You justify your sin of tonight. You will go on trying to justify similar sins. I know your nature. Now go down on your knees. Go on. On your knees." He pointed to a suitable spot on the thinning rust carpet. "Beg forgiveness of God. Now."

  "Ah, merda," Domenico said, not kneeling. "You don't know anything about the real world and what sex is and the different kinds of sex and what sex does to people. But what you do know now is why I did what I did this evening. And you stopped me. You damned and fucking well stopped me. The worst crime in the whole of life, the worst sin, worse than murder. When a man is almost coming." He shuddered with genuine horror. "To stop a man at that point is a terrible terrible sin. It is you who should be down on your knees."

  "Don't tell me what's sin and what isn't sin," Carlo said, getting up again, "and don't say filthy words to me, a priest and a monsignore. So, we have your sin sin sin, do you hear me, and we have your feeble motivations." He sounded a little like the head of the MGM script department. "But you have not repeated what I asked you to repeat. The thing you said when I was forcing you into your trousers in that disgusting bedroom with the naked puttana laughing and showing her brazen bare body. I want to hear that thing again. I can bear it. It was a terrible thing to say to a brother. It was a denial. But I can bear it."

  "I said you had no right."

  "No right as a priest or no right as an elder brother?"

  "No right as either one. You always said we have free will and the right to choose what we do."

  "Yes, and we have the right to stop a man choosing to harm himself. We
have that right and I used that right. What was the thing you said?"

  "It was you," Domenico spoke accusingly, "who said I must go home to see my father die and take care of all arrangements. There was important Church business for you and Raffaele had to stay in Chicago to be murdered by Al Capone."

  "That is not a good thing to say. Speak sensibly."

  "All this is true. I had to see my father die and then settle things for my mother. You talked a lot about my duty as a son."

  "What is this singular possessiveness? Our father, our mother. It was not my fault if I could not be there. You did all our duties for us, very good, thank you, a good son and a good brother and all the rest of it. What has this to do with anything?"

  "I had to go through documents, burn some, burn most of them, keep some, read all. Mother left it to me, she wanted no part of it, leave me to my grief she said, but she didn't seem to grieve much. That is a different story. My story now is that I found this old certificato di adozione." Carlo's sudden alertness was like a stick cracking over a knee. He said with little voice:

  "Tu?"

  "No, tu." I had never seen Carlo, nor, I think, could anyone ever have, so suddenly shrunken and naked. He, the formidable, always full of surprises, had met a surprise of such monumental gravity that its nugget weighed more than his whole arsenal of faith and learning and superhuman confidence to deal with the world. The two kept to Italian, not Milanese.

  Carlo said, "You have it? Mother has it? It is still there?"

  "It was one of the things burned. She said it should have been burned long ago. She did not know it was still among the family documents. She said you must never never be told. She was very disturbed that I had seen it."

  "Rightly so rightly so, you were bound to tell me sometime even if you had to wait a hundred years. You waited ten years. More. But you were bound to tell me. She was right to be disturbed." The humorist next door was laughing again. Carlo beat the wall with terribly earnest fists. The humorist gave a feeble horselaugh and then was silent, probably off to bed.

  Domenico said, "I told you because I was angry. No man can be angrier than when he is put into that state. I could not otherwise have said it. So now we forget all about it. There are rights you do not have. But you're still my elder brother."

  "What is known? Who am I?" A terrifying question, the question of Oedipus.

  Domenico said, "You're Carlo Campanati. The certificate of adoption says your parents are unknown. Mother said that it all happened that time when Italy was taking Ethiopia. The man was in the army and he did not come back. The woman was on the estate for the pressing of the grapes. She had you and then she went off. My father, our father, had a dream of some kind. He woke from the dream and then he called in the advocate for the papers of adoption. He said you had to be of the family. It was a time, Mother said, when the doctors said it would not be wise to have more children, she had had a difficult time with Raffaele. But of course she had no difficult time with myself. Mother said you were a gift from God."

  Carlo groaned terribly. I ventured to say, in English, "I can see nothing to worry about in all this. Why such knowledge should be withheld. Why such knowledge should cause unhappiness."

  "You knew your mother," Carlo groaned. "All men know their mothers, even Jesus Christ. Not to know your mother. Not to know your father is not so important. This is a very profound shock."

  "You were destined perhaps," Domenico said with characteristic stupidity, "to choose your mother, which not many men can do. I mean your mother the Church. But our mother is still your mother."

  "It's not the same," went Carlo hollowly. "I did not issue from her womb. I am not flesh of her flesh. I will worry now hopelessly about my real mother, whom I can never know. Your two children know their mother, that's all that matters for them. And you come to me with your sinful doubts about your paternity, as if that mattered. I have no mother," and he groaned again.

  "The Church," Domenico said, "the Church. You have your mother the Church."

  "The truth is good," I said comfortingly and vaguely, "whatever the truth is. It is good," I clarified, "to know the truth. You are what you are, you are not changed. Your gifts? They come from God, and the parental channel of their transmission is of no importance."

  "Kenneth is right there," Domenico said. "It's like my own gifts. Neither my father nor my mother had them. They come from the unknown. I won't say God, because I'm not sure about God. Talent or genius is a great mystery."

  "What do you mean," Carlo asked, "not sure about God?" He had raised his muzzle at the noise of a straying sheep, sick collie dog though he was. "Tonight seems to be dedicated to your not being sure about anything. Except about my having no mother. What do you mean, not sure?"

  "Talk to the mafiosi about God," Domenico said boldly. "They run the labor at the studios. They say who shall be in my orchestra and who not. You drag me from a bed where I only commit fornication, but these people kill. Why is it all the Catholics are bad men, tell me that? It's six months since I went to mass. I'll work out things for myself. Your mother not mine."

