Earthly Powers

by Anthony Burgess

  "Today

  It's the sixteenth of June today

  And from morning till moon the

  Hours to come

  Will add up to a humdrum Summer's day--"

  "You mean Campanati?"

  "Yes. Does that accent sound all right to you?"

  "So he's left off his Moog and backwards birdsong. Good. It will save his life. Not that it's worth saving."

  "The bridge goes

  'Plenty of fleshly exposure

  Napes and strawberries are red

  Buttocky peaches in a basket

  Racing on at Ascot

  In the royal enclosure

  Ted'

  The words are not always easy to sing. A young New York man is writing them, Sid Tarnhelm. The accent is right?"

  "The accent's fine. Now we have to go and see this Peruvian horror."

  In the vestibule of the Palais I saw my West Coast agent, just arrived, in a magenta shirt with a montage of Greek heroes in profile. His keen agential eyes were hidden from the Cote d'Azur by dark glasses that were also the new insolent golden mirrors to be favored by him who was soon to enter my life. The parrot beak sat ill between the jowls. His name was, even now hard to accept, Lev Trapeze. He said, arms out, "Ken, baby. You look beautiful."

  "Old," I said.

  "Yeah, but only the old are beautiful. You think about that, kid," he said to the exquisite leggy brunette nonentity in linen shorts beside him. And to me, "They took up the final option on that Heracles thing."

  "Sophocles?"

  "That's the one. Principal photography starts in the fall. A guy called Wrigley did the script."

  "Oh my dear God."

  "This Greek guy called Lilliputtopiss or some shit like that, they have the weirdest names, he's playing the lead. Very mysterious money in it, Ken baby, but their check ain't no condom, like they say. You going in there?"

  "I have to. C'est le boulot."

  "Pedophilia Productions they're called now. Philadelphia? I ask them. Then they spell it out. Where's that? I ask them."

  "Oh my dear God."

  "What is this movie now? Is it the one with Bardot naked and the performing seals?"

  "This is Peruvian. Peruvian and seals have something in common. Think about it, Lev. So long."

  Next morning we watched the Quebec entry, Et Patati et Patata. The French jurors protested that they could understand neither the Canadian French dialogue nor the English subtitles. I raged at them and said: Christ, it's only eighteenth-century Norman. The projection was intermitted while a simultaneous translator was sought. Finally I did the job myself. With a parched mouth and thuds in my skull I tottered into the Carlton vestibule at lunchtime: the posters (REAL! NOW! FOR THE FIRST AND LAST TIME!) hurt my eyes. A limp hand touched my sleeve. The face looked familiar. I frowned at it.

  "Bucolo," he said. "Jimmy Bucolo. Professor Bucolo. You know me."

  "You," I said, "are supposed to be in Africa."

  "Could we talk? Alone?" He was in a dirty beige tropical suit and his face and head were so wet with sweat that it was as though he had been dunking them for a hangover. "Alone," he said, "like me, alone. I came back alone, you can see that. Nairobi to Casablanca via El Obeid, Murzuq and Tuggurt. I telephoned from Casablanca and they said where you were. It's been a long trip but I had the money, you gave it. I booked one way for all of us, I might have known." All this was spoken manically. Passersby in the vestibule frowned or grinned at the ham actor demonstrating a role: this was not the place, this was strictly for commerce not art. I felt cold and my head cleared of its ache. I led Bucolo to the elevator, "I've these bags," he said. "A lot of luggage." I signaled to the porter's desk.

  Up in my sitting room I poured whisky into him. He sat hunched and thin and ill and haunted. He could not take the whisky. His face bulged, he got up and staggered, looking for a place to throw up. I pointed, he ran tottering. I sat trying to take in the news. The evidence he had placed on the round glass-topped table seemed irrelevant to anything I was able to, meaning wished to be able to or perhaps unable to, believe. Two certificates headed REPUBLIK RUKWANI with a crouching leopard, the subheading Sertifikit Kifo, the two names and the numbers of two passports, as though for the immigration control of the next world; a Bank of America credit card; John's notebook. Bucolo came back and flopped on the couch facing me. He was not far from total breakdown.

  He said, "There's no need to look at me like that."

  "How am I looking at you?"

