Earthly Powers (24 page)

       "Really a sir, is he, your mate, like what he said?" breathed rummily on me a matelot called Tish.

       "Smooth," said the sir, handing it round in tumblers, "you have to admit the smoothness of it." Dancing went on still, one dancer delicately gnawing his partner's throat, oh do do that it's nice. Dusking sea air outside when the land breeze burst open the door. Then we were battened in again to snug smelly dark with bulbous paper lampshades aswing. Oh, smooth all right, right.

       "Princer Wales smokes that, did you know?" said the scowse whom they called Wet Nelly, one of the fighting Starkeys really he is though from the Dingle, they has a fight afore they goes to bed. "Won many a bet on that, wack. Baby's Bottom it's called. You can buy it in shops."

       The patronne wanted to know who was paying. Sir will pay. He unclawed a cram of bills onto the swimming zinc countertop. "For God's sake, careful." I scooped up most, thrust it into my own right jacket pocket, haggled about change.

       "Better," swaying Dick said, "with an absinthe in it. Reinforce that whatsit. Put one in next time. Smooth, though."

       "Who's absent when she's at home?"

       "Sang de bourreau," Dick told patroness and own-rolled-caporal-puffing filthy-aproned barman. "Put that on list of genuine deuces étrangers."

       "Etrangéres," I could not help correcting, pedantic fool. "Feminine in plural."

       "What you say about lemonade in Bootle? You potty, wack?"

       A no-lipped matelot with milky eyes had been watching me for some time from round the bend of the bar. He now came up and spoke in my ear with bitter sincerity. "You look to me like," he said, "a bastard that's fair crying out to be done, you fucker."

       I drank nervously.

       "Fair swaller on him," said a boy fair as an angel whom the others called Porky. The working class always looks best in uniform.

       "The working class," I began to say.

       In a quiet fury, "Fair begging for it, I know his fucking type, jimmy-the-fucking-one voice on the bastard." I thought we had better be going.

       "Be going."

       "It's his sister," announced Dick. "He shags his sister before dinner. Gives him an appetite."

       "Nothing lower than that," Tish or somebody said. "Dad and daughter, that's different, stands to reason. Fuck a bugger that shags his sister which is his own flesh and blood."

       "A joke," I said. "Crude, but still a joke."

       "It's no bleeding joke, you bastard," gritted the one with milky eyes, his neck muscles knotty with the intensity of his speech. "That's why you've got to get done."

       "Oh, this is nonsense. Dick," I called, "we're going." And I drank a random glass from among many. It was not thirst, it was a gesture of the nerves. Dick did not hear, or listen. He was dancing with a sulky-lipped bullock they called Sparks, and this Sparks was thrusting at Dick in rhythm. Lat the grite big warld keep taming. I wondered whether to have a heart attack, but that organ beat strongly, well fueled by the muck I was toping or stuping. For I ownly knaow that I lay yew sao.

       "You'll get done yet, you fucker."

       "Oh, for Christ's sake," and oversqueezed my glass, which broke. Blood on my fingers. "Damn and bugger it."

       "Porky'll suck that off for you. A real little bloodsucker is Porky here," Tish said. But Porky was a sweating angel, very pale.

       "Damn and damn." I did my own sucking. The gramophone ran down and no one rewound. The big fat frizzed bitch was going on at me about the broken glass. Fahnd saaaam waaaan laaaaaak yaaaaaaaaow.

       "I want to throw," retched Porky. "I got to."

       "Come, dear," Dick said. "Daddy will holdum head for um." And he put an arm tenderly about Porky. Porky sicked spittle. "All right, madame, you fat unsavoury cow. All will be taken care of." And he staggered Porky toward the door.

       "What he is," said Tish, "is like a gentleman. Stands to reason, him being a sir." The door opened to a black wind. Sparks shut it with his arse. Dick and Porky were out there. I was going to go too.

       "You're staying here, fucker," the milky-eyed one said. "You've got to get done."

       "You and whose navy?" I quoted vulgarly from one of my own stupid plays.

       "Summat to say about it?" somebody said, flushed face an inch from mine. "Got it in for the fucking Andrew?"

       "I'm getting out of here," and I marvelled at myself as I grabbed the rump of the smashed glass from the runny zinc and swivelled it from one to another of the blue swayers like a flashlamp.

