Earthly Powers

by Anthony Burgess

  "The question is: what will they say back home?"

  "Well, you can't really expect us at this end to worry overmuch about that, can you? I mean, be reasonable. There is a war on, you know."

  "I'll do it, God help me."

  "Stout chap, thought you would. Joe Goebbels will be pleased."

  So they put me up at the Josefstadt on Lederergasse and sent this pleasant young official to prepare me for the interview. He apologised for not liking my work: he had had Dr. L. C. Knights as a tutor for a year at Cambridge and had been taught a rather rigorous approach to literature. And so, on the rainy evening of September 29, I found myself saying: "Misunderstanding is always a great pity, especially when it turns into war."

  "How, Mr. Toomey, do you define the term nation?"

  "Well, as I think I've already said in some of our private conversations, I think in terms of a certain continuity of culture literature, of course, chiefly--"

  "And literature's made out of language, isn't it?"

  "Well, yes. In a sense you could say that England is the English language and Germany the German. You may, indeed, say that Luther was the creator of Germany as he was the creator of modern German."

  "And Germany is wherever German is spoken, whether it be Austria or Danzig or the Sudetenland?"

  "You could say that, yes."

  "You were surprised on your holiday visit here to the Reich to hear that war had broken out between our two countries?"

  "I was surprised to discover that after conceding the Anschluss and the Czechoslovak business both Britain and France felt so strongly about Poland, a country they were in no position to comfort or assist--"

  "When you say England and France, Mr. Toomey, you mean, I presume, their political leaders?"

  "Well, of course. To be loyal to the democratic system, if not to the elected leaders now in power, I feel compelled to register a vote of very little confidence in Mr. Chamberlain. This, I must emphasise, is not disloyalty. Unlike your own people, we British have the privilege of changing our leaders."

  "That is perhaps because you have no real leader, Mr. Toomey. If you had one, you would not talk of changing him."

  "There may be something in that. Democracy has its price. So, of course, does dictatorship."

  "You regret this war then, Mr. Toomey?"

  "I regret all wars with their wasteful expenditure of young lives. Young blood and high blood, as Ezra Pound once put it, fair cheeks and fine bodies. For an old bitch gone in the teeth--"

  "For a botched civilization. I know the poem. It was a text for practical criticism when I was at Cambridge. You say in your book about religion, Mr. Toomey: 'Something gets into a man, some force beyond his control, something we must term diabolic and learn how to drive out.' Do you still believe that?"

  "Yes, I do. I believe these destructive forces can be overcome if we try hard enough. Exorcizo te, immundissime spiritus, omnis incursio adversarii, omne phantasma, omnis legio--"

  "What is that you are quoting, Mr. Toomey? It sounds very impressive."

  "Oh, it's the old Rituale Romanum. I was thinking of my friend, almost my brother, Monsignor Campanati, Bishop of Moneta in Italy. He has always stoutly held to the view that man was created good and that evil is from the devil. I saw him once at work, driving out demons. I trust he is at work now, exorcising the demons of war that infest this world of ours. Meanwhile, the rest of us can at least pray that peace will soon come again."

  "Amen to that, Mr. Toomey. If I may ask you a general question, what do you consider to be the finest thing in life?"

  "Marcus Aurelius put it rather well, I think. He said, 'For us creatures, knowledge that heaven exists beatifies life--'"

  "Very beautiful, Mr. Toomey."

  "'--Or opens doors yielding noble actions. Zeal inspires sanctity.'"

  "Have you a message for both the German and the British peoples?"

  "Yes. May all your hearts in the long eras rolling relentlessly on teach innocence, not hate. Everyone--everyone--"

  "Yes, Mr. Toomey?"

  "Learn love."

  "Thank you, Mr. Toomey."

  The red light went out.

  Next morning Dr. Eggenberger accompanied me to the airport in a polished Daimler. "Gorgeous weather," he said. "England should be looking lovely just now." In the departure zone he rasped at Lufthansa officials in what seemed very theatrical German. So might he have acted some cardboard jackbooted Prussian in an end-of-term comedy at Hyderabad House near Bridport. I half expected him to wink at me to show that the gross barking was just an act. He did not wink. It was his English that was the act. "Got everything? Passport, cash, traveler's checks?"