  "As if I should have gone with them. But I gave up the faith, you see. Reaction to my brother, my father and mother liked him better than me, he became a priest. It's not uncommon in families, you know that. I don't go to mass any more. Besides, I'd had to go to Morogo, you see, to see the snake ceremony. It was safe enough for them, you see, everybody said that. It was just a matter of a few miles in the Land Rover. A real paved road, you know, and open country a couple of abandoned shantytowns and some scrub before they got to the new village. And everybody said that the terrorists had been contained, you see that. Shinya had been executed publicly. By firing squad. Near total pacification." He started to laugh.

  "Stop that stop that now for Christ's sake. What terrorists, what are you talking about?" He went on laughing, showing brown teeth. I slapped him. He stopped.

  "Thanks. Thanks very much. Thank you very much, that was the right thing to do, thank you. It's Mbolo's party really, but they put Mbolo in jail and they want Mbolo out of jail. They'll kill anybody, but whites are best, Africa for the Africans, you see that. They're still killing but it was put out about total pacification, you know. Containment, you see that."

  "You saw, you saw--"

  "I saw them, I had to identify, you see that. I saw the faces, the bodies were covered, they didn't want me to see the bodies. Damu damu this man kept saying in Swahili, that means blood. Robbed of everything, clothes, watches, money, everything. Except passports, they didn't want the passports. There's a man representing the United States who came in from Kipila, an honorary Consul, you see, black of course. He took the passports. They were given a proper burial, taken to the Christian graveyard in Kilwa Kivinje, that's outside the territory, you know. There was a black Catholic priest did the ceremony, you see that."

  "Let me get this clear," I said. "They were going to mass and they met a roadblock near a shantytown and then the terrorists got them. This was in broad daylight?"

  "No, night, night, you see, they were going to a night mass, they always have mass at night. If they hadn't been going to mass, if they'd lost the faith like me--You see that."

  "John had as good as lost it. He got it back through Laura. Oh Christ, I got Laura there."

  "You got us all there. But you mustn't blame yourself, blame the badness in these bastards, that's all, it could have happened any time any place. There's only Laura, yes, she wouldn't have gone if it hadn't been for ... but it could have happened some place else some time else."

  "Black bastards," I said, "black filthy bastards. What did fucking bad filthy Ralph do about it, eh, Africa for the filthy fucking Africans, cut the white man's balls off. You didn't see the bodies, no, you said that, no, you didn't."

  "They wouldn't let me see them, only the faces, you see that. I think the bodies must have been cut up. They don't have guns, they have the kisu and the sikkin. Can I have some hot tea with mint? It's the only thing that stops my stomach churning. I'd appreciate it if you ... if you..."

  "You can have tea but no mint. This isn't North Africa. The French don't go in for mint. I'll order some for you. Then I have to go. I have to watch a film."

  "You have to what? You have to what? You mean you could after what I, you mean you could ..." Old Mulberry Street proprieties were being outraged. "Christ, to go to a movie."

  I telephoned for tea for him. "The job goes on," I said. "I said I'd do the job and I'm doing it. What do you propose to do?"

  "I'll rest here if you'll let me. Stay the night if it's no bother
. Then I can see about getting back home from Nice. I'll leave their things with you. These." He made hand movements at two of the bags. "When I get back I'll get down to telephoning to St. Louis. You can give the news to John's mother."

  Why me? And what do I want with this dead luggage?"

  He opened his mouth at my hardness of tone. "You're his uncle. His nearest relative. I mean nearest in space. I mean, the same continent, though you're in Europe now, I see that. I mean, what the hell can I do, send a cable saying: John dead?"

  "You'll be flying to New York. Give her the news in person."

  "I can't I can't I can't."

  "All right," I said sighing. "I've missed lunch. I have to grab a sandwich or something. At the bar downstairs. You stay here. Rest. Would you like a sleeping tablet?"

  "I have some of my own. They only bring bad dreams. I can't sleep. I'll just lie down here if it's all right with you. Oh Christ, my stomach." But it was his belly he grasped.