       "Ah, playing dirty. Right, here it comes." But the proffered fist with its tattooed LOVE AND DUTY with blue flowers could not really connect, drink having drained strength from the arm beyond it. The door opened again and to a windier blackness two genuine matelots came in, French, pomponned caps with MAZARIN on them.

       "Parleyvoo wee wee. Jigajig traybon." Of course, my original play title. I dropped the tumbler stump on the filthy wet floor and, for some reason, ground it growling with my heel among the un-ground-out fag-ends. Then I shouldered and pushed out. "Come back, fucker, to get fucked."

       "Dick," I called to the sidestreet. There was only one lamp, dimmish, near a Byrrh poster. I ran inland and came to an alleyway. I heard groaning, then a splash. The thin moon emerged to show Dick, sober and vigorous, holding the doubledup sailor up with strong clasping arms round his middle. The sailor's trousers were right down, hobbling his ankles. Dick was buggering away deep and cheerfully in brutal Norman Douglas style.

       "Just one second, dear," Dick smiled, "then he's all yours. Not all that tight, surprising really. Relaxation consequent on nausea and so on." And still he ground away. Then he shuddered, lips apart, as on unsugared lemon juice as he spattered. "Delicious. So mindless. There, come on, angelface, get it all up for daddy." The two voidings were one. I had an erection. I was bitterly ashamed. Then there were voices calling.

       "Porky. Fucking Porky."

       "Fucked Porky, really," Dick said, releasing him into his own vomit. "All right, dear," buttoning up, "he's all yours." And Dick ran with long expert strides into the blackness of the alley as the moon buttoned itself into its fly of cloud. It was as if he knew the damned place blind. The boy lay heaving, terribly besmirched, bare arse to the sky. A great gust blew the cloud tatters off the moon. Then Porky's mates were there.

CHAPTER 25

The important thing, I explained as well as I could from my bloated mouth, was to get a message to my sister. No, we had no telephone. A telegram. But the post offices were closed and there was no night telephonic service. The plainclothes sergeant by my bed in the Hôpital Saint Roch said a message could be telephoned to the Monaco police and it would then be delivered by hand. For God's sake, please, no mention of what's happened, don't want the poor young recently orphaned girl highly nervous panicking, say met by chance my publisher on his yacht staying on his yacht discussing book. Be back Saturday. The hovering sister shook a grim grey head at that samecli. Amend to lundi. Ah, said the plainclothes sergeant, so monsieur was a man of letters as well as a foreign visitor. That made the whole thing worse. And what was monsieur doing in that particular part of the old port, notoriously low and perilous, no place for, especially lettered, foreign visitors? Ah, I said, but surely in order for man of letters conducting examination of cultural or vivental spectrum of great southern marine city. Monsieur is writing a report on the criminal elements of Nice? Monsieur is doing a dangerous thing. See what monsieur has permitted himself to be led into. No, no, I said, my métier is that of romancier, I am a writer of fiction. Fiction, pronounced the sergeant, is written from the imagination, it is invention, it requires no meddling with the dangerous exterior world. The sergeant was a young plump man smelling of overgarlicked ratatouille, his celluloid collar overtight, eased with irritable fingers when he was not pencilling in his little notebook. Could monsieur remember more than he had already remembered, which was not, if he might be permitted to say so, much? Monsieur could not, monsieur said. Set upon suddenly by thieves when pursuing noise of a cat in pain apparently, we others English are given to love of animals, fought back, was vindictively torn and thumped. And also, the sergeant reminded, anally violated, though not severely, more in a token manner. Were monsieur's assailants francophone? Oh yes, most certainly francophone, though with a strong Algerian accent. Ah, monsieur knows Algiers, he has been conducting similar researches into the unsavoury moeurs of the backstreets of that city? No, a guess really.

       Contusions mostly, a tooth loose, but the behaviour of the heart not well liked by either palpating Dr. Durand or stethoscoping Dr. Castelli. Found unconscious near pool of vomit partially unclothed, light rain beginning to needle body already chilled. Patrolling police, following scream of pain, not monsieur's, disclosed with questing lantern. Evidence of intake of alcohol, whether excess or not not easily judicable, but no matter anyway. Police would continue investigations. No need, I said too eagerly, you'll never find them, besides, I've learnt my lesson. Ah, monsieur has learnt his lesson, is it not? Monsieur should occupy himself with being man of letters and not go carousing in unsavoury lousehaunts of old port. Snap shut notebook, last irritable fingering of overtight celluloid collar, a sort of noose, metaphor of the stringency of duty. Message would at once be sent to monsieur's sister. Back God willing lundi prochain.