  "Everything. And thanks for everything."

  "Well," he said, "let's have you out of the bloody Reich." And in terrible earnest he took a smart pace back, raised his right arm in the ancient European salute, and cried: "Heil Hitler." Bridport was very far.

  On the plane I sat next to an American journalist. "Europe," he jeered, "playing its little lethal games. This time you're really going to be out for the count." I had to be a European, not being an American, but he was incurious as to what sort of European--Icelandic, Latvian, Attic or Spartan, all one to him.

  "Europe's not an entity. That's the mistake you Americans are always making. And it will go on resisting being an entity. That's why Hitler won't win."

  "We'll be in at the end like last time to save all your asses." He then got stuck into a copy of Time with an American senator, unknown to Europe, on the cover: Idaho's George F. Schlitz or somebody. I saw Alps like ruined pastry below. We landed at Graz, then at laked Kiagenfurt. The American got out. "See you, fella. Or maybe not." Then we sailed over the border at Tarvisio and I was safe. I celebrated with a doze until we got to Milan.

  Once in the Federated Malay States, visiting a Chinese patient old and bedrid with Philip, passing through the back room of the jeweler's shop above which that dried fish of an ancient dwelt, I saw in an otherwise empty bookcase a copy of The Cloud of Unknowing. Bagaimana kitab ini datang di-sini? I asked the Mah-Jongg players. How the hell did this get here? They did not know, nor did they care. And now, in the taxi that took me from Milan airfield to the Milan rail terminus, I found, equally baffling, a copy of Hobbes's Leviathan. It was, moreover, from the Molesworth edition of 1839-45, the only complete edition of Hobbes that, before Professor Howard Warrender got to work very recently, was, so I recently was told, available. I asked the driver what it was doing there, and he shrugged and said Ta' tahu, I mean Non to so. I opened the volume, dog-eared, pencilled over, bought at Brentano's in New York but by whom was not indicated on the flyleaf, and found myself looking at Part IV--Of the Kingdom of Darknesse. I read:

  Besides these Soveraign Powers, Divine, and Humane, of which I have hitherto discoursed, there is mention in Scripture of another Power, namely, that of the Rulers of the Darknesse of this world, the Kingdome of Satan, and the Principality of Beelzebub over Daemons, that is to say, over Phantasmes that appear in the Air: For which cause Satan is also called the Prince of the Power of the Air: and (because he ruleth in the darkness of this world) The Prince of this world: And in consequence hereunto, they who are under his Dominion, in opposition to the faith full (who are the Children of the Light) are called the Children of Darknesse.

  And then he spoke of

  a Confederacy of Deceivers, that to obtain dominion over men in this present world, endeavour by dark and erroneous Doctrines to extinguish in them the Light, both by Nature, and of the Gospell; and so to dis-prepare them for the Kin gdome of God to come.

  Looking up from the volume as we approached the station, I saw a poster advertising Mercurio light bulbs. The god Mercury, naked, helmeted or battlebowlered, wings on heels, sped through the blue with a flaring light bulb in hang powered, one presumed, from his own body. Had the Christian image of the devil been contrived out of a mixture of Hermes and his hoofed son Pan? The Prince of the Power of the Air--how noble a title. L
ucifer, the bringer of light. The rulers of the air could not also be the rulers of darkness. The air was where brightness fell from. (Yes, Toomey, leaving it dark.) It was God who sat in darkness fingering his beard, everybody's unwashed old do' man. (Unworthy, Toomey: a light beyond light striking human souls as darkness.) He could not even look after his first chosen. Come on, Toomey, let's have William Blake: hell as energy and energy as eternal delight; John Milton of the devil's party without knowing it. Anything to empty certain words of meaning--words like, for instance, England, home, duty.

  I was, of course, scared of going home. I had failed in my duty to England.