  Carlo nodded. "You wouldn't say this if I were really your elder brother."

  "I've known it for over ten years," Domenico said.

  "Yes, but it's tonight you really know it. Tonight you say it. Go on, go away. I'll see you tomorrow."

  "You won't see me tomorrow. I'm recording music all day. If the mafiosi allow me. Now I think I'll go back to what you interrupted." He insolently left without a goodnight.

  Carlo said, "That bottle is finished. What other whisky do you have?"

  "Scotch, you mean. White Label, Haig, Claymore--"

  "Very good. It is many, many years since I did this." He took a beer glass, half filled it with Claymore and looked at me tragically before drinking. "You must join me," he said. "A man cannot drink alone." The Studebaker could be heard zooming off from the Black Sea. "Well, let him. Let him be damned. Let the devils of pride and lust and stupidity devour him. He was always a fool. Come, drink with me."

  "Vodka," I said. I did not propose to be incapable the next morning, I had a script conference at ten. In the icebox I kept a number of used liquor bottles filled with water. I went to it and chose a chill quart Kavkaz. Then I sat with Carlo, ready out of companionship to slur and dribble, grimacing with simulated distaste of raw spirit as I sipped the cool blessed and neutral.

  Carlo took an hour to get through the Claymore. He said nothing for half of that time, though he made noises of self-pity and occasionally barked dialectal curses. Then he said, "Is it true what Domenico suspects?"

  "This," I said, "is the confessional. Is that clearly understood?" He did not understand for a moment, but then he did and nodded.

  "Sealed," he said. "Sealed, sealed."

  "It's possible for someone to commit a sin out of love. If my sister sinned it was for Domenico's sake. Do you see that? She put her soul in jeopardy to protect his selfesteem. Remember, though, that you'd told Domenico that it was always the woman who was barren. One of the stupidities of the Old Testament. Hortense was driven to it. There's nothing to repent. Does she now go to hell?"

  "Hortense," he said with care, "will not go to hell. If she goes to hell then that is where I would wish to be. I love Hortense. She is too good for that idiot who used to be a brother."

  "Tell me," I said, "how do you get on? I mean, with your vow of abstinence.

  I mean, love. Eros not agape."

  "I get on," he said in his innocence, "as you get on. You found love with chastity, the best kind. And you lost it. I did my best. The evil in the world, the evil. I have nobody. Even Christ had John. I suffer," he said, "from the pangs of lust. I'm a man like any other man, except perhaps you. Some men find chastity easy. I do not. I wonder sometimes whether when the time comes it will not be wise to permit marriage to the priesthood. Better than to burn, take bromides, quinine, bark at the flesh to get into its kennel."

  "When what time comes?"


  "When the Church is remade." Then Carlo got down seriously to his drinking. On the broaching of the dimple Haig he began to curse and spit blasphemies. Like Luther he seemed to see the devil in the corner of the living room, though he did not, in the absence of an inkwell, waste good whisky on him. The devil assumed the guise of a large rat, whose sleek fur and bright teeth Carlo admired extravagantly in various languages, including, I think, Aramaic. In the tones of an upper-class Englishman he said, "For the moment you are in the ascendancy, old boy, what, rather. I see your large clean fangs grinning at my temporary failure. Salut, mon prince, votre bloody altesse. You and I are alike in not possessing a mater, old boy. Even God forced himself into a filial situation. But will prevails, don't you know. There is never any failure of the will. We are what we make ourselves, old chap. Let's see you now as a serpent, your first disguise. Very good, that's really a most remarkable cobra hood, old fellow. I've never been much afraid of snakes, don't you know. The colonial experience, so to say, mon brave. But you bore me rather, you tire me somewhat. A little shut-eye is indicated, wouldn't you say? Rather."

  It was certainly time. Carlo finished what he had in his glass, then he threw the glass in the corner. It did not break. Then he nodded at me quite soberly and went off to bed, sketching a blessing. He was soon roaring. He was up before me next morning; indeed, the aroma of the coffee he was brewing was what woke me. He remembered everything, especially his new stoical loneliness.

  CHAPTER 46

  King Arthur and Sir Bedivere stowed the Holy Grail safely under the rubble of the ruined chapel in the forest, and with it the rusting spear that had pierced Christ's side. Then they rode wearily to the hill where the remnant of their ragged army was gathered for the last battle. The sky boiled and seethed in eastward-driven coils of cloud, and the banner of the dragon fluttered, tattered, fingers in feeble marameo at the approaching enemy. Arthur spoke to his troops, and his weariness was evident from the slackness of his vocal cords, but the wind carried his words as far as the boys in the rear with what was left of the baggage train, and all listened hopelessly to his words. "We who are redeemed through Christ's blood, we who glorified the civilising skills of the Roman with the good news from Galilee, we the ancient Celts to whom was vouchsafed the living faith to bear among the folk of the dark north, we face now annihilation at the hands of a ruthless and Godless enemy. Yet, though we die, the faith can in no wise perish. Our blood will smoke to the sun and it shall be as incense to the Father of all things. From the soil we nourish with our blood a new race of Christians shall arise. Be of good cheer, for the faith cannot die. Men, do your duty, as the Blessed One did his. Cannot you now hear the noise of the approaching Saxon hordes, merciless, pagan, feeders on the flesh and blood of Christian men? Face them without fear, sustained by the vision of the divine cross, hopeful of heaven. Christ died and rose and may not die again. Fare we forth to battle in faith and duty. Trumpeter, sound the charge." And with a main voice the wretched torn army raised its spears and gave praise to God and King Arthur.