  The film I had to see that afternoon was an ill-made Brazilian feature entitled Os Cidadaos, all about low life in Rio, with a norm of gratuitous violence in gaudy psittacine colors. I heard the French journalists saying "genial" whenever a particularly gross cinematic cliche presented itself. I saw the violent killing of John and Laura very clearly in my own inner projection room. It became part of some other film full of outrage in exotic settings, it was half-cleansed to bad art, it was a help, it would in time become an abomination I had been forced to look at as juror at Cannes, title and plot forgotten, that one scene enacted with terrifying conviction but still a cliche, genial. When we staggered out into the huge marine light after the cozy dark shot with screams and stripped bodies, I knew what I had to do.

  I went back to my suite at the Carlton to find Bucolo at the escritoire scribbling madly. He looked at me with demented brightness to say, "I'm doing it. I'm writing letters. I'm telling them all about it."

  "To John's mother too?"

  "I got to. It's my duty. I was head of the team."

  "Don't. I'm seeing about that now." I looked up Domenico in the Alpes Maritimes telephone directory--boulevard Garavan 22--and then ordered a car to take me to Menton. "I'm going," I said, "to see John's father."

  "You mean his real father? You've found his real father?"

  "What the hell do you mean, real father? There are no real fathers, only legal ones. Mothers are different, mothers are all too real."

  "So I don't have to write?"

  "Later, very much later."

  It was a gorgeous early evening, ideal for a coastal spin. The uniformed chauffeur was inclined to talk, making much play with his heavy shoulders and short thick neck. He was a devotee of the cinema, the Cannes festival cared not a turd for art, only for the commerce of the flesh, look at these would-be vedettes thrusting their naked bellies out at the world, being laid by fat Arabian Jews. We sped through Monaco, which he castigated as a principality made rich on human weakness, did I know the book by Dostoevsky about the agonies of a gambler, that would make a great film. At length he dropped me on boulevard Caravan in Menton, which town, he told me, the Italians called Mentone and claimed as their own. Was he to wait? Yes, he was to wait.

  I could have found Domenico's third-floor apartment blindfolded. It was a matter of climbing as far as a loud composition made up of birds, glissandos and electronic ostinati and then knocking at it. At my knock the noise left off. Domenico opened up. He looked terrible. He was old, though some years younger than myself, but he was far gone in decrepitude. He was in dirty white like a Conrad character going to pieces in the tropics, his belly was huge, he was totally bald, he was leaning heavily on two thick sticks. I had not seen him since that bad time at La Scala. He seemed prepared to fend me off with his right hand stick. "All right, all right, Domenico," I said, "I come in peace."

  He growled, "I heard you were in Tangier. What are you doing in these parts?"

  "Cannes, Cannes, Cannes. Where I heard about this musical Ulysses. Congratulations. I'm sure it'll be a riot."

  He was living near monastically in three rooms, though the biggest room appeared, apart from its upright piano, to be equipped with machinery apt for propelling a nuclear submarine. That would be the synthesizing apparatus. In another room there was only a camp bed and music paper. The living room had one armchair and two canvas chairs of the kind used by film directors on location, no carpet, a kitchen table with metal legs and a jazzy plastic top with three stained coffee mugs. I caught a glimpse of what looked like a submarine galley, too small to hold that table, a cooker filthy with spilt coffee and tomato sauce. The splendid evening light fought to pierce dirty windows. Domenico settled heavily and wincing into the armchair. It was old and it creaked. "What's the matter with the legs?" I asked.

  "The arteries are getting clogged. It's agony most of the time. Sometimes it lets up. But not for long."

  "I know. Intermittent claudication. Why are you living like this? Surely you've plenty of royalties coming in?"

  "Alimony. Money's no good if you can't buy services. You can't buy services these days."

  "I'm glad you've gone back to composing real music," I said. I did not trust the canvas chair I was sitting on. I got up and sat on the edge of the kitchen table. "I mean tunes and so on."

  "I got a prize at the Venice festival of electronic music," he said gloomily.

  "But you hanker after the big world of the tone deaf?"

  "This Ulysses is supposed to be a great book. I remember in Paris everybody saying it was the book of the century. I remember Joyce, that thin drunk blind man. I worked with Irving Hamelin once. It was his idea I should do the music. You've caught me just before I go to New York."

  "Traveling must be pretty painful."