  I should have watched for the red light's glowing and then cried: God's curse on Germany. Then I would have been taken away and imprisoned for the duration, hero, patriot, best-selling author now to sell even better. I shook myself out of the taxi at the Milan terminus: I was going to my fratello in the episcopal palace at Moneta. The taxi driver had no objection to my taking away a book that was not his property and was, moreover, in an unintelligible language. I clicked open my suitcase and stowed Hobbes. I tipped the driver extravagantly. I bought a ticket to Moneta and, on the train, quietened my shaking by pondering the mystique or metaphysic or theology of war. Was war a natural product of historical wrongs or was it an allegory of some eternal opposition? It seemed to me that good and evil were probably as indefinable as right and wrong, and that the sole reality was the electricity of opposition. Alpha versus omega, and the two at pacific rest in a Creator who said he was both. He was the Creator of the Prince of the Power of the Air, but he must also be the Creator of an opposing prince whom we blasphemously called God. You were doomed to take sides, but did it matter which side you took? And then the words home and duty bellowed from a baby in the next compartment.

  I told my story to Carlo as we sat over a flask of the local wine in his salone. But first I had had to be admitted by snuffling Mario and stand by while Carlo--formidably, nay beautifully hideous in a black gravy-stained cassockdelivered hard words to two middle-aged men in fascist uniform. Carlo seemed to have said something in a sermon displeasing to the local representatives of the regime. Something about the war and Italy's need to stay out of the war and initiate in the Italian soul if not elsewhere a fight for liberty. "There," boomed Carlo, as I came into the great vestibule with its pious pictures, "is an Englishman. He is by way of being my brother. Nevertheless do your duty to the cause of fascism. He represents democracy, a free opposition, a free press and free speech. Fall upon him, tear him to tatters. Or bring your thugs to do it, we shall be ready for them." They glowered at me but at the same time made vague gestures of greeting. Mario held open the door, snuffling. They left mumbling and with salutes that looked more communist than fascist. Carlo said to me, "What are you doing here? I understood that England had locked her doors."

  He listened to my story. "You did what you had to do," he said. "Whatever they do to you your conscience is clear." And then, "In comparison with Domenico you are as pure as snow."

  "What has Domenico done?"

  "Domenico has obtained a civil divorce in Reno or somewhere and has remarried. He has gone through a form of marriage with some film star I have never heard of. It is mere incidental news in a letter I received from our nephew. A fifteen-year-old boy stained and shamed with Domenico's filthy lust and defection. And his sister too. And Hortense having to go through lawyers to obtain what they call alimony. The name Campanati clings to me like the stink of old grease."

  "It will cling to Hortense also."

  "Along with the faith, the faith, faithful unto death." And there it was: the picture of the wide-eyed Roman at attention while Pompeii fell, my father's surgery, my pulling out of a bad tooth on Christmas morning. "The children will themselves be strong in the faith, thank God, but they need a father and they cannot have a father. It is you they need."

  I groaned in my stomach, remembering that Heinz was awaiting me back in London, his Pflegevater. I began to curse the Nazis, softly but without inhibition. Carlo listened sympathetically and nodded. He said, "This, I think, will be the last time we will see each other for some years. The sooner you return to England the better. Make your peace. Use your talents in propaganda. There are bigger ruffians at large now than ever there were in Chicago. I will tell you what I think is going to happen. The French will give in to the Germans and the Germans will overrun Europe. Mussolini will enter the war and gain such scraps from Hitler's table as he can. And then Italy will collapse and Britain invade Italy and Germany take over this poor benighted country. America will come in at the end as she came in in the last war. But before that we are going to have a terrible time." Carlo's prophecies were always pretty accurate. "I may not survive. I am not by nature a discreet man, though I have tried to practice discretion. You remember that time in the Garden of Allah, ridiculous blasphemy of a name, when we got drunk together? We shall get drunk together tonight, though on wine. Tomorrow you will need time to recover, though I shall not. Then the following day you may take the train from Milan to Ventimiglia and then the train from Ventimiglia to Paris. And then cross the Channel. The amenities of peace are still with us, but they will not be so much longer. It will be a long long time before we see each other again. If we ever do."