       The heart had settled grudgingly to a steady enough rhythm by Friday evening. Though bruised and wretched, I wanted to be out of there. The ward was full of mostly old men who wanted to treat me as an official representative of a Britain that, in the war just won, had behaved treacherously to France. II n'y a qu'un enneini, kept nodding a dithering grayhead. You mean, I said, that we treacherously would not allow you with impunity to overcharge us for horse provender and the use of filthy troop trains to drive the Hun off your soil not ours? The Germans are at least Europeans, some other old fool said. I could walk, and I was going to walk out. Dr. Durand had, I discovered, his account at the Banque Nationale de Paris, my bank too. Would he sell me a check form? You also BNP, monsieur? He would sell me two check forms, one for settling my bill here; the check poundage could be added to my bill. I was permitted to entrust to a male ward orderly, squat with Eskimo hair, a message to the manager of the Banque Nationale de Paris on the Place Massena, requesting him to telephone my branch in Monte Carlo and, thus reasssured as to funds, kindly cash enclosed, seal cash in envelope and give to bearer. The bearer brought me this cash and I overtipped him. Then I asked him to buy me the cheapest possible impermeable at the nearest men's clothing store. Yes, I know it is not raining, but these filthy and torn garments, regard, must be concealed from the common eye.

       This Saturday was March 29, 1919, day of the total eclipse of the sun which Einstein had predicted. I can remember a sudden darkness and feeling no surprise, as if it were natural enough for the sun to be occluded by my guilt and shame. I was so awash with shame and guilt that I could hardly think. Dick? Sir Richard Curry Bart? Was there had there ever been such a person? The name of that ghastly bistro was what? Thudding fists and ripping nails, spit and foul words clear enough in memory but not the inflicting of pain. I resented nobody except myself. But was this just or logical, seeing that I was made as I was? But who had made me as I was, since, as that German up at Eze had affirmed, there was no longer a God? Had I so made myself? When and how? What, anyway, was the solution save gelding? Brow bruised, left eye black, lips blubbered, hands in pockets of cheap raincoat, I limped from the station down rue Grimaldi, earning the odd look of curiosity. I had my keys still, their chain secured to my trousertop, though I had little else. I opened the main door and panted, near dropping, up to the top story. I opened the flat door quietly and knew at once that Domenico was back: his own impermeable, not cheap, hung on the hallstand. I knew, as you know, what was happening.

       But it seemed already to have happened. When I opened the door of Hortense's bedroom I found them both sitting up naked in bed calmly smoking. My first instinct was to snatch that cigarette out of the wicked girl's hand. It was the smoking naked that was so intolerable. But I stood there, nodding, taking all the blame. I heard a dog yelp bitterly out on the street. The dog was being run over by an automobile, and that too was my fault. These two in bed were at first too shocked by my appearance to be abashed at being caught post flagrantem. "What have they done to you?" cried Hortense.

       "What has he..." I began, but I knew the answer. "You dirty swine, you bastard," I told Domenico. "My own sister."

       "Many women," Hortense said, her pert breasts still blazing from the bed, "are the sisters of somebody. Out, both," she ordered. "I want to get dressed."

       "Get your clothes on," I said to Domenico. "You're going to be hit."

       "You couldn't hit an underdone custard," she said. "Who's done this to you? Your nonexistent publisher on his nonexistent yacht? Or that willowy blond little puffball? Out, both of you."

       I went into the salon and poured myself whisky. Domenico was soon after me, on bare feet, in shirt and trousers like a man surprised in seduction, which was what he was. "I cried," he said. "She comforted me."

       "You cried so she could comfort you, you mean, swine."

       "It was the bad news I brought back from Milan. They will not do the opera."

       "Serve you bloody well right, you bloody filthy leering little Don Giovanni."

       He was ready to cry again at this reference to an opera that had been done often and would be done often again, in Milan too.