  "They have wheelchairs at all the airports."

  "You need somebody to look after you. A wife, for instance."

  "You know all about that. You know I tried. Telephoning on my knees, damn it."

  "Less painful than standing?" A telephone wallstand was the only item in the vestibule. "Listen to me, Domenico. Listen to me with care. I want to talk about your son John or Gianni."

  "He's not my son."

  "Look, we're not getting into all that again. Paternity is a fiction. The law says you're his father."

  "How can it say that when it says his mother is not my wife?" That was a complicated statement for Domenico, a twelve-tone ground with a couple of appoggiature.

  "You know perfectly well what the Church says, and to hell with the secular laws of America. You were married once and once only. You're still married. And you're the legal father of two children. You have a certain duty to per form."

  "Try and tell Ortensia about the duty. I'm ready to go back. But not as the father of those two kids."

  "You thickheaded bastard, can't you take in what I'm telling you? The Church says you are the father and the Church is right. And the duty you have to perform is to tell your wife that one of your and her children is dead."

  He grunted at me with his eyes wide: the whites looked as though they ought to be washed. "Dead? Who's dead?"

  "Your son John is dead. And his wife Laura, your daughter-in-law. I got the news today. Along with their wretched orphaned luggage. They were in Africa. They were killed by terrorists in the tiny republic of Rukwa. Somebody has to tell John's mother. You know what happened fifteen years ago when that stupid girl went in with a telegram screaming. Somebody has to tell her quietly, gently before any fool sends her a devastating letter. I just stopped one fool from doing it."

  "Johnny's dead?"

  "John is dead. I think the responsibility of telling her is all yours. Carlo, if he were interested in anything but humanity in the round, would think the same thing. I'm only Hortense's brother. I've already suffered enough with her. I'm suffering now, prospectively. But I'm not going to bear the news and see her collapse. That's your job."

  "I hardly saw Johnny. I don't know what he looked like even. He changed his name. He aban
doned me."

  "You did the abandoning, you bloody fool. When are you going to New York?"

  "Day after tomorrow. I'm sorry he's dead, I'm sorry when anybody's dead. Anna will know already. She always did know when he was sick at school or something. I knew that. She wrote letters to me for a time. I didn't answer. It comes of being gemelli."

  "Twins, I know. Twillies, the doctors call it. Twins' ESP. Domenico, you and Hortense are going to be together again. She's alone now. She won't say no this time. You have to give her the news."

  "I don't want to, I can't. Jesus, the trouble we all have."

  "I know. But it's better to have the trouble and not be lonely. It's hell being lonely. I've been lonely all my life. When Carlo opted for loneliness I knew what I'd always suspected. That he wasn't, isn't human. It's like opting for hell."

  "It's hell all right. Carlo thought we'd all let him down. By being human." And then, "How did Johnny die?"

  "Simple. He died by being in big dirty black Africa. A place where white men are supposed to die. White women too. I paid her fare. But I take no blame, none at all. You must never blame yourself for good intentions."

  "My intentions were good," Domenico said, "with our Saint Nicholas thing. I mean, I mean that God's a bastard. He is too." His eyes began to wash themselves. I could see that he was seeing himself as Nicholas, after all Hollywood had called him Nick, with a dead kid in his arms. He dried his eyes on his sleeve and said, "I see what you mean about it's my job. It's a hell of a job."

  "Nobody else can do it, Domenico."

  "You're right at that." And then, "That apartment in New York. It's yours, isn't it? There are some things a man can't do. I'll have to look around."

  "Don't talk wet," I said in Hortense's manner. "If I gave it to her I gave it to both of you. One flesh as they say."

  "That's out," he said. "That's all over. That's what makes it possible to think of starting all over. Sex," he said, "is a fucking nuisance. Thank Christ I'm over it."

  I went back to Cannes. Bucolo had gone, taking all that luggage with him. He had left a note: "I tore up the letters I wrote but writing them got a lot out of my system. I'm catching the evening flight to Paris. Professor Levi-Strauss is giving lecture on incest and riddles at the Sorbonne. I intend to hear the lecture and get very drunk and then be poured on the plane to New York. I'll leave telling poor John's mother to you. Thanks for having me. The hot tea did a lot of good."