  CHAPTER 54

  The body of grim men who faced me in the bare room on Ebury Street were not quite a tribunal, not quite a court of enquiry. They all wore civilian clothes, but they had military manners, except for one man who had police manners. There were represented, I supposed, Scotland Yard's Special Branch, one of the numerals of MI, and probably the Home Office. The chairman was named Major de la Warr and he had small features set in wide margins of flesh, two chins also, also a fat voice. There was a canned ham called Plumrose, and I tend, when I recall him, to catch an image of the coffin-shaped tin with a pink porker on it. A voice, in other words, both plummy and porky. All the men had what I took to be copies of my dossier, or rather a reduced version of it, since one of the policemen, whose rank I gathered was that of superintendent, seemed to have the definitive unabridged version before him. This, I noted, contained newspaper clippings and even photographs. Major de la Warr said, "You took your time getting back."

  "I was lucky to get back at all."

  "We'll come to that later. What were you doing in Italy?"

  "Visiting Monsignor Campanati, the Bishop of Moneta. He's related to me by marriage." Everybody already knew this, or should have known it, but nobody liked it. A thin man with a stiff collar and black tie pencilled rapid notes.

  "Yes," Major de la Warr said. "All this Latin. Some nonsense about casting out devils."

  "You know it's nonsense apparently," I said. "Certain prelates of the Church think differently."

  "The Church of Rome."

  "To which I belong." This only became true when I confronted the Church of England.

  Major de la Warr said, "And what were you doing in Paris?"

  "Seeing James Joyce. The Irish writer." I gave it them all. "A confirmed neutral in the last war, despite his British passport. Trained by Jesuits. Author of Ulysses, long banned for dirtiness. He'd promised me a copy of Finnegans Wake. Signed. A great experimental masterpiece. Confiscated by HM Customs for investigation. I assured them it was not in code. Damn it all, the publishers are Faber and Faber." Everybody made notes.

  "What," the thin man asked, "were you doing in Austria in the first place?"

  "I've already made it perfectly clear in writing that I was trying to arrange for the exodus of Jakob Strehler. The author. The Nobel prizewinner." Nobody seemed to have heard of him. I was angry and said, "I realize that literature doesn't come into the piovince of you gentlemen, but I submit that the name Jakob Strehler should not he altogether unknown to you. I was trying to perform a duty to international literature."

  "Why," quacked a small man who kept spinning his spectacles round in a left fist that loosely grasped an earpiece, "did you not try to get him out earlier
? After all, we were on the brink of war."

  "His son had been sent to me. I decided that the son needed his father."

  "So," still twirling, "it was not altogether a devotion to what you call international literature." Very shrewd, very nasty. "How were you proposing to get this Strehler fellow out?"

  "I had a forged passport ready for him."

  "British?" Major de la Warr asked.

  "I'm afraid so. I mean, it was the only way."

  "Where is the passport?" That was the man with the stiff collar.

  "Hidden, I think, in the middle of a pile of old copies of Punch that Strehler used to read in his lavatory."

  "Left there for some Nazi agent to use. I see." The same man. "How was the passport obtained in the first place?"

  "Stolen. By the son of Strehler. He stole. He badly needed parental guidance." There was much pencilling.

  A man who smiled with the left side of his mouth and had made a cage of his fingers said, "Where is this Herr Strehler the younger now?"

  "Interned, I gather. I left him in a hotel when I went to get his father. He got himself into some trouble undefined. The two men who came to tell me were not very communicative. But thank God I'm free of him."

  "We have," Major de la Warr said, "copies of the transcript of your ah interview. It was picked up on what is insolently termed the Free British Radio. From Berlin. And yet you say you were in Vienna."

  "I was most certainly in Vienna. Landline landline." Why I made a song of it I did not and do not know. Further notes were scribbled.

  "You realize the gravity of giving comfort to the enemy?" Major de la Warr said. "You gave a lot of comfort. All very chummy. Old friend of the regime. You ah reviled the Prime Minister. You regretted the war. You spoke of the need for ah ah love."

  "Your scrutinizers evidently failed to spot two cunningly prepared acrostics," I said. "Look at your transcripts. One of them, which I fitted into an alleged aphorism of Marcus Aurelius, says FUCK THE BLOODY NAZIS. The other is contained in my final statement. The one beginning 'May all your hearts' and ending 'Learn love.' I leave it to you gentlemen to work it out." They worked it out. The policeman with the fat dossier got it first: "May Hitler rot in hell."